0. Street Level

New Project! Street Level will assemble 49 snapshots of/in the city’s different neighbourhoods. The project has many sources of inspiration: Douglas Coupland’s City of Glass, an idiosyncratic A to Z directory to his Vancouver; the alternative guide Vancouver: The Unknown City which documents the city's secret histories, urban legends, fun factoids, and its many nooks and crannies; 49 is an homage to my friend Chow Yiu Fai’s beautiful book 7749 where he offers 7x7=49 creative exercises just because he likes how the four numbers look on the page; the title came from a conversation I had long time ago with a friend, an American in Canada, who said he can’t think about nation and identity but was finally beginning to figure out his street after almost a decade. Mostly, the project is for me, to find out more about the city, investigate for myself friends' anecdotes and what I learnt in books or saw on the news or recognized from movies. Besides, I  live in a high rise, and seem to be perennially filled with heady thoughts and skyward visions. Coming back down to street level is a blessing, a life line, a necessity.