Wink and Howie's Place - A West Vancouver Mid-Century Home Demolition

You remember this home. In February 2012, I posted about Wink and Howie's cute little place they'd lived in for 40 years. They sold in the summer of 2011 because of declining health (I bought their teak bedroom and dining suites). Well, last weekend, we decided to do a drive-by to see if the home had been restored - as we thought it would be back in 2012. Good God - no. It's been replaced by a concrete monstrosity with Parthenon-worthy Doric columns (the most massive Greek temple columns) and Baroque balconies. First image of the series.

How to Make Vegan Brownies - Vegan and Raw Recipe

Vegan Brownie Recipe image Stacy Reynaud 

Raw Vegan Brownies

Super fast, super easy, super good. 

Call these vegan brownies a breakfast energy square; no guilt is involved. 

What you need:

• 1 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped almonds
• 1.75 cups pitted dates
• 1/2 cup raw cacao
• two pinches of sea salt
• parchment paper
• food processor
• medium size bowl
• small rectangular glass container with a cover (we used one of those glass airtight food storage containers )

What you do:

• Place walnuts in food processor and process till finely ground.
• Add cacao and a pinch of salt and blend.
• Add dates one at a time to the running processor (through the top feeder tube) - the ingredients should look like cake crumbs, yet stick together when squeezed (if they don't, add more dates.)
• Add the mixture to a medium-sized bowl and fold in the almonds.
• Transfer to a parchment paper-lined glass container.
• Press and mold the brownie mixture into the glass container.
• Sprinkle the other pinch of coarse sea salt on top.
• Place in freezer for about 45 minutes.
• Remove from freezer and slice into bite-size servings.
• Cover and store in the fridge.

Makes about eight to ten bite-size brownies - double the recipe for more

adapted from Karla's Closet and My New Roots

Quote of the Week - Erich Fromm

stacy reynaud

While in our private life nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence, those who are in charge of public affairs do practically nothing, and those who have entrusted their fate to them let them continue to do so.

Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be

The Longest Year in History

was 1972.

Remember the power of three? It's happening again, this time with the year 1972.

First off - Moody Blues, Nights in White Satin - a song I thought, from the very first day I heard remembering hearing it, was a cheesy 70s rambling poem song about King Arthur, so I paid no attention to it. Anyway, it popped up at me on the weekend, and I took the time to listen to the lyrics - which are everything but knights in white satin. 

New old favourite!

Then, I was looking at old Honda motorbikes online and came across this vintage ad from 1972. The truck and camper (and mini bike) equate to the elimination of the living in a van down by the river scenario created by the Vancouver rental pool.

Finally, Tuesday night I was looking at residential architecture and up pops this beauty. West Vancouver's Helmut Eppich house designed in 1972 by Arthur Erickson Architects (and sold in 2010 for $4.8 million.)

Vintage Chanel

1991

Christy Turlington

Things that confuse me

Efficiency committees

Initiatives that take the initiative out of initiatives

Quote of the Week - Lao Tzu

The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
image © Stacy Reynaud

A Community Plan that Defeats its Purpose

mid-century home demolition West Vancouver BC image Stacy Reynaud

information on issues relating to McMansions and possible District actions to make new housing better fit existing neighbourhood character.

West Vancouver Home demolition image Stacy Reynaud

West Vancouver heritage demolition image Stacy Reynaud

West Vancouver West Coast Modern home demolition image Stacy Reynaud

West Vancouver mid-century home demolitions image Stacy Reynaud

In West Vancouver, there's this mentality that renters are an unruly, degenerate, dirty bunch who will settle for anything (as interpreted by the state of the rental portfolio and letters to the editor of the North Shore News). Those of that particular mindset aren't reading this blog, so telling them to get their heads out of their (gl)ass (house) won't matter. It also shouldn't give them the right to try and rent us a termite-infested crack house off the highway for $3000 a month (such as one on Palmerston & 14th we saw recently) or this black mould mid-century we looked at in 2012.

Just because we live in West Van doesn't mean we'll pay you more to rent your 'tear down' house you just bought until you can afford to put up your 'trophy house.' You know what we see when we're out there snooping around at architecture, kids (usually baby boomers) whose parents just died that are eager to sell off what they perceived as the tacky family home they grew up in. Don't just blame the buyers of these properties for the 'ugly' neighbourhoods transforming West Van; look at the sellers.

Generation X is just now hitting the peaks of our careers, and we are all looking for homes that we can rent and live in for many years. We can't afford down payments for overpriced homes - remember, we moved out of our parents' house when we graduated from high school, worked three jobs and put ourselves through university instead - because that's what you did. We'd love to rent your well-loved, well-kept, clean, tacky family home and make it our home, but we need to be more innovative to pay over $3000 a month for it - the bloody thing was probably paid off forty years ago. So West Van, if you want to keep, or try to attract, a younger demographic with extra money to spend in the community (not on renting a crappy house), get it together because we're getting fed up with this - and because we rent - we can just up and leave, whenever we want. You're losing your history and your future community all at the same time. 

Check out the Facebook group I Grew Up in West Vancouver.

Are you interested in moving to West Van to rent but need to figure out what's happening here?

The first of two info sessions on West Vancouver housing is Monday, February 24th, from 4 to 8 pm at the West Van Community Centre.

See you there.

PS coach houses shouldn't cost $1.0 million or $4500 monthly to rent.

Images Stacy Reynaud

You Know This Pile of Dirt - Another West Vancouver Home Demolition

The Baker Residence

Architect Peter Faulkner Smith

Altamont West Vancouver BC

built 1958 - demolished 2014

image Stacy Reynaud

View my post and interior photos of the home from April 2013 

image Stacy Reynaud blueprints from the estate of Faulkner Smith

The home was listed as a significant West Vancouver support building. 

The West Vancouver Survey of Significant Architecture 1945-1975, (West Vancouver, BC, 1994), pg 88. 

Architect - Peter Faulkner-Smith 

Date - June 1, 1958 

Location - Altamont, West Vancouver, BC 

I'll post a photo of its replacement once it's built.

all images by Stacy Reynaud

The Internet Killed the Luxury Brand

At the beginning of January I was having a discussion about fashion with a colleague at work -  he's Italian and his family is involved with the fashion industry in Milan, so that makes him an expert, right? We have a similar chat every season, however, this time it was different, not because I missed our previous season's discussion but because my views have changed - you've probably noticed I rarely write about fashion anymore. He asked me who and what I was watching and I said no one. I'm done with those shows and mass marketed pseudo luxury.

You see, back in the olden days before the Internet, fashion bloggers, and phony street style street style blogs, one of the defining aspects of a luxury item was the exclusivity of the item itself. One never, well at least in Vancouver, saw an Hermes bag for example, in real life. I remember going to LA in the early 90s and being awe struck over actually seeing people - in real life - wearing the luxury pieces I'd seen only in magazines - well not so much in awe, but maybe blown away that someone actually spent that much money, after all, it was the grunge era, but you know what I mean. The price, back then, signified high quality - hence luxury. Exclusivity was one of the defining aspects of luxury brands that actually made them luxury. One rarely, if ever, saw the pieces except for on the pages of magazines.

Now, because of the Internet, we see these luxury brands everywhere. How many times have you seen that bloody Givenchy sweatshirt with the rottweiler on it or the green Kenzo one with the tiger? Do you think a sweatshirt is luxury? I do, only if it's my thirty year old Oregon Ducks one I borrowed from my buddy in 1986 (and my husband wants to burn).

Today's silly nouveau riche, and their sixteen year old Lamborghini driving children, have turned what were once luxury brands into nothing more than mass marketed, mass consumed, cheaply produced crap. In the music industry the term is, It's not the band it's their fans. For Gucci, the term was Victoria Beckham. For the Le Corbusier estate it was people in general.

To quell this disaster marketers have had to coin a new term - ultra luxury.  The term luxury, like the term hang in there - has become meaningless.

So, my colleague and I, at the end of our conversation, could not come to an agreement on how low the Prada side part should go, but we did, without debate, agree that Karl Lagerfeld should retire.

stacy reynaud