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Nicholson Road is an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring an image from the previous week, shot in one of the many 'hoods around town in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the City of Vancouver. |
Can you believe the kind of weekend we just had? As much blue sky as you could want, with just the right amount of sun and heat. It's the sort of weather that iPhone photography was made for. And nothing pops better on smart phone cameras than a bit of texture and graffiti. Enter Marshall's Grocery, established back in 1947 in Maywood (out near Metrotown in Burnaby). Also known as R & B Grocery, the shop served this corner for decades before finding itself on the site of a recently approved high-density development.
Remember when corner stores used to be dotted throughout the city? I don't. I'm a child of the suburbs and my only option growing up was a gas station 7-11, a good 15min bike ride away. But these mom n' pop shops used to be a vital hub in the community. Even Jane Jacobs appreciated the corner store as one of the central places for interaction between neighbours. It was the place to find a few ingredients for lunch or dinner, to grab a paper and catch up on the news, or to find a willing ear to listen to a story or two… for Jacobs, it was even the place to leave a spare key for house guests before heading out of town. Fred Herzog, perhaps Vancouver's favourite photographer, has captured plenty of corner stores through his lens. "Bogners Grocery" is one of my favourite images in his collection partly because the scene has become so foreign to us.
These days the supermarkets and big-chain drug stores have largely taken the place of the corner store. Sure they're not always as friendly and the experience isn't as intimate, but the prices are way cheaper and you're pretty much guaranteed to find what you're looking for. The problem is this convenience comes at a price, and we're only just beginning to tally it up. If there's a corner store near you and you're in need of a snack/stamp/conversation, you know where to go!
Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.
