I was recently contacted by a local artist who chose to remain anonymous but wanted to share this (AMAZING) creation: the classic McBarge from Expo86 in miniature form, in a salt shaker! Of the piece "Wafflebored" says "I love ship models in bottles, this is a lowbrow version. Instead of a majestic sailing ship in a beautiful bottle its kind of the opposite, a rotting, dated and neglected piece of Vancouver history in a very humble glass container."
If you're just arriving to Vancouver, HERE is what the fuss over the McBarge is all about.
The floating McDonald's restaurant was a fixture in False Creek during Expo 86 but for years the thing has sat derelict near Port Coquitlam. It's a moss and mould covered ghost of the 1980s that vandals vandalize and often people climb aboard and take photos of themselves on it.
The idea has been floated around to turn it into a number of different things, most recently a restaurant and float plane hub in Mission, but nothing has ever stuck. The next news story you hear about it may be that it simply hit the ocean floor and has turned into a scuba diver's dream, but we're holding out hope that won't be its fate.
When I asked Wafflebored what he thinks of the real life McBarge and what they should do with it he told me "I kind of like it where it is. Vancouver is very new, clean, modern, and intentional, let us have a quirk now and again."
