Vancouver's Ghost Ads. (or, an enquiry into the city's extant advertisements for erstwhile commercial endeavours, including descriptions thereof, a brief pedestrian's guide to their locations, &c, &c)

The other day I walked into a big chain grocery store and then I walked to the flour aisle (well, not exclusively flour -- it's also home to jams, biscuits, and custards), where I found one of the store's many malodorous stockboys. I approached him, in swift steps, the way a brisk man approaches an urgent business matter, and as I did so, he put away the cell phone he was busily texting on and looked up. Then I said, "Do you sell Wild Rose Delicious Cake and Pastry Flour?"

Naturally, I was just fucking with him -- the stuff hasn't existed for decades. But just because the good folks who ran Wild Rose are long dead and the company has been defunct for a couple generations doesn't mean they've stopped advertising. No. If you'd like proof, head to the alley off of Gore Avenue between Pender and Hastings and see for yourself.

This here is what's commonly called a ghost ad -- the finest extant example in Vancouver, so far as I can tell. I don't think I need to elaborate on what a ghost ad is, it being a fairly straightforward matter (antiquated, painted on to a public surface of some kind), but I do think it's worthwhile to ponder why we should care about these ghost ads.

First of all, they're amazing -- just look at them! They're painted on walls in amazing colours and obsolete typefaces! They represent products that probably no longer exist! (or that you've never even heard of -- what the hell's a brigantine?) They have incredible slogans like "You can't lose with Paris shoes"! How can you not love these things, honestly.

But it's not just that they're impossibly cool, these ghost ads. They are really some of the most telling indicators of the morphology of urban forms -- for instance, the plethora of ads on East Hastings reminds us that long before its most recent incarnation as the DTES, the area was the city's most fashionable shopping district. They can offer insights into the day to day lives of our forbears -- what products they bought, how they might have spent their leisure time, and what types of advertising they might have responded to.

With ghost ads I feel like there's a strange kind of paradox at play -- the ads, by nature, are ephemeral, and yet for whatever reason they're still there, and we're looking at them, so they have a certain permanence -- and in the end it's as though we're privy to something we were never supposed to be privy to, and I like that.

Now, I may as well be blunt here -- if you're interested in ghost ads, you're in the wrong city (go to Montreal! or Winnipeg's exchange district!) But not all of us can travel and that's fine. Most of our ghost ads are concentrated in the DTES, so East Hastings near Hawks Avenue or thereabouts would be a good starting point; walk westbound along Hastings and you'll come across a good few of them.

Half the fun of these things is exploring and finding them on your own so I won't give away all the locations, but what I will do is tell you where my favourite is because it's so fantastic. It's in an alley off of Carrall between Cordova and Hastings. High up on the wall is a crazy palimpsest of script with the words "The Louvre Saloon" showing through in wonderful Art Nouveau swirls. Just below that there's a surprisingly intact ad reading "Boston House/Up the Alley/Clean Beds 20c," and if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it's one of the oldest left in the city.

Ghost ads like this connect us to the past in a unique way. They're right there, in the street, and we're interacting with them in public space every day -- they're prompting a historical dialogue with every one who passes by, so take part in it! And be quick about it too, because in a city that consistently displays a marked contempt for the past, you can be sure there won't be too many of these things around for much longer.

Once I figure out how to work computers I will post a link to my flickr collection of the city's ghost ads.