July 9th, 2010
The Rialto Theatre is located on the corner of rue Bernard and avenue du Parc, in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. It was built in 1924 and was one of thousands of ornate movie theatres built in North America at the turn of the century, at a time when films were first entering the mainstream.
These theatres were called movie palaces — a fitting title as they were defined by an over-the-top ornamental aesthetic that evoked old world grandeur. Think limestone balustrades, wrought iron railings, gold molding and red velvet curtains. Most of the movie palaces in the 1920s were built to pay homage to architectural monuments in Europe. The Rialto itself was styled after the Paris Opera House by Montreal architect Joseph Raoul Gariepy. It has been designated as a heritage site by all three levels of government and is considered by its residents to be as much a part of the fabric of Mile End as its bagel shops, cafes and madcap personalities.
The Rialto has stood mostly vacant for the past few years, while its owner, Elias Kalogeras, looked for buyers. Kalogeras had owned the theatre since 1983. During this time it underwent a number of transformations. He purchased the Rialto with hopes of turning it into a mini-Eaton Centre, but the Ministry of Culture intervened and his plans never materialized. Since then it has been a nightclub, a concert venue, a repertory theatre, and a steakhouse. Kalogeras was confronted with many of the problems owners of defunct movie palaces faced: the difficulty of successfully filling such a cavernous space while maintaining the charm of a historic building and keeping it updated to the needs of contemporary society.
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July 6th, 2010
This just in from the Department of Eye Candy: a beautiful time-lapse video of a tropical storm rolling into Hong Kong last summer. One of the benefits of Hong Kong’s abundance of hills and skyscrapers is that it allows for some astounding weather-related sights. It’s nice enough to look out my window at the mountains just north of Kowloon, but when those mountains are framed by dark, fast-moving clouds, that’s an even more impressive sight. So is watching a storm rush towards you over the harbour. You get to see both in this video, which runs a bit long but is worth watching because it’s just so fun to look at.
July 6th, 2010
Lately I’ve been listening to one of my favourite Jean Leloup albums, La Vallée des Réputations, which was released in 2002. It’s folkier than most of his previous albums, a feel captured perfectly by its cover image of Leloup walking down some railroad tracks, guitar slung over his shoulder.
The railway in the photo happens to be the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks that run along the top of Mile End, a few blocks from Leloup’s apartment and a block from where I used to live. The tracks serve as a neat boundary for the neighbourhood, dividing it from Little Italy, the Petite Patrie and the nameless industrial area to the north. To cross them, you have a choice of three underpasses: one on Park Avenue, one on St. Urbain and one on St. Laurent.
Of course, that’s if you decide to cross them legally. Most people don’t bother with that, choosing instead to duck through one of the many holes that have been cut into the chain-link fence along the tracks. It’s quicker, but it’s also a lot more interesting. As the blog Mile Endings puts it so wryly, “If you follow the paths to the chain link fence there’s a hole, and if you step through that, you end up someplace else.”
That “someplace else” is neither here nor there, a parallel universe that exists within the city but is in some ways not a part of it. (Every so often, a deer or some other oblivious animal will wander into the city via the railway, realizing only that it has ventured far away from home when it veers away from the tracks and gets lost in the streets.) Insects buzz in the tall grass growing next to the railroad, the air is sweet with greasy metal and wood railway ties. You can walk along the tracks and feel like a drifter.
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July 4th, 2010
Last month, two stray dogs were found dead on a Mui Wo beach. News of their fate spread quickly through the nearby villages. “It was definitely a poisoning,” said a worker in a beachside restaurant. She explained that people walking through the nearby hills often felt intimidated by the dogs.
But who would do such a thing? “Those people coming from D.B.,” she said with a scowl, referring to Discovery Bay, the upscale development north of Mui Wo.
Mui Wo has long been a shabby sprawl of rural villages on Lantau Island, prized for its eccentric lifestyle and cheap housing. But recent years have seen an influx of transplants looking for suburban luxury at prices far lower than those in Discovery Bay or Sai Kung. As village houses are bought and renovated, property prices have more than doubled in the past five years, and the government now plans to spend HK$300 million on beautification and leisure facilities over the next few years. All of the change has been met by audible grumbling from some long-time Mui Wo residents. “The yuppies are taking over the asylum” is how one blogger described it.
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July 2nd, 2010
Above, 1980s. Below, 2010. Compilation by Lee Chi-man
The fact that a row of prewar shophouses still stands on Johnston Road suggests we’ve entered a new chapter in Hong Kong’s history of urban development. Originally housing the century-old Woo Cheong Pawn Shop and other neighbourhood businesses, the shophouses were bought by the Urban Renewal Authority and incorporated into a property development that included the construction of a luxury apartment tower.
Now the buildings contain a high-end restaurant and café known as The Pawn, which takes its name from the Woo Cheong Pawn Shop, one of the building’s former tenants. Designed by Stanley Wong, its interior is a British colonial mash-up, with a menu to match (think English ale and fried pig’s ears).
Over the past year, I’ve interviewed dozens of people about things related to heritage, and The Pawn keeps cropping up as an example of how buildings shouldn’t be preserved. It’s historic preservation for the highest bidder — the shell of an old building maintained and converted into something with the veneer of history. The ultimate irony is that the Woo Cheong Pawn Shop is still around; it was forced to move down the street to make way for The Pawn.
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