This morning during a walk along Commercial Drive I wandered past Grandview Park. Last year the park had been hotbed of protest from self-appointed “stewards” who saw any development/renos as tantamount to treason to the “alternative” roots of the Drive. In an article authored by Gumboot correspondent Michelle Burtnyk-Horn, we explored the controversial issue. Then after much bluster and a few acts of horrible vandalism by anarchists, the renos went forward and hundreds of thousands of federal and municipal dollars were poured into the upgrade the park.
Are paint bombs what we can expect moving forward?
Today Grandview park has been transformed. Gorgeous and fresh grass is everywhere (good by worn dirt patches). An awesome jungle gym rises above a state-of-the-art playground. To the south of the park is one of Vancouver’s first dedicated bike polo courts. Tucked next to Stellas is a recently opened gorgeous and clean bathroom. Despite all of these improvements, it seems a small vicious group, having lost the war, have decided to keep fighting a battle under the cover of night. Last night, several agitators broke into the park smearing the new washroom with paint and throwing paint bombs at the windows of the new restroom facility. When I spoke with parks officials this morning they were as frustrated as I was. The clean up team’s supervisor predicted this would just be the start of the vandalism.
I truly hope not because it makes me mad just thinking about this sort of thing happening every couple weeks. Unfortunately, something tells me he’s likely right. This sort of careless (seemingly ideologically motivated) property destruction is offensive but common in many parts of the Drive where people seem to cling to the past rather than embracing the present and looking forward to the future.
If this property damage continues, it makes me wonder what can be done to stop it. More police patrols? Maybe, but can they really be there all the time? Could cameras be installed? Likely that would only incense some of the agitators more. But do we really want to be held hostage by people who would vandalize community murals? These are some tough questions that I and other Commercial Drive residents will likely need to ask. In my mind sacrificing a little privacy to catch some of these criminals may be worth it.
This is super frustrating, but I’m a bit more optimistic about what things will be like in a few weeks. For one, this doesn’t particularly sound like the work of the “politically-motivated” (I use those words extremely loosely). I think paint bombs were used in one of their previous protests, but I would have thought spray-painting anti-gentrification slogans would have been more their style. For two, even if it is the local branch of the Black Bloc, these folk seem to have a pretty short attention span. Prior to the park renos, there were all sorts of threats of monkey-wrenching, etc., and then I think the fences were torn down once and that was it.
Julian,
Good points. While I don’t imagine it being a constant (everyday or every week) I do think it will happen frequently enough to require some sort of attention. According to the park board supervisor I spoke with, these guys often use a mix of angry graffiti (blaming the “pigs” for “gentrification”) along with paint bombs.
I find it interesting that people are still looking for reasons to be angry. Some have latched onto the length of the reno, which is fair enough, though it serves no purpose to go on being angry, and others have decided to hate all of the concrete, even though it provides loads of seating at the front of the park.
It would be nice if those responsible would just relax, grab a coffee/beer/joint, and park their asses in the luxurious new grass EastVan style, and stop acting like assholes.
John – I 100% agree.
Kurt