by Richard Harvey
I must confess that I have long enjoyed the odd and often insalubrious appeal of the back alleys of cities. Vancouver, Paris, Madrid, Genoa and Calgary. Yes, Calgary. Nearly 25 years ago, we opened Metrovino in a location described forebodingly and dismissively as “a back alley”. Predictions of our commercial fate were not universally positive…
Long only regarded (with much justification) as the tenebrous world of evil-doers and the dispossessed, I also hold that alleyways are the rarely explored province of surprises, and at times even art in the form of “objets trouvés”, composed of things rejected and abandoned. This “art” may not be pleasing to all, but then, what difference is our reaction to art found in a gallery?
Rabid Francophile as I am, it is my ol’ mate Louis Aragon who wrote one of my favourite books about the City of Light: “Paris Peasant”. This fine example of Surrealist writing (I seek some comfort in the surreal these days) celebrates all of the bizarre and sometimes puzzling sights to be encountered in the darkly appealing alleyways and obscure passageways that riddled his city known for its broad, magisterial avenues. In fact, Aragon described the “Grands Boulevards” (created in the late 19th Century) as a “giant rodent” which “devoured” all the quirky, crooked, suspect streets of medieval Paris.
These grandiose thoroughfares executed by one Baron Haussmann might just have been created for the show-off, idly purposeful “flaneurs”, strolling down the Champs Elysées as if they owned this real estate of riches and grandeur. Not for Aragon; he preferred the ancient, poorly lit and convoluted narrow alleys where vice and violence lived alongside modest commerce and humans eking out a true “living”. For Aragon, the “boulevardiers” were just architect’s stick-figures, placeholders on a stage too big and lacking in humanity to be of interest.
Carriageway, Customs House, 11th Avenue S.E.
These thoughts come to me in the time of Covid-19, as my walk from work to domicile is made increasingly by a return to the alleys and byways of Calgary. The Beltline will not replace the Passage de L’Opéra in Paris, but it still can provide a bit of that certain cocktail of threat, mystery and humanity that irrigates all great alleyways, perhaps just much less picturesque and “humblebrag”.
I may be correctly accused of a vague misanthropy on any given day, but these days, the alleyways provide enhanced and interesting opportunities for “physical distancing”.
Sure, in back alleys I’ll encounter folks scurrying to their vehicles, and some characters are there for reasons of necessity, desire or enterprise, but they and I have the whole thoroughfare to share with ample real estate for safe passage.
“Found Object” always have a story…
And though lacking in exotica, there are things to be seen and found in the alleys of Calgary; some even pleasant. The (lamentably rare) vestiges of our 19th and early 20th Century history are still there, and the Beltline holds traces of the spur tracks of our transcontinental railway that once served the timber and brick warehouses that escaped the wrecking ball. (Metrovino lives in one such building, occupied for many years by Acklands, a company whose wares originally included horse-drawn carriages).
This 1914 building houses our modest wine shop, filled with the products of mainly small wineries. All of them will need our continued support, just like small farmers here at home. We plan to be here for years to come, for you and for them. This building saw the flu epidemic, the depression, WW2 and so many more rough and dangerous times. What a fantastic survivor!
All of us at Metrovino would like to give our thanks to you for your support, now more than ever. We in turn want to give back in our support of essential services, hence we continue to do our donation program that seeks to get funds to those agencies that look after our most vulnerable fellow-citizens.
We do not expect support without giving it, and while we can work, we can share.
Thank you all!!!
