Chinatown double-flyover

I found this well-timed photo as I was catching up on sorting my significant backlog of photos. Looking up at the corner of Somerset Street West and Booth Street, the sky is divided by the traffic signal arms. In the left quadrant is a gull, and in the right quadrant is a low-flying Air Canada jet:

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An urban gas station in Centretown

The Petro Canada at Bronson and Somerset quietly reopened this past Friday after about six months of construction, which started shortly after the reopening of newly reconstructed Bronson Avenue. It comes complete with a convenience store at the corner, seen best at night in HDR.

Even though about three-quarters of Centretown residents walk, bus and bike as part of their regular commute to work and school, the car ownership rate in Centretown is about 1.3 cars per household. So when residents of Centretown, Chinatown and Dalhousie eventually have to fill their tanks, they have to go somewhere. After the closure of the Shell station at Gloucester, this station just on the far side of Centretown's Bronson border is one of the closest to downtown. (I'm not saying I regret the closure of the gas stations that used to pepper Centretown much more heavily!)

But just because a gas station is a car-oriented business, it doesn't mean it can't also fit into the fabric of a walkable urban neighbourhood. Before the construction photos, let's look at how the station used to look:

Peds on Weds: Toronto-style sidewalks part 3 - the downsides

There has been a fair amount of criticism of the Toronto-style sidewalk design since it was made the standard in the City of Ottawa in 2006, just as there have been various challenges implementing it. As with any standard, you can't please all of the people all of the time, especially in a constrained physical environment like Delaware Avenue, below:

In the first part of this series, I described what "Toronto-style" sidewalks are and how they're supposed to work. In the second part, I detailed the rather technical history of how this sidewalk design, also known as "ramp-style vehicle access crossing", became standard, following through minutes from post-amalgamation City of Ottawa through to 2006.

Feedback about the design started as soon as the sidewalks on Delaware (pictured above) and Holland Avenue were installed for the pilot project. Since then, the design has also received its share of criticism from various sources. Today I'll be discussing these criticisms, and other issues the standard has encountered. I'll finish the series next week with a review of alternatives, starting with how Ottawa's sidewalks have been designed through the ages.

3D Thursday: China Doll, karaoke queen

Shanghai restaurant on Somerset Street West near Bronson is home to China Doll, the infamous Ottawa drag performer who hosts karaoke every week and every New Year's Eve—each time in a different, outrageously fun outfit.

I caught up with China Doll during the Chinatown Craft Sale earlier in December, wearing something that was screaming for a 3D photo:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

Of course I'm referring to the hair...

While I'm on the topic, here's China Doll at New Year's a couple of years ago, with a balloon dopplegänger drawn by Chinatown artist Julie Cruikshank:

In fact, China Doll is so famous, the Bytown Museum included some of China Doll's accessories in their 2010 "Evocative Objects" exhibit:

I also ran into China Doll at Bluesfest this past July in advance of the Björk concert. A friend of mine described the ensemble to me and it sounded pretty strange until I met up with her and realized she had been describing China Doll. Though I suppose it can be a bit much for the uninitiated:

Anyhow, whatever your plans are, have a happy new year!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

Chinatown's other panda

On Monday, I posted about a panda-based artwork in Chinatown. However, there is another painted panda on a Chinatown storefront which has become iconic of Chinatown:

This is in the entryway of the vacant storefront that had previously been Manphat Grocery, at the corner of Somerset and Booth. Here's the rest of the window:

As with the other panda, this was done as part of the storefront mural project that runs throughout Chinatown.

The storefront of 800 Somerset Street West wasn't particularly attractive, even before the store closed down in 2008. The Booth Street wall was painted with a mural to brighten it up:

After the store closed, it was papered up from the inside. For a number of years it made the corner pretty dead, and it has only been used for storage for one of the nearby businesses. I've heard it speculated that this unsightly building contributed to the failure of the Chi Developments' 288 Booth condo project diagonally across the street, which was an attempt by an amateur developer to rebuild on the lot left vacant by a fire took in August 2007.

In early June, the mural was still in its early stages. White flowers on their own represent death, which—while perhaps reflective of the level of activity of this space—doesn't contribute to the goals of livening up the street with murals.

With a few blue and bright pink flowers as highlights, the mural has been a welcome splash of colour since it was finished (and retouched after a graffiti attack).

The flowers are just scenery; the real surprise is when you're walking down the sidewalk and the panda pops out at you!

I encourage you to head down to Chinatown to check out the artwork on the many doors, walls and storefronts on Somerset Street between Bay Street and Preston Street. Leigh and Karen from Highjinx have added seasonal decorations to many of the store windows, and the Somerset Chinatown BIA has installed red and white Christmas lights to many of the buildings.

A great place for a Christmas lunch or dinner for your office, family and friends!

Panda prints in Chinatown

In the alleyway between the Chinese restaurant, Ju Xiang Juan, and the Somerset travel agency, is one of the Chinatown murals. This one is of a panda, though not the panda mural that has become iconic of Ottawa's Chinatown (that's a blog post for another day... maybe tomorrow):

(note: I've tweaked the above photo with Photoshop's lens distortion utility. What a versatile and useful tool!)

The mural on the side of the travel agency building is a colourful stencil print of a panda in bright colours. But look closer: those dots are themselves little pandas, each a set of three looking left, centre, and right. Each row of pandas is standing on the edge of a piece of the building's otherwise drab beige siding:

The other side of the alley had a certain je ne sais quoi to it that also caught my eye. The rough brick has an authentic quality to it, obviously having seen many iterations of graffiti, painting over, and sandblasting away. The mural project on Somerset had a dual purpose of livening up the place and deterring graffiti.

You can't see these types of angles while walking by on the sidewalk. If the panda prints hadn't drawn me in to the alley, I wouldn't have caught this view either!

Bronson reopens for the last time

After two years of construction, Bronson Avenue reopens to through traffic today, whereas it had been closed between Laurier and Somerset (the headline of the linked PSA wrongly states Gladstone). I thought I'd post some snapshots to summarize the progress.

As with last year, the reopening isn't necessarily something to celebrate, as Bronson will no doubt return to its status as a traffic sewer for hasty drivers with little or no connection to Centretown, the roadway is the same width as before the reconstruction (despite the Community's strong desire to get it rebuilt otherwise), but without all the potholes to slow them down. There will hopefully be some degree of relief on the side streets which have been host to cut-through traffic when Bronson was closed.

Recall how disruptive the closure was to road users of all modes. Not only did it disrupt the patterns of people who were just passing through, but when the intersection of Somerset and Bronson was closed, bus riders had quite a walk to get to the nearest bus stop. Customer traffic to the businesses along Bronson slowed to a trickle when Gladstone was closed. There were some attempts to maintain temporary sidewalks for pedestrians also, as seen here in the muddy mess of a street, looking north along the former east sidewalk:

Bronson and Somerset still closed

Construction on Bronson Avenue resumed a while ago, with the Somerset and Bronson intersection closed from the beginning of April to the end of May. Other work has also been going on, such as the finishing touches of the segment south of Somerset, in particular the sidewalks and landscaping between MacLaren and Gladstone (which Eric Darwin has recently blogged about). The impact on Chinatown can be expressed in this single photo:

This next picture gives a bit of an idea of why the intersection has to be closed for so long. There's a mess of stuff underneath that needs to be replaced. It's a three-dimensional soup of cables, wires, pipes, drains, and sewers (much of the latter were installed late last year and over the winter).

Chinese New Year Dragon Parade 2012

Today's post follows the theme of last week's 3D photo of the Chinatown Gateway Arch, in that the Lunar New Year is around this time of year.

Every year, there is a dragon dance through Chinatown down Somerset Street. Last year, I made a point of checking it out, and I got some great photos. The parade is physically short, only a handful of floats, but the performances and audience interaction stretches out the time of the parade.

The parade stretches twice as far if you count these four #2 buses that slipped by in a gap after being held up behind the dancers:

3D Thursday: Chinatown Gateway Arch

I've already written a number of posts on Ottawa Chinatown's Royal Gateway Arch, and I've assigned them the label Paifang to distinguish them from the rest of the Chinatown blog posts. But none were in 3D, so get your blue and red glasses out for this one! (Click to view larger for better 3D effect)

Source photos for the 3D images: Left, Right

This Sunday, February 10, 2013, is Chinese New Year (Snake).

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images] [Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Centretown time capsule: August/September 2007

Happy Labour Day everyone!

For today's post, I want to do something a little different. I wanted to give a snapshot of what was happening in Centretown five years ago in August and September 2007. With a high proportion of renters, many Centretown residents—even those active in community affairs—weren't here five years ago (nor was this blog!). For the rest of us, it'll be a trip down memory lane.

The 2007 Labour Day parade, organized by the Ottawa and District Labour Council, ended as usual at McNabb Park for the annual festival with free hotdogs, corn on the cob, and other attractions (if you're reading this post shortly after it goes up, head out there now! They should be there from the end of the parade until 4:30pm). You might recognize this photo of the wading pool as one of the four at the bottom of the CCCA's 'promo cards':

September 2007 marked the official opening of the Corktown Footbridge on the 11th (the bridge opened to traffic the previous September). Municipal politicians and interpreters in 1830's period dress were there to cut the ribbon.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 7: Trees & bike racks

We've had some very summer-like weather the last few days, and the bike counter on the Laurier segregated bike lane registered 1519 cyclists on Wednesday, 2/3 of the highest daily number ever counted at that location!

That makes a good opportunity to talk about the trees and bike racks in this installment of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. Previously, in part 6 the subject was poles and signals.

In the seventeen meetings of the design committee, great persistence by the community representatives and creative thinking all around enabled many more trees to be fit into the design. A particular challenge was getting trees on the viaduct/bridges by the City Centre building, because the drainage patterns make a challenging environment for trees' chance of survival. The solution is described in the next post in the series, part 8*, but this preliminary diagram gives an idea of how many more new trees (the dark green circles) will be added to join the old ones (lighter green circles):

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 6: Poles and signals

Here's part 6 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. In the previous part, we looked at the reconstruction of the roadway along Somerset between Booth and Preston. This time, we'll take a look at the traffic signals and hydro poles in the same stretch.

You'll note that the longer posts are now shortened on the summary pages. You can read more about that here.

Most of the photos in this post were taken in the winter, after Eric Darwin pointed out some concerns with the traffic signal pole design on his blog, West Side Action. I took this one, showing a carefully choreographed dance between two cherry pickers at Somerset and LeBreton, in mid-February.

Even though this is a couple of blocks east of the project limits at Booth Street, it looks like the opportunity was taken to replace some of the other streetposts that had been chipped away by years of snowplows edging past.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 5: Under Chinatown (Booth to Preston)

Last time, in part 4 of the series will take a short walk down the sidewalks of Rochester and Spruce. Previously, in part 3 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West, I showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. This time, we stay on the east side of Preston Street for the reconstruction of the roadway itself.

The intersection of Somerset Street West and Booth Street is a heavy pedestrian area, and for historical reasons is very skewed. For both of these reasons, the crosswalks are painted with well-defined zebra stripes. As of June 2011, the work was just getting started on this phase of the work, which continues down the hill past Rochester to Preston Street.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 4: Contemporary sidewalk design, not on Rochester

I swapped parts 4 and 5 of this series so I could put this one in as a Peds On Weds Wednesday post.

The previous post of this 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. Rochester is the street in between these two, and I figured we could take a little detour to talk about some sidewalk work in the area, and sidewalks in general.

While the roads, sidewalks and utilities underneath them were being dug up along Somerset Street West this past summer, the sidewalks were being replaced on Rochester Street and Spruce.

Not too far north of Somerset, the old sidewalks were dug up in early September, after the rest of the block was already prepared for concrete to be poured.

At the north end of the block, looking toward Somerset from Spruce, we can see the shape of the concrete forms creating the bulbouts (which are not new to this corner).

Ottawa's Chinatown Arch Lights Up

A bit over a year ago, the Chinatown Gateway Arch was officially opened, and around that time I wrote a post chronicling the construction process for the arch.

Since then, there has been a bit more change.

In early Spring 2011, four new lampposts were installed around the arch. These will eventually run all the way along Chinatown's sidewalks, replacing the old ones which are getting, well, old (despite being painted red from the former green)

These four lampposts, however, are slightly different in that they each has two spotlights attached to it to illuminate the arch at nighttime:

Mixing the fish in Chinatown

Chinatown Remixed is back again this year, and for the third year in a row local artists and shops on Somerset West are promoting each other's fare in a celebration of art and culture. In other words, most of the restaurants in Chinatown have work from different artists hanging on their walls. The restaurant owners generally don't mind if you come in just to check out the art, so long as it's not a very busy time of day.

The launch party was last Sunday, and among the festivities was this sidewalk chalk drawing of two koi chasing each other's tails. Brian Smith (in hat on the left) and his daughter Mika drew the fish, and people walking by throughout the day filled in the scales.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour and posters

Today's Jane's Walk for the Rescue Bronson Avenue initiative went really well. It was right on time and we had about 35-45 people on each of the two parts of the tour (breaking it up into two parts worked really well, and some people joined us at noon for the second part). See yesterday's post promoting this walk here

Here are the volunteers who led the walk, from left to right: Will and Josée, who helped keep order and time; and moi, who gave the tour. We're standing at what the NCC calls "Bronson Park" at the top of Bronson overlooking Lebreton Flats, and across the street from Roper House on the Christ Church site.

Here's a shot I took near the end of the tour of the attendees on the second part of the tour as we ducked in to Florence Street for a respite from all that heavy traffic along Bronson:

I made eight different location-specific posters to illustrate the walk at the following locations, copied below (click on them to see full-size ~1.5MB ea). I left them up so you should be able to still see some of them and compare with what's there in person until they're inevitably taken down.

Here are all eight. I'm just listing the names of the posters, which don't have current pictures of the sites because they're intended to be seen in situ. I could make this post insanely long with additional photos and text, but I need some sleep after a long and successful day at the Jane's Walk and the wrap party at the Lieutenant's Pump (which was recently renovated).

Sunday 11am and noon: Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour

This ain't your mother's Mother's Day Jane's Walk. Unless your mother lived on Bronson before they widened it in the '50s.

Sunday, May 8, 2011, at 11am, head on over to Bronson and Queen for a really exciting Jane's Walk on Bronson Avenue. If you're not the morning type, you can meet up with us at the Chinatown Arch/Raw Sugar where we'll get to the second half of the walk at noon.

This will be an illustrated walk. The photo below shows an historical photo of Bronson and Somerset. There are eight different location-specific posters of behind-the-scenes happenings along Bronson that you can't see while standing on location. I'll post copies of these posters on the blog on Monday, and hopefully the posters will stay up a while.

In honour of the occasion, the Mayor proclaimed Thursday May 7, 2011, Jane Jacobs Day in Ottawa:

Rideau Canal chalets visit the Arch

This was one of many chalets and washrooms for the Rideau Canal Skateway that was brought through Centretown on Elgin and Bronson on Saturday to get to its Winter resting place. It was passing by the Chinatown Gateway Arch.

A pleasant reminder that we have something to look forward to as it gets colder. Check out posts with the Canal label for my many posts on the Rideau Canal skateway.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]