Who knew photography could have such a negative aspect?

Ha.  The strangest thing happened yesterday.  I found out that there is still a tiny segment left of the original Georgia St viaduct.  You remember, the one which crossed Main St waaaaay back when Main St was still well under water?

 I wanted to discreetly add a photograph of it to the blasting past into the present post. I was in the back alley taking photographs of the original structure embedded in Georgia St.

due west of Main.

Now, I was just going to quietly drop the photo into the original post with a line or two of context and leave it at that.  You and I would not be sharing this communication at all, except that a Paladin security guard came along just as I was taking those photos and told me to cease and desist.  He told me that it was illegal for me to take a photograph of that site, because it is private property. He said that it belongs to BC Hydro, which is of course ridiculous since it's a City of Vancouver  ROAD, and not private property at all. Being the know-it-all that I am, I was instantly and deeply convinced that  HERE IN CANADA people have the right to stand in a city lane and take photographs of anything they see. He said "No. You can't do that."

I let him know he'd drunk some funny Kool Aid and said "Now I am going ride around to Main St to see the other side of this old piece of Vancouver.  I am going to take photographs of the tram tracks, too."  He called his bosses back - again - and followed me.  He arrived just after I took this photo of the tram tracks.

He promptly took a photograph of me.  So I took one of him.

This one.

He insisted I had to stop taking photos. I insisted he was starkers. He said "I am afraid you will have to stop taking pictures and leave immediately, or I will call the police."  I already had all of the photographs I needed, but I invited him to do just that.  So he did. 

And I filmed him doing so.

 

We waited. He talked to his boss a lot.  

Eventually, the police showed up. They talked to the security guard for a while. 

=

Then they talked to their bosses on the phone for a while.  

Funny, cause when my friend mentioned how we might not be allowed into the US after this, I was literally shaking, shaken, and upset, despite the obvious ridiculousness of the situation. I would have loved to have a chat with the big guy in charge of the rest of the big guys up there where divinity hangs out, because really.  That's enough of being the butt of so many of their silly jokes already.

After what felt like an interminable time, the detectives came over to have a chat with me.  They said that there is in fact a rarely invoked federal law which the security guard was trying to call upon, a felony offense which allows the police to arrest me for taking photographs of certain federal and provincial sites - places like the substation beside the road I was photographing.  Sooooo... I was informed that technically speaking, my photograph of  the security guard up there, the one taken in front of the substation falls under that particular classification and therefore the company technically has the right to insist I not photograph it. There's the value of vengeance for you in a nutshell!

OK.  So in the first place, I had no idea that building was a substation.  And yes of couse ignorance of a law is no excuse for breaking it, but how on EARTH is anybody supposed  to guess that it's illegal to take a photograph of a plain old brick building?!  It's not like it's second nature to assume that you might be breaking the law by standing on a public sidewalk and snapping a photograph of a non-descript building amidst a very public scene. I wasn't even photographing the bloody substation, anyway, until the zealot security guard started taking photographs of me and threatening me with arrest for doing something I was convinced was pefectly legal. I figured if he was going to take one of me I sure as hell was going to take one of him right back, dagnabit.

For goodness sake, if it's so all-important that nobody take photographs of that old piece of infrastructure embedded in a PUBLIC THOROUGHFARE, well then they should have put up a solid fence instead of the SEE-THROUGH wire fences they went with.

Ridiculous.

Please note that despite being proven wrong, and although I do not, in fact, have the legal right to take photographs of anything I choose in the public domain, I rode away from the situation with my sense of righteousness intact.  I remained one with my inner know-it-all. Why? Because in the end, the police did let me keep my awful photographs of an old piece of Vancouver, and they said that the people at BC Hydro/Paladin were pushing their luck. All's well that ends well.

That means I can keep prowling this town,

 taking as many terrible shots of this beautiful place as possible in pursuit of those ever elusive ones that almost capture how lovely Vancouver really is

... when viewed through a velo perspective.

 It's almost perfect, this place. 

Really.

You've gotta love it

 even if it IS inhabited by a strong-like-bull-smart-like-fridge know it all, or two.