Corner store, E. Broadway & Carolina, Vancouver, 1991

This picture, made in the winter of 1990-1991, screams “Raincouver.”

I don’t need to tell you, wherever you live, that corner stores are an endangered species, killed off by big box stores, supermarkets and the ubiquity of car travel. As we saw in last week’s sunlit Corner store, E. Broadway & St. Catherines, that building has been supplanted by condos, just 3 blocks east. Both structures in the photo above have survived on the southeast corner of E. Broadway and Carolina St., but our Black & White Grocery seems to have gone through a few changes in the last 30-years. Going on the embedded Google Street View, dated June, 2019, and the faded awning, its last incarnation seems to have been as a restaurant. It sits vacant and for lease.

I can’t recall the exact month I made this photo, having neglected to date the negative sleeve. The scattered leaves tempt me to consider late 1990, even though the negs and contact sheet sit in my archive between other work from early 1991. Could I have mixed them up? Perhaps this rainy day was in November, the usual “weather widow” Vancouver opens to gales like this. Regardless, before my then-girlfriend and I took the plunge and moved into a condo a block from St. Catherines, in the spring of 1990, she owned a late-Victorian house 4 blocks away from the Black & White Grocery, at 13th & Carolina. It remains, almost unchanged.