Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton, 2007

I made this Wolverhampton street view on a flying visit to my hometown, in 2007. In fact, I have not spent any amount of time exploring the place that helped form my character (for better or worse) since another, month-long, visit in 1988.

Those familiar with my urban photographs might discern within this unremarkable snapshot the source of my inspiration in that genre. However unconscious, I searched out the architecture of my birthplace on the streets of cities like Vancouver and Victoria, themselves outposts of European urban design.

In the ’60s, I walked these streets with my mates, dressed in Carnaby Street-inspired fashion. With bell-bottom jeans, we visited boutiques, perhaps to buy jingle bells for our trouser cuffs, and record stores to buy the latest Beatles and Rolling Stones singles (£1 a-piece, as I recall).

I brought all those pop-culture artifacts (along with my appreciation of heritage buildings) to Canada in 1965. My collection of 45s, most unreleased here, were well received. My fashion choices took a while longer to become mainstream and escape ridicule.

I’m happy to see, via Google Street View, that Wolverhampton has retained most of the wonderful architecture that impressed itself upon my young mind. Meanwhile, in adopted Canadian cities, most relatively “old” buildings have met the bulldozers of Modernity.

Like other urban places and spaces I have loved, my personal perspective imbues my old childhood haunt with a kind of “Lost City” mythos, more dream than real, while the optical elements of my camera compress components in this photo, drawing the eye to the grand old Royal London Buildings. The ultra-wide, navigable, zoomable Google Street View (with its latest drive-by dated May, 2019) reveals details unseen in my static documentation — like shuttered businesses and a “Music Wall” that beckons “Scan the QR codes to listen.”

Wonder if they have any oldies?