Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street

Keith McKellar’s riveting line drawings of the disappearing neon of Vancouver, BC, accompanied by jazz riff tales of the street are from a new collection by the artist Laughing Hand. Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street contains McKellar’s expressionist portraits of famous cafes, theatres––the characters and the street. For the last sixteen years street artist Laughing Hand has been quietly capturing Vancouver’s dives and haunts, through the metaphor of neon and its days of glory, documenting the demise of its crumbling antiques. The Ovaltine Café, the Aristocratic, the Ho Ho, the Orpheum, the Stanley, the Only, the Smiling Buddha, the Yale – these landmarks and their heritage neon are a window into our culture. The stories are anecdotal hearsays––tossed scraps of found memory, tacked together in, off the wall, historical gossips. A poignant and wildly entertaining social comment from the journals of a bohemian sleuth, Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street is a startling glimpse of Canadian cultural heritage.