[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="East side of Commercial Drive - 1700-block - in 1936 (VPL 23618 part)"][/caption] Jak King knows a lot about the history of Commercial Drive. In his recently released The Drive: A Retail, Social and Political History of Commercial Drive he does a great job of outlining a detailed history of the Drive — focusing on the area from Venables to 7th Avenue in the period between the early 1920's to 1956. Having read every issue of the Highland Echo — Commercial Drive's weekly newspaper (which ran from 1936 to 1969) — Jak has documented change through a detailed construction of the people, stores, buildings and curiosities that shaped the 'backdoor' of Vancouver. His book also highlights changes in technology, the important creation of a transportation hub, as well as the formative people and interesting events that saw Commercial drive through the beginning of the 20th century. These early events truly cultivated this unique and often autonomous Vancouver community. This was recently followed by The Encyclopedia of Commercial Drive - a 558 page collection of all businesses and business owners along this well-known street up to 1999. Both books are the first of a series by the area resident on the history of the Drive that tells a story not often heard in our future-foreward city. Spacing Vancouver contributor David Peacock recently had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Jak to talk about his book in a cafe on the Drive that he certainly knew a long back story on. ••• Spacing: The Drive details so much change in ownership from the 1920's through the 50's, does this constant rebirth reflect a bigger societal value in the neighbourhood? Jak: I think that the one thing that we've really maintained is the fact that our stores here are small, and they are generally locally managed. There are chains here — there is the Starbucks here, the Safeway here, whatever else — but essentially most of the stores here are small and locally managed. That's something that has come through history and has been retained. I think that does add to the friendliness of the neighbourhood, and to the fact that we have survived some pretty rough times here. I am a little concerned about the fact that 30 years ago we had a dozen restaurants here and today we have 94. In many ways that's a good thing, making it a very friendly neighbourhood. But what bothers me is that there are 86 businesses that are no longer in existence, that have been taken over by restaurants. I would hate us to become just a foodie neighbourhood. We used to have a lot of furniture stores, appliance stores, more shoe stores, and now we have almost nothing but restaurants for the last 20 years.

Edited by: Inka Schube (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010) After five years of traveling Eastern Europe and Russia as a magazine photographer and scholar, Roman Bezjak has published a compelling look at the modernist buildings of socialist Europe.

Author: Michael Maltzan (Hatje Cantz, 2011) Through conversations with a photographer, journalist, urban planner, futurist and a number of architect-cum-academics, Michael Maltzan tries to define the dynamics of the City of Los Angeles in No More Play. Fabulous Photos by Iwan Baan engage readers in this sweeping narrative, exposing human interaction with L.A.’s horizontal laboratory of cars, highways and urban ecology. No more Play is not a book about buildings. Rather, it offers readers a submersion into L.A.’s sea of cultural influence and gives a look at the mechanisms that spur its rapidly changing urban landscape. Each voice offers a personal account that speaks to the past, present and future of Los Angeles, as well as to the world beyond. Catherine Opie, Matthew Coolidge, Mirko Zardini, Edward Soja, Charles Jencks, Qingyun Ma, Sarah Whiting, James Flanigan, and Charles Waldheim describe the events, places, industries and ideas that are the basis for one of the world’s most flagrant economic and cultural cities.