Visitors are saying that Vancouver's Gastown is getting to be like New York's Soho. Not the Soho as we know it today, but one that harkens back to the late '70s and early '80s when there was still an interesting mix of old and new, derelict and trendy, old and young, despairing and optimistic. Certainly there is no lack of new restaurants and stylish boutiques moving into the area, and their employees and customers are sharing the sidewalks with the eclectic crowds of tourists, panhandlers, buskers, and drug users. So new commerce is making itself visible, but is there art? Yes, plenty, ... if you know where to look.

Walk down this alley bordered by Cordova to the north, West Hastings to the south, Richards to the West, and Homer to the East (in the block just uphill from So.Cial at Le Magasin on Water Street), and you will be dazzled by the brilliantly coloured murals splashed across the brick walls of its entire length.

It's street art at its best, a collage of spray paint, and defacing graffiti that you would probably find crude and garish on the side of a van, or displayed in any commercial sense, yet entwined with the rough aesthetic of the alley and all its debris -- Smithrites overflowing with garbage, power lines, telephone poles, rusted back doors, funky odors, grimy cobblestones ... and even the odd sad, drifting, human soul, it takes on a powerful, living, beauty that is as real and transforming as art can hope to be.

We know not a thing about the mystery artist but (he?) left his calling card painted on the wall as www.coldworldmedia.com.

Go see his handiwork before the city decides to do something sanitizing and stupid.