In a city deluged with rain, splashing water is an obsession
In Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan, a whimsical writer who bridged the shift from the Beat generation to the counterculture in the 1960s, visits the Cleveland Wrecking Yard to inspect a used stream.
He finds the waterfalls, which sell separately for $19 a foot, stacked in the plumbing department, amidst hundreds of toilets.
The running water sections are piled in cut lengths in the lumber yard, going for $6.50 a foot.
You took your chances as to whether or not there were any trout included.
Mr. Brautigan, who died in 1984, imagined at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard you could just plunk some cash on the counter and walk out with a piece of splashing water under your arm, to set it up wherever you wanted.
It's a little harder than that in real life, but in Vancouver, a city that's in love with running water, a lot of people have found ways to do something similar.
Amidst the glass and steel towers of the city are cascading waterfalls, chattering brooks and at least one thundering creation where the main feature is the sound of the water, booming through a concrete canyon.
You might think Vancouver, which has about 1,200 millimetres of rainfall annually, gets enough running water naturally.
But there is such a fascination with it that you can hardly walk more than a few blocks in the city core without encountering a water fountain in one form or another.
It's as if there was a fire sale at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard and Vancouver developers got away with truckloads of waterfalls, which they installed in nooks and crannies all over the city.
Some of the water features are well known, such as the classic big fountain in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, or the stunning series of waterfalls (now closed for renovations) at the nearby courthouse designed by Arthur Erickson.
But there are dozens of obscure waterfalls, streams and ponds out there if you want to search for them.
That task has been made easier for us all by Fountainman, a former salmon habitat biologist whose obsession with Vancouver's water works has evolved into a detailed website, complete with photos, maps and descriptions of 76 city fountains.
He has found one that looks like a neon hot tub, another backed by fantastical, huge glass or ceramic flowers and one that replicates a natural salmon stream.
"Some people are CIA plane-spotters; I guess I am a fountain-spotter," he writes on his Web page.
Fountainman (whose real name isn't posted and who didn't respond to an e-mail query) says he's not quite sure how it happened, but "somehow I've apparently become terribly fascinated with the fountains, pools, ponds, and water art installations in Vancouver."
He's not the only one to feel like that, but judging by his website, Fountainman may well be the world's leading expert on Vancouver's fountains. He estimates there are millions of litres of water flowing, splashing, spouting and gurgling through the city and urges people to get out there and inspect them.
Fountainman rarely gives a bad review to a fountain, and really, who can blame him? Splashing water with its myriad reflections of light and its soothing sounds is fascinating enough, but encountered in the heart of a big city it has a special, magical quality.
What Fountainman hasn't done yet, and we hope he's listening, is produce a single guide map that sets out the best walking or biking route for a fountain tour.
With his detailed website, however, it should be easy enough to plot your own path so that you can wander through the city, going from fountain to fountain, marvelling at what engineers have done with pumps, lights, spray nozzles, concrete -- and Vancouver's seemingly endless supply of water.
In a city deluged with rain, splashing water is an obsession
