Most cities have a seedy underbelly, but how many have a seedy main street? For decades, Vancouver's Granville Street has lived in a kind of slow rut: a melange of pizza joints, straight nightclubs, and sex shops coexisting with high-rise office buildings and, especially in the last ten years, the incessant march of high-end condominums.

In his excellent book, The Vancouver Achievement: Urban Planning and Design, John Punter describes how "the street has stubbornly refused to become respectable or to wither away at the hands of international hotel chains. During the day, Granville Street seems tawdry and drab but, at night, its birght lights continue to draw large numbers of Greater Vancouver young people as the destination for a weekend night out."

Unlike some of Canada's other semi-seedy main streets, like Montreal's Ste-Catherine or, less so, Toronto's Yonge Street, Granville is truly an endangered species. In the ten years I've lived in Vancouver, numerous older buildings have given way to new infil. Parking lots and pawnbrokers are now replaced by the likes of American Apparel and Urban Outfitters. It's only a matter of time -- and probably a short time at that -- that the rest of Granville Street will disappear, and the gentrification of the downtown core will be complete.

Here, then, are some images of Granville as it looked on February 6, 2009.