Broad Street Blues: A Hidden Poem's Revival

0:00It's April 5th. You're listening to Vancouver News today, AI-powered local news. I'm Cory with the story. Hidden in the bricks along Broad Street in downtown Victoria, a poem called Broad Street Blues sits encoded in Morse Code, carved right into the street markers from Pandora Avenue up to View Street. Local writer Michael Kenyon crafted it back in the late 1990s and early 2000s as part of a big street makeover. Those notches spell out gritty lines like imagine sun, pulling from the areas rough past. That makeover aimed to clean up Broad Street, shaking off its reputation for drugs and sex work from decades earlier. Kenyon drew from city archives on old brothels in spots like the Ducks Building and his own 20 years driving taxi at night, witnessing the action. First hand, business owners back then got heated over the raw content so the poem stayed subtle instead of front and center. Fast forward to last fall and real estate developer Robert Fung teamed up with artist Sean

1:00Shepard to paint key lines from the poem on a plywood, wall at the broad and view corner. Fung owned the spot, called Broad View Block, and wanted something better than the crude graffiti popping up during construction. Shepard improvised the mural that nods to the original bricks, and folks have mostly respected it, tagging only around the edges. Kenyon loves seeing his work revived this way, even calling himself a fan of expressive graffiti. The full poem is actually a whole book, with just select bits in the bricks and now on the wall. Fung paid Kenyon an honorarium, and Shepard chatted with him during the process to capture that cryptic vibe. Two new spots are opening downstairs soon, Ayubes, drive fruits and nuts, plus meat and bread sandwich shop, with a boutique hotel rising nearby. The mural's temporary till then. But everyone's pushing to make the poem a permanent street feature, honoring Broad's layered history and sparking. Fresh eyes on its built-in art.