Whyte Avenue

There's a street in Edmonton called Whyte Avenue. It's near the University of Alberta and as such, is the center for arts and crafts, kitschy stores, all kinds of strange and weird people, high class shoppers, and, of course, panhandlers. Its a fun, eclectic place to go. Mickey and I spent our Friday break there yesterday.

All the utility boxes and whatever this is, are painted by random local artists.

The Army and Navy Store has been there forever - it's the store I bought my very first Christmas ornaments in back in 1968. Its the favorite store of poor students.

A utility box all painted up.

I love this building. When I was young and single and living in the Whyte Ave. area, this was the post office. Now it's home to a wonderful Italian restaurant.

Always one of my favorite stores to visit on Whyte. It carries a huge range of cards. I always buy several birthday cards for my sister there.

I loved these birds in When Pigs Fly

The first Christmas display of the year...non-traditional green and red.

My second favorite store - When Pigs Fly. It's chock full of fun things, bric-a-brack, ornaments, cards, ceramics...too many things to mention.

There are several of these posts...I don't know what their original use was, but they're used for posters for out-of-the-way movies, presentations, plays, musical entertainment, etc.

The gnomes in this window display were discovered in the attic of an old house and donated this year for use by the merchants on Whyte Ave. We just saw this one display but then we only 'did' one block of the avenue so there were probably many more.

This huge mural was painted on the side of one of the stores down there.

This is another view of the mural.

And that's one block of a very interesting Edmonton street.