Doug Coupland

Ghosts of Blood Alley is a high-energy pop expression of recent and past billboards and imagery central to its Blood Alley locale. The past includes not only the building site's former incarnation as the Stanley Hotel, but also fragments of the local neighborhood such as the old Woodward's department store. There are also allusions to the recent past via the sorts of ads painted onto local walls in the twentieth century: soda pop and consumer goods. And of course the building's new incarnation as a musical performance space is addressed.

The structure of the mural takes into account the crimps within the building's façade and its colours themselves are faded, addressing the issue of time and history. “Ghosts of Blood Alley's viewers get to decode a puzzle of sorts, deciding for themselves their own relationship to time and history in a way that is both friendly yet cool.