Martin Vasil: So this is the one you kept talking about? The Public Dreams wall?
Joe Jukic: Yeah. Right here on the side of the old building off Commercial. People walk past it every day and never notice. They think it’s just another mural. But listen.
(Joe knocks hard on a section of the wall. A deep, hollow thud answers.)
Martin Vasil: That doesn’t sound solid.
Joe Jukic: Because it’s not. Most of this wall is hollow. They built it that way on purpose. See these panels? I can show you.
(He knocks again, moving along the surface, finding the emptier spots and tapping them like a drum.)
Joe Jukic: Right here… and here. Hollow. That’s where they put the time capsule. Not some official city plaque with a ribbon-cutting. This was the real one. Local kids, some of the old East Van crew, a few of us who actually lived it.
Martin Vasil: Time capsule of what?
Joe Jukic: Dreams. Actual written dreams. Letters. Polaroids. Cassette tapes. Stuff people were too shy or too proud to say out loud. And two of the biggest ones in there are from the days when Tom Cruise was around this neighbourhood and when Nelly Furtado was still just one of the girls from the block.
Martin Vasil: Tom Cruise? In East Van?
Joe Jukic: CHIMO House was right across the alley from where I grew up. Government place for at-risk kids. He was there for a stretch in the eighties. Quiet kid back then. People forget. And Nelly… my brother Mike and I ran in the same circle. Same parties, same friends. Before the fame, before the awards. She used to talk about getting out and making something that would last.
(Joe places his palm flat against one of the hollow sections.)
Joe Jukic: Their memories are in this wall. Not the polished versions. The real ones. Cruise wrote something about wanting to become someone bigger than the system that tried to break him. Nelly left a note about music being the only place she felt honest. Those papers, those little recordings… they’re sealed inside the hollow parts. The time capsule.
Martin Vasil: And nobody’s ever opened it?
Joe Jukic: Not yet. The wall was meant to hold them until the neighbourhood changed enough that people would understand what they meant. Or until someone like us came along who still remembers the old East Van and knows where to knock.
(He knocks one final time, the hollow sound echoing softly down the alley.)
Joe Jukic: Public Dreams wall. That’s the name they gave it. But the real name is what’s hidden inside.