On the inside. Darkness. The future of the world will be decided on what appears to be an abandoned barge, clearly unassuming and certainly abandoned. Watching the movie this set is a part of, Blade Trinity (2004), no viewer would have guessed that the location where it’s all filmed was a McDonald’s. The ship, popularly known as McBarge (McBarcaza in Spanish), was for decades in the Burrard Inlet fjord in the city of Vancouver and was the site of a McDonald’s restaurant for Expo 1986 in Canada, only to later become an annoying shipwreck that the Le franchise didn’t want to know about, but she was still there on the water, to the looks of the locals. It’s been trashed and photographed as an expensive holdover from a time when Reagan-branded fat cows and unbridled capitalism simply caused some companies to make reckless financial decisions.
In the fast food industry, the 1980s were the era of the so-called hamburger wars (literally: hamburger wars). Bondage Burger King took firm steps in its territorial expansion and began using aggressive rhetoric in its advertisements that directly alluded to McDonald’s and mocked the size of its products. In addition to the multiplication of other restaurants such as Wendy’s or Hardee’s, the tension of the market forced companies to move constantly, either with counter-campaigns, offers very close to those of the competition, or new and striking claims that differentiated them despite the investments they had not made. Asaz: Burger King had to lay off staff due to the economic pressure caused by the Burger Wars. McDonald’s ended up staying on top, even though the McBarcaza and the $12 million it cost, according to Business Insider, show that during the year no one read Sun Tzu in this lawsuit.
With an area of 57 square meters, the McBarcaza was an ambitious decision by McDonald’s, which at Expo 86 tried to project its store aimed at customers who escaped without losing the “low-cost” essence.
At 57 meters long, the McBarcaza was an ambitious move by McDonald’s, which capitalized on the Expo 86 concept of technology and future design, trying to project itself to customers who didn’t lose out. the essence of the low cost they were worth. . The elegantly worn parquet floors, the nautical aesthetic of the uniforms, the striking planters and the vacant starlights must convey an idea of affordable sumptuousness capable of uniting its usual popular and the new yuppies. And we cannot say that it was remotely a failure: during its operating period (which the Expo lasted: a little more than a summer) 1,500 meals a day were estimated , figures well above the average for the time and close to the contemporary typical in Arctic America.
Actually called Friendship 500 because it’s the 500th McDonald’s in Canada, the naval block is the work of national engineering firm Robert Allan Ltd. It was built by Cefer Floating Structures and the restaurant was designed by Waisman. Dewar, Mortal and Carter. Constructed of concrete panels, a dagger, and Alucobond (an aluminum compound with an associated combustible mineral), it had no moving parts. Both kitchens were hidden from other McDonald’s outlets and food arrived via a conveyor belt. The McBarcaza, on the other hand, had an auxiliary vessel, the Tiny Tug (Mini Trailer), which was responsible for collecting waste.
Friendship 500 wasn’t the first floating McDonald’s restaurant, as another went free in the city of Saint Louis, Missouri in 1980. However, it wasn’t actually a self-contained ship, but a construction that looked like a boat on which he was. another ship, which was closed in 2000 due to poor condition. At Expo ’86, the company announced plans to expand the mannequin across the country, but the Vancouver McBarge sat idle and stuck in the inflexible False Creek until 1991, when site owner demanded that the company remove it. Unlike other structures featured in the exhibit, such as the SkyTrain or the multi-faceted BC Place stadium, the restaurant’s story ended there and could not be added to McDonald’s list of locations. strange across the world, as in the bay. from Guantánamo in Cuba surrounded by barbed wire because it serves exclusively the army of the American base located in an airplane in Taupo (New Zealand) or that of Roswell designed as a spaceship because of the useless history of the alleged sightings of UFO in the city.
Actually called Friendship 500 because it’s the 500th McDonald’s in Canada, the naval block is the work of national engineering firm Robert Allan Ltd. It was built by Cefer Floating Structures and the restaurant was designed by Waisman. Dewar, Mortal and Carter.
Howard Meakin: A Man and His Dream
“Patience and perseverance win out in the end!” contemporary McBarge owner Howard Meakin, a Canadian developer and real estate agent who has counted McDonald’s among his clients, told ICON Design. Meakin has been trying to reverse his acquisition for more than 20 years, having bought it when the company towed it from False Creek to Burrard Inlet, where it lay semi-derelict until 2015. It currently sits in the Maple Ridge district. During this time, several projects were organized around the ship: the shipowner tried to promote a leisure center with a seafood restaurant -and an air terminal included-, an educational and leisure space on the oceans or now a cultural tourist attraction, the location and nature of which due to ongoing agreements and environmental permits have not yet been clarified.
So far, without confiscation, the only thing that has materialized has been the filming of Blade Trinity. Meakin regrets that many interested investors, in addition to bureaucratic hurdles, “do not understand the restoration costs” (estimated at $4.5 million, in euros around 4.1 million, as announced in 2016 with a view to committing another upset plan). and municipal resistance. For example, his idea for the restaurant, toned down Sturgeons on the Fraser from the river it would sit on, was not realized “because of concerns about noise from seaplane engines” and also because the Matsqui’s indigenous people asked the council that in exchange for the green light, they would improve the sewage system on their land, which the office refused.
The skipper’s plans are now coming true as the McBarcaza is celebrated as a Vancouver icon. There is currently a Facebook link with 3,800 people nostalgic for the ship, who almost daily share their greetings and photos of the almost five months the ship worked as a McDonald’s restaurant during the Expo. A petition was also submitted to declare it a historic site, but only 185 signatures were obtained. Similarly, others were much less enthusiastic about the solidity of the ship, to the point of calling it a junk: journalist Bob Kronbauer, founder of the daily news Vancouver is Awesome, declared in a scathing op-ed published last October that he was “sick of seeing decrepit ships” and that the only place he should be was “at the bottom of the sea”.
The McBarge is not badly preserved. Beyond disuse, theft of materials and destruction, its structure has proven to be of high quality and has sufficiently resisted the passage of time.
Without confiscation, the McBarge is not badly preserved. Paragraph of disuse, theft of materials and destruction, its structure has proven to be of high quality and has withstood the passage of time very well, as can be seen in a new video lithograph inside the ship via the channel Bright Sun Films, endorsing its owner “Fortunately, concrete has a lifespan of at least 100 years,” Howard Meakin tells ICON Design, which estimates 12,000 (instead of 1,500 according to sources at the time ) the daily meals served in the former Expo 86 McDonald’s, which he was “surprised” by meeting. As he recalls, the McBarcaza employed up to 130 workers in its kitchens.
Although the plan to turn it into a Fleet of Affection, with the help of explorer and scholar Phil Nuytten, was still stalled by Meakin’s claim that the owner of the terminal he was supposed to be on n was not persuaded to pay him a settlement. to rent out. , the boss does not give up. Although the social network accounts (officially proud of the McBarge name) opened during this well-meaning revival remain frozen, Meakin confides in ICON Design that he is acquiring a demarcation to finally be able to benefit from “this ideal platform” only in the Bright’s video. , who eventually called him an “annoying pet”: “It’s going to take about two years, but it’s going to happen. I want to see it work for as long as I live.”