Continuing this summer’s Gulf Islands theme, a few weeks back Wen and I went to Hornby Island. It’s a spectacular place:
It’s also a place where the ’60s never died. Aging hippies sell $4 lattes and $3 baked samosas in the local market and then retreat to their $800,000 beach homes:
The little touches are the best. The “elder parking” at the co-op:
It hasn’t been much of a summer here in Vancouver and we’re learning that the best way to deal with it is to just get outside and do things. So on Saturday we got up early and went to Galiano Island. Due to the interminable fog, the view from the ferry wasn’t too great:
When we got there, it rained and kept raining. Fortunately, this created quite eerie and unique circumstances up on top of Bluff Park. Normally you’d look out over Active Pass and see the boats passing between the islands. Needless to say, we were treated to something quite different (but equally beautiful):
We had a great time trekking through rainforest, skirting cliffs and pushing through eight foot hight grasses while startling deer and eagles. Can’t wait to go back on a day when it’s actually a clear day…
It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the Vancouver metropolitan area. A perfectly flat island on the flight path to the airport, it’s frequently derided as not worthy of a visit. In short, it can’t get no respect.
Richmond is at least 60% Asian and the Golden Village feels closer to 100%. Since we moved to Vancouver, Wen and I have assumed that the area must be home to some great Asian food: the question has always been where to go. Thankfully, we finally got a few recommendations so today we set off for Dinesty.
Nuzzled next to a Starbucks and a plus-sized store in an anonymous strip mall, Dinesty captured everything about Richmond. The food was world class; the interior was beautiful and I can’t even remember what it looked like outside.
Curiously, the dining crew consisted of a large number of families where the kids sat playing with their iPads/iPhones/iDevice while the parents ate. Kind of surreal – especially when it was a family of five with three kids who each had matching white earbuds.
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Some people never visit Richmond because it appears to be a series of charmless strip malls abutting the Sky Train:
But it’s worth exploring as you’ll find countless interesting things. Hand-made Japanese chocolate. Countless arcades and billiards halls where you can see the latest crazy videogames on offer and watch legions of Asian-Canadian boys try to frag one another at Call of Duty while sitting in the timeless half darkness. The arcades tend to be off the strip; lurking behind them are the dojos and mixed martial arts academies.
If you walk into a random Japanese store (interestingly, the stores here are a mix of Japanese, Korean and Chinese; it’s as if once you leave “Asia”, your national status is replaced by a continental one), you might find those incredible tiny canned drinks that are normally only found in the land of the rising sun (in the following photo, the cans are abnormally small; Wendy is not suffering from gigantism):
Interspersed are a motley collection of random stores. A hobby shop where awkward teens obviously fantasize about the pretty girl who works the cash; a pet store that feels more like visiting the Vancouver Aquarium – except that you can bring home the exhibits – and numerous computer superstores where the emphasis is on making your own computer rather than buying a pre-made one.
In addition, the malls are a study in the nuances between Asian and Caucasian culture.
The jewellery stores have a lot more jade and gold; a lot less silver. Everywhere the signage is about “success”, “executive”, “prestigious” and “exclusive”. There are a remarkable number of air diffusers and massage stores for sale. If you’re looking for dried foods, these malls are your place. There are countless cell phone stores, but none of them are ones you have seen before:
Every single restaurant has a glass-walled kitchen so you can watch the staff cook:
And the stores sell every form of cute character imaginable:
It’s fascinating and unique place: a bit of Asia built using the latest technology and North American building codes. Bizarrely clean, with not a speck of garbage or graffiti anywhere to be seen. And well worth a visit.
Last night I sat on my deck and watched one of the most incredible sights of my life unfold.
The slowly setting sun painted the city’s skyline in gold and orange. The city was silhouetted against an opal blue sky and mountains tipped with the last vestiges of a long winter. Crows cawed as they grouped for their nightly flight east; the sound was balanced by the gentle rush of white noise from the waterfall in our building’s amenity garden.
Convoys of angry police vehicles streamed across the Burrard Bridge as the smoke from various fires hung over the downtown core. Police helicopters circled overhead and occasionally one of their search lights would cut through the smoke like a laser.
On television pundits kept wringing their hands and rhetorically asking “how could this happen here?” while appearing genuinely stunned.
It was an oddly mesmerizing experience and one that I hope to never see in Vancouver again. Except that I’m pretty sure I will – and it won’t take another playoff run to make it happen.
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Riots are funny things. A riot itself is a complex system with hundreds or thousands of actors involved; predicting when a riot is going to occur is remarkably difficult. You need a group of people (100,000 people watching a hockey game ought to do). Alcohol as an accelerant helps. But more than that, you need a reason for people to riot.
And what reason could people in Vancouver have for rioting?
After all, if you ask anyone in Vancouver if they like the city, they’ll tell you it’s the most awesome place on earth. The mountains. The beaches. A forest in the city. An incredible food scene and some of the best coffee in the world. Hell, it’s got everything but sarcasm.
But it’s also got one problem: if you’re a young person in Vancouver, you may not live a life that’s as good as your parents.
Before you tell me that I’m on crack and run me out of the city, some numbers.
Let’s do something any self-respecting Vancouverite would never do, and compare the city with Toronto.
According to Statscan, in 2006 there were about 2.1 million people in the Vancouver metro area and 5.1 million in the Toronto metro area.
If you were a full-time worker in Vancouver you took home almost exactly $54K versus almost $61K in Toronto.
The Vancouver worker is also a very different beast than the Toronto worker. Torontonians are more likely to be in manufacturing or finance (13.2% of workforce vs. 8.4% and 6.9%/4.8% respectively) whereas Vancouverites are more likely to work in a hotel (7.8% vs. 5.6%) or a hospital (9.2% vs. 7.9% – that difference is almost all nurses), in a school (7.1% vs. 6.1%) or a construction site (6.3% vs. 5.3%).
Toronto’s driven by its wealth of small to large manufacturers and the fact that it’s home to all of Canada’s major banks. Vancouver is much more tied to tourism, real estate and government services.
Why is this important? Well, people in Vancouver don’t only make less money, there’s less potential to make money.
In a city like Toronto where there are lots of companies, you get new types of jobs that just can’t exist in Vancouver. Want to work for a product design company? Investment banker? Insert your high-end, niche business of choice: they can only exist when you’ve lots of head offices.
Anecdotally, this is why if you’re a business person who works in Vancouver, your non-Vancouver friends always ask you “what do people do there?” and “why are there no jobs?” Statistically, about 1% more of people in Toronto’s workforce are considered to be “senior or specialist managers”.
Jobs in a hotel, on a construction site or in a school or hospital are great jobs, but they don’t offer you the same potential as other ones.
Those “Toronto jobs” are more meritocratic. If you’re really good at what you do, you have a chance to be disproportionately rewarded for what you do versus everyone else. You have opportunity; the downside is that it’s a highly competitive world.
If you’re a teacher or a nurse, your pay is fiercely regulated and no matter how good you are, you simply won’t earn beyond a certain amount. (However, your job security is nice and high)
All this talk of income is a little crass, so let’s look at the yin to income’s yang: cost of living – and in Vancouver it’s currently out of control.
As you can see, housing prices are at an insane level – up almost 50% in a little over two years with a gap that’s widening vs. the rest of the country. Moreover, this trend holds across the city. The national papers are full of stories about Chinese buyers frothily overbidding on places in the West side of town, but prices are crazy everywhere. If you want to move out past Commercial Drive (a beautiful neighbourhood, but a long drive to the beach), you’re still looking at $800K for a two bedroom free-standing house.
We’re likely in a bubble, but who knows when it will end and that’s little comfort to the people who actually live here.
Housing prices are important because they’re the single biggest purchase most people will make and they’re key to what has always been a part of the Canadian experience: work hard, save money and buy a house to raise your family.
In Vancouver, this is breaking down.
If you’re a young person considering a career as a nurse or construction worker or teacher or hotel clerk you can pretty easily predict where your income’s going. And you can see that it’s going to be near impossible to live in Vancouver with anything close to the standard you thought you would.
You’re watching part of your life slip away.
The life you took for granted growing up.
The life you were always told you would have.
And that’s what takes us back to the corner of Georgia and Hamilton and a few fans starting to burn a car.
The widening affordability gap in Vancouver is not an excuse for a riot (For the record: I think every rioter should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I applaud efforts like Identify Rioters) but it helps to explain why the riot started in the first place.
There’s a constant tension in Vancouver: it’s the fact that this is turning into a city that’s only affordable for the very rich. You feel this tension when college-educated people talk about being unable to buy a home. You feel it in the constant conversations people have about the price of things (a disproportionate share of time in Vancouver is spent talking about money; eavesdrop and you’ll see). And you feel it when condos open in the middle of nowhere and start at north of $300K for just over 600 square feet.
This tension in the system seeks a release and yesterday’s loss to the Canucks afforded it a chance. I suspect that’s part of the reason why there was so much looting in this riot vs. the one in ’94.
I’ve seen this before, too. When I was in France in 2006 there were massive riots by youth against the government over their future. There are parallels between that one and Vancouver yesterday.
Hopefully, the city will consider this when they try and figure out how to prevent future riots. This is not simply going to be a matter of dispersing crowds and cracking down on alcohol consumption, rather it’s going to involve Vancouver thinking about what type of city it really wants to be – for all Vancouverites – and making that come true.
Wen and I just got back from a rapid sprint through London, Paris & Fontainebleau:
Looking back, it’s fun to contrast the two capitals.
London seems to be a city of repeating motifs; the order of the buildings seems to be almost an apology for the chaotic arrangement of the streets.
Paris on the other hand is a monochromatic mesh of near identical ancient buildings punctured occasionally by an era’s vision of the future. (These buildings are also incredibly clean; I suspect that stimulus money from the 2008 crisis was used to polish buildings and remove dog shit from the streets.)
Interestingly, these visions of the future are increasingly rare. There was lots of construction in Paris but it’s all confined to the outer banlieues where presumably the zoning laws are more lax. In contrast, London was dotted with cranes competing to redraw the skyline:
I’d also forgotten how Paris is a chameleon whose colours change at night:
A few other things I noticed:
1.
The English romanticize the wild…
…while the French seek to tame it
2.
Each city has its own dominant smell. On a walk through the towpaths and parks of the city, London’s appears to be the sweet rot of plants that lurk in cracks between stones and in back alleys. Paris’ is the smell of urine in the subway.
3.
France is the one of only two places in the world (the other being New York’s Upper East Side) where men can innocuously, unabashedly and unrepentantly wear red pants:
4.
London was in full bloom for us when we arrived:
In fact, it may have been blooming too much. It hadn’t rained in ages and there was so much dust and pollen floating around that you literally felt like you had just visited the barber.
5.
The French are the European champions at both smoking in public and randomly stopping in the busiest places on crowded thoroughfares. In fact, urban planners could do better than simply following the French around and watching where they stop as a clue as to the most-trafficked places in a city.
I suspect the halting is driven by a subconscious need to have one’s existence acknowledge by others, if only via profanities.
6.
Every airport is full of defeated-looking people and Heathrow may have just that many more than others. I suspect this is because it’s an airport designed by shareholders who do not fly and worship Thomas Hobbes. It’s all angles and no curves, paths that maximize time spent in duty free rather than getting to your gate, and floor space auctioned to the free-est spending luxury brand rather than thinking about how passengers might, say, want to eat rather than buy jewellery.
7.
France is a great place to simply sit and waste time drinking a coffee. I can see how they came up with the word boulevardier.
8.
London has fantastic street art.
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I’d always thought that Britain was an extremely free place but then I read about their liberal approach to handing out superinjuctions: press bans that are so severe that you can’t even report there’s a ban (Kafka would be proud).
I was reading the story linked to above while also skimming a British paper. It was surreal to read the paper and see that the local press could only refer to one of the stories referred to by the article:
It was also interesting to see that an article about Gordon Ramsay’s in-law appeared on the same page. Was this also a subtle attempt by the paper to tell users to search the internet as Gordon Ramsay has a superinjunction out?
Things have been exceptionally busy recently between work and numerous visitors and this blog has suffered. So, in lieu of a proper post, here are some notes on recent things (plus some recent photos).
1.
The two biggest buildings in my neighbourhood are the Molson brewery and the Lulu Lemon headquarters directly across the street from it. I learned the other day that the brewery has a bar on the top floor where you can grab a pint and look into the top floor of the Lulu Lemon building. There, instead of a bar, they’ve got a gym where all the women who work there exercise.
2.
I learned that many Chinese (plus Koreans and Japanese, according to the Wikipedia) hate the number four as it literally sounds like death. This leads to interesting situations in Vancouver condos, like my friend’s in Yaletown that is 37 storeys tall yet lacks a 34th, 24th, 14th, 4th or 13th floor. Plus there are no “number 4″ units on any floor. Let’s hope a lot of Italians don’t move here soon or we’re going to run out of numbers.
3.
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in Vancouver. A lot of property developers are turning empty lots into temporary parks until they can sell enough units to break ground. I can’t imagine a more cruel joke for the neighbours: you temporarily gain a park until it’s replaced by a 26 storey building of overpriced units.
4.
I continue to be impressed by Apple’s attention to detail. I was at Emily Carr and looking at their industrial design showcase where they have an Apple PowerCD (for non-fanboys, this was a CD player that was briefly sold in the early 90′s). Despite not being sold for over 15 years, if you type it into your iPhone, they’ll auto-correct it to the proper, brand-approved capitalization.
5.
And speaking of Emily Carr, it’s that time of year when the grad’s show off their thesis projects. I’m blown away by the quality of the work and the focus on finding unique solutions to real design problems; the show compares really well with the ITP summer/winter shows that we used to go to in NYC. The following photos/movies do not do it justice:
I particularly liked this exhibit where you could hold up coded cards to paint on a virtual canvas:
The Wire is the best show on television in my lifetime and I’ve recently been re-watching it. So imagine my joy at finding this interview between David Simon (the creator) and Bill Moyers. Topics include the drug war, the importance of a free press and the future of America.
Jane Jacobs talks (in 2001) to the folks at Reason on cities. As a Canadian I couldn’t help but notice the line: It’s really surprising how few creative, important cities Canada has for its size, its population, and its great human potential and attributes.
Some interesting thoughts on how cities in Australia are going to have to change to address the 21st century. I like the approach of framing it in terms of “what does our country stand for?” and “what are the inexorable trends of the next 50 years?”
Bangladesh as a preview for what climate change could mean: lots of change and a need to be incredibly adaptive. I’d also never heard of the fascinating char dwellers before reading this article.
The Village Voice explores the business of selling drugs on Craigslist. As you read, be sure to look up some of their search terms and see if you can find some online drug ads (you will).
If you ever look at a map of America you’ll notice the smooth border that is the 49th parallel and then the little hiccup that is the Northwest Angle. The Walrus investigates who these people are that live in this tiny sliver of America north of the 49th.
Last year when travelling, Wen and I couldn’t help but notice the arrival of Chinese tourists. For this article, Evan Osnos of The New Yorker goes on a European tour with a contingent of the Chinese middle class. The story is about much more than 5 European countries in 10 days.
A weekend visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery has got me crushing on Jim Campbell and his LED art.
All of his works are a trompe l’oeil of sorts; he uses blinking LEDs to create the illusion of motion. If you stare at one LED it appears to blink chaotically; it’s only in the context of all the other LEDs that a pattern – and the art – emerges.
Take for instance, this piece:
You sit at the end of a long room and watch what appears to be a grainy, black and white movie projected on the wall.
Except that there’s no projector. You can stand right in front of the moving image and you won’t block it because it’s created by a mesh of LEDs hanging in front of the screen wall.
Moreover, in the first image it looks like there’s a grid hanging in front of the wall, but you’re only noticing that because this is a static photo. When seen as a video, the effect of motion created by the lights makes you ignore the grid.
It’s mesmerizing.
Here’s a video of another piece.
These are people walking through Grand Central Station. The glass contains one over-exposed image of people walking; an LED screen behind the glass projects the outlines of people. Occasionally the pictures and shadows line up, making you see the piece from a new perspective.
Inspired by the New York Times’ 36 Hours In… series, Wen and I recently ducked down to Seattle.
I love visiting Seattle because it’s a city that is absolutely unlike Vancouver despite the proximity; going there truly feels like a different world.
It was a great weekend: lots of walking, eating, taking photos, exploring and drinking coffee.
Here are some photo highlights.
Spring was in bloom
Public Art Abounds
A few Richard Serra’s at the sculpture park…
The most dynamic art is graffiti on building scaffolding
Lots of Modern Architecture
City Hall
The Hyatt
The library
You Have To Visit The Market
And a couple of random closing shots:
This is an acoustic sculpture at the conservatory. A speak is suspended against taught wires; inaudible music plays and vibrates the string – which in turn trigger instruments. A unique symphony ensues.
Elliott Bay Books is a must-visit for any reader. One of the best book stores I’ve ever been to.
A view of the city from the sculpture park.
And one more interesting thing. We drove back along the coast rather than the interstate. This takes you from Edison on up to Bellingham. This route is highly recommended (and most Vancouverites don’t know about it).
Edison is a really pretty town with a harbour walk around it; the road between in and Bellingham hugs the coast with mountains on one side, cliffs on the other and forests everywhere. There are also lots of restaurants perched on those cliffs where you can grab a quick meal.
Finally saw EyesWideShut only 12+ years after it's release. My confusion over its meaning led me to this awesome screed http://t.co/xF0e9u0r42 years ago
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