by Sean Orr | Think Tanked: Solidarity forever? How about a job? Oh, I get it. He’s trying to paint those against things like the Jumbo glacier project, Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion, and LNG extraction as moneyed elites who are out of touch with poor people: “Many of these politicians, environmental activists, labour leaders, social agency executives, lawyers, doctors and those born with silver spoons in their mouths have to recognize that their charmed lives are also dependent on developing the natural resources our province has”. Because the creation of jobs, no matter how destructive, is far more important than the democratic process that allows for greater accountability of said projects. Hell, the pyramids were a pretty great way to create jobs. Let’s make one of those and use it as a tomb for Fazil Mihlar.
It’s a good thing we don’t have a national housing strategy: Get government out of the housing market. Get the government out of governing. Seriously, just let the corporations do everything. What could possibly go wrong?
Vancouver has no right to regulate the oil industry. It’s true. We signed it away with TILMA. We have no legal right to do anything.
BC Launches Hyper-local Poverty Strategies. Weird. So the mayors want to run the Province and the Province wants to run our towns. Specifically these towns: Surrey, New Westminster, Port Hardy, Cranbrook, Prince George, Kamloops, and Stewart.
The fine art of capitulation: Open letter to parents, administrators, and school trustees. “You got everything you wanted. You win”.
My new friend: Von Boringcity Zu No Fun City.
“There are winner and losers, everything is clean and fair. There is room for busy. Curious, where is the esprit? The cultivated human is the dead human; no men speech on the street, no drinking also, but you can smoke weed. A many of tolerance, but no pressure- no heat. Without friction it’s a little bit colder”.
And now: A tour of Our Dumb Vancouver.
Today’s symbols of ineptitude, outdated ideas, poor planning, blissful ignorance, wishful thinking and bald-faced greed are about to disappear. Get out there, and take it in while you still can.
Stephen Quinn gives an imaginary walking tour of civic blunders: The Viaducts, Wall Centre, the Douglas Ho Chapel, and Main Street Skytrain station. I’ll add the new float plane terminal that Harbour Air refuses to move into, leaving a cluster of aluminum portables in the middle of the Sea Wall. Then there’s the famous double Starbucks. Or how about 200 Granville, a monolith and testament to Vancouver’s media concentration, and the only building completed in a project to wipe out Gastown. How about Storyeum? 40 bucks to take an elevator into the ground to watch people act out Vancouver’s history. It was bought by a furniture salesman who sealed an entire ship in the ground. It now sits empty. And nearby is a steam clock that no longer runs on steam.
A New Vancouverism. Because the old one is broken.
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Just up from the steam clock is our public washroomless train station and transportation hub. Walk up Granville and see the stupid street furniture in the most awkward places imaginable. Then you come to Robson a street, once populated by various bavarian themed restaurants has been cleansed and turned into a street that looks like all the other streets in the world. Take a left on burrard a see the holiest of dumbs, St. stupid Pauls, the only hospital that serves one of the densest neighbourhoods in Canada is also the number one most endangered building if an earthquake were to happen. A hosptial. Great. Then there’s Lion’s Gate Bridge. We spent millions refurbishing it so it would last a few more years. It’s still only three lanes. Sea to Sky is 4. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Oh, come on. It’s not like the Lions Gate Bridge actually connects to the Upper Levels Highway, let alone the Sea-to-Sky. Or like we might ever want to run any sort of improved transit across the First Narrows into West Van. I mean, really. Who’d want that?
This is fun. What else? How about the curve in the middle of the Patullo Bridge? Or the legacy of leaky condos- apartments covered in green netting while the california style stucco is replaced.
You’d think someone as brilliant in city planning and urban/landscape development as Sean Orr would be put to better use than making sandwiches. Stupid world.
I got demoted. Now I wash dishes.