by Sean Orr | Vancouver sets maximum initial rents for rent-only buildings. They should have stuck with their original albeit very cryptic slogan of “affordable is what someone is able to afford”. Although “market housing” is also nicely oblique.

Hey look! We made the Washington Post! These 17 countries may have housing bubbles. If they pop, God help us all. “The major economies have been growing only slowly. Yet with low interest rates and aggressive central bank action across the globe, there is a giant pool of money that has to go somewhere”. Ah yes, the Accursed Share.

Lightsaber in the bathtub: The Private Residences at Hotel Georgia. Is gawking at the rich any less demeaning than gawking at the poor? I mean, I know it’s an example of how absurd real estate is in this city, but this still comes across as envious, voyeuristic conceit.

Speaking of conceit: The REAL Real Housewives of Vancouver: Rebecca Bollwitt. You’re doing it wrong.

Vancouver city hall staffer says Surrey not a ‘real city’. Taken out of context that seems petulant, but The Province tried to paint Vancouver as some bloated communist regime by comparing their staffing levels with Kamloops and Spuzzum, so…

But Surrey isn’t a city. It’s one giant parking lot: What would Commercial Drive look like with Surrey parking standards? Hmm, fewer Quebecois squeegee kids and wafts of patchouli. More Tap Out gear and clouds of Drakkar Noir?

Help! New DTES/Chinatown library needs a name. “VPL suggests residents might name the branch after a neighbourhood, or even something out of left-field, similar to Guelph Park in Mount Pleasant, which was informally labelled “Dude Chilling Park”. Rejected proposals: The Crack Shack, Safe Injection (of Literature) Site, Book Junkies, and The Centre for Kids Who Can’t Read Good.

City Cellar: On liquor in grocery stores. “While we’re long overdue to steer the ship towards modernization, my feeling is so far we’re just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic”.