“Vote, Or Shut The Fuck Up”

“Vote, Or Shut The Fuck Up” is a sign we’ve seen plastered around town, and we couldn’t agree more with the sentiment (nice one, Mr. Berglund). As we’re up in Tofino for the weekend, we made sure to sneak into City Hall before we left so we could vote early. Yeah, we picked a side, and yeah, we voted for Gregor, Heather, Andrea et al. But that’s just us. Who you vote for is [obviously] up to you. As Harry Truman once said, “decisions are made by those who show up.” As long as you step up to your local ballot box today and vote, you can hold your head high. If you don’t, well…you can do as Mr Bergulnd suggests.

The Message To Vancouver City Hall From Anthony Bourdain…

My friend Miguel recently loaned me his copy of Anthony Bourdain’s new book Medium Raw. It was a bit of a rambler, jumping from his sordid past to his comparatively shining presence, but one passage stuck with me, ringing as it does very applicably to Vancouver in the wake of City Hall’s recent baby steps toward bringing street food to local curbs (led by Councillor Heather Deal). Let me preface it by saying that I’ve been pretty hard on them in recent months – perhaps even hysterically so in some recent media interviews, saying among a great many other unkind things that our municipal government’s “.22 caliber imaginations were insufficient for our .357 Magnum city”. What I haven’t been is very constructive, and I regret that. So I offer this Bourdain snippet in the hope that it might prove useful to them if they really do want to cement Vancouver’s reputation as one of the world’s most exciting food cities. In the middle of discussing the impact of the recession on restaurants in New York, Bourdain writes,

If any good comes out of all the pain and insecurity, I can only hope that the Asian-style food court/hawker center is one of them. This institution is way overdue for an appearance (on a large scale) in America. Scores of inexpensive one-chef/one-specialty business (basically, food stalls) clustered around a “court” of shared tables. When will some shrewd and civic minded investors (perhaps in tandem with their city governments) put aside some parking lot-size spaces (near commercial districts) where operators from many lands can sell their wares? Sharing tables, as in classic fast-food food courts? Why, with our enormous Asian and Latino populations, can’t we have dai pai dong – literally, “big sign street”, the Chinese version of the indigenous food court, like they do in Hong Kong – or hawker centers, like in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur? Or “food streets,” like Hanoi and Saigon? The open-to-the-air “wet” taco vendors and quesadilla-makers of Mexico City?

Food preparation areas could be enclosed, as they are in Singapore, so food handling and sanitation issues can hardly be an unsolvable impediment: Singapore is the most rigorously nanny of the nanny states – with the most vibrant hawker culture. The hawker center could be an answered prayer for every hard-pressed office worker in a hurry, every blue collar worker on a budget, every cop on a lunch hour, as well as obsessive foodies at every income level. “Authenticity”; artisanship; freshness; incredible, unheard of variety – and for cheap? All under one roof? This, let us hope, is at least part of our future – whatever happens.

I usually won’t reference Singapore as a positive (not least because one small narcotics offense comes with a mandatory death sentence), but if they can do it, we most certainly could, too. Indeed, why stop at mobile food trucks?

Tea & Two Slices: Talking Truth To Power And Mayoral Epithets

Vancouver mayor apologizes for F-bomb. Oh my god, it’s time Vancouver grew the fuck up and dropped the pseudo-puritan facade that manifests itself as phony outrage.

A post-hippy Mom at McLean Park demanded we show a permit to play soccer last Sunday (after we’d been doing it for 7 years without incident), which made me think of Patton Oswalt: “You can’t rent (mopeds) in San Francisco anymore without a motorcycle license. You know why? Because hippies took them off the market because people were getting hurt– waaah! Actually not hippies, the asshole children of hippies”.

The champion of that archaic thinking, Jon Ferry, wants more signs on our roads. Hey, let’s hire Homer Simpson as our Public Safety Minister. That would be fun. And while editorial space is dedicated to how Jon Ferry’s idiot friends can’t find Deep Cove, they give the budget a free ride.

Journalists should always talk truth to power. Are you just reminding yourself? Or did you forget that you write for The Province?

Thanks to NEWS1130, we now can confirm that 17% of us have tattoos. Read more

Twenty Questions With Mayor Gregor Robertson

Once or twice a week, Scout poses 60 questions to a local who has made life in BC that much more interesting. They pick and choose. The minimum response is 20 answers (a Rorschach test, for sure).

Today, it’s the turn of Mayor Gregor Robertson…

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Scout Q&A

Default drink: Happy Planet juice

Book you’re reading: “Community: The Structure of Belonging” by Peter Block

Last place traveled: Mexico with my family

Worst cliché ever: “Let the chips fall where they may”

Your ancestry: Scottish

The thing that makes you the angriest: Homelessness

Ice cream flavour: double chocolate

The trend you wish you never followed, but did: I used to have really long, shaggy hair back in the day. Not a good idea.

Sport you gave up: Rugby

Mac or PC: Mac

Favourite sports team: Canucks.

Best concert experience ever: Manu Chao at the Commodore last year

The dish you’re proud of: My homegrown salads.

Town you were born in: North Van.

Old television shows you can tolerate re-runs of: Star Trek. Can’t go wrong.

First memory: Dropping plastic toy soldiers with parachutes off my Dad’s apartment in the West End.

Album that first made you love music: The Beatles, Abbey Road.

The career path you considered but never followed: Doctor.

Biggest hope: To see the end of homelessness in Vancouver.

Favourite book as a child: Lord of the Rings.

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Biography

(from VoteVision.ca) A successful businessman, community activist, and politician, Gregor is bringing a new brand of leadership, action and vision to City Hall.

In 1990, two events changed the life of Gregor Robertson: his wife Amy became pregnant with their first child, and he was soaked with chemical herbicide on an industrial farm. Those two events changed the way he viewed the world and launched him on a leading path of responsibility and sustainability – first as an organic farmer and sustainable business leader, and now as the Mayor of Vancouver with a vision of change.

Later that same year, and ahead of his time, Gregor started an organic farm near Fort Langley. That venture soon led him to create Happy Planet Foods, and over the next decade, he helped grow the company into one of Canada’s leading organic food businesses, showcasing sustainability long before it was a buzzword.

His business success earned him the Vancouver Mayor’s Environmental Award for exemplary achievement in 2003 and the Ethics in Action Award in 2004. Later that same year, Gregor was named one of Canada’s “Top 40 under 40” by The Globe and Mail. Throughout those years, Gregor remained committed to organic quality and fair trade, proving that commercial success and sustainability can go hand in hand.

But as a successful entrepreneur committed to social responsibility, Gregor became increasingly aware of the government’s neglect of small business, the environment, and the problem of homelessness. In 2005, he made the decision to enter politics and was elected MLA for Vancouver-Fairview and served as the Opposition Critic for Small Business and Co-Chair of the Caucus Climate Change Task Force. He also led a successful campaign to protect affordable rental housing in Vancouver, helped put a copy of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in every public high school, and has been a tireless advocate for small businesses impacted by the Canada Line construction. Gregor also introduced and championed private members’ bills mandating clear food labeling and the reduction of carcinogens, toxic substances and genetically engineered food.

He is now bringing his brand of business, environmental and responsible leadership to city hall.

Gregor lives in Vancouver with his wife Amy, and their children Terra, Satchel, Jinagh and Johanna. He is an ardent bike commuter, and in his spare moments he plays soccer and the tuba.

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Michelle Sproule grew up in Kitsilano and attended Bond University in Australia and the University of Victoria before receiving her graduate degree in Library Sciences from The University of Toronto. She lives by the beach in Vancouver and enjoys wandering aimlessly through the city’s shops and streets with her best friend – a beat up, sticky, grimy, and uncooperative camera.

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