TEA & TWO SLICES: On Snakeheads Tearing Apart Our City & Hunting Rats On The DTES

by Sean Orr | Burnaby lagoon snakehead caught on tape again. If you think about it, this is the perfect metaphor for Vancouver. There is an invasive species pushing out a native species, only the snakeheads are these mouth-breathing, hyper-sexualized creatures that can sometimes move across land (or bridges and tunnels). Now imagine fishing and catching a crowd of Axed-out roid freaks wearing Parasuco jeans and Snakehead Gym hoodies!

Also, I really don’t think that we are taking this Scottish Broom threat seriously at all. They’re as miserable as their Pictish namesake. They’ll make you a Presbyterian and your life will forever be like Breaking the Waves.

By Jove, the jock-cum-journalist gets it right! Cities deserve bigger share of tax dollars. This is what I was saying just the other day to Jordan Bateman. The cities take most of the province’s most marginalised people. And then we have to pay when the suburbs destroy our city. Is anti-urban rhetoric like Bateman’s just thinly-veiled anti-intellectualism?

Oh, plus we can’t even afford to transport ourselves. TransLink property sell-off plan startles region’s mayors. Weird. It turns out that by hitching transit to gas funding you actually lose money when people start using it. It’s like the infamous Factory Records deal with Happy Mondays that saw the company lose money with every record sold.

Shaking in their boots: Prospect of ‘free-enterprise coalition’ scales back B.C. NDP’s lead. Keep dreaming, you crazy dreamers. You think all those fired BC Libs are going to be allowed back in? They hate each other more than they hate the NDP! Hell, the NDP hates itself (or least they should) more than the two combined.

Speaking of hate: Vision’s ideology makes them ‘mean,’ ‘divisive’. Vision’s vision is way too Vision-y.

B.C. needs more immigrants to address looming labour shortage: task force. Oh, the south of the Fraser is not gonna like the sound of that.

Rat count underway on DTES. The number of ratgoofs, however, remains undetermined.

The following is actually an opinion piece from The Courier: From Napoleon to 20-sided dice.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Pepper-Flavoured Beers And Its No Longer Safe To Do Anything

by Sean Orr | How to make a riot bigger: Video shows Montreal police pepper spraying bar patrons during protest melee. Ain’t nobody better be fucking with my pint of Le Fin Du Monde, yo.

Tweet of the day c/o Stephen Taylor: “Why does violence only ever emerge during leftwing demonstrations? They own the mantle of domestic violent political extremism”. Because nobody ever brought a gun to a Tea Party demo.

Harpoon Stephen: Killer whale expert out of work as feds cut ocean-pollution monitoring positions. Maybe this alone will be the single issue that sinks Harper (aka Captain Ahab).

A theme developing: Cuts at Environment Canada mean fewer left to clean up oil-spill mess. If your irony-metre just went through the roof, you are not alone.

Robyn Urback on shocking anti-male hatred on the SFU campus. More shocking than the real violence they are talking about?

We Built This City on Boosterism: 100 Years of complaining.

That is not a bubble. This is a bubble. Actually, they’re both bubbles, so don’t just take City Caucasian’s word for it. Check in with Bob “Everything Is Going To Be Alright” Rennie, too.

First World Problems: High-speed Internet remains a fantasy for many Canadians. I wanted to read that article, but the page took forever to load.

Gloria Mackarenko practicing for Bard on the Beach: “The boyfriend. Upset about the break-up. He loaded his van with weapons and explosives and burst into her home. It happened. Last evening. In Kamloops.”

Deadly weekend: a scuba diver dies, a woman dead after falling off a Hornby Island cliff, and a Canadian woman dies on Mount Everest in the notorious ‘death zone’. I think the message is clear. Stop doing stuff.

Painting: “Emperor Haute Couture” by Margaret Sutherland.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Luongo And Smoking Weed With Tourists Out By The Steam Clock

by Sean Orr | An elected Senate would ruin B.C., so Harper should have no problem ram-rodding it through then. That’s why I vote Loyalist every time. Down with the Whigs! Long live King George!

Another strange DTES smear piece from The Courier: Vancouver housing provider operates brothels in the Downtown Eastside. What gives? This on the heels of the study that proved sex workers were safer with indoor work spaces. No mention of that in the article, of course. Go figure.

Related: Kitsilano tops the list of 10 cheating neighbourhoods in Vancouver. I love that the byline is by “Staff Writer”. Nobody in the newsroom wanted to put their name to this piece of garbage.

Why Translink is Bankrupt: Metro Vancouver’s Transit Police rack up huge overtime bills. Handing out tickets that no one ever pays?Brilliant. And then something like this happens.

Everything’s Gone Green: V-Pole. A Wi-Fi, Electric Vehicle Charging Lamp Post of the Future. It will also read selective Douglas Coupland quotes like “TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public”.

Who cares if it helps the city? The real question is if it’s good for business: City expands summer VIVA Vancouver plan to restrict vehicle traffic in urban areas. Stick a couple of V-Poles in there and you got yourselves a rockin’ street party!

Unfortunately relevant: Should stratas consider non-smoking bylaws? Not unless you want me smoking, like, 25 joints a day in front of the steam clock. I mean, I’m not exactly pro-Tourism Vancouver, but I’m sure they’d rather I kept the huge plumes of marijuana smoke inside my super fancy Gastown loft (that my parents bought for me).

Cool, and only about 10 years late: Vancouver activists dumpster dine to save the planet. Holy shit this is priceless: “A group of young women who call themselves ‘freegans’ search dumpsters for edible food in the Metro area. They are not homeless or poor, but choose to scavenge their meals this way”. Great, now the Vancouver Sun is hiring writers fresh from the sixth grade.

Why are all the best writers sports-writers? “The Tampa Bay Lightning would control the (media) outlets allowed to have access to Roberto Luongo. Right now, the two publications that seem to have the inside track are: Italian Goaltender Weekly and The Luongo Family Christmas Newsletter. Also, Skymall has submitted a questionnaire asking where Roberto likes to eat when he’s in downtown Nashville.”

Bonus: Fucking Snakeheads! Fish sighting in Burnaby lagoon raises alarm (with video). With viddeeoo!

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Bravely Attacking Soup Kitchens And Exporting Vancouverism

by Sean Orr | The Vancouver Sun’s case for banning masks: Guest editorial: Protesters who cover their faces deserve arrest. Once again, notice the image that the Vancouver Sun has chosen (the Guy Fawkes mask was adopted by the Anonymous movement, a peaceful group). Note also how they employ the word “protesters”. I don’t know if the paper is guilty of a Freudian Slip or a rotten lie here, but the truth is that the proposed law is about rioters, not protestors (I’ve been to a whole lot of protests in my time, but only once have I heard the Riot Act being read, and it was after a hockey game).

My case for banning masks: Two arrested during G20 summit were police: watchdog.

Dad still doesn’t get it: Eco-zealots’ hyperbole leaves me green-faced, wherein an anti-environmentalist consults an environmental group to discredit environmentalists. The headline should be: Grrr. I’m dumb, old, and angry. And I vote.

So the Federal Government accidentally funded something really worthwhile that is working, but now they don’t want to fund it anymore: Future uncertain for Bosman Hotel Community

Meanwhile, The Province runs a truly bizarre smear piece on The Dugout, a volunteer-run food dispensary on the DTES. Really? Fuck off and go do some real investigating, like how the Fraser Institute accepts charity.

Leave the micro-politics of a soup kitchen for trolls like Greg Renouf: Does Irwin Oostinde Run SadoMasochist Sex Parties At The W2 Media Centre? Oh god, Greg. Do grow up. Do you actually know what an S&M party looks like? Do I have to Google that for you?

Politics are boring because you just compared them to hockey and reality TV: Thrust and parry of Hansard a limp affair indeed. To quote the kid in the G.I. Joe parody, “Dude, I got no idea what you’re on about”.

Langley responds: Langley Township ‘not District 12′. Cool comeback, bro.

How a completely fabricated city in the desert is like Vancouver: Mirrors, Mirages and Vancouverism in the Middle East.

Bonus: Vancouver Ltd. by Don Gutstein.

Tea & Two Slices: On Vancouver Becoming Langley & Not Responding To Demagoguery

by Sean Orr | Levant’s latest rant about Tyee ‘dead wrong’ says editor. “I’d rather not respond to demagoguery, but here goes…” Oh man, is it too late to change the name of this column from Tea & Two Slices to I’d Rather not Respond to Demagoguery, But Here Goes? [ed. note: I'm afraid so]

Jordan Bateman: Metro Vancouver should stick to core services. (Ahem, I’d rather not respond to demagoguery, but here goes) It might be that simple in Langley where there is a long history of anti-city sentiment, Mr. Bateman, but cities need to be more autonomous, not less, and not more dependent on a larger bureaucracy, which is even less proportionately represented, but less. Mr. BC Tax Federation would rather have a hick from Calgary living in an Ottawa mansion make all our decisions. Let Langley form their own fucking regional district and see how easy it is for them to deal with higher levels of government.

And as Mr. Bateman’s own Peter Fassbender is about to find out: Mayors must decide on joining TransLink board. For what is dressing up an appointed board (of diamond CEOs and developers) with two local mayors (who will have little to no say in the regions’ transportation future) if not bureaucracy? Perhaps he should be directing his Ayn Randian cynicism towards this:  TILMA Gums up Public Works Bidding, Say BC Engineers.

But Mr Bateman shouldn’t worry. I’m sure Vancouver will look exactly like Langley soon: Vancouver’s arts and culture bleeding out in “steady migration”, warn city creatives.

New Testament: Evangelical Christianity using iPads, big screens and electric guitars. OK, maybe now it’s time to get one of those Atheist Bus campaigns going.

Why does anyone take Kevin Krueger seriously?. Ha! Oh, wait…that was a question?

Here’s the media running a picture of someone who isn’t rioting (nor intending to riot) while talking about rioting (and intending to riot): Should it be a crime to cover your face during a riot? The Guy Fawkes mask was adopted by the Anonymous movement, a peaceful group. The real crime is the media using it to talk about this stupid bill.

A Tale of Two Readerships: Please Don’t Advertise and Ban Billboards, Fund Journalism! One is about cuddling and the other is about advertising).

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Big Trouble At The Cactus Club And Mt. Pleasant Becoming Kits

by Sean Orr | Who saw this coming? Nobody. English Bay Cactus Club causing conflict between cyclists and pedestrians. I can just picture the junior-douchebags drunk on bellinis stumbling into the bike lane, calling cyclists “fags” and just generally detracting from the social fabric of our city.

Gentrification nation: Conflict of Interest at City Hall | Condo Tower Approved in Chinatown. Juicy stuff, Mainlander, although I’m not sure how I feel about the jab at the good people opening up on the 400 block of Columbia…

Speaking of interests and conflicts: Vancity urged to dump interests in Enbridge (one of those moments when you tug at your collar and go “yeeesh”).

Pressure mounts on B.C. Liberals to end silence on Northern Gateway pipeline (and speaking of pressures mounting, my new album Pressure Mounts just dropped).

Yellow Cabs Drawn into Rocky Mountaineer Labour Fight. This is the same Rob Ford-esque piece of work who was chair of the NPA’s election campaign when the lockout first started, then accused Vision of meddling.

Because its illegal every where else: Mount Pleasant skate park dominated by adult males, according to resident. When did Mount Pleasant become as stuck up as Kitsilano?

And before you know it, Mount Pleasant will have a cat café. Oh god. They’re going to call the drinks Cattés and Cattucinos, aren’t they? We’re so fucked.

Because nobody looks when they turn right on a red: Most pedestrian-involved crashes caused by turning vehicles. I can’t count how many times this has happened to me. I used to kick the side of the car but people would react like I was trying to kill their first-born child…

Whee! Bouncy real-estate sales expected in Vancouver. Reads a bit like a poorly translated Hungarian to English phrasebook.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On 14 Day Weather Trends And The Province’s Corporate Shilling

by Sean Orr | The jury’s back: green power is way too expensive. The “jury” in this case is Gwyn Morgan via The Province. Such a conclusion is what we’d expect from the chairman of the board of SNC-Lavalin and the director at EnCana Corporation (the piece of work is also on the Board of Trustees of the right wing Fraser Institute, a director for The Manning Centre for Building Democracy, and a non-executive director of HSBC). Alas, we have to read elsewhere for the truth about corporate capitalism.

Another corporate media outlet to the rescue? Globe to Harper govt: Stop ‘smearing’ green critics.

The Masquerade: Masked protesters could face jail, fines under Tory MP bill.

Manhattan’s highline bridge concept for the old Patullo. In other news, Vancouver Needs a Brooklyn, and New West Could Be It. I guess that makes the DTES the Bronx? V6A: Decoding The Downtown Eastside with Poetry and Prose. Wait, the V6A is a postal code prefix? Funny how I thought it was that condo on Union Street…

The best thing Douglas Coupland has written since City of Glass is my tweet of the day (I’m going to make you click it for greater effect).

Boomerism: I’m aging the old-fashioned way. Yeah? Well fuck you and your new-fangled, modernist aging techniques.

Dome of the rock: The Province clears the way for a gondola up the Stawamus Chief. Why not just run an elevator right up the front of it?

Urban Planet: Growing Vegetables in Vancouver’s Parking Garages. Cool idea (and one that I’ve advocated before).

Bonus: 14 Day Trend- Weather Network.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Gentrifying The DTES And Everything Is Going To Be Alright

by Sean Orr | No good-niks! Editorial: Police inaction lets scofflaws prosper. Oh man! I love it when The Province gets all old-timey!

Let’s put the guy who sexualised housing and promoted the lotus-eating lifestyle of Vancouverism in charge of BC Housing: BC Liberals and Bob Rennie tighten grip on housing construction in Vancouver.

The process of philanthropization is inherent in neo-liberalism and in reality marks the privatization of social housing construction, a direction that has been champion [sic] by Bob Rennie for years

But not to worry. Everything is Going to be Alright, right?

Donut vs. Donut: Downtown Eastside restaurants respond to antipoverty activists. Oh, Ivan. I want to support you so badly, but as I have argued countless times, Gastown is a product of stopping gentrification. It began as a program of heritage restoration back in the 70′s. I mean, is Water Street Cafe and Al Porto on your list of “aggressors”, too? Sheesh.

And yet, at the same time, there is truth to his paranoia: 10-storey condo tower at Main & Keefer seeks approval. Photo evidence from yours truly sets up the sad state of affairs.

But calling him a bully probably just lends more credence to his argument: Neighbourhood bully harms Downtown Eastside planning process. Harms the process or is part of the process? What kind of paper prints that kind of thing? Oh wait…

Just as calling the Mayor of Vancouver a hipster makes Ezra Levant look like a bigger tool then he comes off in his articles: Mayor really the Prince of Tides. Oh man, the hypocrisy abounds. Any examination of any political party will turn up, yes that’s right, political contributors. Be it oil companies, the mining sector, Halliburton, SNC Lavalin, unions, indivuduals, and think tanks like Tides, or the one the conservatives used in the last election, Front Porch Strategies.

But it’s the left that’s loony? Why Harper must love the loony left. “When Stephen Harper was in opposition, the left insisted he had a Secret Agenda he would implement if he ever took power. The right hoped that was true.” I’m confused. So…evidence that something hasn’t quite yet happened is evidence that it won’t? And here I was thinking I had a grasp of logic. Here I was thinking that burning government documents was evidence enough. And here I was thinking Harper’s unanimous support for Israel’s siege on Gaza and war on Lebanon was evidence enough. And here I was thinking thinking the single-handed scuttling of the Copenhagen Climate Summit was…you get the picture.

Also: Foreign prosecutors view Canada as an international joke in terms of prosecuting corporate crime. OK, so that’s not quite the headline verbatim, but I think it sums things up nicely.

Bonus: Jeff Wall photo could sell for $2M at auction.

Extra bonus: Pull up a stool at The Bottleneck.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Vacant Robson Street And Airing Dirty Laundry On May Day

by Sean Orr | M’aidez: Occupy Vancouver alive and well, say protesters. If by alive and well they mean the singling out and possible slander of one individual in front of the whole crowd while a dozen or so are trying to shout them down, then yeah, it is very alive, only in a dead, alienating, and sad sort of way.

Perhaps they were just cold from the divisive and chilly demo at the art gallery: Vancouver’s May Day rally came to a heated conclusion as protesters set a large fire in the middle of Commercial Drive. Because when I think of capitalism run amok, I think of Commercial Drive. Dummies.

News For Youse is equally unimpressed:

All we have to say is, c’mon, that’s the best you could do? In Vancouver, a city known for being unreasonably riotous at the drop of a puck, you couldn’t muster up a knocked-over newspaper box or even one broken window?

You do it to yourself: More than 20 vacancy signs as Vancouver’s Robson Street undergoes ‘transition’. Maybe we can invite the Germans back. A new chapter in Vanishing Vancouver!

Pocket change: Retailers cry ‘enough’ as B.C.’s minimum hourly wage hits $10.25. Because giving people more money to buy stuff won’t help the retail sector whatsoever.

Gossip as news: Rumours of disturbing contest among North Van grad students. You want to see disturbing? You should try looking at my Tumblr dashboard. Yikes.

Some weird old person ranting about city spending or something: Baby Vancouver and King Solomon’s Dilemma. This is the journalistic equivalent of sitting next to your drunk uncle, the one with the bad gas and little white foamy bits in the corners of his mouth. He’s unbuckled his pants and now he’s talking about how you can’t find anywhere to “park your damn car nowadays”.

Of personal interest: Clampdown on boozing in British parliament. Captain Orr would have a fit! I’m not sure, but I think his portfolio was the Ministry of Wine.

TEA & TWO SLICES: On Lives Of Charm And The Steam Clock That Doesn’t Run On Steam

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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