by Sean Orr | Town Hall Meeting – called by VPD. Hopefully it will be as rowdy as this townhall meeting in Tampa. “You work for us! You work for us!” Actually, no…I hope that doesn’t happen. That video is terrifying…
New Democrat MLA criticizes party leader. She always kind of comes across as a stunned owl next to Campbell’s robotic smugness. Wait, I’m getting confused between reality and Blade Runner again, aren’t I? Damn, I hate it when that happens.
Blood Money: An open letter to Andrew Petter, President, Simon Fraser University. Yeah, well that’s easy for you to say from way up in the mountains of Guatemala doing tireless and thankless missionary work, living with peasants, seeing first hand the destruction that gold mining has on an indigenous population. Pffft.
Big ups to my homeboy MayorGregor @FortuneSound! Is it possible our mayor is that cool?
The G Word: @VIAwesome asks if the Tim Horton’s at Main and Broadway is really gentrification or just donuts? Unfortunately gentrification has been happening to the area for a decade. Since the BIA tried to rebrand it as Uptown, since the condo people started calling it SoMa; when Dadabase was forced to close because their rents tripled; when the cowboy shop became a bath and shower outlet, when SportChek moved in on Broadway. It has been a very slow process and as others tweeted, there are still a lot of options for the ‘working class’, including Tim Hortons.
Temporary 99 B-Line stop relocation will be a clusterfuck at Commercial-Broadway Station. Well there isn’t much I can add to a headline like that.
NPA’s Anton calls vote on Hornby lane “theatre” and moves to rescind her vote in favour. If this is theatre, then she’s a terrible actor.
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when starbucks was starting to expand, a trend was noticed in new york such that when a starbucks moved into a neighbourhood, property prices increased … something similar recently occurred in london in neighbourhoods where there was a gourmet cupcake shop … http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertymarket/wordonthestreet/6729320/Property-The-cupcake-effect.html
it may be just me, but having a tim horton’s (or a mcdonald’s or a subway or any of the numerous crappy fastfood places) would put me off living in a neighbourhood and the idea that it’s bandied about as an example of gentrification is quite frankly disturbing
The clothing boutiques and design-forward coffee shops of Main street will have proved to be far more effective as agents of gentrification than the opening of a Tim Hortons location, a business which is actually frequented by people that could be considered ‘working class’.
Anyone deluded enough to get upset about this must really be trying hard to mask their snobbery with self-righteousness.
Tim Horton’s is not gentrification. As Sean Orr rightly notes, the gentrification of Main Street in Mount Pleasant has come and gone.
Timmies is the next step, maybe. Call it suburbification, if you will. A reply to the original twitter message (from “sandersrachel”) used the word “homogenization”, and that’s a good description too. Now that all the trendy artsy folks (and their hordes of wannabe followers) have polished all the rough edges from the neighbourhood, it is safe for an invasion of the bland middle class.
Or, it could just be that this is a major transportation hub with a long-vacant building on it. The hipsters will still have their shade-grown fair trade Americanos at the indie coffee shops, and the commuters can have their double-doubles. And the world will not fall down either way.