5 things I love about Vancouver

Over at the Raincoast blog, Dan Wagstaff is running the 5 Things Vancouver travel series — a sort of miniguide to Vancouver for Olympic tourists and visiting terrorists. It kicks off with an entry from me, in which I politely don’t express my feelings about the Olympics.

(Image from cfarivar’s Flickr stream.)

Vancouver City: The Inner Life Project

Wow — thanks to the Vancouver Biennale Blog for pointing out this amazing time-lapse music video of Vancouver, courtesy of the Inner Life Project.

Vancouver is the least affordable city in the world

A new report says Vancouver has the least affordable housing market in the world. But don’t worry — the city plans to fix the situation with microlofts: 270-square-feet apartments in the midst of the Downtown Eastside marketed to the “risk oblivious.” Yeah, maybe it’s time to move….

Does Hamilton need to be saved?

The Globe has a piece by Trevor Cole on what can be done to save Hamilton from its decline. One suggestion is make Hamilton an arts and culture city.

It’s lucky, then, that Hamilton has people like Jeremy Freiburger, who has been pushing for a greater arts focus for the downtown. He’s the founder and executive director of the Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts, which develops and manages studio space for 70 artists and helps to galvanize cultural initiatives in the city. Freiburger’s effort has been one of the most encouraging signs in the core, but until recently he was ignored by city officials.

“We got no support,” says Freiburger. Hamilton’s leadership was caught up in old, industrial thinking, he says, and some city bureaucrats were straight out of the Fifties. “How they got the job is completely beyond me.” After trying for three years to get the city’s attention, Freiburger’s organization spent $30,000 on a study of cultural industries’ economic impact on Hamilton. The research showed that culture contributed thousands of jobs and injected $250 million annually into the local economy. Of course, that’s nothing compared to farming—or so said a councillor from one of the rural wards—but it helped to make the conversations more productive. The city’s new official plan, finalized in June, now incorporates Freiburger’s data and recognizes culture as one of the key “clusters” in the city’s economy. And recently city hall invested $150,000 toward Freiburger’s latest initiative: developing a creative catalyst centre akin to the Banff Centre. Says Freiburger, “Finally we’ve cracked through the wall.”

I haven’t spent any time in Hamilton myself, but I’ve known people who have lived there who said it was beautiful. And many of the commenters say it doesn’t need to be saved from anything, thank you very much.

(Image from johnpiercy’s Flickr stream.)

Breaking and entering rates in Toronto

The Toronto Star’s latest map of the week could be useful to you — it shows the rates of B&Es in the city.

Should Vancouver be more like Portland?

vs.  

There’s an interesting article over at the Tyee comparing Blandcouver to Portland in the U.S. It focuses on cheap beer and funky neighbourhoods, something I’d say both cities have plenty of. But which one has better rose gardens, hmm? (That would be Portland.)

If looked at only in terms of financial investment, Vancouver can’t be knocked per se. Last year the city handed out over $10.43 million dollars in arts and culture grants across the city. In truth, much of that money goes to large, already established events like the Juno Awards, but strictly speaking, Vancouver tries hard when it comes to supporting the arts. Perhaps even a little too hard.

Ask a Portland artist what makes their life easiest and some, like Katherine, will tell you that the city’s greatest contribution to the arts is not necessarily what they do; it’s what they don’t do.

“I don’t feel like Portland has a lot of money to give to people. I feel like Portland gives a lot of leeway. Portland does a pretty good job of getting out of the way.”

(Pic of Portland from Matt McGee’s Flickr stream. Pic of Vancouver from John Corvera’s Flickr stream.)

“Who still visits the airport strip?”

The National Post’s Mark Medley spends two days in the neighbourhoods around Toronto’s Pearson International Airport to see what the airport means to our civic consciousness.

The security guard standing outside Terminal 1 seems a bit puzzled when I enquire how one leaves Pearson on foot. He points off in the distance and offers directions. Navigating the roller coaster’s worth of twisting ramps is easier than anticipated, quickly leading to streets with aviation-themed names, Jetliner Road and Silver Dart Drive. There are few people on the sidewalk but a wealth of taxis and shuttle buses ferry hotel guests to and from the terminals. There is no sidewalk on either side of the road along much of the boundary, and I pass fewer than 30 pedestrians over the course of two days.

(Image from Vankuso (D.Starosz)’s Flickr stream.)

Globe launches Toronto hub

Promising.

We’ve signed a deal with Torontoist, the city’s best comprehensive blog, to bring you intensely local tales from every corner of Toronto, along with listings of events you won’t want to miss. We’ve created a first-of-its-kind traffic page combining Twitter feeds and real-time images of the GTA’s busiest roads to help make your commute smoother. We’re turning “Inside City Hall” – our local political bureau’s renowned Monday compendium of tips, gossip and analysis – into a daily blog.

Vancouver’s Tales of the City

I am loving Vancouver Magazine’s Tales of the City. A sample:

Living in a glass tower in the West End, you can’t help but get to know your neighbours. There’s the chronic Internet masturbator. Most of my guests have seen him in action—how could they not? They always ask after him: “Does he have a partner yet?” There’s the revolving door of young Asian women studying English, living in studios furnished with a lone futon, which is particularly concerning for men with daughters. Arriving for dinner, my dad always notes those dining alone, bathed in the lonely blue light of the TV, while in other, brightly lit studios more dine together on floor cushions around a tea towel, as though picnicking. Then there’s the couple that have sex so often, and for such long stretches, that life gets in the way and the novelty pales. The woman always seeks battery-powered assistance, which puzzles and worries some guests: “He has a good body and works so hard, but alas…” Gradually, though, even the most voyeuristic get exasperated: “Gawd, how long is this going to take?”—Danielle Egan

(Image from Duane Storey’s Flickr stream.)

Does the best of TO have yet to be written?

The Star’s Geoff Pevere says many of Toronto’s “insistent locales” have yet to be written about. The city’s underground PATH mall actually inspired part of the setting for my new book.

The PATH: This underground labyrinth, which permits those so inclined to wander beneath the city’s streets from Union Station to Dundas St. (and maybe beyond) without once surfacing for unrecycled air, is like the retail version of the Paris sewers, but kinder to the olfactory sense. There are stores, food courts, shoeshine stands and glassy-eyed businesspersons galore down here, but only during business hours. After that, it’s as empty as a ravaged box of Timbits.

The book I’d write would be about someone who hadn’t surfaced since Brian Mulroney was prime minister, only to plunge back in horror after seeing the former PM’s face plastered on one of the huge TV screens at Yonge-Dundas Square during the recent Commons ethics committee hearings.

Wondermark visits Toronto

This blog post by David Malki of Wondermark fame, who was in TO for the comics festival, made me chuckle a little. Now if only he would do a comic about Canada.

I stepped off the airplane and followed the signs, in French and English, the way they do things in Canada. The hallway fed into a giant empty room, thick with winding amusement-park railings full of nobody, the booths at the far end staffed with Valkyries, or bored Customs agents, or trolls — who could say? A stamp and I was through. Canada. I was here.

Ottawa says candles aren’t art

The city of Ottawa says if it’s consumable, it’s not art. Next they’ll be saying cheese can’t be art….

A pair of candle makers from Chelsea, Que., are upset that the City of Ottawa will no longer allow them to sell their wares in the Byward Market because it doesn’t consider their work art.

The city is in the process of deciding which vendors it wants to occupy the downtown vending stalls and it’s decided vendors selling products that don’t last — such as candles — won’t make the cut.

Is Montreal the most bike-friendly city in Canada?

Outrageous!

So what if the white painted stripes outlining the bike lane along Prince Arthur St. aren’t straight, as if drawn by a child without a ruler.

At least the lane is there, say the hundreds of cyclists who use it every day. In fact, bike lanes like this, and paths demarcated by concrete curbs, are everywhere in this city, which for cycling enthusiasts seems to have suddenly become bike heaven.

Through a combination of recent efforts, Montreal is dramatically prioritizing bicycles. Not only has it embarked on a huge expansion of its bike paths – it already has more than Toronto – but on May 12 it will officially launch the first full-fledged public bike rental service in North America, called Bixi, a combination of bike and taxi.

(Image from Theo La Photo’s Flickr stream.)

The Star’s map of the week: pedestrian accidents

The Star’s Map of the Week blog has posted the top areas for pedestrian collisions in Toronto. Be safe on out there on those hard streets, y’all.

Toronto’s Inn Crowd

The New York Times celebrates Toronto’s Drake and Gladstone hotels. And introduces me to the term Torontopia. It’s all right, fellas — they have an ointment for that now.

Today the Gladstone remains Torontopia’s de facto home base. In some corners of Toronto’s arts community, Gladstone partisanship is expressed as animosity toward the Drake, with its jet-setting clientele and unembarrassed marketing of hipster allure. (The Drake’s sexed-up slogan is ‘‘Hot Bed for Culture.’’) ‘‘The Gladstone is cultivating and encouraging community,’’ says Scott Miller Berry, the director of the city’s Images Festival and a Gladstone regular. ‘‘The Drake is kind of buying and selling it.’’

Such gripes are, among other things, a sign of a healthy bohemia — what is an arts scene without its internecine battles and bêtes noires? Still, the Drake can play against type. One of its signature weekly events is Elvis Mondays, a punk- and indie-music showcase that was held at the Drake back in the early ’90s, when the hotel was still an S.R.O. with a dingy Polish bar. Many Torontonians begin their evenings at the Gladstone and end them at the Drake, or vice versa, and to an out-of-towner the places offer different but complementary vantage points at one of the city’s most colorful corners. Even the Gladstone’s own artist-in-residence sees no reason to choose sides. ‘‘The Drake is great,’’ Billio says. ‘‘It’s more international, more Eurotrash. It’s an arts place, but it’s also a party place. What’s wrong with that?’’

TO in six words

Torontonians describe the city in six words (the actual descriptions start around the 3:30 mark) to celebrate its 175 birthday. I like Julie Wilson’s contribution the best. (Via Torontoist.)

Ottawa: The unknown city

I just discovered CanLit gypsy rob mclennan wrote a book about the secrets of Ottawa last year called Ottawa: The Unknown City. Check out the interview with rob on Ottawa’s a-channel, where the anchor actually seems to have read the book and has decent questions to ask. Outstanding! (And rob, I’ve never seen you so dressed up.)

(Video grabbed from the Unknown Ottawa site.)

Vancouver is still one of the least affordable cities in the world

Yeah, but that’s because we don’t get snow here. Oh, wait….

Metro Vancouver sits fourth on Demographia’s 2009 list of least affordable cities, with a median house price at 8.4 times the median income.

Demographia defines affordable home prices as three times a city’s median income or less.

The good news is Winnipeg is still affordable.

(Image from kennymatic’s Flickr stream.)

Montreal solution to snow=crampons

OK, I’ll stop complaining about the weather in Vancouver.

Montrealers’ fashion sense has long been celebrated, but the latest must-have accessory has nothing to do with looking stylish. It’s more a question of avoiding a trip to the hospital emergency room.

For weeks, the city’s sidewalks have been as slick as skating rinks.

When meteorologists forecast a major storm for Wednesday, the city councillor responsible for snow removal — who also happens to be the brother of Mayor Gerald Tremblay — had some practical advice for citizens: Strap some crampons on your boots.

Crampons, which fit over boots and have metal spikes on the sole, are typically used to climb mountains.

Toronto rated 10th best global city

And fourth best in the world for cultural experiences. Take that, Device-to-Root-Out-Evil-stealing Calgary!

In their first-ever Global Cities Index, the editors at Foreign Policy, along with A.T. Kearney, a global management consultancy firm, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, described global cities as symbols of “power, sophistication, wealth, and influence. To call a global city your own suggests that the ideas and values of your metropolis shape the world.”

The journal’s website pointed to Toronto — the only Canadian city on a the list of 60 urban centres — as a “lifestyle centre”, along with Los Angeles, calling them “laid-back cities that enjoy a high quality of life and focus on having fun. They attract worldly people and offer cultural experiences to spare.”