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Vancouver construction - another ingredient for road rage.
2007-01-30 22:42:01
Is it just me or are we, as communters, under attack?  Detours, roads closed, 3 lanes merging to one, pylons, flashing lights and orange vests.  Thanks to 2010, road work is everywhere and it’s paralyzing Vancouver traffic.  And while public transit is failing us as an alternatic, we’re stuck stewing in this crockpot of traffic. I’m always a proponent of improvement, there’s nothing wrong with bigger, better, faster — right? Umm sure, but at what cost?  Well for one, road rage, if it were measurable on a barometer would be contributing to global warming at a dangerous level.  It’s not enough to piss us off on busses, the city planners have to jab us in our cars at the same time.  I can’t pretend that this is on purpose, but how could the city be so poor at planning this whole process? Here’s a map of all the main construction throughout the GVRD, courtesty of the city’s The Road Ahead website.
More About: Other , Construction , Rage , Another

Picket fences and crack dens
2007-01-25 22:38:02
A crack house in the neighbourhood is an easy thing to spot. Look for the worst kept house with overgrown weeds, bed sheets for window treatments, grafitti all over the garage, and the most telling sign: continous foot and vehicle traffic in and out. Forgiveably, any new home owner could gloss over those signs since it could all look harmless, after all a crack den could be mistaken for the residence of students renting and hosting numerous study groups? But with a bit more observation, the occasional raid by the Vancouver Police K-9 unit, and awakening to a shouting match between a pimp and his crack head employee, and you’ll quickly sober up to the fact that yout neighbour’s house is actually owned by a slum lord and used to house prostitutes and traffic drugs. Peachy, no? What do you do, call 9-1-1 and report a crack house in your neighbourhood? Well that’s not a bad start except it’s not considered an emergency. And trust me, insisting it IS an eme...
More About: Crack , Rack , Pick , Fence

Stanley Park loss.
2007-01-25 22:38:02
Over the past few weeks, Vancouver’s weather has been extreme, to say the least. Apparantly we’ve weathered 14 storms of tremendous downpours of rain, 100+ Kilometer winds and large dumpings of snow. Is this El Nino, La Nina, or the Day after Tomorrow? Whatever you want to attribute these strange weather patterns to, it’s causing large amounts of damage to our city including Vancouver’s darling Stanley Park . When I did my own assesment of the damage I didn’t expect to actually feel any bit of remorse, after all, what’s a few fallen trees? But the experience was much more emotional than the news tried to convey. What I saw was a war zone, a crash site, victims sprawled out everywhere, pushed aside to keep traffic moving. The traffic, however, was barely crawling. Onlookers slowed, stopped and stared out to a new face of stanley park. The west side bluffs, hit the hardest, look like a clear cut logging zone. Previously, driving along that r...
More About: Loss

DirectBuy phone tag.
2007-01-25 22:38:02
Everyone knows how fun it is to receive a telemarketer phone call just as you sit down to dinner with your family. After all, you just spent an entire 8 hours working at your job, maybe an hour stuck in traffic, and this 1 minute call shouldn’t take ‘too much of your time’, right? Now, imagine a persistent phone call from a specific number every evening at the same time, except there’s no one at the other end when you answer. The number belongs to Dire ct Buy Vancouver: 604 215 4582. According to their website, “DirectBuy, a buying organization established in 1971, is the #1 way to buy most everything for your home direct from brand-name manufacturers at wholesale prices, plus shipping and handling.” Apparantly, membership to this service costs $4300.00 - wow, quite a price to save. Fishy? You bet. But what about those dead air phone calls? After several months of those calls. I called the number on the call display and of course I got an a...
More About: Phone , Rect

Umbrella Etiquette
2007-01-25 22:38:02
Walking down the busy streets of downtown Vancouver on any given rainy day is like walking down the streets of Pamplona during the running of the bulls. The likelyhood of getting gored by an umbrella is pretty high. Ducking and dodging to absent minded umbrella donners has become an extreme sport that I never signed up for. But because I work downtown where narrow sidewalks and deep puddles keep me in harms way, I have resorted to Chuck Norris moves to keep me dry and safe - but is that necessary? When it rains, people become vicious. No one is safe without a costco sized umbrella anymore. But why don’t people understand that when carrying an umbrella they are not the only ones on those narrow sidewalks. How can they still keep their head down not realizing who they’re bumping with their umbrella. How is it that those of us not carrying an umbrella can get pushed/hustled/herded into the rain from under the dry shelter of an awning by an umbrella carrier. DoesnR...
More About: Etiquette , Umbrella , Ique , Ella

Yield, it?s the law.
2007-01-25 22:38:02
Were you aware that the little yellow triangle on the back of every translink bus symbolizes a giant middle finger to the general public? Yielding to a translink bus is the law, they have the right to cut you off in traffic, to run a red light, to block an intersection, to verbally assault paying passengers. That little yellow triangle removes any accountability. Like James Bond, Translink operators have a license to kill. So let’s see what the News media are saying about all this. As 2010 approaches, we’re hearing lots on the development of new train lines, more buses purchased and more operators needed for the growing fleet at Translink. There are also stories covering Translink bus driver abuse: in fact the Coast Mountain Bus company says there’s an average of one instance of driver abuse per day. We’ve even seen terrorist-like incidents on the news involving chemical weapons and anonymous bomb threats. Wow, how could anyone be so enraged as to thr...
More About: The Law

East Hastings
2007-01-25 22:38:02
As you will gather, from the tone of this blog, I am not a big fan of drug peddlers, prostitutes, street crime, and it’s impact on our communities. I wish I had a giant broom to clean everything up but the solution is much more complex and requires an in depth understanding of this whole ecological system of crime. I hate to say it, but I think just as we are victims to their crime, they are victims to our neglect. Every once in a while I take a walk along East Hastings at a very busy time for foot traffic and drug dealing. I want to see what they see, street level. However, I don’t see much, because eye contact is a lead up to interaction which at this point, I’m not sure is safe with my lack of experience. So I race through, up one side of hastings, back the other, and catch glimpse after glimpse of addicts, pushers, pimps and hoes doing their thing. Everyone’s eyes dart around, keeping their actions secretive and inconspicous. Ironically, no one lo...
More About: Sting