hype

This is normally condohype's bailiwick, but this came into my front door today, and there are two things that irk me (well, much more than two things...); wasted resources, and paper that comes in my front door, and goes directly into the recycling bin (kinda the same).

The paper that this advert. came on weighs 20 grams. I don't know how many people in Greater Vancouver (I refuse to use Metro Vancouver) received this, but let's say (very conservatively) 100,000 households. That equals 2,000 kilograms of wood pulp. How much carbon would that produce - from production to delivery to disposal? (I am not a Global Warming acolyte/fanatic/reactionary) It's a couple of trees that could be sequestering carbon, at the very least. Add in the toxic inks etc., and these chumps are chumps.

As I pointed out, I am not a Global Warming guy, so on to the advertisement itself...

The artist's rendition of the completed project has mature trees, and an established, bucolic atmosphere. The reality is always so much different. Selling dreams and fantasy, and I have the nerve to moniker myself solipsist. Just make it so - build it, and they will come.

The ad. goes on to mention granite, marble, stainless steel (isn't that passe yet?), custom crap etc., and 3.5 acres of private greenspace, blah, blah. Private to whom? The couple of hundred (or more) residents? Does that count boulevards, etc.? How private is it? Can I frolic naked, and have bacchanals at my whim?

Then, there are a couple of pic's - one has a soft focus framing of some seasonal flowers, and is emblazoned with life, the other has people walking so fast that anything less than 1/250th second shutter speed cannot capture them, and is emblazoned with style. Is it life, or style? The imagery is contradictory. The life suggests stopping and smelling the flowers, while the style suggests that it is going to be very fretful to try to pay for this junk.

Then, they admonish to take advantage of your Last Chance for 2007 Prices! There are only about 7 weeks left in 2007, and 2008 is not looking great for RE prices. Do they really think we are that worried about being priced out.

I also wonder at the claim of South Burnaby's fastest selling new residential community. How many new residential communities are there in South Burnaby?

Give me strength.

note: I deliberately blurred all contact information, names, etc. I will not help to promote this crap.

condo culture

I have taken swipes at marketing - specifically of real estate in the past. Recently, there is a new blog on the block - so to speak - condohype which is a very good read. Their most recent thread brought marketing into focus, and then I came across an article in one of my favourite publications - The Republic of East Vancouver. I will excerpt some of it below for illustration, as I think that it is particularly well written. Read the whole thing for a lucid take.

Vancouver's condo industry has embraced "culture" and "art" as a fundamental part of many sales pitches. The cultural allusions run thick in local ad copy. Where once the real estate industry emphasized a residence as a good place to “raise a family,” today they use “lifestyle” to lure prospective buyers.

By correlating cultural commodities of distinction with the people of distinction who purchase them, the marketers construct its imagined clientele at the same time it makes its pitch. Who is this new clientele?

...in a recent New Home Buyers Guide article, Susan Boyce enthuses, "When you're ready to explore, you're at the very heart of what makes Vancouver a vibrant, truly world-class city. Perhaps a night at the opera or symphony? Or an afternoon pondering the latest showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Maybe you'd prefer wine tasting . . . .”

...this strategy "inspires a new language dealing with difference" and "a coded means of discrimination." The mobilization of taste as a mark of distinction appeals to a specific type of resident in the downtown, one who has had the time and money to invest in developing these tastes, tastes developed outside the exigencies of the labour market. Put bluntly, the ads employ coded class appeals to differentiate their target audience.

Condo Salesperson seeks cool, authentic, risk-oblivious people, either sex, for fun and debt-bondage.

It goes on, and I don't want to reproduce it here, but it's worth reading.

Ack. Choke. Please, tell me who I am, tell me what I want/need. Ack.

condohype. a hip, modern, urban commentary

condohype

There's a new blog online - condohype, and it's very worth perusing. Thanks to the pope for pointing it out. Like the pope, I really like the maxim of disown the lifestyle. I'll put a permo-link up in the sidebar.

It's clean, it's sarcastic, and the author thinks like me do. I actually have a little bit of blog envy. I bet it's written on a Mac...

I'm such a Luddite - stuck in the stone age of PC and blogger beta/binary/new blogger/old blogger/Google cookie heaven. Hey Pal, I don't do PayPal. Get yer friggin' cookie off my browser. One of these days, I will get with the programme.

Back to condohype - it's a good read. Check it out. Most of you probably knew that before I did.

riot vancouver 2010 - responding to the schmolympdicks

I received this unsolicited e-mail yesterday. It is a press release from Vancouver's Only magazine (formerly Terminal City). I did not object too much to the "spam" - some spam is ok, and I liked the subversive tone of this one. They are offering up a free "Riot 2010" countdown widget as antithesis to the Schlonglimpdicks' countdown crock o' shite.

With regrets from them (elitist schmoes) the widget only works on Mac.

Feel free to spam Chuck Ansbacher though, he did include his e-mail address. Be nice - it is a fairly cool on-line mag. And, they are pissed off with the Schmo-limpdicks too. I am hearing more and more disgust about that every day. I'm gonna finally pop, and write a manifesto on that some day.

The Only Magazine Riot Vancouver 2010 Widget

Riots are nothing new to the Rainy City. Take, for example, the Victory Square "work camp" riot of 1935, the Gastown pot riots of the '60s, the Guns 'n Roses riot of 2002, and, of course, the Stanley Cup riots of '94. On July 2, 2003, Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. An honour indeed, the city responded with celebration, but also with groans. Anyone honest with themselves admitted there were problems to overcome, but it was thought that these were just the growing pains of a developing city on the verge of becoming "world class." But Vancouver, a city with the most poverty stricken postal code in North America, could only celebrate for so long. It turns out five rings aren't enough to hold this glass city together. The cost of the Games are vastly over budget and diverting money from social programs. There is a constant worry the mountains won't see the kind of snowfall necessary for an Olympic host. Homelessness has increased and is projected to continue. Some citizens want answers. None have been given. Despite continued protests and lucid studies outlining how the Games are damaging the city, the Vancouver Olympics Committee decided to celebrate some more recently. They built a nice digital clock to countdown the remaining three years until the Opening Ceremonies. You may have noticed this monolithic eyesore, seemingly dropped from the sky onto the lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery, missing only a crowd of curious apes and a lobbed bone to complete the scene. There it sits, ticking away in its clean, tasteful glass case under the watchful eye of a hired security guard. Ticking along as the city surrounding it succumbs to the pressures of transition. Building construction rumbles from nearly every corner, marginalised citizens are turned out onto the streets in lucrative grabs for real estate, and money is being exchanged at a drunken pace. Under these circumstances, the countdown and the clock have many symbolic meanings, and Only Magazine sees a situation ripe for public opinion to boil over the edges of decency. Of course, we would never incite or even encourage anyone to riot. If you hadn't thought of it before now you're probably not going to be one of the people there. However, history has taught us that if (when) there is a civil disobedience, it won't be the issues that are blamed, and it won't be all the poor decisions made leading up to the Opening Ceremonies either. So if the police need a scapegoat, Only Magazine volunteers for the job. We love attention. In the spirit of being subversive without actually having to leave your computer, Only Magazine gives you a Widget so you can smash the state and read the Google at the same time. Dissent from your laptop. The Only Magazine Riot Vancouver 2010 Widget.*

Signed,
Only Magazine

*Seriously, Only Magazine does not endorse rioting.

- Official Press Release -
-- Chuck Ansbacher
Managing Editor
Only Magazine
#611 142 - 757 West Hastings
Vancouver, BC
V6C 1A1
onlymagazine.ca

what they did not tell you

After my photoshop fun of yesterday, I am staying on the topic of The "W" - because, well, marketing pisses me off. I am countering that with a little anti-marketing.

Today I had occassion to be driving along East Hastings, when I was re-directed by the po-lice due to a large crowd blocking the street at Main and Hastings (just after I passed a group of about 8 desperados openly shooting something into their veins in front of a boarded-up store). The crowd was holding an annual vigil for the 60-odd women missing from the area. We know what happened to quite a few of them.

The "W" sits at 100 West Hastings - a scant 3 blocks from the Carnegie Community Centre, a scant block from Victory Square, and a meagre two blocks from the colourfully named Blood Alley (just at the end of Trounce Alley).

I wonder if they mentioned the community centre, local parks (Oppenheimer Park is nice on a summer evening), the library at Carnegie, and the cheap eats available there, in the promotional literature for The "W". Intellectuals who will be inhabiting those expensive intellectual properties for the bold were surely mindful of those near-by amenities when considering their purchases.

I found an interesting article relating a reporter's visit to the Carnegie Community Centre in The Republic of East Vancouver. It is an interesting introduction to some of the colourful characters buyers at The "W" will know as neighbours.

How much did those places sell for again?

A visit to the Carnegie Community Centre makes you think about what we mean when we say “community.” It’s Friday, January 19th and I’m coming up the steps of Carnegie with 2005 mayoral candidate Peter Haskell. The crowd of people outside the 104-year-old building tries to sell us everything from syringes to Tylenol-Threes. Haskell is one of many who are forbidden to use the facilities at Carnegie, but as we enter, nobody seems to notice him. As soon as we enter, staff throws somebody out for being intoxicated.

He yells “Get your hands off me!” as he struggles to keep from losing his morsels of food.

I meet another man who has been kicked off the property. Ricky, a big first-nations man, speaks with a somber tone and chooses his words very carefully. “They kicked me out of Carnegie,” he says, “They say it was because I smelled.” “I’m a warrior,” says Ricky, “and I’m not going to let them tear down my community.”

The demographics...are overwhelmingly Southeast Asian; at least fifty percent. It’s at least 30% visible first-nations, and 15% Hispanic. (rich foreigners?)

There is a small branch of the Vancouver Public Library in the building and it is perpetually busy. All the washrooms have those white lights that are supposed to make it hard for intravenous drug users to be able to see a vein to shoot up, but there are needle drop box receptacles on the walls. The washrooms are scary enough, but the lights give them an extra spooky appearance. (Great for the kiddies at Hallowe'en)

It brings me back to the point about what we mean when we say “community.”

Carnegie has recently had a lot of changes...such actions such as groups of seniors picketing Tourism Information Offices and saying “welcome to Vancouver” and handing tourists information about the gentrification that’s been going on here. But critics of the Carnegie are quick to point out that Carnegie management make upwards of $50 000 per year, while volunteers work hours for enough meal tickets to be able to buy something to eat in the cafeteria. link

The homeless you have with you always . . .

Some of the locals -

Abigail is one of the homeless denizens of Vancouver's
notorious Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Photo courtesy of Union Gospel
Mission.

A drug deal in Vancouver's downtown eastside: home to the highest
population of intravenous drug users in Canada, and one of the "worst HIV
epidemics in the developed world." photo: City of Vancouver

WTF? a new sign for The "W"

What ever happened to Blab Runny? You know, the guy who sold us The "W".

The reason that I am wondering - I had a great idea for a new sign for the project. A sign that exemplifies both the "W", and the real estate market in Vancouver. The Running Man seems to have disappeared with all of his booty, and is not returning my calls.

I photoshopped an artist's concept above. The new sign will read "WTF?". I think it's cool - much cooler than when Citroen was advertising on the Eiffel Tower.

What do you think?

clippings

I am posting some clippings from The Republic of East Vancouver newspaper that reflect some of my feelings about the Olympics, the changes foisted upon this city by corporate kleptocrats, self-serving politicians, etc. There are some strong statements, but if one doesn't shout, who will hear?

These writings (albeit some of which are a bit out of context, and edited to my own purposes) reflect how we came to where we are. This insanity did start shortly after the announcement of Vancouver's 2010 bid being accepted. I foresaw where that would take us, but no one seemed to care. I am not entirely sure if the Olympics are 100% causative though, because there is a global RE boom, it's just that things have really gone off the rails here.

We live in a nation dominated by salesmanship (commercial, political, religious). The salesman's credo is: a facile mendacity trumps a stubborn truth, because an honest mode of being would cause the buyer to become wary of the giddy lie of the pitch.

and -

We've become ... a land of suckers and criminals with a cultural landscape peopled by corporate scam artists

and -

All human beings have a talent for denial, but we ... have turned denial into genius. There is no need to burn books if the public is ignorant of their existence. link

From another article in the same publication;

Like America’s commander in chief, BC’s elected premiere is a privileged, nepotistic, drunk-driving, beady-eyed corporate crony. But the similarities don’t end there. Though it is beyond Gordo’s purview to wage war on foreign nations (that’s Harper’s job), the Work Less Party’s brave new documentary, Five Ring Circus, exposes the myriad ways that our government is using the 2010 Olympics to wreak havoc on BC itself.

The movie centers around the well-publicized mandate to make this the greenest, most sustainable Olympics yet. With pinpoint precision, the film goes through the specific promises, one by one, and reveals our government’s vicious mendacity in filling the pockets of real estate, construction, and hospitality interests under the absurd guise of showcasing Vancouver to the world. But the movie makes it clear that the insidious logic of this operation is that we have to ruin North America’s most livable city in order for it to have its dubious day in the sun.

Who would have guessed that the construction firms that lit up their cranes with YES 2010 signs didn’t have our best interests in mind? The ugly truth is that the construction and real estate tycoons care about Vancouverites about as much as Boeing and Halliburton care about the troops and taxpayers.

and -

There’s another dimension to the hideous Yaletownification of Vancouver that the film astutely addresses. As Vancouver’s affordable housing is converted into condos and the cost of living in this already expensive city continues to rise, a gulf is opening up between the haves and the have-nots. And this is having all kinds of hitherto unthought of repercussions on Vancouver’s vitality. link

I have been wanting to rant about the Olympics for quite a while, but I become apoplectic when doings so, and I don't think you are interested in hysteria. Just slightly less than 50% of Vancouverites voted against the Olympics, and interestingly, the divide was between the West Side, and the East Side.

We have had a $2.5 billions boondoggle shoved up our arses in the RAV line, when an at-grade LRT on existing rights-of-way would have cost as little as 1/10 of the RAV. Whose pockets are getting fat on this huge disruption of hundreds of businesses, and traffic nightmares while we meekly bask in our "good fortune"?

live at McDonalds!

The Mac before.

The Mac after the condo conversion.



I've been sooo busy this last week. I haven't had the time to say anything meaningful (well, I have never said much in that way anyhow...).

Last night I was looking for historical items regarding real estate in Vancouver, and came across some interesting stuff.

I am no fan of condo's, but I realize that it is a personal bias, and everyone has their own reasons, and tastes. This one made me shake my head though.

I have read about all of the condo projects - The "W", The Hudson, OMA, etc., but they were just names to me.

I came across before and after photo's of some of these projects. This one kind of left me wondering.

I found out that The Mac was actually built on the site of a McDonald's restaurant, and realized that it was named after their eponymous hamburger. They have a McDonald's downstairs, and condo's upstairs. That is just plain weird. What was in the promotional literature?

Come live at The Mac! A fast-food junkie's dream!

Relax on your balcony while the scintillating odours of frying French Fries and sizzling meat patties waft up and stir the appetites of you and your guests.

Never be stuck for menus for your dinner parties again. You don't need a yard for BBQ's - the biggest BBQ in the world is right in the foyer of this project.

The kids will love it, and will be the envy of their school mates when they have their birthday parties!

And the washrooms are always clean!

I guess it beats the smell of boiled cabbage.

As an aside - There is not much roof over-hang on this project, and it looks like a leaky condo in the waiting.

Addendum:

Bear Claw wins the light-bulb-of-the-week (TM) for dubbing this travesty McCondo (TM)

branding vancouver

This has been bugging me for a while. It really set me off the other day when I read this article over at RET. One of the lines in particular rendered me even more apoplectic -

Baxter said the construction stimulated by the games is "the real issue . . . which brings a lot of people who would otherwise go to [Alberta's] oilpatch."

Then, more importantly, is the role the games' play in reinforcing Vancouver as a brand, because "the Olympics is not a destination event, it's a branding event."

Reinforcing a brand? To what purpose? If I wanted to live in a brand, I would go and live in the mindlessness of Celebration, U.S.A.: Disney's Brave New Town.

I didn't move here 20 years ago because Vancouver was a cool brand, I moved here because I found a laid-back little city that was unpretentious. Now everything is being branded - Science World becomes Telus Land, we have GM Place, what else did I miss? Coffee just isn't coffee unless it's Starbucks or Tim Horton's (it's all crappy coffee - no matter how much it costs you), people walk around with their Tommy Hilfrigger, DINK sweats, Nike this or that, and so on, paying huge money to advertise for rich cats.

Who wants to pay double what it's worth to live in Vancouver TM? I didn't vote for that. Who gains from it? All I do is lose from it. Bub Rainy, Gordon (Jail Bird) Campbell, the owners of IntraWest, and their ilk are getting filthy rich from the branding of Vancouver, and we are paying for it. And our children will be paying for it. It is so sad and ridiculous, it makes me laugh. But it's a nervous, embarrassed kind of laughter.

I voted against the Olympics, and I voted against the hundreds of millions of dollars to be borrowed by the city. There was a fairly clear division between East Van. and Van. West in that vote. East Vancouver voted against it by-and-large, with the opposite true for Vancouver West. The summer that Vancouver/Whistler's bid was accepted, I was in Ontario, and someone congratulated me on the award. Poor guy set me off, and I started railing about what it would really mean - higher home prices, higher taxes, deficits, and debt. I hadn't even considered the branding.

Humans are sickeningly stupid (pardon my misanthropy). A case in point is the water issue right now. People running out to buy brands of water. I heard that a couple of people actually got into a fist-fight because they both wanted the last couple of bottles of Whistler brand water. There was probably generic water from the same source d'eau right beside it for half the price, but it wasn't branded, so they fought over it. Here's a lttle brand trivia for you - Evian (a huge brand of water) spells Naive backwards.

Branding. Hmmph!

third world class

Welcome to Vancouver! Home of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games (well, unless the snow doesn't show up in sufficient quantities).

Vancouver is a world class city! It fits in comfortably with Mexico City (though we don't have the weather that they have, and they had the Olympics 38 long years ago), Tegucigalpa (though their water is more potable), and Addis Ababa (though their mountains are not as spectacularly snow-peaked), and Los Angeles (though they only had the piddlin' Summer Olympics, and their cops are tougher).

Yesterday there were 2 million people in the Lower Mainland who were warned to boil their water. Today, that number was halved to merely 1 million people. One million pregnant women, children, elderly, and the heavily mortgaged. The news spread far and wide very quickly. Last night I had three calls from other parts of Canada - concerned for our well-being. I also had an e-mail from the US with the same concerns. I didn't even know of the advisory before receiving these calls.

Hotels in Vancouver were quick to spread the advisory to all hotel rooms, and offered bottled water to their guests. Coffee shops and restaurants were hit where it hurts as they had to refuse their clients anything involving tap water. There were a lot of cranky, caffeine-deficient people in Vancouver the last couple of days.

I can just imagine visitors filling up their bathtubs with the murk that is on tap, and thinking that they might be better off to smell bad for their flights out of town. And what if any of them become sick with Giardia (classically known as Beaver Fever. How very Canadian...), Cryptosporidium, or such. And what if they sent their nice white shirts to the hotel laundry, and they came back looking as if someone had pissed all over them?

I was not personally affected - we have been drinking spring water for years, and have a good supply of 18 litre bottles stocked (because of the chlorine, we avoid tap water for drinking. At least there is no fluoride added.). I have also had amoebic dysentery, and Giardia, and have a pretty tough intestinal tract, but I had those infections in the Third World - where it can be expected. But Vancouver? That's some bad press man.

Third World Class. The city where people live on the streets. Where you can't even brush your flipping teeth unless you use bottled water (good luck finding any). The city where the middle class can't afford to buy the crappiest house.

Are we over ourselves yet?



VHB and The Pope already posted on this, but I am behind the curve. I have been as busy as, well, a beaver. A beaver crapping in the reservoirs.

urban renewal

image from save the cob garden

This is an interesting story that has been going on for quite some time in East Vancouver.

There is a lot at the corner of Napier Dr. and Salsbury Dr. in East Vancouver that had become "overgrown" with large trees, a few of which were rare, and two century-old pre-fab worker's houses (which were listed #6 on the City's Heritage schedule of threatened historical structures). In addition, there was a cob house built by local residents (picture above). For decades, local children played in the gardens, which were cultivated by locals. The owner had no objections to this use. The lot became a de facto park over time.

After the death of the owner, his estate sold the lot in 2005 to a developer, Niebuhr Construction, for a reported $700k. The developer had plans to demolish the gardens, heritage structures and the cob house in order to erect two duplexes on the property. These plans were vociferously challenged by local residents, who eventually lobbied the Parks Board to purchase the property and maintain it as a park and learning centre. The Parks Board agreed, and offered the developer market value. The developer refused to sell it, and hired homeless people to squat on the lot, and to keep children and locals out. They also destroyed any work that the local gardeners did.

Finally, the locals appealed to the Board of Variance, who proceeded to overturn the development permits. The developer took the City to court, and the City Council fired the five member board en masse, and hired a new board friendlier to the developer. The new board reversed the fired board's decision, and the court case was dropped. Then the fired Board of Variance went to court to challenge their termination. For the whole saga, check The Republic stories here and here

Recently Niebuhr Construction sold the property to another developer for $1.2 million. Last week I drove by and saw that the two heritage structures had been torn down, and a lot of the trees removed, and the gardens bull-dozed. The cob house still stood. Tonight I drove by and saw that the cob house is now gone, and there is an excavation pit on the contentious property.

Okay, so it's a free market, and the owner is allowed to do as he pleases, but it's a damned shame. A quite nice neighbourhood has had it's guts torn out in the spirit of growth.

discounting the discounters

I came across this in my travels of yesterday.

Lloyd advertising "guranteed" offer on your house. Makes me wonder.

Who is Lloyd? What kind of offer might you get? Maybe a pound of weed as a down payment, and the balance in $20 bills? Would Lloyd write up the offer of purchase and sale (might be an idea to have a Grade 6 teacher look over the offer before taking it to your lawyer)? How would Lloyd "gurantee" the offer?

Full service realtors are not too fond of the 1% realtors and other discount services, how do the One Percenters feel about these types of "agents"?

As this market follows it's natural course (down), will anyone be calling Lloyd?

Looks good though, doesn't it? Lloyd has pretty low overhead - $2.91 for a permanent marker, a couple of bucks for the placard, and $30/month for the untraceable cell phone.

Hey, yesterday's post elicited some interest. There was the suggestion of an offer for $100 - $150, and bc_cele quickly brought that up to $70k (though neither of those were "guranteed").

Maybe I'll give Lloyd a call.

over-priced shitty houses

For sale! Make an offer!

This cute little 1 bdrm/bathroom charmer is one of the few affordable properties left in the GVRD.

Features a durable roof, and siding, and a fenced yard - all on a compact 9'x18' foot lot.

Bring your decorating ideas!

over priced and shitty

This was posted at bubblemeter and I had to laugh.

I don't care much about condos, but I like this type of guerrilla anti-marketing. A short and sweet statement. Let us see these all over Vancouver. Another variation for over-priced crack-shacks may be in order as well.

Make up your own placards, or get them at Puff Tags