Never been to Spain.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
I was struck today by the fact that it has been well over a hundred years since the advent of "modern" art. Picasso's "blue period" which everyone knows from college dorm posters was around 1901. Egon Schiele's sexually charged drawings of far-too-thin-and-young models raise the same reactions now that they did then, but flip through a magazine and many ads reflect this imagery. It has seeped into our consumer culture, but as art, it still challenges us.
I see the society at large viewpoint in the statement made by one of my ex-girlfriend's fairly unadventurous and socially conservative friends, who despite being a neo-con, was quite promiscuous- another of today's strange hybrid conflicts (...and the reason that abstinence education doesn't work, but that is a different rant). We were touring the Victoria Art Gallery, which is by no means a very cutting-edge artistic experience, browsing through the collections when we got to the Robert Bateman collection, whereupon she stated loudly: "finally, something I can understand!" I gave her a chance to give me her opinions on what she liked about them. There was one piece there that juxtaposed beautiful West Coast rainforest with a loaded logging truck and made a soft political statement. It turned out to be her least favorite piece. The rest she liked, mainly because they looked like you could reach out and pet them. I admire the draftsmanship, but I tried vainly to communicate my frustration at the complete lack of any narrative.
Modern art has been with us since the end of the century before last and we still greatly fear it as a general society. Very little has changed, yet everything has changed. We cling desperately to the latest technological advancement, that latest ephemeral entertainment: movies, video games; all the while anticipating the next thing down the path. We gleefully anticipate the arrival of the next big consumer product, yet to a large degree fear those things that make us look at ourselves and what we have produced and think.
I see the society at large viewpoint in the statement made by one of my ex-girlfriend's fairly unadventurous and socially conservative friends, who despite being a neo-con, was quite promiscuous- another of today's strange hybrid conflicts (...and the reason that abstinence education doesn't work, but that is a different rant). We were touring the Victoria Art Gallery, which is by no means a very cutting-edge artistic experience, browsing through the collections when we got to the Robert Bateman collection, whereupon she stated loudly: "finally, something I can understand!" I gave her a chance to give me her opinions on what she liked about them. There was one piece there that juxtaposed beautiful West Coast rainforest with a loaded logging truck and made a soft political statement. It turned out to be her least favorite piece. The rest she liked, mainly because they looked like you could reach out and pet them. I admire the draftsmanship, but I tried vainly to communicate my frustration at the complete lack of any narrative.
Modern art has been with us since the end of the century before last and we still greatly fear it as a general society. Very little has changed, yet everything has changed. We cling desperately to the latest technological advancement, that latest ephemeral entertainment: movies, video games; all the while anticipating the next thing down the path. We gleefully anticipate the arrival of the next big consumer product, yet to a large degree fear those things that make us look at ourselves and what we have produced and think.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Surrey's new "downtown"
Today, a rant about realtor hype:
There has been a lot of hype (mostly from realtors hoping to sell units) about Surrey's new downtown core. I have yet to see this core evolve. As a former resident of Surrey, one of the characteristics that always struck me was the expanse: of parking lots, wide streets, the municipality itself and the distances you had to travel between one expanse of asphalt to the next to get anything done. I wholeheartedly blame growing up during my teen years in Surrey for instilling the "car culture" values that I had into my twenties and have worked so hard to get rid of ever since. I was 18 and thought no girl would ever date me unless I had a car, that I would never be able to find a decent job unless I could drive myself there, etc. To some extent, this was actually true- many places I worked had no decent access via transit. Up until my first car at 18 or 19, how did I cope? I walked, I cycled; I covered vast distances without a car and suffered abuse from motorists who felt I didn't belong anywhere near a road. I've never suffered as badly since, even though I am a daily cyclist in Vancouver and still see negligent acts by motorists every minute. It was just so much worse in Surrey, home of muscle car burnouts and the "you're not manly unless you have a truck" attitude. People went out of their way to mess with you. I was spat upon, cut off intentionally, had cigarettes, slurpees and other unidentifiable substances thrown at me.
Anyone I know who lives in Surrey owns a car, even non-adults. I wonder if anyone who buys the more affordable Surrey real estate considers the extra costs of operating a motor vehicle for each home occupant. If you have anything within reasonable walking distance, you are lucky.
As for the downtown core, where is it happening? Around Surrey Central station? That's a shopping mall, not a downtown. I guess you have the basics there: grocery, recreation centre, banks, convenience stores, gas stations and a few restaurants, but it is a pretty poor excuse for a downtown and is only barely made pedestrian friendly by traffic calming. There is a reasonable brew pub there, which is sorely lacking in atmosphere but is the only place around worth hanging out in, other than a smattering of ethnic restaurants. Surrounding this is a series of low-rise box stores and fast food chains, cutting right through it, a six-lane highway. It is about as much of a downtown as Highway 97/Harvey Road in Kelowna- a town that has a reasonable, organically developed downtown, even if the rest of it is a sprawling mess.
Please don't say that the future site of "downtown" is further north, in that area between 104th and 108th in the vicinity of King George Highway. That is an area so infested with junkies and crackhouses waiting to be torn down for future real estate developments that it puts the Downtown Eastside to shame. Surrey has never properly acknowledged it's drug and homelessness problems and allowed them to fester, preferring the heavy-handed law and order approach over reasonable harm reduction strategies. We now see that this method is far less effective. Learn a lesson there, Vancouver.
As far as this "downtown" is concerned, I can't see many Lululemon clad yoga hotties walking their toy dogs from their condo to the local hip independent cafe past the drug-addled wrecks shuffling along there in the middle of the day. I think Buffy is gonna drive Fluffy the hell out of there and double-lock her doors when she gets to her condo out of the secure parkade elevator. No one is going to engage the streets here without armed backup. Strike two for Downtown Surrey.
To be fair, Surrey is growing, fast. Really honkin' fast. It is filling up with high-rise condos that are selling like hotcakes, in large part to investors picking up relative bargains (by Vancouver standards) and turning around and attempting to resell them before the ground is even broken on the building site. A critical mass of people will make it easier to support small businesses and will gradually allow a wide diversity of shops and services to spring up, bringing people out on the streets more than today. The planning seems haphazard, though, residential highrises are springing up down the road from big box parking lots. Most likely, people are still going to drive everywhere as an urban village with everything within a reasonable distance can't really happen in a village with multi-acre sized parking lots. The current and planned architecture is also not conducive to this: secure gated complexes spit cars from their parking garages onto wide multi-lane roads which lead to large big box shopping centres. The surrounding residential streets have no sidewalks. Garages and driveways face the street in North American automobile suburb style, pedestrians are shunned or an afterthought.
The only place that this downtown seems to currently exist is in the minds of marketers. Population growth may cause it to grow organically over time, but without planners willing to enforce strict rules on developers, it is going to be a sprawling, faceless version of a "downtown" and not really a downtown at all.
http://www.westerninvestor.com/regional/surreyaug06.pdf
http://www.quattroliving.ca/news/Province_May08-08.pdf
There has been a lot of hype (mostly from realtors hoping to sell units) about Surrey's new downtown core. I have yet to see this core evolve. As a former resident of Surrey, one of the characteristics that always struck me was the expanse: of parking lots, wide streets, the municipality itself and the distances you had to travel between one expanse of asphalt to the next to get anything done. I wholeheartedly blame growing up during my teen years in Surrey for instilling the "car culture" values that I had into my twenties and have worked so hard to get rid of ever since. I was 18 and thought no girl would ever date me unless I had a car, that I would never be able to find a decent job unless I could drive myself there, etc. To some extent, this was actually true- many places I worked had no decent access via transit. Up until my first car at 18 or 19, how did I cope? I walked, I cycled; I covered vast distances without a car and suffered abuse from motorists who felt I didn't belong anywhere near a road. I've never suffered as badly since, even though I am a daily cyclist in Vancouver and still see negligent acts by motorists every minute. It was just so much worse in Surrey, home of muscle car burnouts and the "you're not manly unless you have a truck" attitude. People went out of their way to mess with you. I was spat upon, cut off intentionally, had cigarettes, slurpees and other unidentifiable substances thrown at me.
Anyone I know who lives in Surrey owns a car, even non-adults. I wonder if anyone who buys the more affordable Surrey real estate considers the extra costs of operating a motor vehicle for each home occupant. If you have anything within reasonable walking distance, you are lucky.
As for the downtown core, where is it happening? Around Surrey Central station? That's a shopping mall, not a downtown. I guess you have the basics there: grocery, recreation centre, banks, convenience stores, gas stations and a few restaurants, but it is a pretty poor excuse for a downtown and is only barely made pedestrian friendly by traffic calming. There is a reasonable brew pub there, which is sorely lacking in atmosphere but is the only place around worth hanging out in, other than a smattering of ethnic restaurants. Surrounding this is a series of low-rise box stores and fast food chains, cutting right through it, a six-lane highway. It is about as much of a downtown as Highway 97/Harvey Road in Kelowna- a town that has a reasonable, organically developed downtown, even if the rest of it is a sprawling mess.
Please don't say that the future site of "downtown" is further north, in that area between 104th and 108th in the vicinity of King George Highway. That is an area so infested with junkies and crackhouses waiting to be torn down for future real estate developments that it puts the Downtown Eastside to shame. Surrey has never properly acknowledged it's drug and homelessness problems and allowed them to fester, preferring the heavy-handed law and order approach over reasonable harm reduction strategies. We now see that this method is far less effective. Learn a lesson there, Vancouver.
As far as this "downtown" is concerned, I can't see many Lululemon clad yoga hotties walking their toy dogs from their condo to the local hip independent cafe past the drug-addled wrecks shuffling along there in the middle of the day. I think Buffy is gonna drive Fluffy the hell out of there and double-lock her doors when she gets to her condo out of the secure parkade elevator. No one is going to engage the streets here without armed backup. Strike two for Downtown Surrey.
To be fair, Surrey is growing, fast. Really honkin' fast. It is filling up with high-rise condos that are selling like hotcakes, in large part to investors picking up relative bargains (by Vancouver standards) and turning around and attempting to resell them before the ground is even broken on the building site. A critical mass of people will make it easier to support small businesses and will gradually allow a wide diversity of shops and services to spring up, bringing people out on the streets more than today. The planning seems haphazard, though, residential highrises are springing up down the road from big box parking lots. Most likely, people are still going to drive everywhere as an urban village with everything within a reasonable distance can't really happen in a village with multi-acre sized parking lots. The current and planned architecture is also not conducive to this: secure gated complexes spit cars from their parking garages onto wide multi-lane roads which lead to large big box shopping centres. The surrounding residential streets have no sidewalks. Garages and driveways face the street in North American automobile suburb style, pedestrians are shunned or an afterthought.
The only place that this downtown seems to currently exist is in the minds of marketers. Population growth may cause it to grow organically over time, but without planners willing to enforce strict rules on developers, it is going to be a sprawling, faceless version of a "downtown" and not really a downtown at all.
http://www.westerninvestor.com/regional/surreyaug06.pdf
http://www.quattroliving.ca/news/Province_May08-08.pdf
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Bad Blogger
I'm failing miserably at the new year's resolution to blog daily, or at least write daily. Bad blogger.
Lately:
-I have moved almost everything I own into my new house on 16th Avenue in Vancouver. No more Surrey real estate ownership. Screw that cesspit.
-I have found my current job in jeopardy.
-I have been seeking a slight career shift, with hopefully a sales and marketing component and away from the purely technical.
-My car was broken into and the thief managed to steal a couple of pens and a $1.99 tall can of Radeberger Pilsner which has been in there for 6 months. I hope it was spoiled and he gets the runs from it.
-A temporary tenant has been found for the basement for the summer and we are stepping up the renovations. Most of the painting has been accomplished, but there are a million small jobs to complete.
More details to follow.
Lately:
-I have moved almost everything I own into my new house on 16th Avenue in Vancouver. No more Surrey real estate ownership. Screw that cesspit.
-I have found my current job in jeopardy.
-I have been seeking a slight career shift, with hopefully a sales and marketing component and away from the purely technical.
-My car was broken into and the thief managed to steal a couple of pens and a $1.99 tall can of Radeberger Pilsner which has been in there for 6 months. I hope it was spoiled and he gets the runs from it.
-A temporary tenant has been found for the basement for the summer and we are stepping up the renovations. Most of the painting has been accomplished, but there are a million small jobs to complete.
More details to follow.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Who brought tha funk?
I remember when people who talked on their cellphones all the time were considered assholes. I also remember a time when it was considered the height of rudeness to walk away and leave your phone ringing loudly for other people to hear.
Now when your ringtone sounds like a cross between the theme from "Shaft" and a 70s porn, that's funny. If it's set to extra loud, because you are half-deaf, then it becomes annoying upon repeated ringing.
Now when your ringtone sounds like a cross between the theme from "Shaft" and a 70s porn, that's funny. If it's set to extra loud, because you are half-deaf, then it becomes annoying upon repeated ringing.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Hi drivers,
It's been a rough winter for cycle-commuting to work, what with the snow, winds and persistent rains, never mind near or total darkness in both directions. This morning, I was greeted by a blanket of snow when I left the house, tonight I apparently have to battle gale-force winds on the way home.
When I am cycling downhill through 2-3 centimeters of slushy snow, take extra care when passing me, in case I lose traction and fall, or get blown into your path. I'd rather not have to bounce off your sheet metal, or have your wheels run over my head.
Thank you for your attention, you warm, comfortable, lazy #$#@#s !
Orange.
PS: I cheer every time I hear parking prices are going up.
WOT
It's been a rough winter for cycle-commuting to work, what with the snow, winds and persistent rains, never mind near or total darkness in both directions. This morning, I was greeted by a blanket of snow when I left the house, tonight I apparently have to battle gale-force winds on the way home.
When I am cycling downhill through 2-3 centimeters of slushy snow, take extra care when passing me, in case I lose traction and fall, or get blown into your path. I'd rather not have to bounce off your sheet metal, or have your wheels run over my head.
Thank you for your attention, you warm, comfortable, lazy #$#@#s !
Orange.
PS: I cheer every time I hear parking prices are going up.
WOT
Thursday, January 24, 2008
DeBeers Class Action judgement
Fact #1: DeBeers made diamonds valuable through manipulative marketing and controlling the global supply by using aggressive price fixing policies, including flooding the local markets of any competitors to lower regional prices.
Fact #2: There 's a lot of diamonds in the world. They are more plentiful than you think. The problem is that there are stores of them hidden away in DeBeer's vaults, making them scarce by design.
Now I didn't buy a diamond between 1994 and 2006, because I am a stingy bastard and don't like to spend my money on things that have a questionable source that may have paid for an African massacre. I like to think (wishfully) that I am immune to manipulative marketing. Also, I am not in the USA, but this is an interesting turn of events. I am sure the 295 million is only a pale reflection of the actual money made by DeBeers through their business practices. But was I a US citizen and had I purchased a diamond, I'd be lining up for my share of the dole-out.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/556011/de_beers_diamond_lawsuit_could_entitle.html
https://diamondsclassaction.com/
Fact #2: There 's a lot of diamonds in the world. They are more plentiful than you think. The problem is that there are stores of them hidden away in DeBeer's vaults, making them scarce by design.
Now I didn't buy a diamond between 1994 and 2006, because I am a stingy bastard and don't like to spend my money on things that have a questionable source that may have paid for an African massacre. I like to think (wishfully) that I am immune to manipulative marketing. Also, I am not in the USA, but this is an interesting turn of events. I am sure the 295 million is only a pale reflection of the actual money made by DeBeers through their business practices. But was I a US citizen and had I purchased a diamond, I'd be lining up for my share of the dole-out.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/556011/de_beers_diamond_lawsuit_could_entitle.html
https://diamondsclassaction.com/
Sunday, January 06, 2008
resorevolution
Slacking on my resolution so far. have not blogged everyday, but will make up for lost time. Goal is not to be every day, but to be consistent. Moving is the big thing right now. Today we got a carload of boxes and packed up a good portion of the kitchen. A little every day and things will look a lot more packed. Thankfully, a lot of our stuff is already packed up & in storage: books, etc.
It's going to be a trick to keep both personal and renovation blogs going while working full time, moving and planning what needs to be done first once we move in. There is a bit of meeting lawyers, and dealing with financing in there, but that is mostly in good shape.
It's going to be a trick to keep both personal and renovation blogs going while working full time, moving and planning what needs to be done first once we move in. There is a bit of meeting lawyers, and dealing with financing in there, but that is mostly in good shape.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The first Canadian homicide of the year is a teenage girl killed by other teenagers. Not a random shooting, not a drug battle, not a pride fight between men. Just a bizarre stabbing.
The Wire is going into a fifth and final season, this time exposing the failings of American society and the inner city through the lens of the media. This may just be the best show in television.
The Wire is going into a fifth and final season, this time exposing the failings of American society and the inner city through the lens of the media. This may just be the best show in television.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Part of my new year's resolutions (yes, I still make those) is to write more. As one way of encouraging myself, I set a goal of blogging once per day, or the equivalent. If I getbusy, I will blog more later when I have time. If I lose steam later in the year, I will attempt to make amends. But of course, that will not happen.
Other goals are to improve my cooking skills, create an exercise regimen that I can stick to (I can't improve unless I do more than I already do) and well, never mind. None of your business is it?
I started out by trying out a new onion soup recipe. I am trying to develop a repertoire of simple, quick to prepare, yet delicious recipes using healthful, organic ingredients with an emphasis on whole grains and other healthful ingredients. The onion soup turned out great with a quick turnaround time from chopping to eating. I have decided I need to purchase a set of ramekins, then I can turn this out at a dinner party and impress people with an easy recipe that looks and tastes great.
Other goals are to improve my cooking skills, create an exercise regimen that I can stick to (I can't improve unless I do more than I already do) and well, never mind. None of your business is it?
I started out by trying out a new onion soup recipe. I am trying to develop a repertoire of simple, quick to prepare, yet delicious recipes using healthful, organic ingredients with an emphasis on whole grains and other healthful ingredients. The onion soup turned out great with a quick turnaround time from chopping to eating. I have decided I need to purchase a set of ramekins, then I can turn this out at a dinner party and impress people with an easy recipe that looks and tastes great.
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