Best overlooked resource

Sometimes our distinguishing features are the hardest to notice. Take our tap water. The reason it tastes better than others’ is because it is. As far as collection points go, it doesn’t get more idyllic than the Capilano, Seymour, and Coquitlam reservoirs, where rainfall and snowmelt are captured. Our water is then treated with kid gloves to avoid contamination, with the holding watersheds being off limits to people and clear of any agricultural or industry runoff. Technically, it rates as soft, which means no calcium carbonate and, more to the point, no scummy film settling on the surface of a glass. It gets bonus points for aftertaste—there is none, despite receiving the standard chlorine treatment. People seem to accept that it’s safe to drink, and restaurant and bar staff don’t make a point of pushing bottled alternatives, so it’s amusing to see every other person in town carrying around a bottle of the bought stuff.

Best sign you’re a vancouver cliche

Other times, however, what sets Vancouver apart can be as plain as the Botox’d nose on your face. Strolling through Kits in your Lululemon gear and MEC jacket, yoga mat strapped to your back (dripping wet from Bikram’s, but it’s so rainy no one notices), you inhale a dynamite roll and an extra-hot low-fat matcha chai organic blueberry soy-milk latte (with whipped cream) while hunting down a present for your gay brother’s wedding (something to match his—and his—all-white interior décor that you got smacked upside the head for saying looked like a Philadelphia cream-cheese ad). Though she’s only next door having her chakras aligned with your feng shui’d condo, you text-message your Asian girlfriend (a budding actor who remains the sole person you’ve met who was actually born here, though you thought she was white because she was blond, then realized she wasn’t when she pretended to be an ESL student to attract you—hey, don’t forget to schedule a tattoo-removal appointment for that Chinese character you thought said “ancient power” but actually means “integrated hydraulic system”). Since you’re in separate SUVs (she has a pole dancercise class and you want to squeeze in some time to get your body freshly Grouse Ground), you arrange a time to meet your om girl at SilverCity Riverport to catch An Inconvenient Truth (because they’re the only ones with screens bigger than your own flat screen). And your mother back home in Toronto thinks West Coasters still wear sandals with socks? Yeah, right.

Best example of a municipal politician failing to keep a promise

Sam Sullivan on bus fares

Last month, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan fessed up to the Straight that he couldn’t keep his pre-election promise to reduce one-zone transit fares to the “pre-COPE” level of $2. Just 10 months ago, in his inaugural address as mayor, Sullivan claimed that the city’s three TransLink representatives would “champion options” to increase bus service and reduce fares. We shouldn’t be too surprised by this broken promise. His predecessor, Larry Campbell, also pledged to reduce transit fares before he was elected in 2002. After joining the TransLink board, however, Campbell voted for fare hikes. Bring out a polygraph the next time any Vancouver mayoral candidate makes a pre-election promise to cut bus fares.

Best example of a provincial politician failing to keep a promise

Gordon Campbell on accountability

Premier Gordon Campbell promised the most open and accountable government in Canada. Then he ensured that a bunch of agencies, including the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee, weren’t covered by the freedom-of-information law. As a result, reporters were unable to obtain detailed lists of Olympic-related expenditures to suppliers of goods and services. It took a recent auditor general’s report to reveal that at a minimum, the 2010 Games could cost the federal, provincial, and municipal governments an estimated $2.5 billion. Give Gordo a gold medal for saying one thing and doing another.

Best example of a federal politician failing to keep a promise

David Emerson on being a Liberal

David Emerson ran as a Liberal in Vancouver Kingsway and never warned his constituents that he would cross the floor to join the Conservatives. As lawyer and political analyst Peter Dimitrov told the Straight last year: “In my mind, there was a legitimate expectation within the minds of the citizens of Vancouver Kingsway that if elected, Mr. Emerson would sit as a Liberal.” On February 6, the day that Emerson was sworn into office after the election, he joined the Conservative caucus and cabinet. When it comes to broken promises, this one belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Honourable mention: Stephen Harper promised last December to review the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s role in B.C.’s leaky-condo crisis, but shelved the idea after winning the election.

Best Imitation of the VAG Steps
The influx of language schools in the area has turned Cathedral Square park (at Richards and Dunsmuir streets) and its reflecting pool into a lunch-time hangout (by the way, both are on top of BC Hydro’s downtown electrical substation), but we wonder where the crowds will go on those days of downpour. Fiona Garden photo.

Best Answer to the Horse-Head Scene in The Godfather

After Vancouver police Chief Jamie Graham left a bullet-riddled target on the desk of city manager Judy Rogers on June 30, along with an ominous-sounding note (“A bad day at the range is better than the best day at work”), he claimed he made the gesture with “only the most positive of intentions”. Wimpy civilians, evidently, should just chill out. How about a nice chorus of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”?

Best instance of a politician snatching victory from what looked like defeat

Virginia Greene

Liberal candidate Virginia Greene lost her bid to become MLA for Vancouver Fairview in 2005 but still wound up with a government job—one that pays twice as much. The premier has appointed Greene as deputy minister of the intergovernmental relations secretariat, which means she hauls in a cool $180,000 per year, according to an official in her office. Vancouver Burrard Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt was paid less than half of that—$89,686 in the last fiscal year—and he actually won the election.

It gets better. Greene also billed the government $41,655 in travel expenses last year during her stint as deputy minister of tourism. In addition, she appears to get a lot more face time with Premier Gordon Campbell. According to the premier’s calendar of appointments, which the Straight has obtained, Greene had five meetings with Campbell between March 9 and June 22, 2006. Over the same period of time, Mayencourt only got one private visit with the boss. It goes to show there isn’t always a strong relationship between poli­tical influence and the number of times a person’s name appears in the paper.

Best instance of a politician snatching defeat from what looked like victory

Christy Clark

Christy Clark, a former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister, seemed to have the 2005 NPA mayoral nomination sewn up last year after reportedly signing up 2,400 new members. That was more than double the number that Sam Sullivan had supposedly recruited. Like many politicians before her, Clark underestimated Sullivan’s craftiness and ended up blowing the nomination race.

Best political “close, but no martini”

Andrew Stewart

Team Burnaby’s Andrew Stewart came in just 3,710 votes behind Derek Corrigan in the Burnaby mayoral race despite concealing an impaired-driving conviction throughout most of the campaign. In the week before the vote, the media revealed that Stewart had received a 12-month licence suspension in 2002. In an interview with the Burnaby Now, Corrigan denied that he had anything to do with the release of the information.

Best Evidence that Victoria is the shit

Yes, the quaint Garden City has boasting rights as the hometown of Canada’s hottest pop star in Nelly Furtado and the reigning NBA MVP in Steve Nash. But when our provincial capital finally completes its first sewage-treatment plan sometime before June 2007, you can flush Vancouver’s competitive edge down the toilet.

Best squeaky wheel

Regular folk going about their days may not recognize Dave Olsen’s name, but the mere mention of cycling advocate D.O. around City Hall has engineers and planners running scared. East Van Dave carpet-bombs city bureaucrats with e-mails (and copies correspondence to media) about anything from dangerous crosswalks and potholes to fences blocking off downtown cycle paths during Canada Line construction. If a pothole wrecked your morning commute, chances are Olsen has already made some city engineer’s life hell over it. He also coined the expression “10 Per Cent Mayor” in relation to the votes garnered by Mayor Sam Sullivan in the 2005 civic election. Olsen wants some accountability. It’s a dirty job and he’s out there doing it.

Best way to keep needles off the streets

The Sheltering Stitch

Local author Nancy Lee came to prominence for Dead Girls, a 2002 collection of stories that riffed on the unsolved disappearances of a number of prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside. Perhaps in recollection of the troubled lives she uncovered as she built her stories, Lee has come up with a way for locals to “turn their passion into compassion”. The Sheltering Stitch collects handknit items to distri­bute to the homeless. The program is run out of Urban Yarns (4421 West 10th Avenue), and more information can be found at the Web site (www.shelteringstitch.com/). “We knit for those we love and value,” Lee says in promotional material. “This is a chance to widen that circle by knitting for those who need it most.” Fair enough, but those folks better treat our organic cashmere-silk creations with the care they warrant. Remember, you homeless: wash in Woolite, dry flat.

Best sign the streets are safe again

Remember way back last spring, all those free dailies tumbleweeding down the roads? And hawkers in pretty aprons duking it out on every other corner? Remember running the gauntlet to the SkyTrain mornings and evenings, stiff-arming the papers without spilling your Tazo® Green Tea Frappuccino® Blended Crème with Melon Syrup? Well, it’s not sporting of us to say so, but they’ve mostly gone away. Try to find more than a quadrille’s worth of happy elves with their corporate rags wrapped in crazy advertising covers. Dose is gone altogether (RIP news stories that begin “According to IMDb…”). And the rest of the merry human vending machines? Where are they now?

Best Reason for Firing Vancouver’s Traffic Engineers

Need further proof that City Hall secretly doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about those stupid enough to live east of Main Street? Well, consider how traffic engineers have done their best to make sure every residential street near Commercial Drive gets the maximum daily dose of bridge-and-tunnel people.

Back when flared pants were cool, cocaine was good for you, and John Travolta was the biggest sex symbol in North America, someone had a brilliant idea. Rather than force the thousands of cars that leave downtown each day onto a major arterial road—Clark Drive and Commercial Drive being the obvious ones—they decided to designate Venables Street as the main pipeline to suburbia. When it became obvious that was turning the street into an unofficial superhighway, the real fun began. Installing a no-entry sign at Venables and Victoria Drive in the ’70s, engi­neers turned one street’s problem into a mess everyone in the neighbourhood could enjoy. Today, more than 10,000 drivers each rush hour have a choice: either inch along Victoria to a jammed-to-capacity Hastings Street or East 1st, or take a shortcut. You don’t need the soothsaying abilities of Mac McLaughlin to figure out which option they go for.

If you’ve ever wondered what enraged rats in a maze look like, hijack a helicopter and spend the afternoon hovering over the area bounded by Victoria, Venables, East 1st Avenue, and Nanaimo Street. Yes, this is the one area of Vancouver where young road-hockey enthusiasts spend more time screeching “Car!” than they do firing tennis balls at some poor kid.

Best proof that East Siders are stupider than those living west of Main Street

The Georgia Viaduct isn’t the only major exit point from downtown Vancouver. Across town, the Burrard Bridge also dumps thousands of drivers out of the city’s centre each day. Funnily, the crème de la crème of Vancouver in Shaughnessy realized there’s no joy watching suburbia whiz by their houses from dawn to dusk, which explains why traffic is forced onto either Arbutus or Granville streets once it hits West 16th Avenue. Sure Larry the Lawyer and Patricia the Proctologist have to do a little work to access their Cypress Street homes each day. But at least they don’t have Dunce the Drywaller from Tsawwassen using their neighbourhood as an all-purpose shortcut to his Airstream.

You might think that the village idiots of East Vancouver would band together and demand a similar solution—installing a 16th Avenue–style, no-entry sign at Clark and Venables would be an excellent start. Sadly, no such luck. The neighbourhood has its own Web-based mailing forum (covgwtc@list.vancouver.ca) where resi­dents can propose solutions to what’s becoming a hideous traffic mess. Every time someone suggests that having to drive six blocks out of their way to get home is preferable to having half of Surrey zip through their streets, the fur starts flying. In case you haven’t heard, people, the burbs are about to get a whole lot busier thanks to the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge. We’d suggest you either barricade yourself off now or move to somewhere where your neighbours aren’t nearly so stupid. Like Shaughnessy.