Category Archive: Vancouver

Frances is back

Posted by Michael Klassen on August 12, 2008

Vancouver political junkies rejoice: Frances Bula is back on the net at www.francesbula.com after a short, post-Vancouver Sun hiatus from her City States blog.

Frances admitted being a little surprised by the popularity of City States. Her newspaper editors insisted that readers didn't want all that information. Blogging proved to her otherwise. Readers wanted all the info they could get.

Frances left the Vancouver Sun as their city beat reporter after 25 years, and is now writing features for Vancouver Magazine and contributing to the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Good to have you back online, Frances.

Tagged: vancouver blogs, vancouver politics

Permalink | Comments (0)

Vancouver's East Side suffers from The Mohawk

Posted by Michael Klassen on August 10, 2008

The Peek-A-Boo extension

Writer Erick Villagomez beat me to a topic that I've been a little obsessed about for the last year or so. I began to document the matter in photos last January. I tagged new homes with small, one-room top floor extensions as having "peek-a-boo" rooms. Erick came up with a better label: The Mohawk.

Erick argues that as a result of Vancouver's rules around "floor space ratio" home builders are squeezing an extra, ugly story to new homes to provide a view over surrounding homes (and trees). He nails it by calling it what it is: junk food architecture.

Continue reading "Vancouver's East Side suffers from The Mohawk" »

Tagged: andres duany, cities, ecodensity, vancouver east

Permalink | Comments (0)

Fireworks at the Nat

Posted by Michael Klassen on July 21, 2008

The Nat Bailey Stadium on a warm sunny evening is intoxicating on its own, even without the cold beer vendors. Entrepreneur Jake Kerr and his business partners have taken a huge financial risk to re-invest in this little Vancouver gem. Even if you're a feint baseball fan, you have to see at least one game here during the summer.

I took a few shots of the park you can see on my Flickr (sorry, lots of people getting in the way). It's a gorgeous, clean and family-friendly venue.

Most fun of all was the evening fireworks, which I also snapped (full screen slideshow here). About halfway through I realized that I could turn my camera during time lapse shots to get the funky curve effects for the explosions.

Tagged: fireworks, nat bailey stadium, summer in vancouver

Permalink | Comments (0)

Some thoughts on Tour de Gastown

Posted by Michael Klassen on July 17, 2008

The annual Tour de Gastown bike race came through town and it was held on a warm July evening, so my family and I decided to go check it out. I had a few observations from the evening I thought I'd share, along with a handful of shots I took there (see Flickr slideshow above).

Gastown feels like the perfect place for an event like this, even with all the construction taking place at Woodwards and at other surrounding sites. It's very accessible once you are parked, and makes for an interesting walk if you want to move around the course.

The womens' race event begins the evening, and it was well underway when we arrived around 6pm. Of course we were hungry as it was the dinner hour. I was surprised by how limited the choices for dining were, and ended up choosing the Water St. Cafe, one of the few restaurants that have stayed in the area over the years. They make a decent pasta dish, but I thought the wine menu needed some better selections.

Continue reading "Some thoughts on Tour de Gastown" »

Tagged: gastown, tour de gastown, vancouver entertainment

Permalink | Comments (0)

Life is a bowl of raspberries

Posted by Michael Klassen on July 16, 2008

Picked from the garden last night. Evidence of the glorious July weather we're experiencing here in Vancouver.

Tagged: gardening, happiness, summer time, vancouver weather

Permalink | Comments (0)

How green is my shed?

Posted by Michael Klassen on July 14, 2008

An old friend James "Two Sheds" Glave has built Eco Shed™ and he is taking great pains to market it, even renting a rubber gorilla costume (I hope it's rented anyway) for this YouTube commercial below. If you want to a quiet getaway with a really small carbon footprint, then call James. Dancing gorilla optional.

Tagged: carbon footprint, environment, green building, green technology

Permalink | Comments (0)

Vancouver Sun's Frances Bula resigns

Posted by Michael Klassen on July 2, 2008

This comes out of the blue. France Bula, the veteran Vancouver Sun writer that covered the city beat more thoroughly than any of her colleagues, announced on her City States blog that she has resigned from the paper.

"Fabula" distinguished herself in recent months with her round-the-clock postings on civic affairs, namely the NPA and Vision Vancouver mayoral nomination battles, on that blog. It was a first for the tired old Vancouver Sun, whose transition into the digital age has been particularly clunky thanks to publisher CanWest.

Apart from the updates on internal rancor within the two political parties (it became a must read for local civic affairs junkies), Bula's blog was particularly insightful on the subject of Vancouver development. Whether covering the recent talk by Andrés Duany, the lengthy debates in council chambers on EcoDensity, or talking about new buildings dotting Vancouver's skyline and the people who built them, Bula's passion for our city and its inner workings was always evident.

Frances does not reveal her reasons for the departure, but her final blog post indicates some frustration with the editorial direction of the Vancouver Sun. Over the last several years CanWest Global has been paying buyouts to many of its longstanding employees, giving them the choice of early retirement.

Tagged: vancouver media, vancouver politics, vancouver sun

Permalink | Comments (0)

Way to go, Walter!

Posted by Michael Klassen on April 9, 2008

My friend Walter Schultz is a community leader in South Vancouver who, for a variety of reasons got it in his head that the Sunset neighbourhood where he lives deserved a new, state of the art, community centre. A very nice celebration took place where the Premier, Vancouver's Mayor and a variety of public officials showed up for the ribbon cutting. A recording of Walter's speech was made which you can view below.