When this city’s most awesome and buzz-worthy blogs aren’t singing the praises of the Vancouver Aquarium (on the same day, no less), you can often find them singing the praises of new condo developments — sometimes they’re even provided accommodations in said condo developments. What fun.
It’s a sweet and cozy racket to say the least. Which is why K&K is starting its own condo-flogging series called “Keeping it Realty” in hopes of attracting sponsorship, goodies, a free meal at Chronic Taco or whatevs.
First stop on the shill express: Mount Pleasant’s way-cool Rize development.
Last weekend, we put on our favourite Hall and Oates T-shirt, dusted off our fixie bike and took a spin to Broadway and Main Street. The ride was sweeter than chillaxing to the last Beach House album on a sunny day at Dude Chilling Park. Why? Because we discovered this rad-looking construction site between Main and Kingsway. It’s the future home of the 21-storey Rize development, which to the best of our knowledge has the support of the entire neighbourhood. And even if there has been some grumblings, we prefer not to let haters kill our vibe and unwavering positivity. That’s just how we roll.
Cycling the perimeter of the construction site like a yarn-bomber around a parking meter, we realized that the marketers of the Rize condo development really, really get us. They understand our plight to carve out our own unique and bitchin’ identity in this world of conformity and stuff.
“We believe in pushing further and doing better” read one of the placards adorning the wicked chain link fence, to which we replied between sips of our cold-pressed, organic juice cleanse, “Totally.”
Another message read, “Embrace passion, soul, craft and craftsmanship,” which at first made us wonder what the difference was between craft and craftsmanship, but then we got distracted by this dude who we thought was Justin Vernon from Bon Iver but turned out to be a barista who once sold us unbleached filters for our Chemex coffee urn.
However, the sign that really struck home was the one that said, “Stand apart and stand for something.” Even though we’re not entirely sure how buying one of the Rize condos is going to make us stand apart from the people who purchased the other 257 condo units in the behemoth development, complete with 7,295 square feet of commercial space, 399 parking stalls and 350 bicycle stalls (bikes rock!), we are confident in our individuality, or at least the sense of individuality that comes from buying a kick-ass condo in the sky with exposed brick walls (cross our fingers) in a hip and happening neighourhood that isn’t Fraser Street, Chinatown or Hastings Sunrise… because gross. Unless of course, there’s a condo development marketer in any of those up-and-coming neighbourhoods who wants to enlighten us on how awesome they are. Hint, hint.
Until then, keep it realty, Vancouver. Peace out.
