Living the dream in Sapperton?
I was walking on Denman Street in English Bay yesterday and noticed a giant billboard on a lot about to be developed. It was one of those "don't need to be a millionaire" ads and it shared the story of a lady who purchased an apartment in the "Brewery District". It sounded interesting and I wondered where the Brewery District was. It turns out that it's “developer-speak” for Sapperton, which is a small neighbourhood on the border of New Westminster.
I'm thinking that if this is the best the developers could come up with to counter the growing anger at the affordability crisis in Vancouver then things are worse than I thought, unless of course your idea of living the dream is living in a small apartment in Sapperton.
–AK
Re: “Vancouver Art Gallery reveals new wooden design”, Oct. 1, 2015.
This architectural concept is safe at best, with the local yokels allowing themselves to be roped in with a BC lumber-industry come-on. It’s an embarrassment of parochial proportions. One would assume an art gallery to be a piece of art in itself – but not in Vancouver: just down the street from the CBC's regressive snooze and the Telus thing-with-knobs-on.
Frank Gehry! Please!
–Claus Lao Schunke
Lovely – this is a remarkable building. We need something iconic that is not green or blue glass. It reminds me of something Japanese, and I love the indoor and outdoor spaces. Wonderful!
-Leeanne Barr
It reminds me of the boxy, almost windowless cedar houses and house-makeovers of the ‘70s. It will age as badly as they did.
– Ian McLeod
Re: “Slow is Better”, Oct. 1, 2015.
Fellow ranter Wm. Baird Blackstone – who references my letter, “Keep art out of the street” (Sept. 17, 2015) – should be aware that the editor chooses captions for letters. I was not suggesting that art should be kept off the streets, per se but even if we were talking Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” rather than a bunch of benches on a road, I’d be suggesting art work be on the sidewalks and promenades adjoining the Art Gallery, not blocking a major thoroughfare from bus traffic (I had not mentioned cars).
While Mr. Blackstone is impressed with a one-day shutdown in the metropolis of Koblenz, Germany, I’m referring to buses being diverted to the hinterlands of the city for months during the summer, inconveniencing seniors, mothers with buggies and people not wanting to take a tour. We too, have our Denman Street Car-Free Day, which is a highlight of the summer, enjoyable to most.
For the record, I was being facetious when referencing the would-be status of Vancouver being a world-class city. We are not, I don’t want us to be. “World-class” is code for raising rents for housing and businesses. Just walk down Denman, Davie, Robson and Granville and you’ll lose count of the number of businesses that have closed; how many people have fled the city because they can’t afford to live here?
Yes, we do need to operate “more effectively” no matter how we care to describe Vancouver.
–Victoria Joss
