How come you can get towed faster than you can get a pizza here?

Want to see efficiency at its best in Vancouver? Just look at the tow industry. A fleet of shiny new tow trucks do the laps of the city all day long, all too ready to jump on their victims as the parking lanes change to roads. Parking is a premium in this city, and the city is extremely pro active about towing. I've been towed a total of twice in three years. Once in my building, for parking in someone elses place, (it was for 30 minutes) and I left a note on my window asking them to call me, (they decided it was a better idea to call a tow truck). second time i was trying to eat at the cactus club in burnaby, i parked in the office depot/tim hortons lot, and the bastards towed me, as a consequence my company has dropped all business with office depot.

So why can you get towed in 15mins, but have to wait 2-3 days for a passport? Why does it take 3 hours some weekends to get through the border? Why does it take 10 days for Telus to connect a phone line? I think if the city handed over operation of all of its projects to the tow truck companies, we'd all spend alot less time waiting to cross bridges (that should;ve been upgraded 20 years ago), denting our rims in any one of a thousand pot holes downtown...

Vancouver Police - Crime prevention or fund raising?

You cant help but be skeptical about the recent 'blitz' on Vancouver motorists. Police everywhere, writing tickets. Mostly to law abiding citizens, doing a few KM about the posted speed limits. It really pisses you off to think that we live in a city with incredible amounts of crime, both violent and property, and this is how they choose to allocate our police resources.

If you ask me, which is more urgent, the need to police roads or reduce crime, (thousands of people per month fall victim to vehicle theft alone in this city) the answer is obvious, the only reason the police are out harrassing working people is that the criminals dont have any money to pay fines.

Last week a friend of mine was stopped for making an illegal passage thru an intersection on a quiet street. The sign was obscured, and basically indicated that only buses could pass thru, all other traffic was to turn left. The real stink of the matter was, there were a total of 4 POLICE VEHICLES parked there, writing tickets out. This is an intersection 3 blocks off of West Georgia in the quiet substreets of Coal Harbour... now you tell me what was this about, public safety or filling quotas?

The good news is my friend pulled his New Zealand drivers license out, so the police have about as much chance of getting their money, as we all do of being safe from criminals, so long as there is money to be made from the people they should be protecting.

Vancouver - best city in the world to live in...

So, dont let it be said i never have anything positive to say. The BBC just aired a report on how Vancouver was assessed as the best city in the world to live in. Pretty amazing, and not hard to believe when you look around...

But lets not be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. Until the authorities do something about the crime/drug problem, we have to consider that the state of many of the people who live on the streets is an appauling embarrasment. Given the taxes that we pay here I think we all deserve a little more.

Eat shit, or at least tread in it...

Well Vancouverites are definitely some of the most dog lovingess people on the face of the earth. Dogs are absolutely everywhere you go, everyone has them, and god help you if you dont like them. Let me start by stating that I like dogs. The love affair the people in this city have with dogs goes beyond normal however, and now its gotten to the point where it is beginning to take its toll on life in this city.

First of all, there are the morons who own massive dogs, and live in small apartments. There should be a law against this, some form of animal cruelty. Then there are the people who insist on owning the vicious kind of dogs, (such as the rock weiler and pit bulls) to which this city has still not taken the urgent steps of banning. Thankfully my strata has just banned these dogs along with a few other vicious breeds. Then there are the kind that constantly stink, because they are washed enough, and they parade through the apartment buildings stinking up the place.

Then, and these are the most annoying people, the ones who dont pick up after their pets. They believe for some reason that the rest of us enjoy walking around stepping in dog shit when we are playing in the park. When our kids want to play in the grass, even when we are walking on the sidewalk.

I urge all of you who along with me, dont have a problem with dogs, only inconsiderate idiotic owners who dont clean up after their animals, next time you witness an act of vandalism on our parks/sidewalks or streets to engage the owner and instruct them to clean up the mess their animal has made.

If you are walking through any of the many parks and sidewalks in this city with your children, or thinking of laying a picnic out in the grass, look out for the shit that is slowly turning our neighborhoods into animal sewer grounds....

IKEA Coquitlam / Highway 1 Rant.

Okay, i go to IKEA once a year, and thats it. I dont like their stuff, but more importantly I dont like the experience. What a nightmare, especially at the coquitlam location on the weekend.

Oh my god, do you think for 1 second, that there is anyone in this city responsible for planning roads/access ways that has a clue what they are doing? The IKEA coquitlam store is the largest retail store in the province, and have you seen the access roads. Take a look at this image from google maps.

The large buiding you see on the right with a wave through it is IKEA, the exit point for Highway1 you can see to the left, doesn't take you to IKEA, but to an access road, for lougheed highway, which then allows you to skirt the outer perimeter of IKEA, and enter the parking lot through another access road. Can you imagine what kind of hell this creates on the weekends when thousands upon thousands of shoppers descend into Coquitlam in order to get a $1 breakfast, or 300 sawdust hotdogs for $1.50???

South for Summer? Get in line.

Now i know a lot of people are going to say, the delays and lineups at the border aren't always or entirely the fault of the Canadians, and I agree, both parties are equally at fault for providing a service which is completely inadequate, however it is another anoying aspect of life in Vancouver, and thats what this blog is all about.

If you're in the US as much as I am, trying to avoid the crazy local prices here, or enjoy a decent restaurant, or find a cool bar to sit and chill in (thats right Seattles bars are so much cooler than Vancouvers), then you've problably been through the Peace Arch or Pacific Crossing at some point or other.

What an organizational fuckup. Unless you're there at some ungodly time of the morning or night, prepare yourself for a wait, in either direction. It seems now that the communication/co-operation between both sides is so limited that last weekend, they were unable to avoid doing roadworks on the US side at Pacific Crossing, and construction on the Canada side at Peace Arch, the result? Lineups and delays and waits of 2 or more hours.

With the Canadian dollar where it is right now more and more people are heading south to spend, only problem is, we the travellers are the only ones who have seemed to notice. There has been little in the way of additional resources put in place to deal with the summer traffic in either direction.

iPhone in Canada? Yeah right...

Well with the launch of the iPhone in the US today, it leaves many of us wondering WTF? Most of us all live within 100 KM of the US border, so the question is what gives. Why aren't rogers offering the iphone here, why haven't they even announced it? The answer as usual is confusing and less than clear. While we can assume its a case of a combination of the following:
1. Licensing deals with Apple Canada/Rogers, trying to get it at a price point where they can gouge the Canadian consumers, and still make alot of money.
2. The fact that they only just released last years technology, and they dont want a newer better phone on the market to compete with that.
3. Probably some crappy govt rules about the device having to have FRENCH instructions included.
4. The CRTC has decided that they need to test the device for 3 months before they approve a license for it to be sold.