“So, everything I’m seeing here, this is all..?” and I trail off, soaking it in.

“I’ve never paid for anything, man,” Percy boasts. “Everything is free. I don’t pay for shit,” and he takes a thick pull from his free blunt. Sensing my disbelief, he adds: “…just blows people’s minds, the type of money involved.”

In 2011, Interac reported Canadian debit skimming losses of $70 million. “Percy”, the young man sitting opposite me, claims his fair share – a senior figure in a crew engaged in the audacious high-tech crime of debit card cloning.

Here’s how it works:

To access your bank account, criminals require data stored on your debit card’s magnetic stripe, plus your PIN code. Until recently, they acquired it through hidden cameras coupled with readily-available card readers known as “skimmers”, installed covertly on ATMs, or put in the hands of collusive staff. Next came the tedious and error-prone task of matching your card data to your video keystrokes. Today there’s a far more elegant solution.

“Back in the day you’d use the skimmers – you’d give it to servers, you’d give it to the [gas] jockeys, whatever – now it’s all about the debit PIN pads,” Percy explains.

By doctoring the terminal handed to you when you make a debit card purchase, Percy and his crew are able to record your card data and PIN right from the machine itself. There’s only one catch:

“You need their machine overnight,” Percy reveals.

“So say you go to a little coffee shop and they’ve got a machine there and it’s not bolted down and you know you can get that thing and you can put it back there, what you have to do is, you gotta be the last customer before that shop shuts down. You go in there, you grab the machine without them noticing and put a dummy machine in.”

Coffee shops come up frequently in our conversation, their high transaction volumes making them a ripe source of card data, and the barista’s head-down work making them prime targets for PIN tampering – a task, Percy insists, far easier than it sounds:

“Order a triple fucking vanilla pump latte, extra froth, two pumps of chocolate, half a pump of caramel, you gotta weigh my sprinkles and count on 16 blueberries. Just order a bunch of shit. They’ll turn around, and honestly, it’s a matter of seconds,” he declares, laughing in a puff of smoke.

“It’s like a phone jack – you just unplug the phone jack, pick it up, put another one in. Then you got the machine all night.”

The card-writing software used by Percy's crew

Fully caffeinated, stolen debit terminal in hand, The Switcher turns the machine over to The Tech – a friend who’s been trained to snip a few wires and solder in a bluetooth-enabled snooping device purchased from a remote criminal engineer. The Tech’s work done, The Switcher returns the next morning to replace the merchant’s machine.

“Say someone else comes in there and they try to use the debit machine and it doesn’t work: out of order. They [the barista] grab it and put it behind the counter. You go there and you can’t do your switch. That’s why you gotta be the last guy there at night and the first customer there in the morning.”

Modified machine in place, the riskiest phase of the fraud is complete, and the store’s debit terminal now transmits customers’ card data and PIN via wireless signal to a laptop outside.

Fast forward a couple weeks. Data downloaded, sorted and scrubbed, it’s written onto blank white debit cards using a USB card writer, the PIN number printed on the front with a label maker. Synchronizing watches, a team of low-level criminals, drug addicts and friends of the fraudsters then fan out across the city, hitting specific financial institutions at preordained times. Pockets bursting, The Hitters retreat into the night to meet with the crew and divvy the spoils.

If it all leaves you feeling rather helpless, keep reading.

“It’s coined as a ‘blitz attack’,” explains Justin Hwang, Associate Vice President of Fraud Management at TD Canada Trust. “The fraudster hires ten runners and then gives them instructions saying here’s your ten counterfeit bank cards, go to this machine and at 9 a.m. start. So yeah, we’re pretty familiar with that.”

TD and other Canadian financial institutions employ sophisticated pattern analysis software for detecting this type of fraud.

“Blitz attacks are pretty quick,” explains Hwang. “They’ve got a window of opportunity probably in the seconds.

“That obviously alerts us. Why all of a sudden, in the span of nanoseconds, are we getting all these withdrawals coming from this set of bank machines within this geographic area? That’s a blitz attack; let’s work to shut it down,” he says.

Hwang, and the entire financial industry, is fiercely protective of the specifics of these systems, speaking only in general terms. His opaque speech is a nod to the ongoing battle of probes and countermeasures taking place between the fraudsters and the banks.

Back in his apartment, Percy elaborates: “We used to smash ‘em,” he says – meaning they would attempt each card in rapid succession – “and we were like, ‘Something’s not working here.’ We talked to these other guys who did it back East – another crew – and they’re like, ‘No man, you give me 100 TDs and I’ll give you 30k every time’. And we’re like, ‘No way, they’re shutting down quick’.

“You gotta do the trick – you gotta do one every five to ten minutes. You swipe one that’s declined, you wait. Five minutes. Go to another machine. It’s tedious. There are certain people running around doing it, and they’ll come back with 37 grand.”

But perhaps more significant in this escalating battle is the quiet roll-out of Chip and PIN technology in Canada. Capturing mag stripe data from swiped cards is trivial, but Percy’s crew, as yet, have no answer for chip-enabled cards, if inserted rather than swiped. After five years of the figures tilting in the fraudsters’ favour, financial institutions appear to be gaining the upper hand: peaking at $142 million in 2009, Canadian debit losses have declined by more than 50 per cent over the last two years.

“We can’t fuck with the chip yet,” Percy confirms. “I know guys who have put in $150, $200k – more – trying to break this fucking thing. It’s all through the magstripe. They insert the chip – we can’t do it. So we gotta go to places that don’t have the chip shit yet.”

Percy’s revelation comes as no surprise to Interac, Canada’s largest network for point of sale debit. Following the European lead, the company will require chip-enabled cards for all debit PIN pad transactions by the end of 2015. The deadline for bank machines on their network looms at the end of this year.

From the Interac perspective, the results from Europe are promising: in the UK, cloned card fraud has fallen a stunning 79 per cent over the last three years, thanks largely to the implementation of Chip and PIN.

But as Justin Hwang over at TD points out, the magnetic stripe on Canadian debit cards is a long way from being completely phased out: “Our neighbours to the south, they haven’t migrated to the chip yet. If TD got rid of the mag stripe, we couldn’t do any business down in the States. That’s preventing customers from using their money where they want it, how they want it, when they want it.”

So while transactions moving across the Interac network may become more secure, the continued presence of the magnetic stripe on Canadian cards leaves them vulnerable to skimming coupled with foreign cash withdrawals or online transactions. And while the European lesson may prove fruitful for card cloning, it also demonstrates the resolve of the fraudsters, who have begun moving their illicit transactions from bank machines to online venues.

“We’re never going to fully get rid of the problem,” conludes Hwang, “but I think we’re at a good spot, where we’ve got a good handle on it and we’ve sorta corralled the problem a little bit.”

With the battle set to rage well into the future, some sage advice for anything you hold dear: careful where you stick it.

The Definitive Guide

If you want to hear TransLink spokesperson Drew Snider’s golden voice turn to brass, try actually getting to the bottom of why the region’s rapid-transit system doesn’t run 24 hours.

“You’re going to hate me by the time this is done,” I chuckle.

“Oh well,” he replies, exhausted. The laugh I’m expecting never comes.

TransLink, and poor Snider, have been responding to media inquiries like this one since the days of Sam Sullivan. Kevin Falcon, flanked by Barwatch chairman John Teti, pledged extended SkyTrain service on weekends during Falcon’s B.C. Liberal leadership bid. More recently, our handsome mayor promoted extended bus and rail hours during his November 2011 municipal campaign. For Snider it’s a tired old question – though it still lingers on the breath of many a Granville-fleeing suburbanite.

The gripe: while rapid transit winds down at 1:15 a.m., the bars close at 3. Night buses, intended as the stop-gap, generally run until only 3:08 a.m., so if you don’t make your stop inside eight minutes of last call, well, your hour-and-a-half commute to Surrey Central just became a 2-hour-and-40-minute pilgrimage. And in the province with the “toughest drunk-driving laws in Canada” (albeit temporarily suspended), critics, bar owners, politicians and journalists are quick to point out the problem.

So, why does the region’s rapid-transit system shut down before the city itself? Unable to find a satisfying reply, The Dependent decided to compile its own.

Economics

Dollars seem the obvious, unsexy factor limiting SkyTrain’s hours of service. TranksLink operates at a $150-million annual deficit and the appetite for increasing cost in existing service lanes is nonexistant. But a quick analysis of the company’s operating metrics yields some surprising results.

According to the ever-patient Snider, a 40-foot city bus costs TransLink $117 an hour to operate. That figure applied to the venerable N19 night bus (that hour-and-a-half saviour of the Surrey-bound night-owl) works out to $175.50 per trip.

And key indicators in TransLink’s 2010 Financial and Performance Report, show SkyTrain runs at $1.98 per kilometer.

Let’s compare, shall we? The section of track running from Waterfront to King George, and mirroring the route of the N19, is 28.9 kms, suggesting an impressive cost per trip of $57.22 by train – less than a third of the price of the equivalent night bus, while taking less than half the time.

In other words, it appears TransLink could extend its eastbound SkyTrain service until 3:30 a.m., running trains every 15 minutes and halving the transit time, for the same price as the three existing N19 night buses running the exact same route.

Seeking to confirm our figures, we emailed our favourite local spokesman.

Repeatedly.

“No. We cannot endorse a cost figure or lead you to a number that could be used in the future,” he finally replied. “We’ve stated before that the cost issue, weighed against the need for the maintenance, is a non-starter. You have the publicly stated cost we talked about and if you want to speculate on that in your story, that’s your prerogative.”

In hindsight, we think we know why the effervescent Snider grew short with our requests to confirm figures: according to TransLink, the cost of operating late into the night is irrelevant compared to the issue Snider kept trying to focus on:

Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance

“One of the things that people need to remember is that SkyTrain goes through extensive maintenance every night,” Snider explained, back when he laughed at our jokes, and responded promptly to our emails. “During that downtime we shut the system down and go over a prescribed area of track and we check splices, we check the switches – anything else that needs maintaining gets worked on. At the same time the cars get cleaned and prepped for the next day. That’s during a three to three-and-a-half-hour window each night.”

Under the cover of darkness, work crews shut off power to the linear induction propulsion system and acquire clearance to enter the track. With the trains safely sleeping, crews pile into diesel-powered speeder cars and begin regularly scheduled maintenance, including:

• grinding tracks for a smoother, quieter ride;
• checking for loose linear induction motor panels;
• fishing lost customer iPods from the carriageway; and,
• lubricating track switches.

According to Snider, the maintenance regime has been finely tuned to fit into the 3.5 hours available, and is critical in preventing costly service interruptions. But if economics are an unsexy explanation for SkyTrain’s slumber, maintenance is downright disappointing. The question on everyone’s wine-stained lips? “How do other cities do it then?”

The short answer is: they don’t.

The campaign to extend San Francisco rapid-transit service to 24 hours has over 25,000 likes on Facebook, and BART has a whole webpage dedicated to explaining its position. Boston’s rail system shuts down at about 1 a.m. In Washington, D.C., trains run until 3 a.m., but only on weekends. Closer to home, and size, Calgary’s C-Train runs until 1:30, resuming sporadic service at 4:00, and finally rolling in earnest again around 6:30 a.m.

But there are exceptions.

The Few, The Brave

Deirdre Parker, press liaison for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, gets no media calls about 24-hour rail service. New York operates all night.

“We’re sorta like the lifeblood of the city,” she explains. “It’s a 24-hour city.”

According to Parker, running 24 hours requires extensive infrastructure, coordination, and, occasionally, daring. The MTA recently began a new maintenance program dubbed “FastTrack”, wherein full portions of the subway are shut down while hordes of maintenance staff move in. Parker, and her many press releases, says it’s been incredibly successful, dramatically improving system efficiency and workplace safety – particularly since, before the days of FastTrack, maintenance crews would be working on active sections of track, and, when a train was coming, would simply get out of the way.

Chicago is the only other North American city we could find operating 24 hours. Even then, only two of their 19 rail lines run around the clock, with maintenance completed using that same impressive “listen and leap” strategy. But beyond their unique maintenance programs, the CTA and MTA also take advantage of extensive networks of rail infrastructure developed over centuries for re-routing trains and keeping their systems in constant motion.

“If you have the infrastructure you can provide alternate service,” Deirdre explains.

The infrastructure here in Vancouver, with its lonely tendrils of rapid transit, simply doesn’t support this level of service.

Fine – Just Give Us an Hour, Then!

Transit service levels are a balance of infrastructure, demand and priority.

Not long ago, Bay Area Rapid Transit completed a study on the impact of extending service on Friday nights and beginning later on Saturday mornings, thus maintaining the maintenance window and providing late-night revelers with a rapid route home.

“What we found in our surveys is that the people who use our service on Saturday morning were disproportionately people of colour who were going to service industry jobs in downtown San Francisco, and BART was the only way for them to go to work,” Jim Allison, BART spokesperson explains. “Our board determined that the negative impacts on those people – who need the transit system to get to work – outweighed the convenience factor for people who simply wanted to go to the bars and not have a designated driver or take a taxi.”

TransLink shares a similar view:

“Planning a trip right now with the existing service has to involve people looking at their own particular needs – their own particular time – and saying ‘Okay, I’m going to cut myself off at 2:30 instead of 3, and assume that I’ve got to get an earlier bus,” Snider suggests.

“It’s getting back to owning some of the responsibility for getting yourself home. You see the schedule, you make your plan, you stick to it as best you can, and don’t expect that a public agency is going to be there all the time. Because we’re responsible to taxpayers, we’re responsible to our customers, and the vast, vast majority are people who rely on it first thing in the morning to get to work and school.”

“So, what I’m hearing is that the coverage is adequate,” we reply, “and you’re not leaving people totally stranded, and frankly, the drunks can wait an extra hour for getting home.”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” Snider says. “I might be a bit more diplomatic than referring to the drunks finding another way of getting home, or waiting an extra hour. We’re not doing it because we’re myopic or we want people to drive drunk – we’re doing it because we need to maintain the service.”

Baxter and Anderson, both just 25, are the driving forces behind “The Sticking Place”, a soon-to-be-released interactive documentary following the journey of women’s Olympic wrestling hopeful Leah Callahan. Working tirelessly over the past nine months, the pair are crafting a new type of film, pioneering in its subject matter, funding model and medium. At the heart of the project is the burgeoning concept of interactive storytelling – an online technique enabled by recent web technologies allowing the viewer to shape the experience.

“The main difference between an interactive documentary and just watching a movie is you have to give a piece of yourself to the story,” Baxter explains. “It mimics Leah’s journey making choices, and we hope it encourages people to look at their own lives and even decision-making in general.”

There are no experts in this type of filmmaking, Baxter and Anderson note, only pioneers. The National Film Board of Canada is one of them, having produced a number of groundbreaking digital works – among them, the highly contentious BLA BLA (directed by Vincent Morriset, the man responsible for Arcade Fire’s interactive website for “Sprawl II” and “Neon Bible”), and “Welcome to Pine Point”, an online, interactive documentary by Vancouver design duo Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge which explores the digital memories of the residents of a former northern mining town. Enamoured by the possibilities of the medium, the girls decided to use the web for their next film project. The selection of women’s Olympic wrestling – admittedly not the most popular sport in the world – came after Baxter attended the Canadian Nationals to watch Callahan compete.

“I’d never seen wrestling before,” Baxter explains. “It was in the worst little gym in Edmonton – it was freezing cold – but it was one of the most exciting things I’d ever seen. It was only two minutes long and I didn’t even know what was going on; I was trying to judge from how people were reacting.”

Despite how little she understood, Baxter was inspired by the commitment demonstrated by athletes of such an obscure discipline. She related the experience to Anderson and the two debated dropping their existing project for what they considered a more compelling story. It was Callahan’s plain-speaking manner that ultimately spurred their decision.

“I think the strongest reason I’m drawn to it is Leah’s character,” Anderson explains, “she’s so honest, blunt and raw. Going on this high-stakes journey with someone who is like that, to me, is an amazing story, especially doing it using an interactive framework.”

The decision to follow Callahan has proven a good one, with the 24-year-old wrestler upsetting her longtime rival and the national champ this past weekend to secure the spot on the Canadian Olympic team. Requiring only a few more routine victories, Callahan looks set to represent the Canadian women in London next summer. Now, with months of film on hand, Baxter and Anderson have moved on to the next stages of production: editing, design, animation, sound mixing and coding. While the pair are capable of much of this work themselves, some of the more technical tasks require outside assistance. For many on an indie budget this is the greatest hurdle.

Enter Kickstarter, a Manhattan-based “crowdfunding” site, where prospective fundraisers post a short video explaining their project and financial needs, and offer up rewards for donations over the internet. In the case of “The Sticking Place”, Baxter and Anderson have a goal of $20,000 for production expenses. In exchange for donations, they’re offering buttons, production credits and even a sweaty wrestling singlet worn by Callahan. As of this writing, “The Sticking Place” has raised just over 50% of its fundraising goal, with 11 days to go. Regardless of its outcome, the girls say the Kickstarter campaign has been a tremendous inspiration, and they’re adamant the film will be produced one way or another:

“Basically all those people who are pledging to support us are saying, ‘We believe in your creative vision, we believe that you’re going to get this project done and that you’re going to make something really cool and we are really excited to see it, so just do it’.”

Check out the full details of the project at The Sticking Place’s Kickstarter HQ.

Data is from the Burrard Street Bridge separated bike lane trial, and covers the period of January 1 2010 to June 30 2011.

The first, and most obvious, question:

What impact does precipitation have on the number of bicycle trips?

The results are somewhat surprising. Predictably, there’s a steep drop in bicycle traffic from dry days to wet – an immediate decline of around 30% from days with zero precipitation to those with even one millimetre. But beyond that, heavier rainfall appears to have little impact on cycling numbers, suggesting there is a core contingent of rain-or-shine riders in Vancouver.

With an average of 1,200 trips on days with five millimetres of rain or more, and assuming each cyclist completes a round-trip, it seems a reasonable estimate that there are about 600 people using the Burrard Street Bridge bike lane, rain or shine.

And now for the second, only slightly less obvious, question:

What about temperature?

Curiously, temperature appears to have a far more direct relationship with the number of cycling trips than rainfall; just look at that nice, smooth curve!

Please leave your irate bike lane-related analysis in the comments below.

Food Not Bombs: “I need people to volunteer to come pick 20,000-30,000 carrots in Chilliwack in the near future. It’s going to go to waste if no one comes to pick this. There’s broccoli and cabbage, if you don’t like carrots. Come to the Food Tent tonight and come talk to us!”

“Just a quick bit I’d like to share. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Thank you.”

“Can we also acknowledge that media has not been trustworthy and does not have integrity. They may put a biased spin on the story. We should acknowledge that the media taints things.”

“We need a new cell phone for the Information Tent, the last one was stolen.”

“MC to be honest I have no idea what to do next. Right now we are not even talking about issues. The issue is from what I understand that I am white and male and am trying to talk about committee updates. I don’t know what to do.”

GA Vote: “Those in favour of a moritorum of white males?”
More than 10% opposed. postpone decision until next GA

Proposal:
No weapons shall be used against anyone within the community of Occupy Vancouver, this does not include the Police.

Proposal:
As a camp, whoever we see on the grounds, we love them, whether it’s a fellow neighbour or policeman.

“If you want to be involved this weekend, rather than locking arms, it’s been suggested that you zip tie your arms or wrists together. That way you can not be violent at all.”

2:19 Request for something to do with audibility and mic usage, inaudible.

-Proposal stating that First Nations representatives want us to fund the sacred fire by paying $300 a week towards buying .alderwood to be used as firewood (the only kind of wood that is acceptable to use for this purpose).
CONSENSUS NOT REACHED, QUORUM WAS NOT ATTAINED (from the crowd that was gathered, a small number voted “yes”, and a small number (including myself, the minute-taker) voted “no”)

“I feel like at this point of transition we need to have other ways of getting to know each other other than the GA. I propose we rent a hall for one night, find a free DJ, maybe a free band, get a liquor license, party like crazy, dance, and have some fun. Talk to each other, have some group hugs. Thank you.”

Proposal:
Respect Committee – For funding our Elders here. We acknowledge we are on unceded Coast Salish territory and appreciate their guidance here. We suggest $50 for each of the Elders to help with the car troubles recently. The alternative will be to establish a separate donation box to subsidize transportation costs for First Nation Elders which will be run through the Indigenous Outreach Committee. Tomorrow at 5:30pm we will be discussing this at the black tent.

Finance Committee:  ”I know we have just over $11,000 in our bank plus $4,000 in PayPal.”

“The finances might not be a problem we need to solve. I have heard of a person in Mexico that has built an island out of recyclable things. He has a farm on this island. Apparently it’s big and it’s built out of garbage. I believe we can do the same thing here so long as we are not infringing on any boating bylaws. Thank you.”

 [Editor's note: Amazing.]

To peruse the minutes yourself head on over to the Occupy Vancouver website. Minutes prior to November 9 can be found on the Old Occupy Vancouver website.
Banner Image: Jesse Winter

It’s the first time I’ve evoked a hostile response from the man. I make mental note of the scene, to be described later: bathed in the orange glow of the alley lights, November mist falling around us, the infamous Cletus tugging at the end of his leash, Lamarche’s eyes are ablaze, but his expression is cold.

“I haven’t seen you like this before,” I tell him. “Why is that? Help me understand.”

“You’re giving legs to something I purposely didn’t want to give legs to, and now you’re coming back trying to revive this thing again. I have no interest in that, so if you have anything else, cool. If not, I’m going to go get ready for this debate.”

It will later occur to me that Lamarche views me as a vulture, circling the scandal that’s overshadowed his campaign, looking to fill my belly with the death of his candidacy. Given our original agreement and the unfortunate evolution of this series, I might think the same, but the truth is there’s simply nothing else to write about. At this point, following the Lamarche campaign and writing an inspirational story about municipal politics would be like writing a biography of Charlie Manson and only mentioning the music.

Embedded, I dreamed of an exposé of democracy’s tender, naughty bits. With the young, buccaneering Lamarche I thought this might even be possible, so keen was he to talk about running a different kind of campaign, of being a different kind of candidate. His narrative, as it’s referred to in politics, is heavy on youthful differentiators: skateboarding, renting – the tech-savvy social media king. It all pointed to a romantic story, full of underdog potential. But as the days passed, so too did the prospects of writing the tale I had envisioned: dark horse candidate squeaks into City Hall following daring, open campaign.

Those are my thoughts, standing silently face to face behind Jason’s apartment, the stink of my questions and his evasiveness weighing heavy on the both of us. “Okay then,” I finally shrug, “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.” He offers an unconvincing nod before walking back to his building, leaving me to wander the damp alley, contemplating the significance of his stonewalling and the future of this series.

Lamarche at the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant debate

My aim, as with every story, is to tell the truth. But with this assignment, more than any other, I’m utterly confounded as to what that might be. One of the few things I can say with absolute confidence is that municipal politics have chewed me up and spat me out.

Here’s what else I know:

To win in Vancouver requires a heroic effort, involving a team of dedicated volunteers; a contingent of professional strategists, managers and communications experts; months of tireless and mind-numbing pavement-pounding, sign-posting, hand-shaking, baby-kissing, telephoning, debating, scheduling and coordination; and of course, a party with a couple million dollars in the war chest doesn’t hurt.

Independents don’t stand a chance.

Vancouverites vote for a party, a mayor, then councilors – in that order. The more engaged among us may toss a few votes to a rival party to balance out power, but even then, most voters have no idea what separates individual candidates, short of their party affiliation.

The power of the machines aside, all civic campaigns focus on one unsexy task: voter identification. Central office stores the names of the hands shaken and babies kissed by individual candidates in a massive database. Bored-looking volunteers (and candidates themselves) sit in plastic lawn chairs in rooms full of endlessly-dialing computers waiting for a human voice in their headsets. Will you be voting November 19? Can we count on your support? Can we put a sign on your lawn? Do you need a ride to the polling station?

In municipal politics, where the winners and losers are separated by a thousand votes, the “ground game”, as it’s called, is the foundation of any successful campaign. Identify your supporters and get them into the ballot box. It’s no secret, and there’s nothing flashy about it.

But at this task is where the simplicity ends. Far less obvious, and far more interesting, is that blurry line between fact and fiction – spontaneity and cold calculation, truths and half-truths – always lingering in the public’s mind during a candidate’s bizarre quest to rule. Some might call it strategy; others, the bloodsport of politics.

It probably says more about me than Lamarche that I struggled to accept that every act, opinion and manoeuvre was precisely as it seemed. He never admitted to anything approaching strategy. According to him, every word was the truth and every motive pure. Cynical fuck that I am, and without a baseline from which to judge, this left me suspicious of everything – even more so once I had established contacts who I determined spoke frankly and honestly, even if only off the record.

Poor Lamarche, however, was always on the record, and the more he pronounced of his guileless campaign strategy, the less I believed it. Surely our boy was in possession of at least some of the wit and cunning required to win in this cruel arena? Surely he was not ignorant to the techniques that would ultimately prove his downfall?

Cue the Puppy Presser. A slick media moment if I’d ever seen one – Lamarche’s black lab Cletus decked out in a t-shirt and “Vote Lamarche” button, goaded to “speak” for the cameras if he supported his master’s plan to ban the retail sale of dogs. In spite of my relentless prodding, Lamarche held firm to the claim that the press conference was not a calculating attempt to grab headlines, but rather an honest reflection of his desire to help animals.

Regardless of his claims, my analysis of the event was cruel and sarcastic; I hated what I wrote, but it was what I saw.

Lamarche reviewing notes at his "Puppy Presser"

With the “different campaign” promised by Lamarche failing to materialize, I was ready to end this pitiful series, rather than write another negative installment, when suddenly the first arrow of the campaign was slung, and it landed in our boy’s camp:

The Date Matrix.

I’ll admit, I read the headlines with a sick sort of glee. Policy, door-knocking and spot-rezoning debates are intensely boring, I’ve found, whereas a good old fashioned scandal is something we can all get behind. And get behind it we did. Running first at 11.40 pm, CTV’s shocking exclusive on Lamarche’s online rating system for ex-girlfriends, including a category evaluating (gasp!) their sexual performance, ran as their lead story the next morning, and featured a surprised Lamarche confronted on camera with a printout of the now-infamous blog post. That afternoon, it ballooned from a small, local story, carried by a single media property, into a national headline, with Lamarche following along on his smartphone while trying to concentrate on his job as a TD small business banker. I could only imagine the horror of seeing a minor transgression from my online past dragged up and aired out on the national news…or worse, turned into a joke.

I felt for the man, and thought the media’s pounce cheap and opportunistic.

Inside the NPA there were immediate calls to cut Lamarche loose, but by the end of the day the panic had given way to a kind of novelty. You better hope they spell your name right, son, ‘cause that’s more name recognition than all the street signs and our entire advertising budget could get you.

Needless to say, I looked forward to our conversation that night. With plans to meet at English Bay and take Cletus for a walk, I was surprised to find Lamarche’s black lab replaced by his smart and personable girlfriend. I interpreted it as a sign that he was finally opening up to me, and that I might still get that cutting insider’s story I had envisioned. Over dinner the three of us discussed the “attack”, as Lamarche called it, and speculated on its effect: had all that outrage from his opponents actually backfired, giving his campaign a shot in the arm instead? Our boy was loose and glowing, exuding the confidence of a man who’s been fired at without result.

He was in the finest form I’d so far witnessed, and I left the restaurant optimistic about the future of this series.

But on the walk home something about the sudden introduction of the girlfriend began to nag at me. I could put her in the story, she said, so long as I didn’t reveal her name. She even had a nice quote for me: “What was my reaction [to the Date Matrix]? Well, I had already seen it a long time ago – he had showed it to me. You know, it’s this satirical comment, it’s just this witty kinda way of economizing something that’s not normally economized.”

I struggled to imagine Lamarche one day pulling up this lame joke from his internet past and showing it to the missus. And a quote from a female – better yet, his girlfriend – declaring the whole thing to be a harmless joke, played rather well, didn’t it?

Had I just been Hillary Clintoned?

There was little time for reflection – CTV wasn’t done with our boy yet. And this go ‘round their revelations wouldn’t be so easily shrugged aside.

Four years ago, a user by the name of “downtown j” posted a number of crude and childish definitions on the site UrbanDictionary.com. “Downtown j”, CTV claimed, was a name used by Jason Lamarche. What’s more, the “downtown j” on Urban Dictionary wrote that he moved from Ottawa to Vancouver, participated in the Vancouver Zombie Walk, and made numerous mentions of skateboarding. CTV noted the similarities to our boy. The links were indeed curious, but by no means conclusive, and Lamarche immediately denied the connection. But then, shortly thereafter, he came forward with a bizarre claim that he had received an email from a former neighbour who admitted to using his computer and making the posts. Oh, and one more thing: the neighbour refused to talk to the media.

Regardless of whether it was true, the whole thing defied credulity, and Lamarche manned his flimsy barricade against a furious onslaught of media, declaring the whole thing a Vision smear campaign and publicly naming the staffers he deemed responsible.

Then, he disappeared.

Lamarche speaking to reporters at the NPA platform announcement

I waited for him at the West End candidates debate – perhaps the most significant event of his campaign, held in his very own neighbourhood. He had often told me that the West End was key to victory, but he stayed home rather than confront another assault by the media, who turned the NPA platform announcement earlier that day into the Jason Lamarche show.

Next was the NPA’s showcase fundraiser dinner, which he also neglected to attend.

He stopped returning my calls and ignored my text messages. His Twitter account went silent. His Facebook page disappeared. The irony of our boy – the new breed of candidate, the Social Media King – undone by the very device that he claimed as his competitive advantage, was not lost on me. Nor was the significance of his silence.

I plied my contacts, both inside the NPA and out. By all accounts the Lamarche campaign was over, even with nearly two weeks to go. The team I had been introduced to as his core campaigners were no longer at work, and most predicted that Jason would finish last in the party, with one source suggesting anyone finishing below him will have accomplished something very shocking indeed.

When I finally meet Jason again, bathed in the orange glow of the alley lights, Cletus on his leash, the blaze in his eyes, he’s no longer the same human being – a humbled version of the energetic and opinionated young man I met months ago, evidenced by his refusal to cross a quiet sidestreet before the signal has changed, citing his fear that someone might see and report it to the media.

When I make the obligatory demand for an interview with the mystery neighbour it becomes clear that our relationship has now officially soured, and it’s with a strange sense of guilt that I take leave of him.

“If you have anything else, cool. If not, I’m going to go get ready for this debate.”

A week or so later, I coax him into one last telephone call with the following text message: “Dude, I’m not going to slam you with less than a week to go. Help me out here.”

Late on the Sunday night before the elections I ask him how he feels about my coverage.

“I think you wrote a story that wasn’t very well read and then you changed the angle…”

I assure him that my intention was not to generate reads, but rather to offer insight, and I re-state my difficulty in separating the truth from the “truth” in politics. The realization that, after weeks in the trenches, having spoken to dozens of people both on and off the record, after hearing from campaign managers, reputation managers, politicians and staffers, that, when it comes to municipal politics, I still don’t have any idea what’s real and what isn’t.

In response, he relates to me a story about an old friend:

“I had a friend who worked for the government in comms [communications] and he always used to tell me: ‘Dude, you’ve got no message.’” The implication being that Lamarche is precisely as he appears.

And for the first time it occurs to me that, here at the end, there are two possibilities with Jason Lamarche. The first is that he’s been playing me the entire time, that his honest insistence about Puppy Pressers and altruistic politics was nothing more than an economy-sized bag of bullshit. But the second, and perhaps more horrifying, possibility is that maybe Jason Lamarche really did stick to the truth this entire campaign – oblivious to the potential outcome. Maybe he torpedoed his entire campaign with that unbelievable yarn about his neighbour using his computer because it was the truth; maybe he really was totally naïve to the cynicism that a press release about puppies might generate. And maybe I’ve become part of that machine I loathe so much, serving up cruel commentary on a human being guilty of nothing more than a desire to make his city a better place.

I ask him if, in spite of it all, he thinks he’s still got a chance.

“If five of us get in, I’ll think you’ll see me in there,” he says.

And with this, I’m less certain than ever about when I’m being spun.

Lamarche "main streeting" on Granville

As if the t-shirt isn’t enough, the damn dog’s wearing a Lamarche for Council button too. Oh Cletus, you’re less pet than puppet, I think, steering a wide berth around his handlers. The whole scene is enough to make me swear off politics forever, but I fight the urge to cancel this series and soldier on, perhaps vaguely aware that I’m about to witness the stuff of municipal political legend.

The invitation slipped into my inbox innocuously enough:

Hey Matt,

Can you come to this?

I’d been pleading for meaningful engagement for weeks – stuck in the back seat when I had clearly called shotgun – and so took the summons as a positive development. But opening the attachment, I grew despondent once more:

NPA candidate calls for ban of dog sales in pet stores.
Jason Lamarche says ban would protect dogs and combat puppy mills.

Yes, that’s how it all started: the genesis of what I’ll refer to as the notorious Jason Lamarche “Puppy Presser”, a political manoeuvre so daring in its cowardice, so bold in its trifling, that I immediately discounted it as crap. Of course his first press release would be about puppies, I thought. Mine would be too. But what happens if the media perceives it as a blatant publicity stunt, Mr Lamarche? Or worse, what if the voters do?

The armchair strategist inside me was skeptical, but the human being was downright disillusioned – already mourning over what was sure to be an awkward moment when 11am rolled by and not a single news outfit showed up for our rookie’s first ever solo press conference.

Thoroughly expecting a disaster, I’m greeted by a goddamn media circus instead. CTV, Global, Sun Media. Metro. 24 Hours. The Province. And in the middle, our boy Lamarche, mingling nervously, a ream of papers in hand, photogenic mutt Cletus sniffing at the grass beside him. A moment or two of stately handshaking and he leads the dog to their position in front of the cameras.

I begin snapping half-hearted photos, clearly not understanding the gravity of the event.

“Hello everybody, my name is Jason Lamarche, and I want to ban the retail sale of dogs in Vancouver,” he says, plainly. “If elected to City Council on November 19th I will put a motion forward to do so.” His voice trembles slightly.

“This will promote adoption from animal shelters and combat puppy mills. While Vancouver only has a small number of retail stores that sell dogs, this policy… This ban is often a costly program… Wait, let me me rephrase that.”

On this last point he stops and restarts while the press waits dutifully. My mood grows ever more somber. The poor lad, he’s staked his entire political campaign on this – this issue of puppy mills – and each time he stutters in the unforgiving eyes of the television cameras, during what will surely be his first and last press conference, I imagine his popularity sliding and the relevance of this series fading further into oblivion.

Wrapping up his speech, he asks the group if there are any questions.

“Do you know how many pet stores there are in Vancouver that sell dogs?” inquires a reporter with The Province.

“There are a very small number in the city of Vancouver,” he replies. “This ban again is about promoting the adoption of animals through shelters and by combating puppy mills, and breaking the link between puppy mills and retail stores.”

A reporter behind the Sun Media camera pipes up with what I fear to be the death blow:

“Jason, is there any information out of Richmond or Toronto that getting rid of dogs out of pet stores is actually working, in terms of cutting down puppy mills?”

Richmond, we learned during Lamarche’s speech, passed a ban a year ago, with Toronto following suit shortly thereafter.

“Well, for example,” Lamarche replies, “this is about breaking the link between pet shops and puppy mills.”

I die a little inside.

“Clearly, if you prevent the retail sale of dogs at the retail level you’re breaking that link between them,” he continues. “I imagine the puppy mills are still operating but the City of Vancouver or any other city that adopts this bylaw will break that relationship between retail stores and puppy mills.”

I’m baffled. The reporter’s question was thoughtful and specific, but, either through an act of nerves or spectacular cunning, Lamarche skipped it right by, answering a question sure, but not the one that was asked. And this is how it continues for the remainder of the conference: a reporter asks a question and Lamarche replies that he wants to break the link between retail stores and puppy mills.

“Have you talked to any pet store owners that sell dogs in Vancouver?”

“I have not heard from the pet store owners – no one has contacted me about this – but this ban is about promoting adoption from shelters and breaking that link between them and puppy mills. “

“What research has this been based on?”

“This is really about personal passions and issues we connect with. As a dog owner, I’m very concerned about the safety and treatment of animals and now that I’m running for City Council, I’m actually in a position where I can advance a cause I strongly believe in, which is protecting the safety and treatment of animals.”

“And how does this do that?”

“This does that by breaking the link between puppy mills and retail stores…”

Deciding there’s no point in listening further, I turn to the CTV reporter beside me.

“Is it typical for this many people to come out to one of these?” I half-whisper.

“It depends on the issue,” he replies. “He’s picked a good one. Everyone loves dogs.”

“Forgive the pun, but isn’t this a little ‘fluffy’?”

“Oh yeah, it’s soft, but everyone cares about animals. Watch television news.”

“Four legs good?” I ask, repeating the unofficial mantra of the trade.

“Four legs good”, a journalist overhearing our conversation agrees.

By now, the cameras have stopped rolling and Lamarche seems more at ease, talking casually with the gathered reporters.

“They say every politician has a pet project,” he says, “and this one’s mine.”

Everyone groans.

Growing bolder, Lamarche drops to one knee. He adjusts Cletus so that he’s facing the cameras and asks the dog:

“Do you want to ban the sale of dogs in retail stores? Speak if you do. Speak! Speak! Speak if you do!”

The camera operators scramble to get it all in frame.

But the best is yet to come: prodded for some b-roll to stitch together the stories for the evening news, Jason and Cletus find themselves frolicking together in the dog park, running with playful abandon towards the cameras, retreating to their starting point and then doing it again. And again. And again…

To me, the whole thing is a disaster, but it’s elation in the Lamarche camp as we head out for coffee to debrief.

“I honestly didn’t think anyone would show up,” Lamarche says, unable to conceal his glee. “I didn’t think any media was going to show up, and when I got there, there was no one. And then I saw a car from The Province driving around and I was like, ‘The Province, really?’ and then I walked down the street to just go over my notes and kinda collect myself and by the time I got back all these cameras had setup and I was kinda like: ‘uh, interesting.’”

But something about his coyness doesn’t sit right with me. Lamarche is no stranger to video – producing hours of skateboard films and, later on, an online political show called the Liberal Minute (which he’s taken down for the duration of this campaign). The dog, the t-shirt, the running shots – what came across as hokey and contrived in the moment turned into a piece of media magic. Images and video of Lamarche and Cletus mid-frolic make their way onto most of the major TV news outlets, and reach as far as Montreal in print. What’s more, the resulting coverage was overwhelmingly positive and bore little resemblance to the awkward and lumpy press conference I had witnessed. Edited down to tiny soundbites and bounding puppies, our boy came across as confident and polished.

Sitting down for coffee a week later I press him on what I now consider a heroic act of media manipulation:

“Lamarche, of all the things happening in this city – and there are many that we should be excited about – the thing that you decide to go to the public with is dog sales.”

He nods.

“And there’s not even a single store in the city selling dogs.”

“I didn’t know that at the time,” is his quick, if bashful reply. “The information I had, through an editor at a widely-read pet magazine, was that there was actually a pet store still doing it. They had stopped doing it in the spring of this year. So in my mind, this was still going on.”

He leans forward.

“The flip side of that – actually the unintended happy consequence – with no shops selling dogs it’s the perfect time to ban it, because you’re not making any economic impact on any store, and you’re also saying that Vancouver is now going to permanently close that link between retail stores and puppy mills.”

Again with that damn soundbite… And as our conversation continues, me pressing him ever harder, he grows ever more adamant that the issue was chosen not for its saleability, but because it’s something he’s truly passionate about. He’s a co-founder of the West End Dog Show, he reminds me, proudly. Cletus, he points out, is an adopted animal. And when Richmond passed its ban last year, Lamarche created a Facebook page within days of the announcement calling for similar action here in Vancouver.

While I’ll never fully shake my cynical assessment of his motivations, I have to hand it to the boy: on municipal terms the Lamarche team just hit a home run – a triumph by the mundane standards of civic politics, where simple name recognition is the biggest hurdle to overcome. As Vancouverites enter the ballot boxes November 19 and scan a list of hundreds of names they’ve never heard, I can’t help but wonder if their eyes will linger on that box next to Lamarche, Jason.

But if name recognition is the game, then the loathed “Puppy Presser” is nothing compared to the media shit-storm that will be swirling around Jason a few weeks later.

Read Part One

Banner Image: Francois Saikaly

In the parking lot behind the Olympic Village Canada Line station the heavy cameras of the real press – OMNI, CTV, Global, CBC – along with the inky clout of The Province and The Globe and Mail, fan out before a plastic podium, adorned with the red, white and blue of the Non-Partisan Association.

“Check one, two, one-two,” a youngish man from the hired production company clucks into the microphones.

My first ever political press event.

There’s barely time to absorb the scene before a woman in business casual seizes my hand, demands a card and informs me she has “backgrounders” – the printed materials provided for journalists too lazy or deadline-crunched to take notes or ask questions. She works for a “reputation management” company – one of the benefactors of the looming municipal elections.

“I don’t get quoted,” she tells me, but offers her number in case I want to speak to someone who does. Naturally, I sense in her offer more of the vague lies of politics.

Lingering at the back, I feel an outsider among the SUVs and impatience of the paid press, the feigned calm of the milling candidates, and the day-job stares of the production folks. Two dozen humans are present, but not one a full-fledged civilian. They’re left to learn about this on the evening news – this choreographed dance between politics and media, held not in front of the Canada Line station, but behind it, the reason no doubt related to the rusty train tracks laying idle just behind the podium. Yes, the stage is all set for the NPA’s “significant campaign platform announcement”.

But that’s not why I’m here. My reason stands to the right of the podium, hands clasped at his waist, the whole spectacle not yet routine enough for him to put on the air of calm exuded by the veterans. Another tender virgin of municipal politics. The poor bastard, I think. I’ve got him under the microscope, and he’s basically asked me to do it, this council hopeful – our window into the Vancouver civic election.

The intention is not to promote the NPA. Nor Vision Vancouver. Nor is it to undermine them. No, the aim is to provide a raw glimpse into the world of municipal politics by tracking in painstaking detail the journey of a single candidate. I’ve demanded total access. The story will be useless, I’ve explained, unless I’m there when the critical decisions are made and the pivotal battles fought. To his benefit or peril, Jason Lamarche was the first one to say, “all right”.

But that was a week ago (or maybe six), when he seemed excited at the prospect of dedicated coverage. Today I arrive at this “significant campaign platform announcement” uninvited, and filled with an amateur’s uncertainty. The NPA is a formidable political organization, having enjoyed fifteen years of majority rule until their implosion, most recently at the hands of a slick Vision Vancouver campaign fronted by a handsome man named Gregor Robertson. Decimated in 2008, the Non-Partisan Association’s current fundraising and media efforts suggest it’s serious about mounting a comeback, and it’s the only legitimate challenger to the Robertson juggernaut. Who knows how they’ll feel about Lamarche’s decision to let me in.

All that is speculation, but this much is certain: today our boy looks sharp and focused next to the podium. While the rest of the candidates engage in idle chatter, or busy themselves on their smartphones, Lamarche stands alone, having staked out an early claim, hoping to appear on the evening news next to party leader Suzanne Anton. Dressed for the task, he sports a well-cut suit (stripes aligned at every seam) and a thin red tie. Face immaculately shaved, he looks young, in spite of his retreating hairline, and I sense a grin tugging at his cheeks as he notices my presence and the snap of my shutter. As best I can tell, no one else has a dedicated reporter.

And to be fair, not many candidates would allow such a thing, especially by an unknown and cynical liability such as myself. Politicians are notoriously risk-averse. But here’s the thing about our man – the youngest on the NPA ticket, a former sponsored skateboarder, the lone renter, an unknown: somehow he needs to get known. Above the 40,000 votes the NPA will deliver him by party loyalty alone, he needs to drum up an additional 10,000 to 20,000 himself to earn a council seat. It leaves him with the question asked by candidates for the last twenty years in this town: how the hell do you convince 20,000 people to check your name in a ballot box? The vast majority of it comes down to pure name recognition. No doubt I’m a part of that strategy. The pessimist in me understands that, but beyond a calculated act of self-promotion, I can’t help but wonder if Lamarche’s willingness to open up is evidence of his confidence – not in my skills or objectivity, but in his own. Maybe, just maybe, he actually believes in what he has to say, and he believes people will like what they hear, if only he can figure out how to get them to hear it.

An opportunity presents itself: the soundcheck complete, Lamarche finds himself alone in the dead eyes of the TV cameras, and he makes what I interpret as an attempt to win the favour of their operators, in the hope they might pan to him at some future event, or ask his opinion at the next press conference:

“Do you need a white-balance card?” he quips, feigning a Vannah White pose with the imagined prop. No one laughs. With eight weeks until the November 19 elections, these early-campaign announcements are snoozers for the media heavies. (“It’s where they make the promises they’re going to break,” a network cameraman tells me while packing his gear.) Having received the morning press release, editors citywide balanced their resources against the potential payoff of this “significant campaign platform announcement”. Decisions, decisions: what if somebody gets shot?

Oh, wow, striding through the parking lot, assistant at her elbow, mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton is the last to arrive, in true dramatic fashion. Lamarche, taking the lead, begins a slow clap, and he cracks off two or three, right beside the microphones, before realizing no one else has joined in. Greetings are exchanged, hands shaken, before Anton shuffles her papers and settles in front of the podium.

“Today marks the second in a series of announcements that we will be making in the coming weeks that will offer Vancouver voters a positive, common-sense alternative to Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver,” Anton declares, reading from a script so stilted it deserves a second reading.

The newspaper folks begin jotting dutifully in their vertical-flip notebooks, and I wonder vaguely if I’m doing it wrong: recording on my phone for later, and absorbing the quality of Anton’s speech for now. I decide she would make a painful preacher – voice gripped tight in her throat and delivery suggesting an awareness of human intonation but not quite an understanding. The contrived pauses and stresses reach their climax as she delivers the punch line:

“It gives me great pleasure… to announce today, that the NPA is bringing the downtown streetcar back to Vancouver.”

An odd silence befalls her team before they break into applause, and I have the overwhelming sensation of being trapped at a sibling’s high school play. Her speech trods on, stumbling once or twice, but backed by a dozen candidates nodding in unison at anything faintly resembling a point. And suddenly I realize: these are not the calculating pros we’ve all grown cynical of, watching CNN. These are not even the comparatively slick, well-oiled campaigns of Canadian provincial or federal politicians, with their professional script-writers, market research, and illusions of spontaneity. Here in the trenches of municipal politics the vibe is raw to a point that it’s endearing. “Oh, I can’t stay mad at you!” – these are regular people, and it’s about the only thing that makes the whole awkward ballet tolerable.

Our man Lamarche, for example: the skateboarder-turned-small-business-banker. We ride the train home together, me drawing a ticket from the machine, him in possession of a one-zone pass. He holds a shitty red umbrella. We talk about the conference and I ask him about the intimidating effect of the mainstream cameras. “I didn’t know where to look,” he admits, with a modest smile. But he had fun. He enjoyed himself. And he thought the party’s announcement was genuinely important, well-conceived and well-executed. Not everyone agreed.

And once again I’m confronted by the rude question that I’ll be facing for the duration of this series: where is that line between fact and fiction? Where does the choreography end, and the real dance begin? Would he tell me if he thought the announcement was hollow, vapid, manipulative trickery? I size him up, as we stroll down Davie Street, and he pontificates on voter apathy. When I talk he leans in and makes eye contact – a Trudeau trick. When he speaks he does so articulately, and with much movement of the hands.

“You’re a believer in the system,” I finally accuse him.

“Of course,” he claims, and he gestures to the expanse of concrete before us. “This is a road. This is not an accident,” his eyes alight.

“This is a sidewalk,” he says, shifting his gaze to the ground. “This is not an accident.”

He points out the purple hue of the garbage cans and the rainbow banners hanging from the lampposts – symbols of safety and acceptance – all the while shrugging his shoulders at me and holding his palms to the sky, as if to ask, “do you not appreciate how all of this stuff gets done?”

And it occurs to me that I don’t.

At least, not yet.

Read Part Two

Ad posted to Vancouver, BC craigslist > for sale / wanted > bicycles

Ryan looks a young 30 or so, aside from the missing teeth. His face is fresh and kind, bearing none of the open wounds one typically associates with crystal meth. As we walk, his backpack jingles with the occasional sound of metal on metal. “B & E tools,” he explains, matter-of-factly.

Ryan (not his real name) is a professional thief. When his targets aren’t homes or businesses, he steals bicycles.

“No bike’s really safe if it’s on a cable lock,” he tells me.

“If it’s on a cable lock what do you do?”

“Bolt cutters,” he says, without hesitation.

While thieving, Ryan carries the powerful, over-sized scissors hanging from a string beneath his shirt, along with a cordless grinder in his backpack. Prowling the night, he searches for high-value mountain bikes he can sell to a middle-man for a quick profit. If particularly desperate, he says, he’ll steal in broad daylight – leaning forward and slipping the bolt cutters from beneath his shirt. To anyone watching, his hunched figure appears to be unlocking the bike.

As for the grinder, well, there’s nothing subtle about that – the loud, battery-operated tool is reserved for the more robust locking mechanisms, such as high-end u-locks and the thick, squared chains that can’t be cut with bolt cutters that Ryan refers to as “gangster chains”.

“The most high-profile bike I ever did was at the corner of Cambie and Hastings,” he says. “I just looked around all directions – any cops? No cops. And I just start grinding. People pull up at the red light and they’re looking at me, sparks are flying. And the worst is on some u-locks you gotta cut both sides because it won’t turn. It won’t spin around, so you gotta cut both sides.”

“So what’s safe if you have a cordless grinder?” I ask.

“Nothing,” is his frank reply. He tells me that the $200 tool, normally used with gloves and protective eyewear, is capable of cutting through any lock in under five minutes.

“So, because bike theft was your specialty, you went out and invested in a portable grinder?”

“Yeah, and I stole a bike on my way back.”

Ad posted to Vancouver, BC craigslist > for sale / wanted > bicycles

It’s not a stretch to say that bike theft is a problem in Vancouver. According to the VPD, nearly 2,000 bikes were reported stolen last year. That’s one for every 300 Vancouverites. Heck, last May, City Manager Penny Ballem had her bike lifted right off the steps of City Hall. A quick search of Craigslist shows several posts a day pleading for the return of a beloved chariot, or threatening graphic violence for the bastard who took it. So far in 2011, the VPD has received 826 reports of stolen bicycles.

A public index of these bikes is available online at the Canadian Police Information Centre, which suggests that “The public can use this site to help keep their neighbourhoods safe by checking and reporting suspicious vehicles”. Ironically, the database has become a tool for criminals as well. Everyone I talk to is aware of CPIC, and fences – the middle-men who purchase stolen bikes and resell them – use it to determine whether their merchandise has been flagged hot. If so, the bike is broken down into separate components and sold, or built into another “clean” bike; or the serial number is grinded out or painted over.

Asked what kind of machines are most desirable, Ryan tells me that the demand for roadies and hybrids is growing, but he still goes for the expensive mountain bikes. The fad of a few years ago was for shocks and disc brakes. “There used to be a guy around who’d take any bike with good disc brakes. You could call him and within an hour you’d have it sold. He went to jail. They caught him with 185 bikes in a storage unit and a bunch of other shit…”

Ryan is referring to legendary fence Gordon Blackwell, infamous for throwing eggs at a CTV news crew, but also a popular fellow for his Bike Rescue business, which he claimed reunited owners with their stolen bicycles. The business was shut down by police in 2010, followed by Blackwell pleading guilty to 36 counts of possession of stolen property. His website claimed that he scoured the internet looking for deals too good to be true and then attempted to return the bikes to their rightful owners. Anything he couldn’t resolve he sold for himself. In reality, he had an army of thieves like Ryan scouring the city for high-value mountain bikes.

A severed cable lock outside of Vancouver General Hospital

Beyond bolt cutters and cordless grinders, thieves employ a number of techniques to relieve people of their beloved bicycles. Butane canisters are sprayed into cheap, aluminum locking mechanisms, freezing the components so they can be smashed with a hammer. Street signs can be unbolted from the bottom and lifted out of the ground, allowing the thief to carry the bike away and break the lock later. Bike racks themselves are vulnerable to a similar ploy. There’s also much scuttlebutt about the use of hydraulic spreaders, or car jacks, capable of exerting massive force, for popping open even the most stubborn of u-locks.

Faced with such a well-armed and organized foe, the Vancouver cyclist might find themselves wondering what, if anything, can be done. Fret not, brothers and sisters, for there are ways to mitigate the risks: First and foremost, ditch that cable lock – the favourite lock of the bike thief – and pick yourself up a quality u-lock, or chain. Medium risk rating is the absolute minimum, and locks that come with anti-theft guarantees in the form of financial compensation are generally good choices.

Now, go buy another lock. Yes, thwarted the opportunity to steal an entire bike, thieves will settle for the accessories instead. Tires are especially easy to remove and good for a quick buck. A properly secured bicycle will have a strong lock looped through the frame and rear tire, attached to a solid anchor in a public place, with a lesser lock linking the front tire to the frame.

Lastly, take a picture of your bike and record the serial number, typically imprinted on the bottom of the frame. The VPD recovers hundreds of stolen bikes every year, auctioning off the majority because they’re unable to identify the owners.

Completing our loop around the block, Ryan and I arrive at my bike, both tires secured and tethered to a parking meter. I ask him if he could steal it. “Cordless grinder would take that off in a heartbeat” he scoffs, but in the case of my bike he says he wouldn’t do it.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s lots of security around here and that bike’s just not worth it.”

For bike thieves, the game is a balance of risk and reward. All that we can do is attempt to skew that balance in our favour. Only the boldest and most desperate of thieves will risk pulling out a car jack or letting the sparks fly in broad daylight, outside of, say, the library.

I ask Ryan if he thinks my bike would still be here if left overnight.

“I think so, because there’s lots of security, and not a lot of people have a cordless grinder,” he says with a grin.

A bicycle properly secured with a "gangster chain" around the back tire and frame and a u-lock on the front tire.

Mark Brand standing behind the renewed Save-on-Meats

My interview with Mark Brand is interrupted by yet another phone call, only this time the 35-year old Gastown entrepreneur doesn’t return with an apology, he tells me he has to leave – there’s an emergency at one of his stores.

As we pass the statue of Gassy Jack, he explains that someone is harassing his staff at Sharks and Hammers. We pass a cop parked on Water but Brand pays him no mind.

At the storefront the tension surrounds a tall, skinny young man wearing a torn shirt. He has no shoes on but introduces himself as Dimi, careful to point out that it’s not short for Dimitri. He’s fixated on the name of Brand’s clothing line: Welcome to East Van.

“Are you from East Van?” Dimi demands. Brand replies that he is.

“Is the designer from East Van?” he presses, “I want to meet the designer.”

“The designer’s an East Van artist, but he’s not here right now,” Brand says calmly. At about six feet and 200 pounds, he has little to fear. He’s confident and in control, but not at all hostile. Still, Dimi raises his chin:

“You want to hit me?”

“No, I don’t want to hit you,” Brand assures him. “I just want you to leave.”

“What’s that tattoo say?” Dimi asks, pointing to the ink on Brand’s neck.

“Boneta. It’s my mom’s name.”

Dimi steps forward and turns Brand’s collar down, exposing the entirety of his tattoo. That Brand doesn’t flinch seems to earn him some credit, and the situation cools. After a short conference with his staff, we’re on our way back to Boneta, Dimi left tossing a football with one of the locals Brand pays to do odd jobs.

“Do you deal with stuff like that often?” I ask.

“Almost every day,” he tells me.

Despite what the waves of waddling tourists, fawning restaurant reviewers, and hip young urbanites might suggest of Gastown, it’s still contested territory. The low-income community that’s long fought for a dignified home in the Downtown Eastside is suspicious of outsiders, new business, and development in the increasingly tony neighbourhood. Their fear: that all this revitalization will force them out.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Originally a tongue-in-cheek expression, gentrification describes the return of the gentry to the inner city. It has since become a pejorative, implying a capitalist selfishness and social ignorance. In the Downtown Eastside, home to the last stand of low-income housing in the city, its implications are particularly critical. Here, the impacts of rising land values, rents, and goods and services can have disastrous effects on those already living at the end of their means. Indeed, gentrification and homelessness are familiar bedfellows.

Here’s how it works: developers and property owners, seeking to convert land to its most profitable use, meet with a growing middle-class demand for gritty urban living. Exposed bricks and beams, access to waterfront or the downtown core, and the vibe real estate agents refer to as “edgy”, are all highly valued by the new urbanite. Aging properties previously considered unsuitable for upgrade, like those in areas of extreme poverty, grow dollar signs as cultural pathfinders begin to change the character of the neighbourhood, driving up land values and prices. Before long, the low-income residents are priced out. And, if you’re in the Downtown Eastside, the next stop is likely the streets.

Poster in the Downtown Eastside

Brand is a familiar figure on these sidewalks, but strictly speaking, he’s not from East Van. Born in Scotland, he worked as a bartender in Australia before moving to Vancouver, where he built a name for himself mixing cocktails in Crosstown’s legendary Chambar. Anointed Vancouver Magazine’s bartender of the year, Brand set out on his own about four years ago, Gastown his chosen venue.

Boneta, the name of his mother, is also the name of Brand’s first restaurant. Launched four years ago on the doubtful corner of Carrall and Cordova, it’s the first of six businesses he’s opened in the neighbourhood, with the rejuvenated Save-on-Meats the latest. Brand is part of a thriving independent business community that’s transforming Gastown from one of the most depressed areas in the city into its thriving cultural centre.

The line between revitalization and gentrification is blurry and awkward.

Although the influx of new business into the area is seen by many academics and activists as fueling the gentrification of the neighbourhood, Brand is adamant that he hasn’t displaced anyone. Gesturing to the expanse of the Boneta dining room behind us, he explains, “this space was empty and dormant and it was full of rats and pigeons. The Diamond had been dormant for years and there had been nothing but bad memories there for people. Gallery, which was Sharks, was completely dormant and empty and was a squatters’ heaven. The mini mart was dormant and also filled with rats and mice. These were not spaces that were vibrant, community spaces – I didn’t displace InSite – these were places that were empty.”

“I don’t think you can blame the independent businessman for trying to have a go at it and then affecting change. Did we push anybody out of this space? No. Did we take anything else out of here? No.”

Sean Heather seated in his first Gastown enteprise, the Irish Heather

Sean Heather, one of the first of the new wave of businessmen to enter the neighbourhood, shares a similar perspective. At the age of 27, the self-described workaholic, tired of toiling for someone else, decided to strike out on his own. Having worked the register at Benny’s Bagels during its heyday, Kits seemed the obvious place to start:

“It made sense for me to open something in Kitsilano because I could feed off of the energy and who I was,” Heather explains, his Irish accent fading. “I couldn’t afford it. For love nor money I couldn’t make it happen. So in desperation I said to the real estate agent, ‘show me anything,’ and he goes, ‘well anything? Would you go to Gastown?’”

“It was almost within a week of opening my doors I thought, ‘what have I done?’ This was probably the toughest neighbourhood in the country at that time. There were drug dealers outside the front door,” he recalls. “It was a real circle-the-wagons kind of a situation.”

Fifteen years later and the area’s heroin addiction has been replaced with crack, and Heather is now operating eight businesses in the area, including the groundbreaking Salt Tasting Room, with its lonely entrance in the reeking depths of Blood Alley. Guests wander in amongst the used rigs and human feces before sitting down for wine, cheese and charcuterie pairings offered up by young waiters in skinny ties and oxfords. The concept proved an enormous success, winning a $50-thousand first prize from Cadillac Fairview for achievement in a retail concept, third place in enRoute magazine’s top 10 best new restaurants in Canada, and numerous local accolades.

Heather, like Brand, says he’s aware of the issues surrounding business in the neighbourhood:

“I’ve been able to put my hand on my heart – it’s something that I think about before I go in there. This was a Hell’s Angels club that was mothballed,” he explains of the Irish Heather, “Salt was a burned out building. My actions haven’t physically displaced anybody. It’s not even like there was a small mom and pop there and I came in with a higher price. I’m pretty proud of the fact that nothing I’ve done has directly put people out into the street.”

“I feel like I took a chance at coming down here and I feel like a lot of what I’ve done has contributed to make this neighbourhood better,” he adds.

A building being demolished along Pender, its facade preserved. (Photo Credit: Liam Hanham)

Forget for a moment the caricature of the heartless developer evicting hapless tenants to build luxury condos. Or the global chain that outbids the mom and pop for their cherished space in the community. There’s a more subtle change that a neighbourhood like the Downtown Eastside must undergo before developers or chain stores ever consider such actions. Million-dollar condos won’t appear at Main and Hastings overnight; the uncomfortable empirical truth is that the road to caramel machiatos is paved by artists and daring entrepreneurs.

Gastown and the surrounding area is currently home to around 10,000 units of low-income housing – 5,000 rooms in the form of social housing. Funded by the government, social housing is immune to rising land values and rent increases. The remaining units, however, are held in private hands in the area’s notorious single room occupancy hotels. In one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet, the changing character of the neighbourhood, quickly becoming more palatable to the middle class, has created enormous pressure to convert the neglected heritage buildings into lofts, storefronts and condominiums. To curb the relentless demolition while the units were waiting to be replaced by social housing, the City enacted a by-law in 2003 imposing hefty fines for upgrade or conversion of any building designated a critical SRO.

The number of low-income units in the area is now effectively secured; their affordability is not. Rents can increase by inflation plus two percent annually, as is the case with any other rental unit in the city. As the neighbourhood climbs out of poverty, so too do the rents. This is the soft gentrification and slow attrition of the low income residents of the Downtown Eastside.

Heather concedes:

“As a byproduct of me being down here, I guess there are people who have been displaced, and I guess, to a degree, I would feel bad about that, yeah. But am I driving around a Porsche, flying around in a helicopter? I have a lot of business down here – I employ 110 people – but I don’t think I’ve raped and pillaged and brought negative things in. Maybe because I was stupid enough, or had no options, to come down here 15 years ago, I’ve paved the way for people who have less scruples than I feel I have. I don’t know if I can be responsible for that. I think I’ve done the best I can in the best possible way for the neighbourhood, and if it wasn’t me, then it would have been somebody else, and I don’t know that they would have done it the way I’ve done it.”

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

It’s not all doom and gloom, however; the City’s policies, while imperfect, are at least progressive. In the official community plan for the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver has outlined a policy of revitalization without displacement. The aim is to encourage economic development, thereby reversing its decline, while maintaining it as the primary neighbourhood for low income people in the region.

So then, back to Mark Brand and his latest venture, the revitalized Save-on-Meats: After a million-dollar facelift the community institution re-opened Monday, serving up butcher’s cuts and sandwiches on the main floor alongside a classic diner. In the basement: the full distribution centre for SOLEfood, an enterprising non-profit engaged in urban agriculture, providing jobs and training for community residents. (Brand offered them a 24-month abatement period as they seek financial stability.) In the back corner: the East Van Laundry company, which will do linens, chef coats, and wine polishing cloths for local restaurants. Brand says that every aspect will employ a number of at-risk people from the neighbourhood and calls his guiding philosophy “social enterprise reversed”.

“It’s trying to setup businesses that can sustain local residents and people at risk,” he explains, “but they have to sustain first – they have to be businesses that make sense that can then help. If you just come in and constantly do social enterprises, well, funding runs out – and then you’re really crushing dreams. ‘We had 20 employees who thought they could affect change, now I don’t have grants and funding…’ Well if you had a business model that was already operating and making sense…” Brand suggests.

His vision of a vibrant and diverse community is a potent and seductive one, shared by the City. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that in a market-based system, the poor will eventually lose out. Still, Brand’s passion and sincerity offers hope. Beyond employing members of the low-income community, he’s seeking to provide goods and services for the entire neighbourhood, subsidizing a lower tier of meat and sandwiches with higher cost items in the butcher and sandwich shops.

“We’ll be providing a $1.50 breakfast sandwich, $2.00 lunch sandwiches, $2.00 chowders and soup by the cup. That is a break-even product. It’s a loss-leader. I’m not going to make any money on it, which is totally fine, because the people who are buying the other sandwiches that are in there, from corned beef to braised meet, et cetera, those will be on a higher tier.”

“So without saying it, what we’re looking at here is a dignified approach to just providing something. I don’t want to be like, ‘these are for poor people and these are for rich people’, it’s got nothing to do with that, you can come in and buy something that you can afford to buy and you can make that choice with your cash and I can make whatever choice I want with mine. It doesn’t have to be pointed out, it doesn’t have to be at a distribution non-profit centre, it can just be in a business, and you can mingle and hang out with whoever you want.”

Whether the bold plan will succeed remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the entire city is watching.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

]]> http://thedependent.ca/featured/gentrifiers/feed/ 11 http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/events/freddie-rawjis-vancouver-canucks/ http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/events/freddie-rawjis-vancouver-canucks/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:38:06 +0000 Matt Chambers http://thedependent.ca/?p=2265 Granville Street interviews following the Vancouver Canucks’ game 6 loss to the Boston Bruins.

Since 2001, the median house price in Vancouver has increased nearly 200%; the median family income, 30%.

And in 2010, the price of a detached family home in Vancouver eclipsed $1-million.

Here, the insanity that gripped North American housing markets before the 2008 financial meltdown is still alive and well. Fueled by low interest rates, foreign investment, and the belief that Vancouver is fundamentally different, housing prices in the Big Smoke have nearly doubled over the last decade. And even after the market collapse of 2008, which saw housing prices in North America plummet, March prices here have set another new record.

For the generation that frequents this publication, the boom that’s padding our parents’ portfolios leaves us with an uncomfortable legacy: there’s little hope of providing our children with the childhood provided for us. For many, it’s struggle enough to make rent, let alone support a family.

So then, a sentimental question for you: is this the place you’ll raise your kids?

And now, a practical one: will it be a place you can?

“I don’t have a snap answer or a silver bullet, but I think it is the critical question facing the city,” says City Councilor Geoff Meggs. “It’s not just a question of social inclusion – which is sort of a pompous way of saying the city should work for everybody in it, including everybody who works in it – but it’s an economic question, because the current housing prices and market rents are out of reach of precisely the people we need to build the future economy.”

Take the example of Uta Stolben, an on-call librarian at the Vancouver Public Library, and a near-perfect example of the struggle of ordinary Vancouverites. Stolben and her husband, a college professor, live with their two children in a rented townhome in Champlain Heights. A year after they moved in, the strata passed a bylaw forbidding rentals in the complex. For the past five years their existing agreement has been grandfathered, and the owner, who lives out of country, has kept their rent low so as to continue profiting from the property. According to Uta, the cost is the only thing keeping them there – the unit is too small and in poor repair, and they’ve been forced to upgrade appliances at their own expense. Stolben says they would move out if only they could afford it.

They’re living in what the Canadian government refers to as Core Housing Need: the academic term for households whose accommodations are overly crowded, crumbling, or costly. If your bed touches more than two walls, your bathroom sink doubles as a laundry machine, or you spend more than 30% of your income on shelter, you qualify. No need to be sheepish, though, in this town you’re in good company: according to 2006 census data, nearly one in five Vancouver households is living in core need right now. Even educated, double-income families like the Stolbens.

While the numbers paint a grim picture, Vancouver is not alone, and there are lessons to be learned. A phone call to Tim Wake, three-year Whistler municipal councilor and former head of the Whistler Housing Authority, reveals that the resort town a short way up the road experienced a similar crisis over a decade ago, and they’re on their way to fixing it.

“Up until the early 90’s, people like you and me, people who were earning a reasonable wage, could afford to buy a home in Whistler. After ‘95, it was pretty much out of the question,” Wake explains. “Prices went from about $200,000 to $500,000 to over $1 million dollars and more.”

At a time of explosive tourism and service-industry growth, the spike in prices had some unexpected consequences:

“We were at risk of not being able to get enough people to fill all the jobs that we had. We were also at risk of losing all the volunteers and all the great people that make up a community. Even people like doctors, nurses, firefighters and police were having trouble finding a place to live.”

In response, Whistler established a local housing authority and laid out an aggressive plan to house 75% of its workers inside the municipality by 2020. The Whistler Housing Authority was tasked with creating and managing a parallel housing market restricted to residents only, and with overseeing the ingenious program designed to deliver much of it below market rates. 2020 is still a long way out, but so far the program has been a rousing success.

To understand what they did, we must first understand some development basics: plots of land are zoned by cities and municipalities for uses and densities. “Use” indicates the type of building allowed on a property – in downtown Vancouver, we favour mixed-use zoning: retail at the street-level, offices a few stories above, and condos filling out the rest. “Density” dictates how much a site can hold. Translating loosely to height, it’s a major driver of land values – higher densities permit higher buildings, higher revenues, and potentially, higher profits. To ensure the viability of a project, developers create a sort of budget known as a pro forma. Hard costs, like land and construction, along with soft costs, like marketing and architecture, are punched into a financial model and then subtracted from the project’s estimated revenue; another subtraction for profit and voila – an insanely-simplified development pro forma. If it all balances, start building.

And here’s where things get interesting: when a developer arrives at the doorstep of Whistler, the municipality reviews their plans and, if approved, mandates an odd sort of partnership, whereby additional density is granted for the project. But rather than sell the extra units on the open market, the developer is required to sell them to working residents through the Whistler Housing Authority. And since the developer’s pro forma already covers the marketing, architecture, land, and profit for the project, Whistler demands that these additional units be sold at substantially lower prices.

“The concept here is that their margin is generated solely from the market side of the project,” Wake explains. “They’re not giving away the affordable units, they are, in effect, selling them at cost, and that cost is purely the construction cost, because the soft costs are paid for by the market side of the development, and the land is also paid for by the market side of the development.”

It’s an ingenious and effective system for providing middle-income housing.

“When we started doing it in 1997 we had about 2,500 beds of rental housing, and today we have about 6,000 beds of not only rental, but rental and affordable home ownership,” Wake beams.

Whistler isn’t the only local example of a successful middle income housing strategy. The University of British Columbia, surrounded by some of the most expensive neighbourhoods in the city, has long struggled to house its workforce and attendees.

“Largely due to our location – way at the end of the point on the west side of Vancouver – our faculty, staff and students were finding it very difficult to find reasonably priced housing within a reasonable commute distance,” explains Nancy Knight, VP of Finance, Resources & Operations at UBC.

As a result, UBC has taken on the role of developer, building non-market units on campus for staff, students, and their families. Over the last twenty years, UBC has become one of the largest developers of purpose-built rentals in British Columbia. And their reasons go beyond pure economics:

“We had a lot of pressure from adjacent neighbourhoods about traffic going back and forth to campus every day. We also had concerns about the environmental impacts of all that commuting in terms of emissions and greenhouse gases,” Knight explains.

On-campus housing is all part of UBC’s plan to build a unique, vibrant and sustainable university community. To understand how they’re building it, we’re back to the concept of the pro forma and the function of land values: In development, land represents a significant portion of the cost of a project, and UBC is blessed with lots of it. The Vancouver campus covers about 1,000 acres, 200 of which have been set aside for neighbourhood development.

“Because we own the land we’re building the rental housing on,” Knight explains, “in the pro forma we’ve not required a return to the land, and so that allows us to provide it at a lower cost to our faculty staff that would like to live on campus and rent.”

The City of Vancouver has explored similar options. The original False Creek development in the 1970’s saw condominiums built on city-owned property and sold at below-market prices. Vancouver owns a number of properties throughout the city, on which more units could be built in a similar manner.

Councilor Geoff Meggs, who lives in the Southwest False Creek development, sees this type of leasehold arrangement as one of the many possibilities for building what he terms “modest market” housing in the City of Vancouver.

“If we want people to live closer to work, reduce their requirements for automobiles, and make the maximum use of public transit in a cost-effective way, we don’t want to force everybody who makes the wheels turn to commute that long distance,” Meggs says.

“The people that I’m talking about, they’re not looking for a subsidy – they’re working hard – they just want home ownership or stable rental so they can get on with their lives, and the market at the moment is not able to deliver that to them.”

According to Meggs, it’s a valid policy decision for City Council to mandate the creation of more inclusive housing in the city.

“I think there are various ways we could reduce the costs of it. How we do it is exactly what needs to be debated,” Meggs says.

“We really need to ransack the toolbox and see what might work.”

Fourth in a four part series on drug dealing in the Downtown Eastside.

Part One: Introductions
Part Two: The System
Part Three: The Violence

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

IT’S BEEN THREE months now, and the alley entrance seems a safe and familiar place.

Good morning.

How’s the article coming?

So easy to forget the weeks of sweaty palms and alley darkness that preceded my acceptance. Now, standing in the midst of the crews operating “out back”, I’m comfortable. I’ve learned the system. I know the numbers, measurements, and slang. I’ve heard the justifications for the violence.

And these are the things that I describe to friends and family curious about the story. They listen intently, nodding as I speak but waiting to ask the inevitable question:

Who are these people?

I’ve spent enough time at their side to have a sense. We’ve shared meals, jokes, and inconveniences. I’ve been witness to their daily life, their changes in mood, their reactions to successes and failures.

The temptation is for broad and sweeping conclusions:

They’re idiots, for example.

But if the reasons behind a person’s entrance into addiction are varied and complicated, so too are the reasons for a person’s entrance into the drug trade. For every beast I encounter committing heinous acts of violence or exploitation, I hear a human tale, too.

How much of it to believe?

THREADS IS SEVENTEEN years old, part of the next generation of hopeful and ignorant kids who will either wind up in jail, fight their way to a mid-level position or drop out for a tenuous shot at a legitimate life. Addicted to Percocets and constantly under intense pressure, Threads is unpredictable. Violent. Scary.

This guy’s a fucking narc, he declared one day upon my arrival. Royal and the others ignored him but he wasn’t prepared to let the allegation slide.

If they take me down I’m coming for you, he said, pointing a finger to my chest.

A week later and he’s my best friend, vouching for the photographer and me so we can get pictures of a worker holding drugs.

While the more senior dealers come and go, Threads is a permanent fixture. He works twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and on a quiet morning at the alley entrance I venture to ask him and his partner if they like what they do.

You think I like standing here in this piss-smelling alley dealing with these fucking people all day? he scoffs.

Then why are you here?

He tells me that he dropped out of school.

I’d get stuck on a math problem and I’d get so angry that I’d just walk out, Threads says, spitting.

Seventeen years old, no high school education, an inevitable criminal record — Threads’ options seem limited indeed.

We’re fuck-ups, his partner says, chuckling. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

TEFLON, BY CONTRAST, is neatly groomed and well-dressed. I encounter him only once as he crosses the street, coffee and iPhone in hand, to help a young addict with a head full of grey hair who has collapsed to the sidewalk nearby. The addict struggles to his feet, tugging at his chest and steadying himself against one of the parking poles, but his legs tremble and he’s forced to sit back down.

He fell down over there, too, Teflon tells me as he dials 911.

For twenty minutes we make small talk with the man, trying to keep him calm and conscious. No ambulance arrives. A nearby merchant brings a cup of water and the man makes his way to wobbly feet.

As he wanders away I’m confronted by the need to reconcile the violence and exploitation I’ve witnessed with the dealers as individuals. How does this young man, his coffee, clothes, and iPhone paid for by the misery of people like the man he just helped, show compassion one moment and opportunistic indifference the next?

I hand him a card.

You seem like a sensible guy, I say, explaining my purpose.

He turns it over and I ask him the best question I can think of:

Why are you here?

He considers it for a moment.

It’s not like I moved to Canada thinking I was going to be a drug dealer, he tells me. I know this is wrong.

He says that he immigrated from Iran three years ago.

I have four years’ university education towards becoming an engineer. I tried to apply to school and they said my credits were worth nothing — I would have to start from scratch. So I started a business instead, but it went bankrupt and I owed a bunch of money to my family. My auntie lent me 22k. The bank, you can just walk away from, but you can’t do that with your aunt. So I worked a few jobs — plumber, warehouse, coffee shops — none of it could pay my bills. I realized that if I kept working like that I was going to be paying my debts for the rest of my life.

Do you ever feel guilty?

Yeah, I did for the first, like, six or seven months. Then I stopped.

Why?

These people are making choices, right? It’s their choice to be here and do this — I’m not forcing them.

He pauses.

When I first started I tried to help these two people. They were fresh down here — a guy and a girl — and I said, ‘You don’t want to be down here. This isn’t the lifestyle for you,’ and I put them up in an apartment in Burnaby.

He sighs.

But four months later they were down here again.

THE LATINOS ARE slowest to warm to me. The Icy Dealer and his crew out front finally open up when I tell them that I’m interested in their perspective.

It’s good that you’re doing this, he tells me.

We’re not bad people, a shorter dealer says. We’ve just run out of options.

I ask them why they got involved and the short one says that he moved here and tried to get into school but couldn’t because he wasn’t a citizen. He tried to find work, he says. He felt roadblocks going up all around him, and then his mother got sick.

And back home, it’s not like here — you just go to the hospital. If you don’t have money back home, you die.

All of them say they’re sending money back to their families, but they ask me not to say which country.

Were you involved in the drug trade back home? I ask.

No man. I didn’t know anything about this until I got here, the short one says.

What did you do back home?

I had gone to university for one year. I wanted to be a lawyer. I consider myself an educated person. I think I could do anything I wanted, but no one will give me a chance. If I could get a job for $15 or $18 an hour I’d take it; I’d take it for sure. I’ve tried so many things. Counting them off on his fingers, he lists: dish washing, gardening, removing asbestos, one year working on an apprenticeship as an auto mechanic. But I need to pay the bills. If someone said to me, okay, we’ll send you to school and we’ll support you while you do it, I would do it. But no one is going to do that for me. I need to support my family back home, survive, pay my rent.

Do you make better money than if you were working a regular job?

Of course.

Are you getting rich?

He laughs.

No man. If we were getting rich I’d be at home sitting in my house drinking a beer at the beach enjoying my life. Do you think I want to be out here worried about the police? Dealing with these people? Standing in the rain? No one out here is getting rich. We’re at the bottom of it all, man. We’re the lowest in the chain. Below us it’s just the workers. Maybe the guys at the top — the politicians, the guys in buildings wearing the ties — maybe they’re getting rich, but not us, man.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

I STAND NEAR the alley entrance with Playboy and his partner, Shox.

How long have you been dealing? I ask.

Not very long, he says. He claims he’s going back to school.

It’s just a summertime thing, he adds.

I’m tempted to mention that it’s already November.

Do you ever feel bad? I ask him, instead.

Of course, man, he says. I’m human. I feel human things. I feel terrible. But these people, these people who have been doing this for 10 years already, they’ve made their choice. If they want to do it they can. But when I see someone new, like this guy… and he motions to a young man dressed in crisp clothes I had assumed was a dealer.

Go home, bro, Playboy tells him. Go home. This is not the life for you.

Only now do I notice the man’s wide eyes and shifting feet. He cowers at Playboy’s address, then walks across the street, driving off in a brand new Acura.

A few weeks later, we’ll sit in a diner as Playboy shovels runny eggs into his mouth with scraps of toast. We’ll talk about soccer and girls and food, and he’ll tell me that he wants to live a simple life. He doesn’t want to be rich, he just wants a nice wife and three kids. Two boys and a girl.

Canada is a great country, Playboy will tell me. A multi-ethnic country. A tolerant country. I hate the religious extremists at home. I can’t go back to my country.

Why not?

Because they’ll see my tattoos and they’ll say I’m a non-Muslim and they’ll slit my throat.

It’s the last time I’ll see Playboy. It’s one of the last times I’ll lock my bike up and wander over to the alley entrance, wondering at what madness I’ll encounter today. Shortly thereafter, I’ll begin the task of sorting through my unwieldy tangle of notes and building the story, all the while contemplating the contents of this paragraph right here. Dreams of insights so sharp they’ll split the thing wide open. Bold, declarative statements, that wrap the story whole. But there will be nothing sufficiently satisfying, and I’ll opt instead to hope that the information I’ve presented will be enough for the readers to draw their own conclusions.

For now, though, it’s just Playboy, Shox and me; and the alley; and the man in the Acura. He’s returned, having circled the block, and this time, instead of sending him away, Playboy directs him to a nearby worker.

I ask him why he decided to sell the man something and he shrugs.

If I didn’t, someone else would.

Photo Credit: Matt Chambers

Third in a four part series on drug dealing in the Downtown Eastside.

Part One: Introductions
Part Two: The System

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Why the fuck do you want to write about this piece of shit, anyway? Threads demands. This place is fucking gay.

He begins pacing, muttering something about his worker taking off.

These people are like fucking ghosts, he says. They’re right there, then you turn around and they’re gone, bro.

He spits.

Gonna start stabbing people, he declares, fire in his eyes. And not that pussy three inch blade either — the fucking seven inch’er. Get right in there.

Do you carry a knife? I ask him, not sure if he’s serious.

No, but I’ll grab one from one of the workers and get busy, bro.

A week earlier a young woman by the name of Ashley Machiskinic fell to her death from a fifth-storey window. Community leaders are adamant that she was killed over drug debts. Standing on the corner I hear a lot about money owed. The talk isn’t of dope-sick addicts running tabs $10 too high — addicts don’t get tabs — it’s about those with sufficient credit to get themselves into real trouble: the workers, holders, and dealers.

Threads is near the bottom of the chain. He fronts borrowed drugs to addicts who then sell it and pay him back, smoking or pocketing a small profit for their trouble.

It’s a world of deep credit but shallow trust; and while the workers insulate the dealers from the law, the problem with giving $100 worth of crack to a crack head and telling him to go sell it should be obvious to anyone…

I ask a young woman — the only female dealer I’ve met — how she handles the problem.

It’s all about who you pick, she says, referring to worker selection. If you pick a crack head, they’re always going to lose a lot of it. Oh, you lost it? Yeah, right. How do you lose a gram of crack? You lost it in your pipe, that’s where. It’s better to get alcoholics, because there’s no temptation and you just pay them in booze.

Borrowing drugs $1,300 at a time, the junior dealers are gambling with every half-ball they distribute; every worker that “takes off” pushes them $100 further from settling their own debts. There are no courts to mediate, no cops to call, and the obligations are heavy.

At the Latino corner I approach an icy dealer and his crew, who have been slow to warm to me:

If they’re addicts, and you’ve got them handling all this money and drugs, do you think they’re ever tempted to take off with it?

Temptation every day, a shorter dealer tells me. Temptation every day…

So how do you deal with that?

We just let it go, says another.

We see them two weeks later but we don’t do anything, explains the Icy Dealer. What are we going to do, beat someone up for it? You can’t blame them for taking it — it’s a part of doing business. Sometimes we lose $1,500 and we don’t do anything.

The others nod their heads in agreement.

Some people will beat them up though, admits the short one, and he raises an eyebrow in the direction I came.

Like that girl who got thrown out the window, adds the other.

But the violence is not good, the Icy Dealer says. If we beat someone up and everyone’s saying ‘oh, she owed those Spanish guys money,’ then the cops are going to come for us. Like, they know who we are, they know who all of us are. If they chose to come get us, they could. They can make us a priority.

It’s tempting to believe him. And having spent so much time in their company — believing myself safe in their presence — I find it hard to believe that any of the people I’ve spoken with could be responsible for the awful kinds of violence that make headlines in this city. Still, if I accept everything they tell me as truth then there’s no violence in the drug trade, and there’s no heroin being sold in the Downtown Eastside, either.

I’ve stood at the Icy Dealer’s side and watched him send heroin addicts to his worker, yet he denies it to my face.

And though no one is keen to talk about it, I’m beginning to understand that physical violence, or at least its threat, is a lynchpin of the system.

When I confront him on this, the Icy Dealer simply responds: The cops don’t like it.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Two weeks later: I come around the corner and spot two Middle-Eastern dealers who find a novelty in my presence: Playboy and Shox. They’re speaking Farsi to a short man in a green baseball cap, and as I approach I realize that the tone is menacing. Playboy hisses something at the man and then breaks into English:

I don’t even want to look at you. Go stand in the alley for five minutes while I think of what to do with you.

The man wanders into the alley and settles against a wall.

If he wasn’t one of my countrymen, Playboy tells me, I would beat him up. If he was Black or Spanish, I would beat him up, he snarls. I try to help him out and this is what he does to me…

What did he do?

He came up short, Shox says, meaning that they didn’t receive the expected amount for the half-ball.

And what does he say?

Always excuses: Oh, I got robbed, or the cops picked me up.

Count it again, Playboy says between pulls from his cigarette.

Shox thumbs through a small stack of bills and coins. Thirty-five, he says — well short of the expected seventy.

Playboy paces, slowly dragging on his smoke, before finally calling the man over. He shuffles forward, eyes to the ground and hat in his hand as Playboy and Shox move close, speaking just inches from his face. A knot pulls tight in my stomach as Playboy draws a hand behind his back and clenches it into a fist. Another dealer, watching from a few feet away, slips on a pair of black gloves.

Images of addicts with lips like purple balloons and black eyes bulging shut. The blood spatters at the alley entrance that day we were taking pictures…

I consider what would happen if I asked them to stop, but just as the moment seems about to snap Playboy steps away and orders the man against the wall. He paces, says something I don’t understand and then flicks his cigarette in the man’s face.

Get the fuck out of here, he snarls, and the man scurries off.

Composing himself, Playboy turns to me:

I wasn’t going to hurt him, he says, I’ve just got to scare him. What can I do? Stand out here and look like a clown? You can’t let these people climb on top of you.

A week before, I overheard Shox talking about the problems they were having with a well-known worker:

…so Playboy and I took her into the alley and we were working her over and she was all screaming and crying…

Really? the other dealer asked. She’s one of my best workers. I use her every morning…

She kept coming up short. She owed the whole crew money. She owed me $40, Playboy $65. And so yesterday I’m walking down the alley and she jumps out from behind one of the dumpsters screaming that she’s gonna slit my throat!

He laughs.

So I grab her and throw her against the wall, and I’ve got her like this and I’m just about to beat the shit out of her when some big construction worker tells me to stop or he’s gonna call the cops. Man, I wish he wasn’t there. I want to beat up a girl, man.

It’s the first time that I hear any of the dealers admit to beating up a worker, but the venerable Threads is not to be outdone by Shox’s account:

Check these out, bro, he says, handing me a pair of black gloves with metal plates riveted to the knuckles. Motorcycle gloves, he explains with a nod.

What are they for?

Protect your hands, plus they fucking hurt like hell. You shoulda seen this guy knock this fucking dude out, standing right here. Come up beside him and just ‘pow’ and the guy goes fucking down, bro. Those gloves.

I pass them back.

Do you always hold them?

Keep them in the shop, he says, motioning to a storefront nearby.

And the owner lets you?

Yeah, bro, I buy tons of shit in there so he helps me out. I just tell him, ‘hold these for me,’ and I grab them whenever I need them. Hey, check these out, he says, passing them to a tall dealer in a dark hoodie.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Do you want to get breakfast? Playboy asks me.

Sure.

The two of them seem to take a liking to me. We talk about girls. We talk about religion. We talk about the magazine, and finally we talk about the violence.

The media makes it seem like a big problem, they tell me, but it’s not.

I realize this may be a dumb thing for me to say, but the other day I heard you talking about beating someone up in the alley. Do you ever beat people up?

Never.

I nod.

What about the guy today? Would you have beat him up if I wasn’t there?

Nah, bro.

The conversation cools and Playboy turns his attention to his iPhone, starting a game of online poker.

We sit in silence.

People are interested in it, I tell them. I’m not judging, but it’s my job to ask. According to everyone I speak to, no one sells heroin and no one beats up workers. I’m just looking for the truth. Have you ever beaten up a worker?

Nah, bro, Playboy says, never looking up from his phone.

What’s the point? Shox asks.

Look, I’m not stupid, I tell them.

Playboy looks up from his phone.

Pretend you were on this side and I was on your side and I asked you that question, what would you say?

I think about it.

Depends how much I trusted you and depends on how I wanted the story told.

Exactly, bro.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Read Part Four.

Second in a four part series on drug dealing in the Downtown Eastside.

Read part one.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

I return almost daily — learning the intricacies of the cop/dealer/ID dance, witnessing the alley’s welfare day transformation from ant colony to hornet’s nest, and identifying the loose schedules followed by the crews who station themselves “out back”.

My guys are the morning crew, and with them my presence is tolerated but not quite trusted. Dealers, unintroduced, stop mid-sentence to demand: who the fuck is this guy? They remain silent, eyes fixed on me, until Royal confirms that I’m “cool.”

By walking around with you, I’m vouching for you, he explains. They’d never let you stand here.

I ask him why he bothers talking to me at all, and I get a cold shrug in reply.

You’re not gonna decide that I know too much and kick the shit out of me one day, are you?

It’s the first time I’ve made him laugh.

Nah man, I’m not telling you anything the cops don’t already know.

The truth is, Royal hardly tells me anything. Instead, he tolerates my presence, often as if I’m not even there. Peering over his shoulder I build the foundations of my understanding, and armed with a few new words and some borrowed credibility I set out to learn more.

A short girl with no eyebrows marches over to the dealer beside me. They walk down the alley, talking quietly. I recognize the girl as a worker: a carrier of a small amount of drugs but a large amount of risk.

She has been fronted a half-ball, a hunk of crack worth about $100, which she breaks up with a razor blade and sells in the alley alcoves. She has come to give the dealer his proceeds of the sale, usually about $75, and is then free to sell or smoke the rest.

I step over to Grin, who stands away from the group, leaning against a building.

The workers are all addicts, right?

Yeah.

Can you use any worker you want?

Some of them are exclusive, like they got one main boss and they’ll only work for him. But others will work for anybody, you know?

As if to illustrate the point, a few minutes later he’s arguing with another dealer over the rights to a sheepish looking man in a filthy white tracksuit. Overruled, Grin settles against a telephone pole, and I’m reminded of a conversation over lunch with Royal and another senior dealer:

What would happen if I tried to start selling out back?

And you didn’t know us? It wouldn’t happen.

We wouldn’t even have to touch you, we’d just tell all the workers to give us your stuff.

And what if I did know you?

Well, you pick up off somebody and they let you in, and then you just gotta keep selling their stuff.

See, you think all those guys are bosses, but they’re not — they’re workers, Royal reveals.

Grin, along with most of the other young men out here, is only a couple of notches from the bottom. A boss fronts him a zip (the street term for an ounce of cocaine), which cooks down to about 30 half-balls. Grin pays $1,300 for the zip, due once it’s been sold. His aim is to move one a day, which clears him almost a thousand dollars, but there are plenty of obstacles — not least of all, finding workers.

How come you’re always out in the morning? I ask him. Are there shifts?

There’s no shifts; we all get to choose, you know? But if you come too late, then the workers are all tied up.

The addicts who take care of the actual sale of drugs are a hotly-contested commodity, the senior dealers laying claim to the most experienced and trustworthy. Those with a long history on the streets know the most addicts and can therefore push the most product. They’re also less likely to take off with the drugs.

As workers return, seeking their next package, the dealers whisper instructions for reloading in their ear. But if the workers are hotly-contested, the most cherished are those known as the Holders. The ghostly layer between dealers and workers is the most vulnerable part of the system, and exactly what they do is one of the few subjects still taboo in my presence.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

At the alley entrance a cop car sits, engine running, two wheels on the sidewalk. I cross the street to make a lap around the block and notice a young man with a coffee and an iPhone in hand. He rests his cup on a parking divider, pulls a wad of bills from his pocket and counts it, then does the same with a pile of coins.

Is it busier on sunny days? I ask.

He looks up, startled. A little busier on sunny days, yeah.

But busiest near the end of the month, right? I say, referring to the government checks that set the alleys ablaze.

He seems puzzled.

Last week of the month, yeah.

When I explain that I’m writing an article and ask him if he’s willing to talk he hesitates, chews at his lip, then steps over.

Is it good money?

It used to be way better. You could make over $1,000 a day. Not anymore: 300, maybe 400 a day. If you work it out it’s like $25 an hour. Too much competition. So many dealers down here now.

What about the police? Have they made it tougher?

No, he says emphatically, they let us do it. If they wanted to stop me they could, just like that, and he snaps his fingers. I had some problems with the police a couple of years ago and in like two weeks they gathered up all the evidence they needed. They got everything on me. They can do it anytime they want, but they don’t.

Are you ever holding anything that could get you in trouble?

I hold no money. I never hold drugs. Well, I hold a little bit of money, but not much. You find a guy who will hold for you and you find a worker. The worker goes out, sells, comes back, hands the holder the money, and reloads.

How much does the holder have?

Depends.

More than the workers?

Oh yeah.

And he’s an addict?

Yep.

I pause, putting it all together.

You must trust him to leave him with so much.

We get burned. The guys get pinched by the cops or they take off. But you just gotta treat ‘em right. Some people treat them like shit and get burned. You pay him well, buy him cigarettes and food and give him something to smoke. He’s got everything he needs and he’s not stupid, he sticks around. Why would he throw it all away?

The dealer tells me he’s got to get back to work and I continue on my loop around the block. My sunny day opener breaks the icy stare of a Latino dealer I’ve tried to talk to twice before.

When I explain that my story is from the perspective of the dealers, the rest of his crew gathers around. I’m keen to hear whether the Latinos out front operate in the same way as the crews out back, but before we have a chance to talk a toothless man cries out, two coming down! a chorus that is repeated all the way down the block.

The dealers tell me that they’ll be right back as two cops come over the hill with a wave of street folk cresting in front them. Arms puffed out to accommodate their guns and radios, the sidewalk is empty in their wake, but within a few minutes everyone is back, dealers included.

Gaunt, weathered faces shuffle towards us and request powder (cocaine), base (crack), or down (heroin). The dealers motion them to a tall man with a creased face and sunken cheeks standing in the middle of a lurching crowd of tokers.

Grin was right: with the Latinos there’s more on display than out back — their worker is stationed within plain sight.

I ask the icy dealer to clarify my understanding of the system.

There are three levels: the worker, who is an addict and who actually sells the product… He nods. The holder, who is also an addict, but trusted, and holds all the product and money and resupplies the workers… And the boss, who doesn’t touch anything, but just supervises.

Yep, he says, and I’m about to ask him about the temptation of the workers and holders, but we’re interrupted once again by a cry of ‘three coming down!’ On the horizon a trio of broad figures lumbers towards us.

We walk.

They know what you’re doing, right? I ask.

Yeah.

So, why do you bother moving?

Out of respect, he says. We get out of their way to show that we know who they are. Some guys just stand there, but we move.

Suddenly he stops.

Alright, man, he says, bumping my fist. And he’s gone.

Around the corner I spot Royal and a senior dealer standing with a fresh-faced guy I’ve never seen before. He’s being educated on the system.

It’s like any other business, the senior man explains, you gotta know where your inventory is at all times. He looks over at me: right, man?

I nod, not sure that it’s the right thing to do. As I do so, though, I realize that my understanding of this system is nearly complete.

Two tiers of addicts, whom the courts view as sick and exploited rather than criminal, insulate the dealers from the law and allow them to stand openly on the street corners. But while the workers and holders provide resilience to the system, they seem a likely weakness as well — I wonder how much product is lost in their pipes and arms.

Could this be the source of the fabled violence of the Downtown Eastside drug trade? I make it my aim to find out.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

Centered around the ARC, Mergatroid and Parker Street buildings, the event showcases local paintings, sculptures, pottery, jewelery, and most everything between. But perhaps more important than an opportunity to soak in the city’s artwork is the chance, for those of us who will never receive an invite to a private gallery opening, to meet the artists themselves.

“You sit in your studio all year making the work on your own and it’s really nice to talk to people and see what they respond to. I don’t meet the people in the gallery,” explains Eve Leader, longtime Parker resident and Crawl veteran. “Here, I actually talk to people and receive feedback. I like that communication; and if I like the person a lot I’m so pleased that they’ve chosen my work. I get to see who’s responded to it, and sometimes you’re so heartened by who responds.”

When folks respond strongly, Leader is able to do something at the Crawl that she’s not typically able to: “If I see someone who really loves the work I make a plan so that they can buy it. Some people have paid me over two years. So, it gives me that opportunity, too, to make it possible, and I don’t have that opportunity in the gallery.”

Eve Leader

Working in oil paint and graphite on mylar drafting film, Leader creates haunting images of the human form adrift in abstract landscapes.

“This is work that is mainly to do with interior states,” she says. Speaking of her tendency towards unidentifiable places, Leader explains, “If you ask me why I don’t want to reference the world, it’s a strong impulse in me not to because then I can make it in this psychological place rather than grounded in the world.”

A short way down the creaking hall finds Marie Doris Valois prepping her studio. A resident of Quebec until two years ago, Valois came to Vancouver to paint far from the demands of daily life. On display this year will be her series titled On the Road, inspired by her cross-country drive to B.C.

“When my partner drives I draw, but the landscape is changing all the time,” she explains in her accented English, “so it’s nice to practice ‘direct perception’. We don’t name it. I don’t name the tree or the mountain – I have no time – it’s just the feeling.

“I tried to keep this when I arrived – to feel this direct perception. So, if I have an idea to do something, I sit, I meditate and when my mind is empty I can go and have the feeling of freedom and play and have fun.”

Marie Doris Valois

Robin Ripley is a retired librarian turned visual artist. For her, the Crawl is foremost an opportunity to show her work.

“I don’t mind that they meet me afterwards, but I like them to encounter the work without me present. Here, it’s so crowded and people don’t always know who the artist is; and I don’t really say, ‘Hello. Welcome to my studio.’ I really think that people need to explore the work without that kind of interaction.”

Ripley is displaying selections from her series Threnody, which features leaves mended with fabric.

“Obviously it’s about environmental issues,” she says, “but it’s also about paying attention to details. By altering the leaf it makes people look at it more closely. I realized that I saw all these trees all the time and yet I didn’t know anything about them. I ended up reading and learning a lot in the process. For me, as an artist, part of making art is that you’re exploring ideas yourself.”

Robin Ripley

Noel Hodnett, proprietor of Hodnett Fine Art, has spent considerable energy transforming part of his space into a gallery setting. Hodnett Fine Art exists almost exclusively to promote his own work, he admits, because he finds the actual gallery experience too constrictive.

“Each painting, for me, is a separate kind of journey of discovery. Gallerists and curators don’t like that because they want to see a body of work that is ‘together’; and I find it extremely difficult to consciously paint a series of paintings. I get bored. I allow the marks on the painting – the initial marks on the painting – to dictate a direction.”

Noel Hodnett

Hodnett, whose paintings sell for upwards of $15,000, creates striking and vibrant landscapes pushed to the point of abstraction. On display this year is a collection dealing with the raw power and timeless qualities of barren earth.

“I’ve participated in the crawl most years, and the reason is that first of all it gives me an end point to work towards. The closer the deadline the more desperate one becomes, and because of the deadline you throw this horrible perfectionism that one would want to strive for out the window, which is a very good thing for me.”

Noel Hodnett

Carla Tak, who paints full-time at Parker Street, also uses the Crawl to impose deadlines and transform her workspace into a gallery of her creation.

“The Crawl allows you to turn your own studio into a gallery and put what you want up and display what you want.

“I tend to sell more [by] word-of-mouth than in galleries because I don’t do big bodies of work, and I’m very impulsive and I don’t want someone to say, oh that’s not selling so you can’t do that. I know I’d get sucked into that because I love to make money and I’m fearful that I’d lose myself in the acclaim of being in this gallery or that gallery.

Carla Tak

“But I’ll leave this up,” she says, motioning to the tack board covered in sketches and inspirations. “Normally, I put a very large painting here but I’ll probably leave my board up to give people a sense of ‘me’.”

That sense of ‘me’ is the distinguishing factor of The Crawl, where the chance to connect with a piece of art and the person who made it is provided to the general public for one brief and glorious weekend of the year. Don’t miss it.

Carla Tak

For more information check out the Eastside Culture Crawl.

First in a four part series.

FROM A BENCH at the corner of Carrall and Hastings I watch as the street dealers ply their trade. Standing in clusters, they’re easy to pick out: Hooded sweatshirts and neck tattoos. Hats with flat brims and holograms indicating authenticity still inside. They lean against buildings and parking meters, one leg up and bent at the knee – stones in a stream of sunken faces and shuffling feet.

I warily approach four men at an alley entrance. Their necks are thick and they wear Nike runners, sweatpants, and graphic print tees. We exchange nods and I launch into my well-worn spiel:

I’m writing a story about the street-level drug trade. I’m not trying to fuck with anybody; I just want to understand it from the perspective of the dealers.

This is the tense part. I’ve canvassed these streets for over three weeks and I’ve yet to encounter anyone willing to talk. The responses range from feigning hearing loss to outright hostility.

There are certainly less nervy ways to write this story: an interview with the VPD, a chat with a director at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, an appointment with the friendly folks at InSite. It would be an account of addiction, gangs, violence, and exploitation. It would be an accurate portrait of the Hastings drug trade, but it would be absent the elusive voices of those most involved, and my aim – for good or ill – is to write it in the words of the dealers themselves.

They scrutinize the business cards, pondering my proposition.

Our time’s a hundred bucks an hour, the big man says, and they all laugh.

I’m not allowed to pay.

Well, I’m not allowed to talk.

Just as I’m about to accept this as another defeat, a cop car wheels into the alley behind us, window down. The driver bids a sarcastic hello and calls over a young dealer by name, demanding his driver’s license. Scanning the remaining faces, the cop then raises a finger and unwittingly propels me into the world of the Hastings drug trade.

Did you know you’re associating with the biggest drug dealers in the Downtown East Side? he asks. The group laughs and the cop shoots them a dirty look.

They’ve wondered at my recent presence down here. A business card, coupled with the computer’s output, satisfies their curiosity. They note that the young dealer is “moving up in the world” and implore me to be careful, then disappear down the alley.

They do that to you whenever they want? I ask as we walk back to the group.

Yep.

How many times a day?

Couple.

And they know everything?

Yep.

But they can’t do anything…

Nope.

THE YOUNG DEALER melts back into the circle, which has grown by two in the familiar uniform. I linger tentatively, waiting for a break in conversation, feeling the police have provided me an unlikely in: for a moment I was treated like a dealer, and the officer’s plain talk has eliminated the need for the group to deny their purpose on these streets.

Do you mind if I hang out for a bit? I ask.

All eyes defer the question to the big man I’ll call Royal. He nods thoughtfully, hands in the pockets of a black graphic print track suit.

All right, he says, his speech slow and careless and exuding a quiet authority. What did they ask you?

About what I was doing. For a moment I felt like one of the gang.

We’re not a gang, Royal corrects me, utterly humourless. They think we are, but we’re not.

The conversation resumes and every couple of minutes a man on a bike with sunken cheeks and an ill-fitting helmet appears. Circling us, he reports on the movements of people and police. He informs us that two officers are coming down the alley and as we walk down Cordova another guy on a bike calls out to us: Six up. Four on foot, and he motions back the way we came.

I walk silently, struggling to formulate useful but innocuous questions.

How can the cops know what you do but not bust you? I ask a short, stocky dealer beside me.

They don’t know everything, Royal interjects. They think they do, but they don’t.

They know the whole game, counters the dealer, but it’s about evidence. I don’t do anything to incriminate myself. I don’t ever touch money, I don’t ever hold anything and I don’t ever send people to the workers. Well, if I do, I do it discreetly. His eyes are bright and sharp but he never meets my gaze. It’s about evidence, he continues. They build a picture of you and they collect all this evidence against you and once they’ve got something big, they bring it all together and bring a case against you.

Are you ever scared out here? I ask him.

Only when they come deep at me.

Like, tires screeching and lights blazing and that?

No, like when they just come walking over and straight up to me. I wonder if they’ve got enough evidence to put me away, but then I think, ‘no’. That’s the only thing that gets my adrenaline pumping.

We wander back to the alley entrance. Leaning against telephone poles and parking barriers, the conversation turns to girls. Cars. Steroids. Money. The mood is remarkably relaxed.

The circle expands and contracts with dealers, messengers, and addicts. Despite standing in their midst for hours I never see drugs or money.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

ROYAL WANDERS AWAY from the group and over to the benches. He moves slowly, hands in his pockets, barely checking for traffic. A younger dealer with dark skin and a wide grin goes with him, baggy sweatsuit concealing his thin frame. I follow.

Specific questions have so far been met with uncomfortable silence, so I keep things generic, hoping for breadcrumbs of truth. In a roundabout way I ask about the territories, the regular faces on the regular corners I’ve come to know over the weeks, the ethnic divides from block to block.

What about those Spanish guys? I say.

What about ‘em? asks Grin.

What’s their deal? They won’t talk to me.

He thinks about it for a moment.

They work out front, he says, motioning to Hastings, and we work out back. He nods to the alley beside us.

What if you went out front, what would happen?

Nothing, Royal says. Depends who you know. His big hands are like meat cleavers resting at his waist.

What if they came out back? I ask.

If they just came working one day out back it wouldn’t be a problem. But if they did it like, a couple days in a row we might ask what’s up, you know?

I didn’t.

They got their own way and we got ours, Grin explains. They got their Spanish style. They’ll sit out there with their guy, like just ten feet away and watch him the whole time. We let our guys go wherever and we just meet up later, you know?

So you guys don’t actually sell drugs?

He shakes his head.

So what do you do then? is what I want to ask, but I know it will be greeted with silence.

How much do you pay your guy?

If I make $100 I’ll give him $10, say, but that’s just an example.

So, ten percent?

That’s just an example.

And how much do you make in a day?

He hesitates. $500, he says finally. Anywhere from $500 to $1,000.

But it used to be way more, says Royal.

Why’s that?

The recession. Plus, that’s before they shipped all the addicts out of town or sent them to jail for the Olympics. You used to be able to make like $3,000 a day.

A cloud of marijuana smoke wafts over from a nearby bench.

Do you guys smoke weed out here? I ask.

I do at home, but I try to stay away from illegal activities when I’m here, Grin says. They bust you for anything. Smoking too close to the building. Jaywalking. Not wearing a helmet. They give you like a $250 fine, he says.

They tell us, we gotta tax you somehow.

The conversation cools and in the silence I grow uncomfortable. Rather than wear out my welcome I ask if I can come back tomorrow.

Sure, Royal says, to my surprise. When’s your article coming out?

I’ll probably research it for a couple of months.

I reach out to shake Grin’s hand but he extends his fist instead.

Around here we do it like this, he says with his wide smile, and I bump knuckles with the both of them and wander giddy into the street.

The next two months will be interesting, to say the least.

Read Part Two.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

The next civic election is still fifteen months away, but already the political landscape is caked with slung mud. The increasingly negative coverage of Vision Vancouver was punctuated this week with blogger Alex Tsakumis’ release of a purported media “hit-list”. According to Tsakumis, whose source remains anonymous, the list details members of Vancouver media that Vision has identified as problematic and targeted for smear campaigns.

“I know you have little children but they will one day become big children and smear campaigns by people with powerful, monied crazies can last a long time,” warned the source in a dramatic statement published on Tsakumis’ blog.

Over telephone, Tsakumis, a former 24 Hours columnist, claimed that his source is a Vision insider with exceptional credentials.

“I sat down, I looked at his material, I said: it’s not good enough for me to just see the material, I need to talk to you – I need to put you on tape.” According to Tsakumis, the leak initially declined but eventually decided that the story was too important; they completed a taped interview and Tsakumis ran the piece.

An anonymous source coming forward with damning information about the Mayor’s office has become a regular occurrence in Vancouver.

Listed as Vision enemy number one is Michael Klassen, editor of CityCaucus.com. Klassen has been at the centre of a spate of stories and leaked documents that have been bad news for Vancouver’s governing Vision party. Recent items of note are the leaked staff survey bemoaning the management style at City Hall; the exposure of no-bid, no-tender contracts; and the leaked claim that 15 iPads and iPhones are on order for the Mayor and City Council, despite the City’s financial woes.

Klassen and CityCaucus.com are the center of Vision opposition in local media, and have professional ties to the opposition NPA. CityCaucus co-founder Daniel Fontaine served as former NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan’s Chief of Staff, and Klassen did communications work for the Mayor’s office during that time. Both Klassen and Fontaine have tendrils extending deep into City Hall and consistently break leaked stories that the mainstream media can’t.

Or won’t.

In the case of the chic new Apple hardware supposedly ordered for Robertson and Co., Klassen admits that he published the claim before he was able to verify it. Still waiting for confirmation by way of a Freedom of Information request, CityCaucus.com chose to run the story, their headline reading, “15 iPads & iPhone 4 devices requested for Mayor & Council.”

“It was a tough call on that one,” admitted Klassen by email, “but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

In the case of the iPads, Klassen has chosen to risk his credibility, banking on the reliability of his disenfranchised sources inside City Hall. So far, the gambles have paid off, but they also hint at the dangerous game being played by Klassen and CityCaucus.

Other media have begun to home in on the dangers of leaked information and anonymous sources. The same day Tsakumis broke his “hit-list” story, The Vancouver Observer published a piece claiming that Klassen is manipulating local non-partisan journalists by feeding them falsified leaks. (Incidentally, the hapless journalist fingered as Klassen’s stooge is veteran Sun reporter Jeff Lee – number nine on the supposed “hit list”.) The article also alludes to patronage positions awarded to Klassen as a result of his relationship with former NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan, with an editorial promise of more info to come.

But if Klassen’s relationships are a matter of public interest, so are The Vancouver Observer’s. Ian Reid, author of the Klassen piece is a former Vision campaign manager, and The Observer’s Vision links don’t end there. Follow the money, as they say. Founder and publisher Linda Solomon is the sister of Joel Solomon, President and CEO of Renewal Partners, an organization that invests in and offers financial support to businesses they see as fostering positive social change. Renewal invested in Gregor Robertson’s Happy Planet Juice Company, and Joel Solomon and Renewal donated a combined $32,935.10 to Gregor Robertson’s 2008 mayoral campaign. Joel Solomon is a close personal friend of the Mayor’s, and many consider him to be one of the main drivers of Vision policy.

So far, that policy has been to deny the anonymous claims of iPads and hit-lists. Responding via email, Executive Assistant to the Mayor Kevin Quinlan wrote: “There’s no truth to either; there’s no ipad order and no mayor’s office hit list.”

Wendy Stewart, Acting Communications Director for the Mayor’s office makes the same claims: “Nothing is in the pipe and IT has not ordered anything that is being reported.”

Clearly, someone is lying.

According to Tsakumis, number two on the disputed list, the Mayor’s office has begun planting information to trap and fire unauthorized sources within the organization. “They’re trying to identify internal leaks at City Hall and their internal leaks in party to get rid of them. They’re setting traps throughout City Hall all the time. The atmosphere is toxic.”

Asked whether he was concerned his source may have been fed false information, Tsakumis was adamant: “If it were a plant they would NEVER risk something that could hurt them so badly and going sideways as it has. They would never take such a risk,” he wrote.

“Besides, I know this man well enough and he is as decent as he is forthright.”

With the recently-leaked survey of non-union City staff indicating a growing dissatisfaction with operations at City Hall, it’s likely that more leaks will come, and they’ll be published by way of CityCaucus.com and Alex Tsakumis. The Mayor’s office, meanwhile, will grow ever more paranoid.

Between the spin, the lies, the competing interests and the sources unwilling to stand publicly behind their claims, the coming months have all the ingredients of politics and media at their very worst, and will leave the general public with little hope of untangling the mess.

If the truth in life seems elusive, in politics it seems downright impossible.

As they do, red buses rumble by on the street behind them, the tinny sound of their guide escaping through a half-present canopy. The passing buses reveal visor-clad troupes across the street, all wearing the same shirt, and following a man who holds a white paddle above his head.

I wonder how these people would fare on a Sean Orr walking tour?

Not a guide by trade, Orr is a notorious writer, photographer, musician and artist, known both affectionately and hatefully as The Fighting Flâneur – a result of his highly-public challenge of a local blogger to a bare knuckle street fight.

Flâneur, taken by itself, is a French word, meaning “stroller” or “loafer”, adopted to describe a person who walks a city in order to experience it. Orr, camera in hand, is the quintessential flâneur – a very different beast from the vulgar walking tourist. The flâneur strolls in a state of deliberate aimlessness, savoring whatever civic scenes pass them by.

Knowing none of these things, two friends and I arrived at JD’s Barbershop in Gastown – the site of Orr’s May art exhibition and the start of the tour. He appeared as we were locking up our bicycles, drinking a beer from a brown paper bag. Despite the fact that the tours started “officially” at noon and ran every half hour, we were his first group. It was 4pm.

“So, where do you want to go?” he asked.

Our trio exchanged a series of confused glances.

“Wherever you like?” I suggested.

He shrugged, and we headed north, walking in silence, and wondering what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into.

Our first stop was Trounce Alley, where Orr educated us on which scenes from The NeverEnding Story were filmed there. Out the other side, we found ourselves a block or so away from The Flâneur’s home. Here, he referenced a drawing from his recent art exhibition – a tangle of roads and alleys thrusting eastwards from his front door, and dotted with landmarks like beggars and cheap restaurants. He explained it as a psychogeographic map.

We nodded politely.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

What we didn’t know at the time is that psychogeography is an actual word – a scientific-sounding term for the rather unscientific study of how human behaviour is affected by place. The word was invented by French writer Guy Debord, who famously bound his first book in sandpaper, so as to destroy any others placed next to it.

Debord, a raging alcoholic, theorized that the economic and architectural modernization of Europe after World War II was responsible for a crushing of both the public and private spirit. As a political tool for combating this perceived alienation, Debord developed his Theory of the Dérive.

In 1958 he wrote, “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”

Debord believed that there are fissures, currents and undertows in a city as a result of the feelings that spaces give us. Microclimates, neighbourhoods, histories and orientations – Debord claimed that “from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”

Although Debord’s original vision of the dérive as a political tool has fallen by the wayside, the concept is still very much alive. The dérive is used by urban planners to experience and connect with a space; Will Self at The Independent writes a popular column on the subject; and Iain Sinclair features psychogeography heavily in his last several novels.

But because we had never heard the term, and because the Fighting Flâneur saw no need to introduce it to us, we were about to embark on our first ever dérive, completely unaware. First, however, as Debord would have likely suggested, we needed booze.

As we walked to Steamworks Brew Pub, Orr explained the significance of his map: through drawing it, he said, he realized that his entire life radiated eastward from his front door. “For whatever reason I always step out and turn left; never right.”

It was his segue to the grand theme of the tour. Beers in hand, we wandered aimlessly through the crumbling alleys of the Downtown Eastside, Orr pointing out historic landmarks, literally as we tripped over them, and explaining their significance in the growth of the city in two directions: east, with big sugar and asian labour; and west, with the CPR and wealthy landowners.

Senses assaulted by the stench and poverty of the back alleys, Orr provided the historical context for the polarization of the city visible right before our eyes.

The Flâneur, whose mom is a historian, is a knowledgeable if somewhat scatterbrained guide, and our allotted twenty minutes expired quickly. With the unlikeliness of anyone else showing up for a tour, and no other commitments on a lazy Saturday, we opted to purchase more beer and extend the dérive.

Our next stop was the overpass in Andy Livingstone Park, where we lingered and learned that the swarms of tiny flies we kept running into were balls of mating insects. At the soccer field below we sat in the shade provided by one of the enormous lightposts and observed how hot the turf was compared to the real grass. Soon, we found ourselves traversing the Adanac Bike Trail, trespassing at the Jimi Hendrix Shrine, and walking the lanes of Strathcona. Finally, we entered the cool of the Cottonwood Community Garden, where we had a nap.

I hadn’t realized it, but by this time we’d been walking for nearly three hours and had covered almost ten kilometers, occupying ourselves with nothing but chatter on the scenery, neighbourhoods and architecture we had been passing. As we realized this, Orr explained that the goal of his walking tour was to reconnect people with their physical environment.

Laying down in the bark mulch, everyone agreed: it was the best walking tour they’d never been on.

And while it may never achieve the popularity of a half-covered bus tour, it’s still tempting to imagine a future rife with psychogeographic tours, where men like Orr lead packs of visor-clad Japanese tourists, yanking them along bike-trails and through eastside alleys, asking:

“So, where do you want to go?”

Every Saturday, noon until four. Sign-up here.

Today, on a whim, The Dependent decided to cobble together a news piece about the Celebration of Light. A few phone calls and a long distance minute later and we were in touch with Maude Furtado, General Manager of the Montreal-based fireworks company Groupe Fiatlux-Ampleman and executive producer of the Celebration of Light in Vancouver. Furtado was kind enough to give us a tour of the barge and explain the logistics of putting on a world class fireworks show.

“The first step in building any pyro-musical show is the soundtrack,” she explains, stepping through a narrow alley sided by sandboxes and mortar tubes.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

“The designer then imagines what type of effect will go with each moment of the music,” she continues. “Then they need to find the products and the different calibres, and based on the listing time and the pre-firing time they program it into the computer. Each effect has a specific duration and listing time; it needs to be taken into consideration when programming the show to make sure the effect will fire at the right point in the music.”

The Celebration of Light is controlled by a computerized firing system. The turn of a key and the flip of a switch and the entire twenty-five minute display ensues. According to Furtado, it takes a team of fifteen people three days to set up each show – hence the Wednesday, Saturday schedule.

After every show, a cleanup crew disassembles the configuration, stores the mortar mounts and rakes the sandboxes flat. The next group then comes in, and with the help of the local crew, begins positioning their firing mounts in the sand. They work based upon what Furtado describes as “an international language of fireworks”. Back in the warehouse, firing positions are assigned addresses and the addresses are then marked on each explosive. Each address is assigned a time code and the plan is circulated to the assembly crew.

During the show however, both the music and the time code are beamed to the barge via wireless signal from the beach.

Apart from this, the operation is remarkably low-tech for its size and magnitude- the pre-show warning shells are actually controlled by a small kitchen knife attached to a battery.
The entire display is overseen by a small, two-person crew operating within a cramped control room, and, with visibility limited to a thin window crisscrossed by metal wire, the show is monitored entirely by sound.

“From the sound and the vibrations, we know if it’s going well or not,” Furtado explains. “If there’s an explosion inside the mortars it’s a very different sound and feeling.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Furtado speaks of fireworks with the kind of passion most people reserve for their children.

“We measure fireworks in millimetres,” she explains. “The biggest allowed in Canada are 300mm. At this show they’ll have 250mm, which are quite big.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

When asked about her favourite pyrotechnic effect, Furtado is adamant: the Flying Saucer.
“Somebody told me today that they look like jellyfish – they go slowly up in the air and then they come down and then go back up. You don’t see them on many occasions and I think they’re a real crowd pleaser.”

For Benoit Berthelet, lead designer for the tribute to China this Saturday, there are no favourites – they’re all the best. Casually smoking a cigarette mere metres away from a swinging metal door that is all that separates him from $200,000 worth of pyrotechnics, he explains that he sees fireworks displays as pure artistic expression: “I work like a painter,” he grins, “what you have in your stockroom is what you can use.”

Berthelet got into the fireworks business after graduating from theatre school and working on an assembly crew at a Montreal fireworks festival. “I was hit by a spark,” he explains, pinching at the sleeve of his shirt, “and from there I was hooked.”

When asked what people should be looking for at tomorrow night’s show, Berthelet responded:

“We’re going to work on four levels: the water, low, medium, high… and super high.”

Asked who her favourite so far has been, Maude was diplomatic: “they all have something special. It’s like explaining the difference from one painting to another – saying it in words is not easy. The Mexican show was very powerful – a lot of aerial shells were painting the sky quite well; the Spanish was more subtle and perhaps a little more artistic; the American show was that Fourth of July show you could expect from an American team, and of course the soundtrack gives the first impression and the choice of music sets the mood…”

Whoops

Bill Vander Zalm’s Fight HST campaign has mobilized and invigorated the most apathetic electorate in British Columbian history. If the 705,643 signatures on the anti-HST petition are valid, it will mark the the first time in Canadian history that a citizen-sponsored initiative has passed the signatory stage; but regardless of whether the initiative succeeds on a legal basis, the movement has given British Columbians a taste of the previously-unknown powers and perils of direct democracy.

According to Bill Tieleman, Fight HST organizer and influential columnist with The Tyee and 24Hrs newspaper, the groundswell of public outrage coupled with the use of these powerful tools has changed BC politics forever.

“This is every cliche in the book – this is waking up the sleeping giant, et cetera.”

Direct democracy allows individual citizens to draft laws and vote directly on matters of public policy. In our current system of representative government, the average citizen’s power ends with their ability to elect a representative – the theory being that elected officials translate into law the wishes of those who elected them, and if they don’t, they get voted out in the next election. The aim of the system is to provide accountability while at the same time sufficient stability for government to implement their agenda.

In BC there are two pieces of legislation that bypass the representative system: the Referendum Act, which allows for questions to be put directly to the general public as a vote; and the Recall and Initiative Act, which contains two provisions: one allowing citizens to recall their elected MLA at any time, and another permitting them to draft questions to be posed to the public as a referendum.

Ratified in 1990, the Referendum Act was the first tool of direct democracy in BC. Ironically, it was introduced by the Social Credit government lead by then Premier Bill Vander Zalm. Shortly after the act’s inception, (but not before Vander Zalm resigned in scandal) the Social Credit party used it to ask the electorate if they wanted more direct democracy.

In a 1991 referendum British Columbians voted overwhelmingly in favour of legislation for both recall and initiative, and on September 24, 1995 the Recall and Initiative Act was brought into law, where despite its initial popularity, it lay dormant for nearly fifteen years.

That is, until the HST. Organizers of the Fight HST campaign laid out a three-phase plan to force the government to repeal the HST. First, they drafted a piece of legislation called the HST Extinguishment Act, and registered it as a citizen initiative; second, they launched a court case challenging the constitutionality of the tax; and third they planned a recall campaign to remove MLAs one by one in an effort to destabilize the government and force it to either repeal the tax or lose its majority. Both recall and initiative are incredibly onerous processes. A successful citizen initiative requires the signatures of 10% of voters in every riding in British Columbia, and the recall of an MLA requires the signatures of 40% of the riding’s voters from the last election.

Over 40% of those who voted in the last election have signed Vander Zalm's petition against the HST.

For Bill Vander Zalm, who sees the HST issue as a catalyst for empowering the public through direct democracy, the high thresholds have rendered the legislation ineffective. “Right now it’s a pretense – it makes it look like we have a vehicle for direct democracy, but except for an issue like HST, it would never work.”

According to Ujjal Dosanjh, current Liberal MP and former BC Premier, that’s the point. After the 1991 referendum Dosanjh chaired a committee that consulted voters and made the recommendations that would later become the Recall and Initiative Act. Dosanjh explains that the high signatory requirements were put in place to avoid political instability and the erosion of minority rights seen in places with high occurrences of citizen-sponsored referenda. “We wanted to make sure that we have a society that is civil and stable, protects the basic rights of everyone, and doesn’t allow us to be whipped into a frenzy over minor issues.”

California is the oft-cited example of citizen initiative run amok. Critics, like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, claim the process has ruined the state’s ability to govern and subjected the state to the tyranny of the majority. With its relatively-low threshold for qualification, there are an average of 20 citizen-sponsored initiatives on every ballot, running the gamut from rewriting the entire state Constitution, to outlawing same-sex marriage.

According to Vander Zalm, while the California system is too relaxed, ours is too restrictive. “People will find ways to abuse it, so you gotta make it difficult enough that it doesn’t get abused, but not so difficult that it doesn’t work – there’s got to be a proper balance.”

Vander Zalm says that he’s committed to the reform of direct democracy even after the HST fight is over. He says technology should be leveraged to allow for greater participation in our democratic processes. “By democratizing the system, that goes a little bit beyond amending legislation – I think most everyone now has a computer, they have the internet, there ought to be ways by which they can participate online.”

Bill Tieleman believes that the reform Vander Zalm seeks is now inevitable. “I think it would be extremely hard for any political party that comes to office to completely ignore the need to fix the recall and initiative act to make it more accessible and fair to the public. I think this campaign has fundamentally changed that equation, and I don’t think any party can ignore that at this stage.”

Former BC Attorney General Geoff Plant agrees with Tieleman that reform is likely, but thinks that the Fight HST’s successful use of citizen initiative has exposed weaknesses in the Recall and Initiative Act that will actually lead to its demise.

“I think that there is a way to attack or challenge government policy,” explains Plant. “It’s political processes, it’s letters to the editors, phone calls to your member of the legislature, and it’s in the ballot box. Initiative was not intended for that process, and I think the fact that it has been so successful here probably creates the seeds of its own demise.”

He sees similar issues with the Fight HST campaign’s use of recall:

“Recall is about personal conduct and the personal decisions of an individual member of the legislature. It is not intended as a tool to oppose government policy, and yet clearly that’s what’s being planned here, and while they may be able to do it, I think that accelerates the moment in time when some government is going to be elected and says, ‘that’s actually not democratic; the place where our decisions are ultimately to be judged is the ballot box, not a recall initiative,’ so they’re either going to define recall narrowly, or they’re going to get rid of it altogether.”

“My own view is that what we’re seeing here is the misuse of potentially valuable instruments, that’s going to have the effect of undermining the goal of more accountable government because it’s going to result eventually in the elimination of the tools of recall and initiative.”

While Ujjal Dosanjh believes that the use of the initiative process to oppose the HST is within the spirit of the legislation, he shares the concerns of Geoff Plant regarding the use of recall as a tool to depose government. “There is merit to the idea that by referendum you should be able to oppose any policy that the public intensely dislikes, except rights of minority, equality rights, and things of that nature, but in terms of recall – the recall legislation was not meant to cause an overthrow of government because you disagree with the public policy of that government.”

Tieleman is unfazed by the argument and says that unless the government withdraws the HST and reverses it, there will be recall campaigns come mid-November.

Whether the public’s anger will be sufficient to support the campaigns promised by Tieleman this fall, or whether they will prefer to have it out with the BC Liberals in the 2013 general election is impossible to say, but with a charismatic old warhorse like Bill Zander Zalm committed to its pursuit, and influential columnist Bill Tieleman throwing his editorial clout behind it, the growing application of direct democracy in BC is a serious possibility.

Even Geoff Plant concedes that the movement has rejuvenated voters. “I do think that the speed with which it was possible to organize this campaign, and the size of the campaign, have probably given everyone in British Columbia a renewed sense of empowerment about what they can do to make their voice heard.”

The question is now, what will we do with that power?

Photo credit: Jay Currie

City councillor for sixteen years, influential blogger, recognized global speaker and Director of the City Program at SFU – Gordon Price is one of Vancouver’s foremost authorities on the built environment.

–

What would you say is the biggest planning issue facing our region today?

The vulnerability to the basic commodity upon which our entire world has been based: oil.

Let’s just cover that off: oil has some particular features that if not making it unique, the combination thereof is extraordinary: it’s liquid and stable at room temperature and it’s incredibly energy intensive. So while people may talk about alternatives, there isn’t any alternative that combines all of those particular features.

We’ve come to accept that our world can function in a certain way based on the particular characteristics of a limited resource that’s been so cheap – bottled water is more expensive – that it’s now in every aspect of our lives: food, clothes, transportation, construction materials, and just about everything that we process has an element of oil in it.

While it’s easy to get into an apocalyptic scenario around peak oil, volatility is more the issue than an actual shortage. This expectation that something as critical to your life as oil will stay at a fixed price is more important than even what the price is.

Can you give an example of the effects of the volatile price of oil?

Well, in 2005 I think that you can make a case that as a result of that spike in oil price the assumption that the asset value of homes, particularly the ex-urban ones being built in the unbelievable staggering waste known as the sub-prime blowout came to a crashing end and brought the world’s financial system down with it. It’s more complicated than that, but it seems to me that the dots are too close:

If you live in an ex-urban community where your only transportation choice is to drive and suddenly your commuting cost just doubled and you’ve already strung out your debt in order to acquire the mini McMansion, you have no room, because you have no choice. Ex-urban development is built almost exclusively on the idea that everyone will drive everywhere for everything, even internally, within their own communities. There aren’t many options to walk and cycling is seen to be a non-existent choice. There’s just no give, so that’s where I say the vulnerability comes from – this lack of choice in the system.

What does the Gateway Project mean for choice in our region’s transportation system?

It’s not the route itself over the bridge that I have a problem with it – I voted for some of this stuff when I was on the Metro and Translink boards – what I object to is the very clear message that we are going to organize our transportation system in the fastest growing parts of our region around vehicles, almost exclusively, and anything else isn’t to be taken seriously.

Still, that tends to focus narrowly on the corridor itself: the actual roadway – the bridge. The far greater significance is the land use consequences:

To make a generalization, transportation is always about land use and in particular, real estate. Every form of transportation that we’ve used has allowed us to expand the land that’s available for development. If you were constrained by your own two feet, or maybe a horse’s feet, the diameter of a city is pretty limited, so you get these compact, dense cities. With the arrival of the horse omnibus and the initial cable cars, the city begins to expand somewhat, but it was with the electric street car in 1887 that you had an exponential increase in the amount of land that a city can begin to appropriate.

Land becomes so cheap that for the first time in history an average working person can think about owning their own land and building their own house – effectively the first suburbs. It’s a very high quality way of life. In fact, every culture that can begin to afford it will tend to move towards something like what we would call a suburb.

Then, with the arrival of the automobile we see a geometric increase in the amount of land available – you can develop any parcel so long as you can get a road to it.

By the 1950s we begin to build these huge trunk lines extending to far parts of the region that then join up with transcontinental roads so that everything can be organized around the car. Architecture adapts, planning responds, and you get this combination that most of us have lived in since the ‘50s: single-purpose residential subdivisions, college campuses, office parks, mega theatres, shopping malls, strip developments – everything is basically organized on the assumption that people drive everywhere. By the time you get into the 1960s you see the urban form that’s pretty typical everywhere: a parking lot with some expression of a box.

Then you see the final stage where we don’t even allow people to walk or bike on the streets. You see a total car dominance, all based on the assumption that there will be no end to cheap, secure, fuel.

The gateway project reinforces it tremendously, and locks the next generation into auto-dependence.

Is it fair to say that the Gateway Project is intended to help the economy by reducing congestion?

That’s the argument – a fatuous calculation – they take a very small number and multiply it by a very big number. So if I’m for instance stuck in traffic for two minutes and there’s a million people, you end up with a very large number that has absolutely no consequence on how you live your life and make decisions: two minutes of no consequence. But you can say, “ahh, that’s worth x hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.”

But it’s not some nefarious scheme by the oil industry or the car industry – it’s done on the rationale that this is best for the economy. It’s a coalition of interests – in this case we can identify them as the Gateway Council, and they consist of ports, the trucking industry, warehousing, manufacturing and the kinds of businesses that really are vehicle dependent.

Is the increase in capacity going to decrease the congestion?

It’s always promised. If you look at the first edition of the Transportation Planning Handbook by the Institute of Transportation Engineers in 1942: it was dedicated to the efficient, free and rapid flow of traffic. It’s almost never delivered that, but it’s always promised to do so. The ideal vision of a functioning region is always in the future, and there’s a good reason why they would make that type of promise and why we continue to live with it still: their job as traffic engineers is to translate infinity into a kind of reality. The infinity is based upon the fact that you can never limit the amount of automobiles. So long as people can afford an automobile and get one, there can’t be any imposed limit on the number of vehicles that come onto the road. We will never make a decision for instance, that we will match up the road space with the number of vehicles we allow, as they do in Singapore.

So the job of the road designer is to keep planning for an infinite increase, which means they will never come to terms with this idea that there is a practical limit to the amount of capacity that the system can handle, and therefore its efficiency.

Half a million vehicles have been added to Metro Vancouver's roadways over the last twenty years

Is that the same principle that drives the American phenomenon where we see eight and twelve lane freeways jammed bumper to bumper?

Absolutely. The studies are pretty clear now that if you build more road space it attracts more vehicles. There is an idea called triple-induction theory, which is that if you build new road space it will attract more traffic from three sources: people who previously would have used the road space if it were available but since it was too congested, drive at another time, use another mode of transport, or use another route. That will surely happen with Gateway: the moment that road space is completed there will be people who will now drive, or will choose to drive at rush hour, or might have taken another route or another mode – maybe Skytrain.

Road builders will argue adamantly, and they certainly did in the Gateway case, that all they’re doing is building roads – they don’t take into account what the consequences of those roads will be on land use patterns . That, they argue, is determined by municipalities and regional plans. This by the way, I think is professionally irresponsible.

One of the [Gateway] project managers said, “all that we’re doing basically is building up what we planned to do in the 60s.”

Their thinking is rooted in the height of auto-dependent urban planning.

Given carte blanche, what would you do for transportation in the region?

Build out what Translink’s already got. There’s no question what we need to do – that’s well-determined. You can have debate over the pieces and who gets the first priority, but we have demonstrated time and time again that when we build a frequent transit network – a combination of trolleys, buses, shuttles, trunk lines and rapid transit in a web that’s frequent and affordable (it doesn’t need to be cheap, it just needs to be affordable) you’ll see these kinds of increases that we’ve seen these last few years. And more importantly, land use starts to organize itself around it.

If we set out expanding that rapid transit network, would Gateway still be necessary?

Gateway would be better. That’s the brutal irony: Gateway argues that tolls will keep the number of vehicles down to the point that triple-induction won’t negate the justification for the expenditure. In other words, we’ll keep the traffic moving. But really what they’re saying is we will price people out of their cars. They will not say it that way – that’s just political dynamite – but how else can it be? If you’re going to argue with the increase in the number of vehicles that the road space you will build won’t get filled up, that can only mean that whatever the tolls on the bridge will price people out of using the road system at least at the peak times. Well, at that point you have to give them a choice. But gateway has no responsibility to provide choices. They’re not funding any buses, they’re not funding the light rail – they’re not funding any of the related part of the network that will take the pressure off of Gateway in order to make it work.

This is the scam; this is the professional irresponsibility; this is the political blindness: so we’re going to spend billions to lock people into motordom – into car dependence – not provide them with any choice and then watch the system fail because we didn’t act at a time when we are likely to be incredibly vulnerable to the fluctuating cost of oil.

I was exhausted – too busy dreaming of celebrity and backstage access to get any real sleep. The original correspondent slept worse, I’m sure – after having secured our first ever press passes, work prevented him from attending the festival. The job of rock-star interviewer and VIP then fell on the broad shoulders of your humble and responsible Editor.

My plan was ambitious but achievable: interviews with bands and festival organizers, a sober comparison to other events in North America and Europe, and a picture of the overall mood and scene by way of a crisp narrative.

These are the first two paragraphs from my notebook:

“The rented Prius purred silently as I drove to the house of our cute little rideshare from Paris, France. I waited ten minutes outside before she finally emerged from the basement suite, despite the warning call I had given upon leaving my house. She smelled of stale liquor and cigarettes, and had obviously been up late.”

“She was friendly but a little uncomfortable with such an early morning stranger. To put her at ease I suggested she plug in her iPod. Booka Shade and idle chatter occupied us on the way to the photographer’s house. He was already waiting out front, drinking a beer. His backpack was filled with the implements of photography and nothing more. He had neither tent nor sleeping bag, but he did carry a very large cooler.”

Monday, 6:40am

The Fearless Photographer burst into my tent, wearing only half his pants and laughing uproariously. “Dude, we just woke up her friends!” he said.

By “friends” he was referring to the Texans who had pulled up two days earlier in a white van with wholesome phrases like, “Sasquatch or Bust,” and “Time of Our Lives,” painted on its sides. By “we” he meant himself and the petite 25-year-old blonde he’d been courting for the past 24 hours or so.

For me there was no morning joy. I could barely open my eyes, my mouth tasted like gasoline, and I was still wearing all of my clothes, including my hat. Instinctively, I patted at my front pocket, checking for my iPhone. It was gone. As was my wallet. My keys and passport were the only things of value I still had. Worst of all, I had lost my backpack, which contained the Fearless Photographer’s driver’s license and passport.

“I lost my phone,” I told him.

“So?”

“And my wallet.”

“So?”

“And my backpack.”

“So?”

“So it had your driver’s license and passport in it.”

He stopped pulling up his pants for a moment. “So?” he finally asked.

The Fearless Photographer, charging into danger

Saturday, 9:00am

The drive to the border was pleasant.

“Where are you from?” barked the officer in the booth.

“Vancouver, Canada,” I said, motioning between the photographer and I, “and Paris, France in the back.”

He asked the Parisian if she had a visa. She didn’t understand. He thumbed through her passport and informed her that she required a six dollar stamp to enter the United States of America – something she should know. He handed us a bright orange piece of paper: “Pull into the parking – they’ll tell you what to do.”

A lifetime of harmless, illegal activities played out on the dirty projector in my mind. I wondered vaguely if today would be the first day that a man would touch his finger to my anus, or that I might spend the night in jail. Just as we were about to step inside the French girl seized my wrist:

“I have weed in the car,” she said, desperately.

I stared at her, trying to comprehend what I had just heard. “Why?” was the only response I could muster.

She didn’t respond. It was more of a rhetorical question, anyway.

Monday, 9:00am

“Well, according to my pictures the last place you had your backpack was the techno dance party,” the photographer said.

“Techno dance party?” I asked, taking a small pull from my water bottle. Even water made me want to retch.

“The school bus with the DJ and the enormous pole with the LED lights on it?” he suggested.

“Must have been a different festival.”

“Do you remember Moon?” he asked. I shook my head weakly. “Emily, the blonde that kept asking you to marry her?” I shook my head again. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “What do you remember?”

“Eating ecstasy and getting on the back of the golf cart.”

“You’re worse than me,” he observed, cracking another beer.

“Worse than you? Have you even eaten since we got here?”

“Only if you count bloody marys. Now, let’s go find that passport, champ.”

We walked for an hour, the sun beating on our backs, picking our way through the endless maze of cars and crushed Keystone Lights – the evidence of the night before. A pineapple top here, a D battery there, the occasional wild-eyed wanderer still in the grips of Molly – what the American kids call ecstasy.

“Have you seen our backpack?” we’d ask random strangers sitting with their heads in their hands at their campsites.

“Nah man,” was the inevitable reply, “have you seen our keys?”

Have you seen my keys?

Saturday, 09:30hrs

Inside, the agent ordered the Parisian Drug Mule to place the four fingers of her right hand onto the green screen on his desk. “Press hard,” he told her, but she trembled to the point that the machine couldn’t read her fingerprints. He reached out and held her hand tight against the glass. It shook in his grasp.

Suddenly, the officer in the next stall spoke: “Are you eating an apple?” he asked the Fearless Photographer, incredulous. Hearing this, a senior man at the back rose from his desk and marched over.

“Are you eating an apple in front of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer!?” he boomed, “That’s incredibly disrespectful!” and he turned on his heel and marched back to his desk where he dug out a plastic bag. The photographer dropped the core in and just as the supervisor was about to tie a knot, the photographer motioned for the bag again. He leaned forward and spat out a mouthful of brown apple.

He shook his head and scowled: “ugh, that part was all bruised.”

I imagined the cruel penetration of my new cellmate’s shiv. Jail seemed the only logical outcome.

But the border agent’s physical contact with the cute little Frenchie had changed something. Or maybe it was her accent. In any case: “Sasquatch, right?” he asked.

We nodded.

“The ratio’s like a hundred to one there, you know – you don’t need to bring any girls,” he said, smiling. And then, addressing the Mule: “Normally it’s $1,000 but I’ll let you go for six.”

We walked towards the door, certain that it was a cruel trick and that we would be arm barred and beaten at any moment.

Instead, we drove in silence for at least twenty minutes. “How much do you have?” I finally asked her.

“Only a joint,” she replied.

“Well, you better spark that fucking joint, Frenchie,” the photographer said.

Monday, 1:15pm

The young woman at the lost and found did little to convince us that we would see our bag even if it was turned in. “What colour was it?” she asked, uninterested and speaking in the past tense.

“Purple,” I said, weakly.

She looked around without leaving her chair. “Nope.”

We traded the lost and found lineup for the espresso one. An iced mocha prepared me as best it could for the two-mile march from the campground to the venue. I paused every fifty feet to gather myself and stave off vomit. Our Fearless Photographer was somehow full of energy, calling out to all the beautiful freaks to come have their picture taken by the infamous Dependent Magazine. Body paint, feathers and neon glasses were committed to digital memory as group after group posed for the camera.

Beautiful Freaks

“Go be a pussy somewhere else,” he told me, sensing my anguish, “you’re killing the mood.”

I opted for a nap on the grass beneath a tent inside the venue. What sounded like the Arcade Fire’s “Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)” pulled me from a fitful, sweaty slumber. A trembling hand produced the schedule from my pocket – no mention of Arcade Fire. Was my insanity now complete? I opted not to care, joining the swaying crowd and feeling life become nearly bearable again as the band broke into a shining rendition of “Intervention”.

Saturday, 5:00pm

The Mule only had a ticket for Sunday. The folks at the media check-in had been there for days already and were too weary to fight with the Fearless Photographer when he claimed the Mule was shooting video for our interviews. “Next time, play by the rules,” they told us, wrapping a blue wristband around her anyway.

We walked straight to the beer tent and were directed to a man with a stack of yellow wristbands reading, “Drinking Age Verified”. I handed him my passport and asked what percentage of the folks he was approving were from Canada. “85%,” he claimed, “most of them are from Alberta, B.C., and what’s that other one between them?”

Eleven-dollar beers in hand we strolled to the crest of the natural amphitheater. I leaned forward through the crowd and took it all in. The Mule gasped when she first saw the stage, framed as it was by ten thousand people and set against the red rock of the Columbia River Gorge. “Oh my gosh,” she exclaimed in her thick French accent, “this is huge.” She meant amazing. I nodded, awestruck, even having seen it all before. On the stage were OK Go – the geniuses behind the infamous treadmill video, and incidentally, our first interview.

I made my way to the press area to wait for Tim Nordwind, the fellow hopping about the stage in a powder blue leisure suit and slapping the bass while thousands danced around him. I was ill-prepared. Still, I was confident that I would be able to make it up as I went and that a minor celebrity such as he would be no match for my wit.

I was wrong:

Tim Nordwind – OK Go – Interview

Monday, 6:20pm

I fought the urge to vomit for the duration of my interview with The Heavy. I would later skip interviews with Booka Shade and Boys Noize for similar reasons. As Band of Horses played, the shakes and the heat and the guilt of losing all my valuables proved overwhelming. I resigned myself to the long walk back to the tent where I would grab a quick nap and return, re-energized and at peace with my sins, to catch MGMT and Neon Indian.

Arriving at the campground I found the Fearless Photographer playing a game of “Flip Cup” with two of our Texan neighbours. “Oh, brew!” he cried out. I couldn’t see his face, obscured as it was by his hood and sunglasses, but his voice informed me that we was completely shit-faced. Apparently he had come back for a nap but the girls woke him up and demanded that he join their game.

“Did you even see a show today?” I asked.

“Oh, brew, I was so close, brew!” he said, cackling and putting an arm around the blonde at his side. She wore a tank top and skirt to his jeans and sweater. Her face paint had been smeared all down her neck and in her hair.

“Come play with us!” she insisted, drunkly.

I waved a finger and gagged at the prospect of consuming another drop of liquor and made a bed in the long grass instead. I was no match for the corn-fed charm of those girls from Texas and the relentless insults of the Fearless Photographer though. For my weakness the savvy veterans punished me with drink as I figured out how to balance the cup on the edge of the table and flip it over, to land on its top.

MGMT’s “Kids” pealed from the main stage and echoed through the canyon behind us. An hour later and my brain was sufficiently lubed to be motivated again. “Let’s go back to the festival,” I suggested.

“I want to see Band of Horses!” exclaimed the blonde, their set long finished.

“One more game!” shouted the brunette, again.

Afternoon refreshments

Saturday, 9:00pm

We exited the press area and headed to the main stage where Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk” was bursting from the sound system. Neither Broken Social Scene nor The National before them had the crowd so obviously engaged. I’d never been a fan of Vampire Weekend, but the clean, African sound of those middle-class Columbia boys set something in my soul alight.

The big screens zoomed close as the lead singer laid out the crowd’s responsibilities in “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)“. He looked more like the kind of boy that mum would like to have for dinner than the kind who’d be killing the main stage at an indie rock festival.

“For those of you who aren’t familiar with our work, this one has a little call and answer,” he explained. “When I sing … You sing …” and when the chorus hit and the band went silent and the crowd crooned, “Blake’s got a new face,” in that ridiculous falsetto, I couldn’t help but join in.

It was the best moment of the festival.

Monday, 9:45pm

“C’mere,” the Fearless Photographer hissed at me. He was slouched in one of the neighbour’s fold-up chairs, arm draped over the blonde who was telling the brunette how great the photographer was.

“I need you to get that brunette out of here,” he told me, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I don’t care how you do it, but I need you to help me out here, brother – for the team,” and he held out a limp fist. At this the blonde giggled and gave the group a guilty shrug.

I weighed my options.

“All right, grab your shit, honey – we’re going to the concert.”

“But what about these guys?” she slurred. “They have to come too!”

“They’re going to meet us there,” I assured her. She nodded and for the next twenty minutes buzzed about the campsite while the photographer and the blonde groaned and pleaded for me to take her away. Cathy packed provisions for a two-day expedition: leggings, blanket, jacket, sausages, chicken burgers, advil, tampons and twelve beers.

We made it as far as the portable toilets at the campground entrance, Cathy leaning heavily on my arm.

“You’re cute,” she said. And then: “I have to pee.”

“Uh huh.”

Ten minutes later she emerged, stumbled a few yards and collapsed in a heap. “Let’s just watch from here,” she suggested, sensibly.

I fished beer after beer from the bag and listened to the strains of Neon Indian, Ween and Boys Noize from the hill beside the toilets a mile from the stage while Cathy retched and heaved beside me.

“Are you having fun?” she asked.

Saturday, 10:10pm

A flash of our media wristbands and the three of us entered the pit just as My Morning Jacket stepped out. Four songs in and the photographer, the Mule and I exchanged a wordless glance that we all knew meant it was time to leave.

We caught the last few tracks of Z-Trip’s set – the best being a schizophrenic marriage of Jay-Z and Nirvana. Beside me a shirtless man with long hair pulled a small bag from his sock. He held it open as the Fearless Photographer licked a pinky finger and plunged it in, sucking the white powder off and grimacing as he did.

We danced like fiends in the pulsing, sweaty crowd until the music stopped and we pushed our way with everyone else to the late night stage. “Why the fuck didn’t you mention Z-Trip earlier?!” the photographer demanded. The Mule nodded her head enthusiastically.

Deadmau5 (pronounced Dead-mau-five to those sarcastic fans in the know) appeared to ferocious applause. With the nod of his head and flick of a switch, nasty, stinking bass burst from the speakers. It seemed especially filthy when compared to all the indie rock that had preceded it. The crowd cheered and surged. People shoved their way to the front. Young women balanced on young men’s shoulders and exposed their painted breasts.

We were treated to the most fantastic light show I’ve ever seen – the trademark mask becoming animated as the set progressed, culminating with its freakish, glitched out face singing “Sometimes Things Get Complicated”.

But it all came to a cruel and unexpected halt with a rising track that hinted at one last enormous bass drop that never came. The crowd moaned and the word “Deadmau5″ dominated the chatter of the energized masses heading back to camp for more booze, drugs or sleep.

Tuesday, 5:46am

The Fearless Photographer burst into my tent, wearing only half his pants and laughing uproariously. “Dude, I love those Texas girls!” he said.

“What’s all that yelling?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Well it sounds like your lady friend.”

“Oh. Yeah. She locked the keys in the van and someone’s got a flight to catch.”

“Should we remind them that the batteries are dead?” I suggested.

“Let’s wait a minute.”

“Can I have a sip of that beer?” I asked, sitting up.

“Sure. And hey, I called the Canadian Embassy – they can’t turn down any Canadian Citizen at the border.”

“Excellent, now we’ve just got to prove you’re Canadian.”

“Well, if we can’t I’ll just wait until next year. Meet me here?” he asked, passing the beer over Cathy.

“Fuck yeah,” I grinned.

More Photos

For Adam Henderson, one of the organizers, the fledgling contest was a rousing success: “Our target was 150 entries and we thought that would be a bit of a challenge. Turns out we had 193.”

Part of the draw may have been the grand prize: a chance to brew your beer with Iain Hill, head brewer for the Mark James Group, and have it sold on tap at the Yaletown Brewing Company. Runners up were also chosen by R&B Brewing Co. to have small-batch casks brewed on their test equipment and sold as a part of the “R&B Homebrewing Series”. Pretty impressive stuff for a contest hatched in January of this year.

The judging was completed to the standards of the Beer Judge Certification Program, a kind of governing standard for beer quality. “Someone is brewing a beer as an attempt at a standard style; the BJCP has codified these styles and provided a framework for evaluating whether a beer is a good example of the category,” explained Adam Henderson. Local professional brewers, BJCP certified judges and cicerones (think sommelier, but for beer) rated the Vancouver entries on appearance, aroma, flavour and mouth feel. Beers receiving a score higher than forty-two out of fifty are considered world-class examples of their style.

Best of Show was taken by Owen Kirkaldy of Edmonton, for his Sour Ale entry, TreewhaleLambic. Owen graciously passed along the grand prize to Vancouver homebrewer Matt Anderson, whose Rocket to Russia, a high-alcohol Imperial Stout aged in bourbon casks, earned him first runner-up.

As for the rookie Cavers, who’s been waxing authoritatively about homebrewing here on The Dependent, he was unable to break out of his category and establish himself show-wide. While judges described Brown House Ale as “clear and bright,” with “a very nice aroma,” they also pointed out that it was “over-carbonated for its style” and that the flavour was perhaps a little too far on the “roasty side”. Brown House Ale still scored a thirty-two, good enough for gold.

The ever-humble Cavers loves the feedback: “The criticism is great. With a craft like homebrewing, which doesn’t cost a whole lot, you make quite a bit of it, so inevitably your friends drink a lot of it. You poke them and prod them for a reaction and so much of the time they just say, ‘oh, thanks, beer’. This was a great opportunity because the judges don’t have any interest in boosting my ego or thanking me.”

In addition to his medal, Cavers walked away with a fifty pound bag of malted barley, the future of which remains uncertain: “I think I’ll probably make another batch of Brown House Ale, and cut down on the roasted malts, but it’s summer coming up, and summer is a time to drink refreshing pale ales and bitters – things that have nice, light, floral aromas. I’ve been daydreaming about making a gingered ale for a while now [...] it’s light, it’s refreshing, and it’s flavoured quite assertively with ginger. It’s totally delicious on a hot summer day.”

Asked what he’ll be brewing for the next contest, Cavers wasn’t sure either: “I don’t know. I entered one of the categories that appeals to me the most. English Brown Ales are generally beers that are lower in strength, subtle in flavour, delicate in taste and immensely complex. People out in the Pacific Northwest drink a lot of IPA, and it’s just a big over-the-top, lots of hops, lots of booze, lots of beer on your tongue. I tasted the winning IPA and it was great. But that said, it’s probably the Belgian Ales that people see as the highest achievement. Those are phenomenal – complex, strong – definitely the wine of beer.”

“I don’t know what I’ll enter, but I’ll definitely be back.”

The Vancouver Homebrew Awards media circus

]]> http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/events/cavers-golden-at-vancouver-homebrew-awards/feed/ 7 http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/events/faces-of-defeat/ http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/events/faces-of-defeat/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 18:48:07 +0000 Matt Chambers http://thedependent.ca/?p=447 Video feature]]> Fans wandered out of GM Place last night stunned, their hockey hopes dashed by a superior Chicago side.

Here at The Dependent, we don’t care much for hockey, but we do for people. It troubled us to see so many of our fellow citizens in such obvious distress.

Supplementary photos:

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Perhaps a reminder of previous glory is in order…

Photo Credits: Liam Hanham

Centered in the Riverkeeper’s complaint is the Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. The largest in Metro Vancouver, Iona pumps 500 million litres of primary sewage into the Strait of Georgia every day. An upgrade of the aging facility has long been on the radar of environmentalists and politicians but the billion dollar price tag has senior government doing all it can to push back the timeline.

To better understand the issue, The Dependent scheduled a walking tour of Metro Vancouver’s “poster-child” for wastewater treatment: Annacis Island.

Frank Dolemeyer, Operations Supervisor at Annacis, served as tour guide. He explained that incoming wastewater, known as “influent”, is first put through a mechanical process known as primary treatment. It’s screened for large debris and then pumped into holding tanks where the heavier particles sink as “sludge”, and the fats, oil and grease rise to the top as “scum”. Both are removed by metal arms slowly raking the tanks.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

With the removal of sludge and scum, primary treatment ends. The effluent is an odoriferous, sickly brownish-grey, with about half of its solids removed.

As organic matter in wastewater decomposes it consumes oxygen. Effluent too high in organic material creates oxygen-starved areas devoid of life. A standard Canadian wastewater test places ten rainbow trout into a tank of undiluted effluent; if less than half of the fish survive, the plant is said to have failed the test. Primary treatment facilities reduce the oxygen requirements of effluent by approximately 30% – just enough for half of the fish to survive. This is the treatment employed at the Iona facility.

Annacis takes it a few steps further: those large geodesic domes visible from the Alex Fraser Bridge are called trickling filters. They mark the start of a biological and chemical process known as secondary treatment. Inside the domes are enormous honeycomb structures through which effluent slowly filters. As the water descends, the tiny organisms inside it attach themselves to the honeycomb material. Oxygen and temperature levels inside the domes are closely regulated, and a thriving colony of microorganisms is grown large enough to eat great quantities of the waste in the water. It is an ingenious and effective process, where in essence, the wastewater is used to clean itself. The effluent leaving Annacis is clear and smells faintly of chlorine.

According to Dolemeyer, the secondary treatment employed at Annacis reduces the oxygen demands of the effluent by approximately 90%. Being something of a layman, I wanted him to put it into terms that I could understand, so I asked him if he would drink it.

“Absolutely not,” was his utterly humourless reply.

While you may not make ice cubes with it, tests show that the effluent coming from secondary treatment plants like Annacis Island, Lulu Island and Northwest Langley is not acutely toxic to fish, and once it’s diluted by the Fraser River, Metro Vancouver asserts that it poses marginal environmental concern. For those of us living in Richmond, Delta or anywhere east of Burnaby, you may therefore flush with a clear conscience, whereas those of us flushing in Vancouver proper should be very ashamed indeed. Our wastewater flows through combined storm and sanitary sewers to the Iona Island or Lions Gate facilities, both of which offer primary treatment only.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“They [Iona] operate on a permit from the Provincial Government,” explained Douglas Chapman of Fraser Riverkeeper,  “and as part of their procedures they have to sample their effluent every month and do a toxicity test on it. They usually fail about four tests in a twelve month period. It seems that in the summer they have problems when there’s not as much rain and the wastewater isn’t as diluted.”

Chapman is one of the main drivers of the citizen submission and is no stranger to environmental law. Working as a crown prosecutor in Ontario, he was responsible for Canada’s first environmental conviction that resulted in jail time. He was also involved in a private prosecution of the Annacis Plant before its upgrade to secondary treatment. In 2007, Chapman was the informant in another private prosecution against the Provincial Government and what is now Metro Vancouver, charging that the Iona and Lions Gate facilities are operated in contravention of the Federal Fisheries Act.

The act, which prohibits releasing a substance known to be “deleterious” to fish into fish-bearing waters, has been used to successfully convict Dawson City, Yukon and Iqaluit, Nunavut, confirming that untreated effluent is known to be “deleterious” to fish.

Still, Chapman’s 2007 case was never likely to succeed. “The [Federal] Attorney General has a policy of staying private prosecutions against the B.C. Government,” explained Devon Page, Executive Director of Ecojustice. Ecojustice represented Chapman in the case. “It’s something we’ve been fighting for as long as we’ve been around. From my perspective, it’s based upon the presumption that only the government is entitled to act as a watchdog on environmental issues. We take the position that they aren’t doing a very good job.”

In November 2008, the Federal Attorney General stayed the charges as expected, declaring the case not in the public interest and furthermore, unlikely to result in a conviction. How the A.G. came to those conclusions, in spite of a Provincial Judge approving them has never been revealed. To find out, Ecojustice filed a Freedom of Information request. The Attorney General disputed the request, claiming the information was privileged. The FOI Commissioner overruled, declaring that documents pertaining to the decision had to be disclosed. The A.G. turned them over, almost fully blacked out. Ecojustice continues to pursue the matter on behalf of Mr. Chapman.

In the meantime, the T. Buck Suzuki foundation may explain why the prosecution was stayed: In their 2004 Sewage Report Card, Vancouver receives a “C-”, and in the executive summary they note that “as Provinces are often compelled by law to share the cost of infrastructure upgrades such as new sewage treatment plants with local governments, they are often loath to prosecute these same entities as the only logical outcome of such prosecution would be a demand for system upgrades.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

By the end of 2008 the global economy had all but finished its free-fall. The beginning of 2009 saw the B.C. Liberals announce the first provincial budget deficit in five years. The appetite for cost-sharing on a $1.4 billion project was unlikely. In fact, it still is. Metro Vancouver is currently in the process of drafting a new Liquid Waste Management Plan. The document, which must be approved by the B.C. Minister of the Environment, will formalize the timeline for upgrading the Iona and Lions Gate facilities. Metro Vancouver is pushing to complete both by 2020, but the Provincial Environment Minister has rejected any cost-sharing language in the plan.

“It’s imperative that we replace both of them [Iona and Lions Gate],” said Malcolm Brodie, Chair of the Metro Vancouver Finance Committee, “and the only thing that’s holding the replacement of both of them back is the senior-level government financial contribution. If we knew it was one-third, one-third, one-third on each, we could confidently put it into the plan for 2020.” Without Provincial and Federal assistance, Metro Vancouver is faced with the unpopular necessity of raising their sewerage fees astronomically. In a report to Metro Vancouver Board of Directors, Brodie’s Finance Committee predicted Vancouver’s annual household sewerage levy to rise from $160 in 2010 to $1171 by 2030.

Further complicating the development of the new Plan is the unveiling of the Canada-wide Strategy for the Management of Municipal Wastewater Effluent. The new Strategy sets modern standards for wastewater treatment across Canada and provides a framework for assessing plant upgrade priorities based on factors including volume and discharge environment. A new definition in the Strategy may see the Georgia Strait defined as “open marine environment” and  the Iona timeline extended from the current Provincial mandate of 2020 to 2030.

Christianne Wilhelmson is the Executive Director of the Georgia Strait Alliance. She was involved in the 2007 Ecojustice private prosecution and has played a heavy part in the development of the new Canada-wide Strategy. She says she was surprised by the new definition and stops just short of suggesting that it was crafted specifically by senior government to extend the Iona time frame: “My cynical mind says that they created that just so that Iona – well, I don’t get where those numbers come from. I’ve seen no rationale. I’d like to.”

Indeed, the new definition fits the Iona discharge profile rather snugly:

With no apparent support for near-term plant upgrades by senior levels of government, all signs point to the continuation of primary treatment at Iona for the next twenty years. For Douglas Chapman, the international filing, which has no enforcement component, is an attempt to raise the profile of these issues and get some answers: “I want to know why the Government of Canada isn’t following their own environmental laws.”

Something to think about the next time you flush in Vancouver…

Pondering life, love and the treatment of residential wastewater at the Annacis Island WWTP

Andrew Morrison tucking into Noodlebox's infamous Cambodian Jungle Noodles.

NAME: Andrew Morrison

OCCUPATION: Food Critic / Editor

BASE OF OPERATIONS: East Van

Andrew Morrison is a local food critic, intellectual, father, and blogger. He’s made regular contributions to Vancouver Magazine and Western Living, and now earns his bread as a food critic for The Westender. His success can be traced back to humble days as a waiter and amateur blogger, serving up daily news and opinion on the Vancouver restaurant scene. His online presence is now focused in Scout Magazine, a popular website dedicated to the exploration of Vancouver food and culture.

–

I’ve got to get it out of the way: what’s your favourite place to eat in Vancouver?

For a full spread, probably Lumiere. For a little bit relaxed and affordable and accessible, I’d go Chambar. If it’s just me solo with my iPod I’d go Kintaro or Motomachi Shokudo — there’s plenty.

What would you say is unique about the Vancouver dining experience?

Wow, um…

I’d say there’s a community of chefs that you don’t really see in other parts of the world. There’s very little suspicion or animosity within the restaurant industry here, and there’s a spirit of camaraderie that permeates it all; I think that’s been responsible for the diversification and the expansion of our food scene over the last ten years. I mean, it’s really just exploded in a positive way. Looking back over the last decade I’m amazed at how much the food scene here has flourished, and I think it has a lot to do with chefs playing off each other and restaurateurs building a sense of community– not just amongst the restaurant community itself, but with the wineries, fisherman, farmers and artisan producers.

Are there any food items or movements here that are distinctly our own?

I think that geographically we’re very lucky. We’ve got the Okanagan Valley producing some top drawer wines, we’ve got the Pacific Ocean giving us fantastic local seafood and we’ve got great farms in the Fraser Valley and all around Southwestern B.C. We’ve come to appreciate that. I mean, twenty-five years ago if you asked a restaurateur about local food they’d just look at you with a blank stare going, “what the hell is that?”. You get your tomatoes from California and Mexico and you could give a damn about spot prawns or fish that could be caught in Howe Sound.

Things have changed, and I’d say we have something of a gastronomical autarky [Editor's note: it means self-sufficient. I looked it up.] where you can actually source everything from our own province; I mean we’re still going to have trouble finding citrus and that sort of thing, but as far as proteins, greens and fruits are concerned, we can get it all here.

What about Scout Magazine: what’s its purpose?

Really it’s just an outlet for the things that I can’t do in print or want to see online. I come from a food and restaurant background, and that’s all I’ve ever done, work-wise, but academically my background is in history and classics. I read a lot, and I enjoy art and literature. Scout is an outlet where I can apply all those interests. It’s sort of like a culmination of projects I’ve had on the go for coming up on 10 years now.

Walk us through the steps that lead you here.

I started blogging in 2001 with a running commentary on the Bush Administration’s response to September 11th. When he won re-election I couldn’t stand the thought of writing another four years about George W., so I scrapped that.

I think it was Hemingway who said, “write what you know.” I knew the restaurant business. I mean it’s not a complicated thing, but it’s something that I was confident with, so I started Waiter Blog, and it took off right out of the gate. That eventually lead to the launch of Urban Diner, but there’s a finite number of people who are interested enough in food and restaurants in this city to hit a website about it three times a day. In my mind we hit a ceiling.

So if you felt like you ran out of rope with Urban Diner, what was it that was going to be different about Scout?

Well if I wanted to say, “these are the 10 things you need to know about Sarah Palin,” or if I went on a tangent about astronomy or some new bug they’ve discovered in the Bolivian rain forest, there wasn’t really a place to put it [on Urban Diner].

Plus, I sometimes get sick to death of food, particularly the chatter that surrounds it. I understand that people are really interested in it, but it has led to an insular, gossipy atmosphere full of geeks. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but when you fetishize something you take away a lot of its value, and the value of food is very human. It’s not intellectual — it’s subjective, it’s personal; going ten paragraphs on your favourite donut stabs my own personal affections for food.

The evolution from Urban Diner to Scout– is it fair to say Scout has reached new heights for you?

Absolutely.

What do you think makes it so popular?

I think what used to be the strength of Urban Diner was its reporting and the raw sort of ‘we get the information first’ thing. Scout draws a larger audience because it does that original reporting; it gets the news about the restaurant business first and in-depth without dealing in gossip and hearsay. I also think it’s prettier: it’s more functional and it’s updated more — it’s become the CNN of the restaurant business in Vancouver. But beyond that, we suggest interesting and cool things that people can do who have nothing to do with food and restaurants. We do music, we do the arts scene, we do plenty that goes beyond food.

It’s fascinating to me that you’ve found a way to differentiate yourself in this new media landscape where anyone can contribute, to the point that you make a living doing it– it’s inspiring.

I think these days everyone comes to their own little niche through their own devices. Is my story unique? I don’t know. The media landscape in Vancouver is very open right now and I don’t think we do anything particularly unique. I really like what Beyond Robson does, what Vancouver Is Awesome does. I think there’s a lot of room out there online for something like the Georgia Straight that isn’t the Georgia Straight. I wish there were six Georgia Straights! I wish The Tyee wasn’t so staid; I wish they would inject a little fun or humour into it. It’s one of my favourite websites. I’d actually love to write for them, but it so often comes across as too dry or professorial. I wish they would just funk out with an orgasm every once in awhile. They have a niche audience and preaching to the choir isn’t a bad thing, but I like the idea of them occasionally poking a stick into a hornet’s nest and having a little fun.

Is that where you see Scout heading?

I’d like to see us working on arts and culture and politics and city news and commentary a little bit more. I mean the food and restaurant component of Scout is always going to take care of itself because it’s a hobby of mine, and I really enjoy doing it, but I would never want it to be mass or mainstream media. I make enough to get by, and that’s it. My story is not a success story.

Well, I think it’s a success story in the sense that you’ve turned a humble waiterblog into a career as a professional food critic…

Sure, yeah, I understand that the optics of it are very good, but a waiter makes more than a writer does, and a waiter, depending on the degree of talent, might not work as hard as a writer. It’s a success in appearances only — I have a byline in print and I have a successful blog and there’s a certain modicum of name recognition and celebrity that comes with that, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing, especially if you measure success by your bank balance [laugh].

Well, I don’t think that people aspiring to similar paths measure success in that way anyway

And I don’t either. I could give a damn. I’m really happy that I can look after my children and be a stay-at-home dad that plays lego one minute and breaks a story the next. For me, it’s a totally ideal situation. I don’t care if I make $300 a week because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Typical Vancouver morning tab structure

Abstract

It is widely speculated that the hipster is one of the fastest growing mammalian species in Metro Vancouver (Haddow, 2008; Henley, 2005), but to date these statements have amounted to little more than conjecture.

Efforts to obtain a reliable hipster count through conventional human population surveys have been confounded by physical appearance, grouping habits and migration patterns.

Capture-recapture techniques are commonly used to estimate the size of elusive subject groups. Here we apply a simple capture-recapture method to hipsters in Vancouver.

Introduction

Traditional methods of population estimation have proven ineffective when applied to hipsters.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

One of the main factors preventing a regular count of the hipster is its physical appearance. Plaid and stripes break up body outlines, and a group of hipsters standing close together is often indistinguishable from a single individual. Black skinny jeans or leggings serve a similar purpose, confusing the eyes of predators, and rendering counts through direct observation unreliable.

Further complicating the task is the elusive nature of the hipster. By definition, a hipster hangout is a place you’ve never heard of, and once outsiders identify a culturally-significant location, it is quickly abandoned in favour of a new, unknown venue.

To overcome these difficulties, we have employed a simple two-capture formula commonly used in marine ecology. This method is based on the probability of encountering the same hipster following two subsequent sampling sessions.

Expressed as a formula:

where
N = Total hipster population
R = Total hipsters captured in Sample 1
P= Total hipsters captured in Sample 2
X = Count of hipsters captured in Sample 1 and Sample 2

Subjects were isolated from the group at random for capture then marked for future identification. To avoid unnecessary injury or distress individuals were marked by sleeve tattoos. The employment of this identification method was preferred, as it seemed to have no effect on the subject’s subsequent survival or reintegration back into its cohort.

Before release individuals were measured for beard length, pant cuff tension, and general distaste for all things the examiner liked using the Pearson-Polanowski test.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Data and Findings

Sample 1 was taken at a Red Cedar / Yukon Blonde CD Release Party, where 413 unique individuals were cataloged entering the premises. Sample 2, taken at the ASTORIA ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY!!! realized a count of 370 individuals, 2 of which had been observed in Sample 1.

Thusly,

N = 413*370 / 2

N = 76,405

Supplementary Data and Discussion

While hipster numbers appear generally healthy, observations made during Sample 2 at The Astoria support the hypothesis that their numbers are actually on the decline.

Ostensibly, the Hipster is a pack animal, but despite repeated observation, no discernible Alpha Male has been identified. Unlike other pack mammals, both male and female hipsters engage in the act of display,  engaging in rhythmic courtship rituals and presenting their plaid plumage with no apparent preference for selection versus display.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

The creature’s poor eyesight, as evidenced by the proliferation of thick-rimmed glasses, further complicates the selection process, and may explain why of the 413 individuals sampled, only 8 appeared to be active breeding pairs.

The dietary habits of the hipster exert additional negative population pressure. Subjects at The Astoria were observed consuming large amounts of an offensive-tasting fermented beverage. Its low cost of acquisition ($3.75 per serving) appears to encourage an increase in its consumption.

While the variants ‘Pabst Blue Ribbon’, ‘Lucky Lager’, and ‘Pacific Pilsner’ are not consumed by the larger mammals of Granville Street, similar beverages there have had decidedly negative effects on the health of local populations (Eustace, 2009).

Conclusion

The size of the hipster community makes the lack of available data particularly concerning. The downward pressures exerted on the species support the hypothesis that they may actually be on the decline, making growth trending ever more important.

The health of the current population provides science with a tremendous opportunity to collect data on this elusive creature. Mating habits, home ranges and dietary data, in addition to population counts, are critical for future conservation efforts.

Application of the capture-recapture method over multiple time periods is recommended to establish and monitor the ongoing trend, and scientists are encouraged to take up other avenues of data collection, lest we lose this strange and magnificent creature forever.

I was at Boneta on Friday for an Old Fashioned or three on my birthday. Then, to the Alibi Room, where I drank cask ale as a party behind me also celebrated a birthday. Saturday, it was the Irish Heather for a friend’s party, and finally a family dinner on Sunday, where my glorious entrance into the world was overshadowed by that of my aunt.

All this bouncing from bar to bar and dinner to dinner got me wondering: what the hell is going on in April that’s got so many people having babies?

The clever and infant-obsessed girlfriend pointed out to me that August is actually the month of stork and diaper, but I had already consumed two glasses of wine and so I disagreed, loudly, and to the point that my elderly aunt asked me not to make a scene.

I obliged, but made a mental note to look it up, so that if I was right, I could throw it back in their faces, and if I was wrong, I could ensure it was never brought up again.

% of births in B.C. by month, averaged over the last 10 years (Statistics Canada)

Looking at the graph, I realized how foolish it was to be arguing over such trifling matters, especially considering that the original question was so backwards and upside-down.

Some quick math applied to births by month in B.C. in 2007 and we arrive at the heart of the matter:

Cases of confirmed unprotected vaginal sex in B.C. by month, 2006 - 2007 (Statistics Canada)

]]> http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/blahg/holy-birthday-blur-batman/feed/ 1 http://thedependent.ca/featured/purported-nazi-rally-produces-hundreds-of-protestors/ http://thedependent.ca/featured/purported-nazi-rally-produces-hundreds-of-protestors/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:42:56 +0000 Matt Chambers http://thedependent.ca/?p=234 The purported Neo-Nazi rally that was to make its way from Braid Station to the Art Gallery downtown failed to materialize yesterday.

Waiting just in case, was a crowd of opposition protesters, their numbers estimated anywhere from 150 to 400 people. At the front of the group stood about 30 demonstrators assembled in the now-familiar Black Bloc, holding wooden batons and a large banner reading, ‘NAZI SCUM FUCK OFF!’.

David Eby, Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, stood on the fringes of the crowd as a legal observer. He said he understood the desire for anonymity amongst the protesters.

“It’s to prevent people from being identified as individuals and followed home or victimized later,” he said.

Confrontation flared only once, as two young men were said to have spat on the sign held by the Black Bloc protesters.

A man in a black hood, accused of spitting on an anti-racism banner talks to media. To the left, a man in a green hoodie talks to police.

Maitland Cassia, media liaison for the Vancouver chapter of the anti-racist organization A.R.A., believed they were scouts for the Neo-Nazi march.

“Two guys came out of a car, looked at our group and were like, ‘holy shit’. Then two guys came through wearing hoodies and sunglasses and said, ‘Oh, where’s all our friends?’, and spat on the A.P.C. [Anti-Poverty Committee] banner,” Cassia said.

A young man standing behind the banner, wielding a wooden baton, confirmed the events, saying one of the men who spat on the sign was wearing a green patterned hoodie. “We tried to catch up with them, but they were behind the pigs.”

Asked what he would have done had he caught them, the man responded: “I don’t know, hopefully smash them.”

As we arrived on the upper level of the station we witnessed two men surrounded by police, media, and a handful of demonstrators. A man in a green hoodie told the cameras that people suddenly started calling him a Nazi. “We hate all races equally,” he assured them.

The men were escorted onto a Skytrain without incident.

An hour later, Maitland Cassia addressed the crowd, thanking them for their participation and declaring the action a success.

“To the art gallery,” he called out through a bullhorn. “Let’s party.”

Rally Legitimacy

News sites have been abuzz with comments questioning whether the rally was ever going to happen.

The story appears to have originated on the website of  Anti-Racist Canada: The ARC Collective. The original story, no longer available on their site, was posted February 22nd, and included pictures of Travis Annan and Lee Peacock, who the site claimed were the organizers of the event.

Maitland Cassia addresses anti-racism protesters at Braid Skytrain Station, New Westminster

The assertion appears to be based upon a dead web page and a now-defunct Facebook group that detailed the march and listed Annan and Peacock as the organizers.

A March 8th story run by the Georgia Straight generated a number of comments questioning the legitimacy of the rally, many of which were focused on the credibility of  No One Is Illegal, the organization used by the Straight as its exclusive source of information. NOII has come under public fire for their support of the Black Bloc tactics that resulted in broken windows during the Heart Attack 2010 protest.

An NOII press release stated that they had received their information from the A.R.A.

“We have received information from Anti Racist Action and other groups that a white pride/neo-nazi group is planning a rally in the Lower Mainland on March 21st, 2010,” the statement read.

Maitland Cassia, media liaison for A.R.A., confirmed that his organization’s information was based on posts made on the Anti-Racist Canada website, and supplemented by the A.R.A.’s own investigations on Facebook.

Travis Annan meanwhile, claims he had nothing to do with the rally, and that someone used his identity online. In a comment made on Cassia’s press release, someone identifying themselves as Annan’s wife said that Annan opposed the rally, and that assertions that he was involved had put his safety in jeopardy:

“That picture you have on your site is my husband.(TA) I am cut out of the picture. who ever planed this march posed as him. He has nothing to do with this and is upset about his name being slandered. I completely disagree with the march and so does he. This has taken a horrible affect on myself and him. And i hate that his face is being posted all over this. When he had nothing to do with it. This has now put my husband and i in danger.”

Cassia confirmed he had been contacted by someone claiming to be Annan’s wife, who made similar assertions. While he wouldn’t rule out the possibility that someone could have organized the online rally in Annan’s name, Cassia said he doubted it.

“I know they talked to the Province and the Canadian Media as well, but neither could ascertain the veracity of their claims,” he said.

At the time of writing, The Dependent has not received confirmation on the source of the ARC Collective’s information detailing Travis Annan’s participation, nor have we had any success contacting Travis Annan directly.

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of the rally aside, the greeting to be expected for Nazis in Vancouver is abundantly clear:

For Fujon Hair salon on Denman, the Olympics marked the worst month of sales in nine years. Jay Hur, owner of Teresa’s Cafe, said his business was down 20%. Even Kingyo Izakaya, normally packed on Friday and Saturday nights, saw sales slow: “Our numbers were down 5%. The West End was dead,” said owner Minoru Tamaru.

Kingyo’s business has returned, but for some the effects of a quiet February linger on: “We spent so much– hiring staff, training them, stocking product according to summer inventories,” explained Jimmy Brar, owner of Characters on Davie Street.

The restaurant, in its eleventh year, saw this February down 70% over the last.

“Davie Street had nothing– no flowers, no lights. There should have been something happening in this area,” Brar said.

Tom Chambers, general manager at True Confections, echoed similar sentiments: “We were hoping that the business association would do a bit more.”

Four days into the games, Lyn Hellyar, Executive Director of the West End Business Improvement Association, told us she had received no feedback from her members, and wouldn’t be talking to them until she was back in town, the first week of March. A sign on the BIA door later confirmed she was away on vacation.

But not all the associations closed up shop:

“We’ve been sprinting a marathon for 15 days now — that’s the only way I can describe it,” said Annette O’Shea, Executive Director at the Yaletown BIA.

According to O’Shea, Yaletown started talking Olympic strategy four years ago, and adjusted their budget for the last two.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” she said, “and really successful for small business. We have 900 members, 275 of which are ground floor– ground floor of course has had the greatest impact– but across the board all of them have had the best February ever. In fact, within the first four days of the games, they had already beaten their Feb ’09, and it’s just gotten better and better.”

Yaletown was undoubtedly blessed — with the construction of the Canada Line, its proximity to the major venues, and its hosting of the LiveCity site, the neighbourhood seemed destined to benefit from the games — but the BIA deserves some credit as well.

‘Made in Vancouver’ was a 15-day street festival with 3 sound stages, a fashion stage, buskers, acrobats and jazz, put on by the BIA and ‘I Heart Van Art’. The festival featured some 3,000 hours of live entertainment performed by artists who worked for nothing more than a place to showcase their talents.

“For the last two years our BIA said, ‘let’s focus everything we can on getting the most out of this Olympic opportunity’,” said O’Shea.

When the city said it would cancel the LiveCity Yaletown site, O’Shea fought for its survival. “We lobbied very hard to ensure LiveCity happened, and that the city was aware that it was welcomed and supported here, and that we would do what we could to help it.”

“We wouldn’t have been very successful if it hadn’t been for the David Lam site,” she added.

The Yaletown BIA, like its West End counterpart, is funded by local businesses, who pay through a city-imposed levy on property taxes. The budgets are put to vote at an Annual General Meeting, and require final approval by city council.

Yaletown, with its base of around 900 members, received $531,003.13 in tax levies from the city for 2009/10.

The West End BIA received $600,000.01 from around 800 members– the second highest grant in Vancouver.

Originally founded as the Davie Village BIA, then spanning only three blocks, the association expanded its boundaries to include Davie Street West, Denman Street, and a portion of Robson. After the required notifications and public hearings, the expansion was approved by council for April 1st, 2007, and the grant jumped from $160,000 to $500,000.

The BIA expansion process requires that 33.3% of affected merchants or property owners submit written objection if an expansion is to be denied. Votes not cast are assumed to be in favour– or least not openly opposed.

According to City BIA Program Coordinator, Peter Vaisbord, no expansion request in Vancouver has ever been denied. The West End was close though; including letters of objection received after deadline, holders of 29.9% of the assessed land value opposed its creation. 35 individual merchants (9.2% of the total) also wrote in to protest.

Three years later and the association has yet to gain a firm foothold with its new members, and struggles to reach the 15 votes required for quorum at its AGM.

In a March 10th interview, Lyn Hellyar identified awareness amongst her members as a key issue: “A lot of merchants don’t even know they’re a member, which to me is almost incredible, because if you’re running a business and you’re paying money out towards something, you’d think you’d want to know what it was going to do.”

Part of the disconnect occurs in the way the city collects the levy, which is itemized on the property tax to the landlord, but may never be shown to the tenant, who ultimately bears the cost.

Aftab Ali Khan, owner of Ciao Bella and La Bistro de Paris, has hosted BIA meetings in the past, but said he had no idea he was paying into it. Like many others in the West End, he wishes the BIA did more for the Olympics. “Nothing happened. It was very disappointing. It was like a big party and we were not invited.”

Khan has never voted at any of the West End BIA’s general meetings, and is beginning to think he needs to participate. “I should be a part of it,” he said, “it would be much better.”

“Perhaps it’s my fault too,” he added.

Lynn Hellyar speaks frankly about the challenges in her catchment: “I could have a wonderful board because I have all kinds of contacts downtown. I’ve got people that would say yes to come sit on my board, but I can’t ask them because you have to be either a property owner or a merchant within the boundary [...] My pool isn’t as good as what his [Charles Gauthier, Executive Director of the Downtown BIA] is.”

As for the Olympics, Hellyar said the BIA’s options were limited: “We couldn’t have had a live site — that was VANOC mandated — but maybe we could have had one of the pavilions. In terms of having a big screen TV [...] even if we had wanted to have one and could get permission, we don’t have that kind of budget.”

The West End BIA focused instead on an awareness campaign, centered around their hand-delivered newsletter: “I realized that a lot of our merchants were just oblivious to the Olympics. The Olympics were happening ‘there’, not ‘here’. And so they weren’t thinking in terms of, okay, we should decorate for this, we should do promotions– there’s things that we should do. So we started to try and tell them about the things that they could do.”

Sean McCann, proprietor of Fun-O-Rama on Denman, fished the latest newsletter from the trash beneath his desk. “I have no idea what they do aside from put up banners and pay those guys who walk around in the red clown suits,” he said, referring to the Downtown Ambassadors program, funded in part by the West End BIA.

“We’ve got a printer right across the street and they get their printing done outside of the West End,” he said, holding the newsletter.

McCann said that given the opportunity he would vote the BIA out, but like the vast majority of business owners in the area, he doesn’t attend the annual general meetings.

While the future of the embattled association may be uncertain, one thing is not: in a democracy, you must speak for your voice to be heard.

He was speaking at a VIVO-hosted discussion on ‘diversity of tactics’, and was addressing specifically the black-clad demonstrators who clashed with police and smashed windows during the Feb. 12th, 2010 ‘Heart Attack’ Olympic protest.

The same evening David Eby was making this statement, I was cornered by activists at the Olympic Tent Village and threatened while Olympic Resistance Network spokesperson Harsha Walia snatched my cell phone and deleted my audio recordings.

At around 8.40pm, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010, photographer Liam Hanham and I entered the Olympic Tent Village at 58 W Hastings, intending to cover reports of undercover police officers infiltrating and provoking the encampment. At the entrance we greeted the half dozen people milling about with a nod and ‘hello’.

“Okay everyone, we’re about to start the meeting,” a woman called out as we surveyed our surroundings.  We opted to pass the two dozen people gathering beneath the large tarps near the entrance, and proceed into the heart of the camp.

Inside, only two people were visible: a man who exited the toilet and disappeared beneath a tarp, and a young woman from Calgary who sat in front of a fire drinking orange liquor from a plastic bottle.

She invited us to sit and talk.

“It’s complicated,” was all she would say about her current situation. She declined to give us her name.

We made our way over to the meeting.

The three of us stood outside the circle while I activated the voice recording on my phone and stepped through the outer ranks. As I did, a university-aged woman wearing a fashionable rain jacket noticed the glow from my phone and asked me what I was doing.

“I’m recording.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you with?”

“The Dependent Magazine, here in Vancouver.”

With this, she turned her attention back to the speaker: a man who appeared to be in his mid thirties, talking about security and the need to protect the camp from the police and anyone trying to get in to take photographs. He outlined a strict no-alcohol policy.

I stepped into the open center of the circle and leaned against a pole which supported the tarp overhead.

A middle-aged woman with long, curly hair began to speak. I pointed the microphone at her.

She explained the ultimatum that had been issued to B.C. Housing to find permanent shelter for all the people in the camp. She said that she didn’t expect the demand would be met.

“We know they have spaces. We need to keep the pressure on,” she said. She then asked for suggestions from the group as to how to raise media awareness. Silence followed until a man behind me suggested they camp outside the B.C. Housing building. I turned and pointed the microphone to catch what he said.

Another man suggested a sit-in in their lobby.

A woman with a shock of curly, red hair chimed in: “I think it’s great that we’re finding places for people who want them, but what about the people who want to stay on the streets?” she asked.

The time on my recording registered just over eight minutes.

The meeting continued, bouncing between the group’s discussion on media awareness and strategy, and the woman with red hair who continued to raise the issue of people who wanted to live on the streets.

A young woman later identified as Harsha Walia interrupted:

“Wait a minute– is that guy recording?” she asked, stepping into the circle.

I said that I was.

“Did anyone say that you could?” she asked.

A number of similar questions arose from the crowd: ‘Who gave you permission?’, ‘Who are you?’, ‘Who are you with?’

Harsha walked up beside me. “Why are you recording?” she asked.

“I’m writing a story.”

“Did anyone give you permission?”

“No, I don’t need permission.”

She asked me to stop the recording, which I did.

“That’s unethical journalism,” someone called out.

“You’re having a public meeting in a public place and I’m recording it. There’s no expectation of privacy. You asked me to stop and I stopped, what’s unethical about that?”

“We’re trying to protect our anonymity,” a young woman called out.

“Delete it,” Harsha told me.

I refused.

Another young woman approached. She wore glasses and had her hair tied back in a ponytail. “Did you ask anyone’s permission to record this?”

“I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

People began to rise from their seats.

Harsha suggested we move outside the circle so that the meeting could continue.

“Who are you?” the second girl asked me as we walked.

“Matt Chambers. I’m a writer for The Dependent.” I handed her my business card. “Do you have a card?”

She said that she didn’t, and refused to give me her name.

“Let’s go talk to the legal observers,” I suggested.

“Why?” the second girl asked.

“Because I want to talk to them.”

“They have nothing to do with this,” she replied.

I stepped outside the camp entrance and onto the sidewalk. Harsha and the second girl were at either side of me. The bright orange shirts of the legal observers were nowhere to be seen.  Half a dozen people lingered around us– a mixture of activists and neighbourhood residents.

Harsha stepped in front of me and once again demanded that I delete the recording.

I refused. She continued to insist.

As we talked a visibly intoxicated man approached us. He was thickly built, had his hair in a ponytail and carried a guitar on his back. He said something loud and unintelligible to me. The second girl addressed him by name, asking him to calm down.

“Delete it,” Harsha said.

I refused once again, angering the man. He said something that I couldn’t understand and then reached out to grab me. I took a step backwards and out of his reach.

“This guy’s gonna hurt me. You clearly know him, please ask him to leave.”

“Not until you delete it,” Harsha said.

The man began yelling at me again and waving his finger in my face. Fearing for my safety, I told them I would delete the recording. The second girl then stood between the man and I. Harsha stood within a foot of my person as I deleted the recording.

When I had finished, she told me to give her my phone.

I refused, and showed her the display. The last recording was an interview with Spencer Herbert, West End MLA, from around 3pm that day.

“Give it to me,” she repeated.

I refused once more, and the man began to yell again. He reached out to grab me. I stepped backwards.

“Let me see it,” Harsha said, following.

The man stepped towards me and Harsha took the phone from my hand. The drunk man then pushed me hard in the chest and I stumbled backwards. He pursued, yelling, as I moved behind a parking meter to put something between us. Harsha walked to the entrance of the camp with my phone.

The second girl ran forward and put herself between the man and I. She told him to leave.

I stood dumbfounded as they walked away.

Once the man had disappeared from sight before I approached the camp entrance where a new scuffle had broken out just inside. I spotted Harsha on the outskirts of the confrontation and asked for my phone back. She turned it over without a word.

The second girl approached me once more. “You’re unethical,” she told me, then walked away.

I checked the phone– all the voice memos had been deleted. Hours of work and personal notes.

We gathered our thoughts, mounted our bikes, and left with precisely the opposite story we had expected.

We traverse the spectrum of quality and perspective:

The Georgia Straight

The Straight offers up a spate of editorial coverage, covering the gamut from critical to outraged:

The new B.C. Liberal budget is another step in the wrong direction for this government, in a series of wrong steps dating back to 2001.

Zing!

A sampling of the opinions on offer:

• Marc Lee: B.C. budget offers inaction on climate change
• Dean Skoreyko: A budget that benefits nobody but the B.C. Liberals
• Bruce Ralston: B.C. Liberal budget fails to offer real economic plan
• Ujjal Dosanjh: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s deficit of hope
• Jane Sterk: B.C. Liberal budget takes us back to the future in 2010

The Tyee: ‘Hangover Budget’ Pleases Few

Another decidedly cynical reception, leading off with a quote from opposition leader Carole James, and moving quickly to the shedding of 4,000 jobs from government.

“I didn’t see the government come forward with a strategy around jobs, a strategy around investing in people, putting resources that we need to in research and development, in post-secondary education in making sure we’re providing for the people who are going to help us get through this economic recovery.”

Isolating the section headings provides a high-level picture of how the Tyee feels:

• Revenues down, spending up
• Many missed opportunitues
• Environmental contradictions
• Not enough for health, education
• Cuts to resource ministries

The Vancouver Sun: B.C. budget keeps tight lid on all spending except health and education

The Sun chooses to focus on the return to a balanced budget, not straying from the words of Finance Minister Colin Hansen, and others who proclaim the budget ‘prudent’, until half-way through the piece. Still, criticism is measured, and mention of spending cuts and layoffs are made only after those detailing the increased spending on health care and education.

“Unlike other provinces that, in these past few months have seen their budget deficits increase significantly, we have approached the development of this budget with the determination that we are going to get this province back out of the red ink at the earliest opportunity,” Hansen said Tuesday.

The day after the budget was released, the Sun’s legacy print publication ran a similar article, titled: ”PRUDENT’ B.C. BUDGET BOOSTS SPENDING, DEBT’

Metro News: Budget Unveiled

Metro news lead with their budget story March 3rd, focused entirely on cuts to the public sector. Information is at a premium: pictures, titles, and block quotes account for over half of the real-estate reserved for the piece.

The province will cut roughly 3,500 full-time jobs, reducing its public service down to 27,700 in 2012/13, from its current level of 31,300.

The Province: The 2010 B.C. budget in pictures

Every person’s income taxes will be reduced by about $80. The basic personal exemption is being increased by $1,627 to $11,000.

The Province provided us an alternative view of the latest provincial budget, summed up in 11 pictures and 243 words.

Anyone doing a round-up on my round-up might point out that they had several other articles on the topic, but they were limited to bullet points or narrowly-focused editorials.

Decide for yourself:

• Budget 2010: The full details
• Use our Olympic brainpower to balance provincial budget
• BC gov’t shouldn’t be tax sneaks
• BC poised to perform better

CBC: B.C. budget offers few surprises

B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen unveiled his post-Olympic budget in the legislature on Tuesday in Victoria, and there were few surprises in the economic blueprint intended to pull B.C. out of the recession.

For the most comprehensive and balanced coverage, we have to step outside of the local media and look to the CBC, who presents a fact-based comparative of the changes year over year along with a diverse sampling of expert opinion.

For those of you with big screens, I highly recommend clicking through the thumbnails for hi-res, uncropped images.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

The Street Party

Olympic Ground Zero, aka, Granville and Robson erupted in celebration with Canada’s 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. in Olympic Men’s Hockey:

The Nervous Police

The police presence was thick, with a lone officer stationed on the rooftop below us as we snapped photos and video. He watched the surging crowd nervously as drunken revelers piled onto lampposts to wave their flags. When an international film crew joined Liam and I he came up the stairs and asked us to leave. The reaction to my camera was a little more aggressive than I had anticipated. Apparently he was expecting the festivities to get out of hand:

The city feels… Alive.

And I wonder, will it all just walk out the door come February 28th? Is it the throngs of international visitors we were promised making all that noise? A wave of Yankee invaders, perhaps?

Yesterday I set out, notebook in hand, and asked over 1,000 people in the thick crowds around Granville and Robson: “Where are you from?”

Their answers pleased me.

Visitors by City

Cities with more than 5 recorded visitors

Visitors by Province / State

Visitors by Country

Visitors by Continent

Drunk In Vancouver is a chronicle of the city and its many subcultures, explored by way of everyone’s favourite social lubricant: BOOZE.

The rules are simple:

1) Pick a drink
2) Pick an appropriate venue
3) Keep an open mind

The Dependent presents:

JAGERBOMBS AT THE ROXY

If you’ve never had one you’re either under 12 or over 40. Take 1 can Red Bull, empty into pint glass. Pour one shot Jagermeister, drop into glass. Hear clink. See foam. Tilt. Enjoy.

The mighty Jagerbomb.

If they’re your drink for the night and you play by the Drunk in Vancouver rules, the mixture of sugary stimulant and syrupy depressant is liable to put you in the hospital.

Which is precisely what it did.

***

Granville Street was buzzing. I was decked out in the finest of urban cowboy and Jimmy was a mess of hair gel and Axe Body Spray and fake Gucci shades. In preparation, he had been watching My New Haircut on repeat for the previous two days.

At Robson, we passed two gorillas in Ed Hardy kicking the shit out of a guy on the ground. The complainant scrambled to his feet, bruised and bloody, and darted into an alley. His attackers paced the strip like caged animals, full of drink and adrenaline and testosterone.

“Think that’s how we’ll end up?” I asked Jimmy.

“Sure hope so,” he said as we stepped into Taf’s for a warm-up.

“Three jagerbombs,” he demanded of the hostess.

“Sorry.  We don’t have Red Bull,” she said, surprised. “Do you still want a table?”

“Jager?” Jimmy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yup…”

“Good– two of those, and two empty glasses,” and he jogged out the door.

“Back in a second!” he called over his shoulder.

I was left to ponder the amateur art on the walls until Jimmy returned with two Red Bulls, which he promptly poured.

“Well,” he said raising his Jager shot, “to the first official Drunk in Vancouver. May it be fun and prosperous and enjoyed responsibly,” he said with a wink, and we clinked and dropped and downed the syrupy concoctions.

“”Two more!” he immediately called out, waving his finger in a wide circle above his head and, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“I’ma get my pimp on tonight,” he told me, producing a peanut from his jacket pocket.

“What the fuck is that for?”

“You’ll see,” was all he’d say.

Apparently, the Roxy crowd that night included the cast of Starlight Express.

The lineup for the Roxy was a parade of sky-high heels, winter-tanned thighs, thick chains and hair gel.

“This is gonna be fucking awesome,” Jimmy grinned, his breath hot and sour in my ear.

He swaggered up to the bouncer.

“We’re here to see Tonya,” he said, importantly.

The meaty fellow inspected his clipboard, crossed us off, and lifted the nylon rope.

“Wait a minute,” said his counterpart, placing a thick hand on Jimmy’s chest, “let’s see that shirt.”

It was tattooed with an elaborate heart and sparrow design. Jimmy lowered his progressively-tinted Gucci knock-offs.

“Problem?” he asked, coldly.

“No Ed Hardy,” the bouncer informed him.

I squeezed myself between them. “We’re here to see Tonya.”

***

Inside, the place was packed: cute, twenty-somethings in tank tops and heels. Wide, white smiles. UB-40 and inoffensive party rock-and-roll. A distinct absence of fistfights. It was a playground for the youngish single crowd, looking for a night on the town or perhaps a stranger’s bed. Jimmy seemed right at home, minus the Ed Hardy.

Tonya led us to the bartender at the back.

“This is Jules. He’s our personality,” she informed us. Jules had dyed blond hair and was wearing an ’05 away ‘Nucks Jersey. Tonya whispered in his ear and he began flipping glasses over his back, Cocktail-style, until the bartop was covered. He balanced shots on the rims between.

A crowd began to form and people fished camera phones from their pockets.

“Right now?” I asked Tonya, completely unprepared. On the phone I had told her we were professionals.

“Right now,” she confirmed.

I gestured desperately to Jimmy who leaped onto the bar and pulled out his camera.

I cupped my hands and yelled into the air, “FREE DRINKS!” to which I received no response. Tonya looked on and finally threw a wedge of lemon and ordained the unholy marriage of Jagermeister and Red Bull.

Cute, red-cheeked girls with big eyelashes, and young men with drunken smiles and ill intentions pushed their eager hands through the crowd, now understanding my offer.

Jimmy’s flash popped as the drinks were hoisted (I myself consuming three in short order) and a moment later he was beside me, Jagerbomb in hand.

“Got some good ones, I think,” and he drained the glass and slammed it on the bar, “now to get laid.”

Night on Jager Mountain.

“You girls wanna see a magic trick?” he asked of the two ladies beside us.

“Sure!”

“All right,” he said, producing a peanut from his pocket, “I take this ordinary peanut … rub off that weird brown skin … and then shove it up my nose!”

Which he promptly did.

The girls gasped.

“I’ve learned that I have a rather interesting digestive talent,” he continued, “and if I place food in my nose it actually comes out,” he paused dramatically, “my BELLYBUTTON!”

And he lifted his shirt and sucked in his stomach and sure enough, a peanut dropped out.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“How’d you do that!?” one of the girls exclaimed.

“I already told you, my dearies: MAGIC! Now who wants to dance?!” and he wandered off into the crowd, one on each arm, only to lose them both to a pack of jumping, screaming, hugging girlfriends.

He turned back to me and shrugged, then shot me a grin as he pulled another peanut from his pocket.

***

“Motherfucker,” someone muttered in the stall behind me as I buried my face in a handful of cold water. My heart was thumping in my chest and pounding at my temples. Drinking Jagerbombs all night was proving very difficult…

In the mirror I saw the stall door open and to my surprise Jimmy emerged, a trickle of blood beneath his left nostril. By now it was 1am, and the last time I had seen him was over an hour ago, performing his infamous trick for yet another group of enthusiastic females.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your nose is bleeding. Did somebody knock ya?”

“Goddamnit… Is it really bleeding?” He craned his neck to look in the mirror and let out a defeated sigh. “I was trying to get the peanuts out.”

“Peanuts?”

“The first one I could deal with, but the second is driving me nuts.”

I wracked my brain seeking punishment for the obvious pun, but my head hurt too much.

“You’re a moron,” was all I could muster, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples, “you really can’t get them out?”

He closed his mouth and blew hard out his nose.

“Nope,” he said bleakly, “and I just tried with my keys.”

The blood glistened on his upper lip.

***

“Both nostrils, eh?” said the doctor, slipping on gloves.

Jimmy nodded.

“Does alcohol have anything to do with this little predicament?” he asked, clearly amused.

Jimmy nodded again as the doc produced a curved instrument with a balloon on the end.

“I’ll need you to sit still,” he said. He squeezed the device’s base, and the balloon expanded and contracted.

Jimmy let out a nasal sigh: “Damn Jagerbombs,” he said.

“Damn Jagerbombs,” I agreed, my head swimming in sugar and caffeine.

“Damn Jagerbombs indeed,” said the good doctor.

Then, he put a gentle hand on Jimmy’s head, and tilted it backwards.

Have a suggestion of where we could get

DRUNK IN VANCOUVER?

email dgee@thedependent.ca!

]]> http://thedependent.ca/entertainment/drunk-in-vancouver/jagerbombs-at-the-roxy/feed/ 3 http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/blahg/day-in-pictures-granville/ http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/blahg/day-in-pictures-granville/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:40:31 +0000 Matt Chambers http://thedependent.ca/?p=111 Liam and I wandered Granville Street yesterday, snapping photos and camping out on rooftops.

Incredible to see the city so alive. This wintry weather certainly has more people out and about than on days past.

Street performers drew crowds of hundreds as wide-eyed tourists and locals looked on.

Even Batman made an appearance!

We traverse the spectrum of quality and perspective:

Metro News: Young women charged with assaulting officer during protest

“They dressed like terrorists, putting fear in people,” Tanner said. “There should be a place for protesters, but it should be done in a more civilized way.”

Reading this, I wonder why the Metro doesn’t just eliminate whatever writing staff they have left and post the VPD media releases verbatim? The only notable difference is a collection of forgettable quotes, including the obligatory ‘protesters have rights too’ toss-away.

*barf*

The Vancouver Sun: Seven people arrested in police protests

“I believe that everybody has the right to protest and it’s unfortunate that property gets damaged by some of the protesters,” said Rich Gorman, the regional vice-president of The Bay.

Peppered with measured words from the VPD, Rich Gorman, Gregor Robertson, Gordon Campbell and a single protester who condemns the acts of vandalism, The Sun’s angle is clear, and as a nod to the winning formula employed at Metro News, the final sentence is the only reference to an opposing view: a link to a Youtube video shot by protestors.

CTV News: First day of Olympics marred by violence

“People can choose the tactics that they like,” she said, saying police were responsible for most of the violence.

The first article I found that actually quoted an Olympic Resistance Network spokesperson. I can’t help but wonder if she gets the space because she presents so poorly.

The article itself remains focused on the arrests and damage and perpetrators of violence, but CTV also presents a look at what I consider one of the most interesting angles: Who are the Anarchists?

If it wasn’t immediately clear in the original story, CTV doesn’t appear to hold them in very high regard.

The Tyee: Arrests, Beatings as Saturday Protest Turns Violent

Ryan Lundy, a non affiliated photographer who came to document the event, was hit several times. “A cop came behind me and smacked me in the groin with his baton. I was hit from behind with a shield. I went down to the ground. Two cops hit me about three times,” he said.

An objective, first-person account of Saturday’s protests. Geoff Dembicki had the grapes and good sense to actually get out there and watch it all happen, and he relates it to us in a balanced and colourful act of journalism.

If you’re not familiar with the work of Geoff Demibicki or The Tyee, you probably should be.

The Georgia Straight: 2010 Heart Attack disrupts Vancouver on day two of Winter Olympics

“This is what democracy looks like!” protesters shouted as a hint of marijuana smoke wafted into the morning air.

Occasionally The Straight reminds us why it got so damned popular in the first place: an honest and informative first-person account of the protests, by Carlito Pablo.

He captures the good and the bad and the absurd in one balanced story — my vote for the best in local coverage.

Vancouver Media Co-Op: Corporate Heart Attack displays growing solidarity

In a bittersweet comment that is heavy in truth, he states that “most people know shits pretty fucked up out there and just don’t feel like it’s their responsibility. It’s just not good enough. Things won’t get better until those people start waking up.”

And inevitably we arrive at Vancouver Media Co-Op– the yin to Metro News’ yang.

It’s the center of propaganda for the protest movement and provides a useful, if glaringly biased, perspective.

Absent from all their discussion and coverage though, is a cohesive picture as to why any windows were smashed in the first place. Presumably the intention was to drum up media interest, and that was certainly achieved, but even Vancouver Co-Op seems more focused on the events than the message.

Perhaps it’s because for the many groups protesting the games, or using it as a platform to make their message heard, there is no one banner behind which they all agree to march.

NAME:  Michael Fitzsimmons

OCCUPATION:  Artist

BASE OF OPERATIONS:  Parker Street Studios, Vancouver

Above even the circular saw next door, the spraying booth drowns out all noise. Michael Fitzsimmons hovers over a piece — his mouth and nose protected by a multi-coloured respirator, and his hearing shielded from the roar by industrial earphones.

We stand in his drab and paint-stained studio, which serves unlikely double-duty as both furniture-finishing operation and artist workspace.  Before us, he pours multi-coloured liquids onto a what looks like an unfinished door, smearing them around with paper towels, and then blowing them across the surface with an airgun. The chemicals he’s playing with are not just mildly unpleasant, they are severely toxic.

His unique adaptations of industrial techniques and materials have created an effect entirely his own: dark and vibrant scenes of deep space and particulate energy, splayed out and pulsing before you.

–

So… what is Zebo Designs?

We do Furniture Finishing.  Primarily, it’s work with custom cabinets.  Say, an Interior Designer has a customer who wants something unusual built; they’ll deal with a custom Cabinetmaker who will build it and ship it to us for finishing.

A lot of the Furniture Makers have their own finishing departments, so what we get are the jobs that have a particular kind of finish that not everyone can do.

Michael Fitzsimmons, his dull industrial studio overpowered by his work

Does the Furniture Finishing tie into your artwork?

I don’t know that the paintings are triggered by the aesthetics of what I’m doing on the furniture, but certainly the technology of what I’m working with is a big part of it, because I work with catalyzed lacquers and all kinds of conversion varnishes and solvents, and it’s not the kind of material that most people would or could- without a specific setup to safely use it, start working with for art. I mean, you HAVE to have a respirator and a Spray Booth.  You couldn’t use this stuff in a residential neighbourhood.  Just the fumes coming out of it would have your neighbours storming down the doors.

And you’ve sort of translated this industrial application into painting, with your understanding of the relationship between these chemicals and the paint, is that fair to say?

Yeah. Because I’ve worked for quite a few years with these paints, doing a lot of unusual finishes and odd combos of materials and colours, I’ve had a lot of experience manipulating them. I’ve got cupboards full of all sorts of materials. Because, on the furniture side of things, I’m more of a paint technologist than most artists, I’m able to actually MAKE the paints that I work with. I deal directly with industrial suppliers who I get all the ingredients from.

So you’re not even dealing with colour base?

No, I start from a lot of clear bases, and I’ve got a couple of different resins, binders, solvents, catalysts and pigments, powders, dyes — I’ll use all kinds of things to generate colour. Some things I want to be fairly rigid, hard, solid paints; others I want to be able to dissolve or melt away, so I’ll change the way I make the paint. When I started doing artwork with it, I had a… VOCABULARY, if you want to call it that, that an artist who just picks up the materials would take awhile to learn. Anyone could, of course, but it wouldn’t be instantaneous.

Michael Fitzsimmons - Field

It certainly creates some very unique and interesting effects. When I first had a look, I had the impression it was digital.

Yeah, I’ve had that comment a lot — on some of the paintings, people first think it’s something digitally produced, but it’s all analog.

Do you have an idea when you sit down how a piece is going to end up, or does it evolve as you work?

Well, both. In many cases I just walk up to the panel and I don’t even know what the first colour will be. I just start working, and so it’s like an improvisational thing, I suppose: you put down one bit of colour and you look at it and you think ‘well, what’s next?’ and the route that it will go to in the end is hard to know. There’s a lot of other paintings I do where I know before I start the panel what it will look like, pretty much. Where I’ve got a plan and an approach. ‘Field’ was created in that way.

I’m curious about the effect you’ve achieved in Field — did you use different colours of paint, or is it all one colour, and you’ve generated that bursting effect by way of a chemical reaction?

It’s more the chemical reaction. I DO use different colours, but a lot of the colour happens after the paint’s already on there. I move them around a lot after they’re on the surface. I can melt and partially dissolve and get a chemical reaction between two different things to make a colour change. It’s one of the things that I’ve learned over the years, working with these materials: what kind of solvent is going to produce the desired effect.

There seems to be a recurring theme of red and black – is that intentional?

Well, it’s not a symbolic reason.  Working in the furniture trade, over the years, I worked with a lot of browns and taupes and earthtones, and I think that enhanced my liking of strong, vibrant colours. Even though I know how to do muted tones, I seldom do. I really enjoy the bright, vibrant aesthetic.

Michael Fitzsimmons - Trio

Is there an inspiration for you behind this, or is the inspiration the final product?

Both. I do a lot of things where I just love to see what happens. One of the big sources for my imagery is particle physics; detection images; Bubble-Chamber photos– where it’s tracks of electrons or other particles that leave the arcs — and I’ve done a number of paintings that have made use of that image. I’ve got a fascination with elemental forces, I suppose.

I’m not painting just to do abstract painting. For some people, paint is what it’s all about, but I’m happier if someone forgets that the surface of the painting is there and just thinks that they’re looking at something in a mysterious space.

Can you tell us about your first sale?

Well, when I was doing just the furniture for a few years, and my wife was painting, she was putting things in the Eastside Culture Crawl. So, I started putting out some… well, what we call Mounting Boards– we attach them to finished or painted surfaces so that they can be handled; picked up and moved around without touching the paint, and, bit by bit, they get a lot of interesting drips and spatters and residues of colours on them by pure accident.

I always liked them and thought of them as artwork in themselves, and a couple years in the crawl I sold a bunch of them — about a thousand bucks worth of Mounting Boards, which is great because they’re literally off-cast, accidental crap from our shop. But on the other hand, they were interesting artworks, a lot of them, and that was kinda my ongoing connection to the arts even though I wasn’t doing it, and my paintings are kind of similar. I mean, I take similar approach in my paintings.

The first real SIGNIFICANT sale that I had came along in a nice way, in that we had finished a set of dining room chairs and, one day, a woman came in with one that had a problem. While she was here, she saw a painting and loved it. She ended up buying it, and just taking the chair back without us fixing it.

Michael Fitzsimmons - Northwest Passage

It must have been nice to know that your art had that kind of an effect on someone.

It’s a very nice compliment when someone purchases your work. People give compliments all the time, and with all genuineness I’m sure, but when someone also parts with money out of their bank account it’s sort of an extra-special comment– someone liked it enough that they actually wanted to keep it on their wall. It’s a very satisfying thing.

If you moved to selling paintings as your primary source of income, do you think that having to paint, or having to paint things that are commercially viable might might suck some of the fun out of it?

I like to think not, but it’s a concern I suppose, and it’s one reason that I’m not rushing to chop out the other source of income. As it is now, I don’t feel any deep pressure to make an income from art, so if I wish to start doing some odd paintings that people may think are ugly or won’t sell, I won’t need to worry about it, whereas any artist who makes their living solely from their art, there’s always an eye on the market -which is not an altogether bad thing.  I don’t think it’s selling out doing that, but it’s a little extra source of pressure that can, in some cases, slow you from experimenting.

You’ve decided to donate some of your work for charity — can you tell us about that?

Yeah.  I’ve donated it to an auction called Unite with Art, which is a UNICEF-run charity for children with HIV. It’s an excellent cause and they have an auction with a dinner and all, and quite a number of artists from around town participate. It’s the third year that they’ve done it, and they have about 50 or 60 artists participating. I’m hoping I’ll bring a good price — it’s a good cause.

We hope so too, Michael.   Thanks very much.

–

Michael Fitzsimmons works out of suite #280 at Parker Street Studios, and welcomes visitors to both his studio, and website: www.zebodesigns.com

Contact Michael by phone at 604.255.7473 or by email, at zebodesigns@telus.net

–

Untitled

NAME:  Sonya Iwasiuk

OCCUPATION:  Artist

BASE OF OPERATIONS:  Parker Street Studios, Vancouver

Four uneven floors of dilapidated studios and crooked hallways set a fitting scene for one of the most productive centers of art in our city. Wandering Parker Street Studios for even a short time reveals an abundance of local talent, and still, the work of Sonya Iwasiuk sticks in the mind.

Raised in small-town Alberta, Sonya’s work is dominated by the expansive, rusty landscapes of her childhood. Attached to every piece, an object – gnarled and worn by weather and time, found on a walk or a hike, or at the roadside. It is the center, both in the aesthetic, and in the implied narrative: eons of calm and tempest — explorations of fragility, eternity, strength, and death.

–

So… where does it all come from?

Well, as a kid, I was really into drawing – it was my love. I explored a lot, too. I grew up on the outskirts of a small town in Northern Alberta, where there were abandoned homesteads and barns and buildings all over the place. I was always curious about them and their past; I’d wander out with my dog and search for old jars and bottles and forgotten things.

prairie remnants

Would you say those memories of your childhood are your main source of inspiration?

Well, my childhood – I don’t know if it’s like everybody’s childhood – but I reminisce about it a lot, and I think you can see that in my work. But I also like to paint stories. I’m really interested in human nature and tragedy, and the connection of objects to the past.

After the days of exploring ruined buildings, where did you go?

After high school I moved to Winnipeg to be reunited with my father, and decided to stay there and go to college. I went to the U. of M. thinking I would enroll in Fine Arts, but when I got there I thought ‘Hmmm.. I think I want to make money instead’ *laughs* ‘so I went into advertising…’

I guess you felt like it had some connection to art, then?

Yeah – it’s design, and art is design. If you don’t place things properly, a piece won’t balance, and it will be too tense, and people won’t like it.

And that kept you going until you decided to make the move to painting?

No, I finished school and eventually made my way out to Vancouver to work freelance. I didn’t like it though, and I got out and ended up selling high-end furniture for a little while.

Eventually I decided I wanted to be a set decorator for film. I was just about to get started when I took a weekend off and got into a car accident. I couldn’t work for eight months – so, it was pretty bad – and for years my body was too sore to do anything physical, even paint. Eventually, I started feeling better and started to get fit again, and so that was my focus – I was always hiking and kayaking. I was always outdoors. Art was the last thing on my mind.

Then I ended up getting Lyme Disease while hiking, and that was what brought me back to art – because I could no longer hike -or do anything, really; I was just so fatigued.

three spikes

What was the process like, getting back? Was it at home, working out of the garage?

Yeah, we tore down a bunch of shelves and cupboards and built a little studio area and I spent the first little while just sorta playing around in there. I fell in love with it all over again and realized how much I had been missing it all those years.

Was that the point you decided to make a career out of it?

No, it wasn’t until I was let go from my job last fall.

I went on holiday, and came back to find out they didn’t need me anymore. I was kinda dreading going back anyway, so it was funny – I was shocked and relieved at the same time. They gave me three months’ severance, and my partner said to me, ‘okay, now is the time – paint’, and so I went at it. Even though I’m going into debt right now – which is freaky for me – I’m going with it, because I really want to succeed. I love it so much.

The proverbial ’starving artist’, then. How optimistic are you that you’ll be able to support yourself with your painting?

Well, apparently I’m doing quite well, considering I’ve only been at it for seven months. I’ve sold 18 pieces, and the economy doesn’t exactly have people rushing out to buy paintings.

I have the type of personality that hates to fail, and I usually succeed when I really put myself into something. That’s what I’m doing with this, so I’m confident it will work out.

Are you happy with what you’ve produced so far?

Mostly. I experiment a lot, so there are bound to be pieces that don’t work. Every time somebody buys one of my paintings, I’m amazed. Obviously, I’m working towards being accepted into larger and more prominent galleries, but I don’t think any artist I’ve ever spoken to is completely happy with their work.

Untitled

I think we’ve seen a divergence from the original theme of wide landscapes, and a movement into a more figurative style – is that a part of that process?

Yeah, I’ve never wanted to keep to one theme or style for too long, so I often play around with whatever I’m thinking or feeling at the time.

This latest piece you’ve made quite large. Did you have a sense that it needed to be big?

Yeah.  I did a small sketch in about twenty minutes and thought ‘this is going to be a good painting- it’s got good composition; it’s going to be very powerful. It needs to be big’.

I feel quite attached to it – it will be weird when I sell it. Like ‘Shirley’s Garage’. It was strange when I sold that, because it was so personal and I knew the story so well.

Can you tell us how the object ties into the story ? Is there any actual connection between them in this  case, or is it just aesthetic?

Aesthetic. It’s just so raw and rough and tied into the cage etching I did above the girl. I love the metal, because it can be beautiful when I want it to be, and it can be– it’s sculpture all the time, and I love putting the sculptural element into every piece. But in this case it comes through very raw, and cutting.

The subjects of the story – are they aware that you made this?

No.

How do you think they’d feel about it?

The two standing figures… they’d probably be angry.

Shirley's Garage

I know Shirley’s Garage was another one with a difficult theme – are you comfortable going into that?

Yeah, that was a friend of mine that had experienced some awful tragedies in her life. I knew that her son had died and that her husband had left her shortly after that. I hadn’t even talked to her about it – I just heard about it from someone else – and I wondered what that would feel like – to have your son die and then your husband of over twenty years leave you shortly after. If it were me, I would want to crawl into a corner somewhere.

She ended up giving me some pieces of metal when she decided to purge her garage, and her life, actually. They were 2′ x 3′ pieces of tin from old roofing tiles or something, and with that one I actually put the metal on the canvas first and then I just started painting- I started painting what I thought Shirley must feel like, and it came out. I didn’t even mean it, it just came out.

Was she aware that you had painted it?

Yeah, I told her about it after I sold it, actually – it was one of the first that I had sold, minus a couple of 6″ x 6″ pieces previous to that. I couldn’t believe that somebody actually came into my studio – there was an open house here in April – and bought my biggest and most expensive piece. It gave me a lot of confidence.

What was the reaction when you told her what you had done, and that you had sold it?

She wanted to see it; she thought it was great, and she really wanted to see it. She actually came by the day before I was to deliver it. She broke down. She told me that she felt like she had been witnessed, and that I had told the untold story… it was a really amazing experience. She even said that she felt she could move on now, and that I had somehow helped on that journey. It was pretty incredible.

–

Sonya Iwasiuk works out of suite #342 in Parker Street Studios, and welcomes visitors to both her studio, and her website: www.faintinggoatstudio.com

Contact Sonya by phone at 778.998.7894 or by email, at sonya@faintinggoatstudio.com

Sonya with Sammy

]]> http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/art/sonya-iwasuik-the-fainting-goat/feed/ 4 http://thedependent.ca/featured/suitcase-full-of-dildos/ http://thedependent.ca/featured/suitcase-full-of-dildos/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:12:41 +0000 Matt Chambers http://thedependent.ca/?p=9 Demi gets up at two. She draws a bath, shaves her legs and brushes her teeth. Sitting at the computer, she selects a picture: today’s has her kneeling on the edge of a bed, sinking into the white duvet. All is exposed, save her face, which is cut off at her sly smile.

Her fingers hover over the keyboard as she contemplates a title.

“WHAT EVERY MAN DESERVES,” she types, and wanders into the bedroom to pack her bag: lingerie, bikinis, hand sanitizer, toothbrush, mouthwash, magazines, deodorant, lube, condoms, dildos, handcuffs, gag, and a knife. Last to go in is a small satchel, filled with good-luck charms.

Her phone begins to ring: a trickle at first, becoming a torrent by 11pm.

“What are your restrictions?”, ”Do you do anything bareback?”, “Do you like what you do?” they ask.

“Depends what you look like,” she replies, her frankness causing some of them to hang up.

Others are emboldened. Others still are masturbating. Occasionally, someone calls wanting more than just her voice; and by 7am, she’s made three appointments and $1,000. Opting to pass on the rush of pre-meeting quickies, she retires to bed, one of over 800 women using the internet to prostitute in Vancouver.

Born in small-town Ontario, Demi moved to Coquitlam six months ago to live with a boyfriend. After being beaten and locked in a closet, she left him, but decided to stay in the city. Without a job, and without a safety-net of friends and family, rent loomed. The prospect of quick and easy cash proved irresistible.

“As a beautiful girl I get hounded all the time,” she says, “I just decided to take advantage of it.”

Demi is 24, Caucasian, and what seems a world away from the horrors of survival sex that play out on the Downtown East side. For her, there is no strutting on street corners; she posts an ad on Craigslist, and 15 minutes later her phone is ringing.

The free classifieds site has long been a tool of the sex trade, and was described as “the largest source of prostitution in America,” by Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart during a 2009 lawsuit to shut down the ‘Erotic Services’ section. The suit was thrown out, but the publicity it generated, along with the subsequent murder of a Boston masseuse who used Craigslist to find clients, compelled the company to act. In the United States the ‘Erotic Services’ section was replaced by the ‘Adult Services’ section, which requires a $10 credit card charge per ad, and has a manual approval process for every post.

In Canadian cities the Erotic Services board remains; users pay no fees and validate their account with a phone number rather than a credit card. In Vancouver, the board sees an average of 1,100 advertisements a day — which is more than any U.S. city, and bested only by Toronto — but the count paints a slightly misleading picture: Demi posts up to a dozen ads a day.

Craigslist didn’t respond to a request for a count of active users, but a computer program written by The Dependent revealed, over a one-month period in the Vancouver area, over 800 unique numbers.

For Demi, Craigslist is the only source of business; it generates 2-3 clients a day, and upwards of  $1,000.

“It’s unbelievable the money you can make,” she says.

Demi tries to operate like a business, and found that her Coquitlam location was holding her back.

“It’s nice inside, but from the outside, it’s a crack shack. I’d see the Porsches drive up and then leave,” she tells me. She hired a driver so she could meet clients on their own terms.

For $40 an hour, she’s chauffeured through the city in a late-model Jeep Cherokee. Connected to the internet through her iPhone, she continues to post advertisements, respond to messages, and answer phone calls.

“I get lots and lots of calls,” she says, “most of them just want to hear my voice or get more pictures, or jerk off. The more questions they ask, the less likely they are to make an appointment. If they’re really interested, I tell them to text me their name, number, address, and buzzer. Before I started that I used to get stood up a lot.”

Once a client confirms, the driver punches the address into his GPS. They agree on a pickup time and he drops her off.

“You walk in, take a deep breath, knock on the door, and hope for the best –  that it’s a clean gentlemen, decent looking, and not ready to kill you,” she laughs.

“I’m not scared, but I’m cautious.”

“The driver’s supposed to add security,” she says. “If you’re not out there, it’s his duty to come get you.”

Amazingly, the driver is the only criminal in Demi’s operation.

Prostitution itself is legal in Canada. The peripheral activities, such as operating a common bawdy house, communicating in a public place for the purposes of prostitution, or living off its avails are all crimes, but by visiting clients rather than using a regular in-call location, Demi skirts the bawdy house law; and by communicating over the internet or telephone, instead of the city streets, she also avoids the communication law.

Statistics Canada data shows that the communication law accounts for 98% of all prostitution-related charges. Its intention is to address the nuisance associated with the street trade, and almost all of the efforts of Law Enforcement are focused there. SFU professor John Lowman, who has spent the last decade researching the local sex trade, estimates that over 80% of Vancouver prostitution occurs indoors — in massage parlours, hotel rooms, and private residences.

The City of Vancouver issues licenses to escorts, escort services, and body rub parlours — the latter for “manipulating, touching or stimulating … a person’s body or part thereof”. It is the only questionable license in the city that doesn’t explicitly forbid prostitution on site, and its $7,891 fee is the third most expensive, behind only the PNE and Hastings Downs.

PIVOT Legal Society, a local non-profit, has launched a charter challenge in B.C. Supreme Court, claiming this two-tiered status of prostitution in Canada contributes to the violence perpetrated against sex-trade workers. Centered in their suit is the communication law.

“It forces workers into isolated areas to avoid police, and into cars before they’ve had a chance to size up a date,” explains Katrina Pacey, of PIVOT.

Pacey also argues that bawdy-house laws prevent sex workers from operating in safe and sanitary conditions, and that the procuring and avails laws prevent them from working together, or with security.

For Demi, the hiring of a driver was less about safety than business. While it was an improvement over her Coquitlam location, she found herself paying $40 an hour to be carted from tanning salon to shopping centre, nail parlour to restaurant during the slower afternoons. She began renting a Yaletown condo for $1,900 a month, in addition to her $700 a month Coquitlam residence.

“You make better money in Yaletown,” she says, “the guys are there. The money’s there. They call when they’re coming out of their office and they’ll be like, 15 minutes.”

Bouncing between the two apartments for work and sleep, she rents the Yaletown location out to other escorts when she’s not working.

“I never enjoy the sex,” she tells me, “but every day of my life is fun.  I love walking in, click, click, click with the heels, and seeing the guy’s jaw just drop. Most of my job doesn’t even involve sex. I shake my ass, slip the condom on and it’s over — three pump dump — $300 in 15 minutes,” she laughs. “Ahh, the world of looking at men as suckers.”

Two weeks later and I’m calling with some follow-up questions.

“Hey,” she says plainly; in the background: voices, and the periodic burst of an intercom, “I’m in the E.R.”

“Swine Flu?” I ask, hopefully.

“No, I fell off the wagon—” she says,  “crack. I went to detox but they wouldn’t take me, I was so fucked-up. They sent me here.” She pauses. “You show strong for so long, but you can only do it for so long. I was abused as a kid, and it’s all coming back to me… everytime… it just got on top of me.  I’m going back to visit my family in Ontario; I’ll call you in a bit.”

Two days later: “I’m getting some wind,” she says. She sounds tired.

“I had a boyfriend who was using and kept leaving me to do it. I asked him, ‘if you use here, will you leave me tonight?’ He said no, and so he stayed and I used.”

She says she won’t return to the sex trade.

“But, I don’t regret it. We all fuck up — we do.  For me, it was easier money than a real job, and when you’ve got low self-confidence, you think that’s all you can be. I don’t have an education. I wasn’t raised in a normal way. I’ve been running my whole life not knowing what I’m looking for or where I’m going, but I don’t regret it. I can’t regret it. I take it, absorb it, learn from it, and move on.  Reflecting on what I’ve done is hard, you know? It’s not the purest of things.”

“Do you think it should be legal? I ask.

“No,” she says, emphatically, “we’re sick for taking their money and they’re sick for giving it to us.”

She says talking is a part of the recovery.

“I’m not ashamed of it. It goes in the memory box.”

Three days later, she’s upbeat and energetic. She’s playing cards with a friend, the phone pinned between her ear and shoulder.

“I’m going to be a counselor,” she tells me, “I haven’t given to society and I want to.”

Her future in the sex trade is less certain.

“Now that I’m clean, I know I’ll still do calls. I’ve got a guy in Vancouver who calls me, begging to pay me three grand to do an ass smoothie.”

“What’s an ass smoothie?” I ask.

Her friend laughing in the background.

“Well if you don’t know…” she says.

And I never hear from her again.

While global population growth has stabilized at 1%, urban numbers continue to explode. Planners the world over are on the lookout for functional models of density, and now, Vancouver’s unique approach has earned it a classification all of its own: Vancouverism.

For those living here, it’s easy to take for granted the vibrant, densely-populated urban core, with its abundance of public spaces and parks, and its pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. It is a balance of prosperity and livability envied across the globe, one reflected in our continuous ranking as the world’s most livable city. But conscious, considerate planning has not always been the hallmark of Vancouver’s progress. This Golden Age has been preceded by many decades of bronze, and nowhere is that better exemplified than in the history of the West End.

When the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in 1886, its executives sought land to build homes. As one of the few areas that didn’t require the construction of a new bridge, the West End presented an obvious choice, and the first mansions were built along a bluff rising 40 feet above Coal Harbour, with fine views of the inlet and the North Shore.

Not long after settlement began, the Dominion of Canada set aside the 1,000 acres of logged forest nearby. Named after Governor General Lord Stanley, the park was dedicated ‘to the use and enjoyment of peoples of all colours, creeds, and customs, for all time’. At first it was indiscernible from the tangle of tree and thorn covering the Downtown Peninsula, but with the steady conversion of woodland to Victorian mansion, Lord Stanley’s Park became quite the jewel indeed, and the magnificent homes beside it – so close to work, beach, and greenspace – comprised the most exclusive neighbourhood in the city. By 1910, the entire square mile of 66′ lots was occupied by rich and middle-class families.

High Density Housing

The British Columbia Electric Railway operated rail cars on Robson, Denman, and Davie Streets. The Central Business District and the West End fed off one another – demand for workers increasing the demand for housing, and demand for housing increasing the demand for jobs. Retail shops began to appear along the streetcar lines, servicing those coming to and from work. Vancouver enjoyed a booming trade in forestry, fishing and mining, and the success of the city put pressures on the West End that its original structures could not withstand.

As of 1926, Vancouver had no concrete zoning regulations. Development continued unchecked throughout the 66′ grid, with the construction of apartments and conversion of old homes to multi-tenant dwellings becoming commonplace. To serve the growing population, storefronts were setup on ground floors and in front yards. Wooden construction, now several decades old, began to show its age. The upper classes fled the neighbourhood.

With the Great Depression came an enormous demand for cheap rental accommodation, and a rapid acceleration in the breakdown of private homes, and their conversion to multi-tenant rentals. Newly-enacted zoning laws limited wooden structures to two stories and inadvertently encouraged an aggressive use of lot space. While the original houses of the West End were vigorous exercises in timber construction, the apartments that replaced them showed little imagination. In areas where considerable redevelopment had taken place, the resulting street picture was monotonous, and the basic standards of light, air, and privacy were minimized by the closeness of the buildings.

By the 1940s the conversion from upper to lower-class was complete, and the papers were filled with articles describing the crowded and polluted living conditions to be found in the West End. City health officials labeled over 50% of the suites they inspected as ‘unsuitable’ for living. Pollution from heavy industry along False Creek forced Mamie Maloney – the newspaper columnist – to wash her kitchen drapes every two weeks, and lament the ‘tattle-tale grey’ that stained her white linens, hung out to dry.

Nothing changed until the 1950s. Motordom – the idea that everyone would drive everywhere for everything – was changing the course of entire countries. Modern construction and financial instruments made it possible to build larger structures, more quickly than ever before. A profound change was unavoidable, sealed by the arrival of Gerald Sutton Brown as City Planning Director. Sutton Brown sought to change planning from a custodial enterprise into an active effort to improve the human environment. Centered in his sights, was the West End. “Where else is there residential so close to the business center of a great city?” he admired, and dismissed the construction of two storey apartments as ‘useless’, tabling instead a plan for buildings ten stories or more.

In 1956, City Council enacted the new zoning bylaws recommended for the West End. They eliminated height restrictions, and introduced a new tool for controlling development: floor space ratio. It is a metric still used today – calculated by dividing the total square footage of a building by its total site area. The West End was permitted an FSR of 3.0, intended as a deterrent to the ‘box’ forms of apartments, and a promotion of tall, well-spaced modern architecture. The number of building sites doubled from 1955 to 1956. It spawned an explosion of high-rise apartments, fueled by the booming economy, and while the rest of North America burst out into suburbia, the West End experienced a 50% increase in population in the 1960s.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

The new construction was tall, fast and cheap, and quickly recognized as such. Proponents cited the strong lines and clean facades as new heights in architectural design, but few saw the bland, repeated patterns as anything other than pure capitalism. The new zoning regulations affected little control over the whims of private capital, and shrewd developers realized that while the FSR limited a building’s footprint, it could still be constructed narrowly across the width of the site, thus providing and stealing as many ‘views’ as possible. The structures were declared parasites on the community – thieves of light, air and amenity. Residents bemoaned the new character of their neighbourhood: “In 1955, the eight storey Sylvia Hotel was the tallest building in the West End. Today, 20 years later, it is hidden beneath a forest of high-rise apartment buildings; the fine old mansions that once surrounded it are gone; the inexpensive rooming-houses destroyed; the human scale of the area obliterated; and all in the name of progress and profit.”

Compounding the despair was the constant flow of traffic. The original streets, converted from horse cart paths and still dissecting the 66′ grid, could not keep up with the demands of motorists. Every summer they were clogged with the automobiles of beach and park goers, and every rush hour, the arterial streets were jammed with cars trying to get out to Georgia. So pervasive was the mentality of motordom, that Sutton Brown’s planning department could only imagine the neighbourhood with a complete saturation of the automobile:

“On the basis of estimated traffic figures, it appears that an elaborate arrangement of freeway connections and major arteries will be required to service the West End … At present, most of the local streets are residential in character, but with the necessary improvements and the volume of traffic to be carried, this residential amenity will be removed.”

It was a transformation taking place all across North America, but opposition in the West End was strong. The neighbourhood was built for life before the car, and over 50% of its residents lived as such.

In 1971 the Social Development Committee commissioned a report by Robert Collier, who stressed an emphasis on people over technology.

“In the past five years the city has spent close to $1M on transportation studies,” he observed, “we seem to be more interested in cars than people – for we have not spent one-tenth of that amount obtaining up-to-date social information.”

His report filled that void, making extensive use of community dialogue. Collier discovered – much to the shock of the city – that people actually enjoyed living in the West End. A high value was placed on its easy access to work, play, shopping, variety of accommodation, and reasonable rent. The main leisure activity was walking, and the primary concerns of residents were noise, pollution, traffic, parking, and community spirit. Collier stressed the importance of public input in the development process, citing residents criticism of the city’s past insensitivity to their concerns. The assessment spawned a critical shift in planning policy, and local teams were established to consult the city.

The result was a moratorium on the construction of new towers, the installation of traffic barriers and mini-parks to restore calm and reduce noise, the construction of a new community center, and a community development plan, which saw a reduction of floor space ratios, a restoration of building height limitations, rules governing sunlight penetration, and incentives to integrate amenities into new buildings. The 1975 West End Plan was a recognition that, although the massive redevelopment of the district did not result in absolutely disastrous consequences, it did produce a number of problems that, if unchecked, would lead to a severe deterioration in the quality of life of the residents in the district.

The 1975 plan was the result of almost a century of rapid development in the West End. Its principles remain largely unchanged even today, and the neighbourhood’s skyline is almost exactly the same as it was forty years ago. Still, it is one of the most desirable places to live on the planet, and the memory of its successes and failures have been applied to False Creek, Coal Harbour, the Olympic Village, and the city of Vancouver as a whole.

Check out those view corridors, and that easy access to pristine coastline.

Oh, yeah.