July 9, 2010
Have been at Gabriola for six days. Today is Friday, not so good for travelling. I had thought of staying another day, but woke up at 5 am, and figured I’d get going early.
Loaded the car, shut the cottage and got the 6:30 am Gabriola ferry to Nanaimo. Only about a third full. Got to the Nanaimo side by 6:55, then set off for the Duke Point ferry to Tsawassen, arriving with a bit of time to spare before loading on for the 7:45 ferry.
It was a beautiful morning, with hotter-than-usual weather. Once on the boat I immediately went out on deck.
At the front of the vessel, just before we got going, a family of five wandered by; mother, father and three young children.
The mother and two littlest ones moved along, but the father and a boy of about six stopped at the front rail of the deck to look out at the channel between Gabriola and Protection Island, gleaming in the early morning, bright blue and topped with whitecaps.
The little boy turned to look up at the bridge.
“Dad, I can see the captain.”
“Uh huh...you gonna wave?” suggested the father.
The boy waits a bit, still looking up, as if summoning nerve. After a few seconds, as the father wanders off after the mother, he waves.
“Mom, mom!” he shouts, running after the family.
“I waved at the captain and he...she waved back!”
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Radiant City Review
Making fun of the suburbs is nothing new, says Joseph Heath, one of the academic commentators featured in Radiant City, a documentary by filmmaker Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown.
Nothing new indeed. Contempt for suburban living is almost a cornerstone of popular culture. In this respect, the tone of Radiant City rings pretty familiar.
Combining a reality television style of storytelling with commentary from a handful of urban design experts and cultural critics, Radiant City is more fun than most documentaries. Burns and Brown are both Albertans, and they use Calgary, with its oil-fuelled economy and supercharged housing market, as their model. The docudrama bits, which
focus on a few weeks in the life of a suburban family, deliver a dry kind of comedy. And far from weighing the movie down, the various talking head experts provide a series of nicely-placed breaks in the
narrative.
While style of the movie is appealing, the substance is not really anything we haven’t heard before: the suburbs alienate people from each other; they are environmentally wasteful, they're esthetically bereft, and so on. The most sprited defense of suburban living is provided by characters the audience is clearly intended to laugh at. A realtor, for instance, earnestly selling the viewer on the proximity of new subdivisions to ‘power centres’ (shopping malls).
I agree with the gist of Radiant City's message, but I can’t help but think that there’s something missing in the film’s analysis.
Its not just that people live in the suburbs because it’s a place where you can have some space at an affordable price, especially if you have a family. There are other problems with high density living than the issue
of less space for the money.
Look at the Lower Mainland. When you consider the downside of high-density property, from problems with the quality of condo construction over the past couple of decades to often dysfunctional strata governance, can you really blame people for choosing the suburban
option?
In an interview with the New York Times a few months back, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan was quoted as saying “If we want to convince people to live in higher densities we have to provide them with the amenities that will make that type of living attractive.”
He was talking about green spaces like Stanley Park, but how about also providing people with buildings that are solidly built, or have suites that are a reasonable size, in which you don’t have to listen to everything the person beside/below/above you is doing?
Increasingly I come across downtown apartment dwellers looking for secondary properties out of town due to the nerve-rattling nature of downtown living. It can be a cheaper option than buying a house in many suburbs. The result is that you just end up with sprawl that is exported a little farther afield, to places like the Gulf Islands, or the Sunshine Coast, or the Interior.
And the intense downtown condo development we've seen in Vancouver has displaced a lot of downtown office and industrial space. What you start to get is a reverse commute, wherein people live in the city and work in the suburbs.
Anecdotal stuff? Maybe (although the issue of a depleting downtown office and industrial space is of genuine concern to planners).
But my point is that if not done properly, high density development can be as sterile as the suburbs, and a component of a lifestyle that may not end up being any more environmentally friendly.
In fact, you can easily envision a sequel to Radiant City. Instead of laughing at suburban realtors and their power centres, you’d amuse yourself with hipster urban realtors talking about ‘vibe’ and ‘edginess.’ Instead of a panel of academics railing against the social ills of suburbia, you’d have some commentary on all the people packed into small apartments of questionable construction quality, commuting each day to their jobs in the suburban industrial park.
Radiant City is a good film, well worth seeing. But I think its conclusions, like the suburbs it mocks, are a little too cookie cutter in their design.
Nothing new indeed. Contempt for suburban living is almost a cornerstone of popular culture. In this respect, the tone of Radiant City rings pretty familiar.
Combining a reality television style of storytelling with commentary from a handful of urban design experts and cultural critics, Radiant City is more fun than most documentaries. Burns and Brown are both Albertans, and they use Calgary, with its oil-fuelled economy and supercharged housing market, as their model. The docudrama bits, which
focus on a few weeks in the life of a suburban family, deliver a dry kind of comedy. And far from weighing the movie down, the various talking head experts provide a series of nicely-placed breaks in the
narrative.
While style of the movie is appealing, the substance is not really anything we haven’t heard before: the suburbs alienate people from each other; they are environmentally wasteful, they're esthetically bereft, and so on. The most sprited defense of suburban living is provided by characters the audience is clearly intended to laugh at. A realtor, for instance, earnestly selling the viewer on the proximity of new subdivisions to ‘power centres’ (shopping malls).
I agree with the gist of Radiant City's message, but I can’t help but think that there’s something missing in the film’s analysis.
Its not just that people live in the suburbs because it’s a place where you can have some space at an affordable price, especially if you have a family. There are other problems with high density living than the issue
of less space for the money.
Look at the Lower Mainland. When you consider the downside of high-density property, from problems with the quality of condo construction over the past couple of decades to often dysfunctional strata governance, can you really blame people for choosing the suburban
option?
In an interview with the New York Times a few months back, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan was quoted as saying “If we want to convince people to live in higher densities we have to provide them with the amenities that will make that type of living attractive.”
He was talking about green spaces like Stanley Park, but how about also providing people with buildings that are solidly built, or have suites that are a reasonable size, in which you don’t have to listen to everything the person beside/below/above you is doing?
Increasingly I come across downtown apartment dwellers looking for secondary properties out of town due to the nerve-rattling nature of downtown living. It can be a cheaper option than buying a house in many suburbs. The result is that you just end up with sprawl that is exported a little farther afield, to places like the Gulf Islands, or the Sunshine Coast, or the Interior.
And the intense downtown condo development we've seen in Vancouver has displaced a lot of downtown office and industrial space. What you start to get is a reverse commute, wherein people live in the city and work in the suburbs.
Anecdotal stuff? Maybe (although the issue of a depleting downtown office and industrial space is of genuine concern to planners).
But my point is that if not done properly, high density development can be as sterile as the suburbs, and a component of a lifestyle that may not end up being any more environmentally friendly.
In fact, you can easily envision a sequel to Radiant City. Instead of laughing at suburban realtors and their power centres, you’d amuse yourself with hipster urban realtors talking about ‘vibe’ and ‘edginess.’ Instead of a panel of academics railing against the social ills of suburbia, you’d have some commentary on all the people packed into small apartments of questionable construction quality, commuting each day to their jobs in the suburban industrial park.
Radiant City is a good film, well worth seeing. But I think its conclusions, like the suburbs it mocks, are a little too cookie cutter in their design.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Conspiracy Theories (part one)
"People believe (in the idea of a 9/11 conspiracy) because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives..."
George Monbiot on conspiracy theories.
George Monbiot on conspiracy theories.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
“Like all rich people, Keith lived in fear of being exploited.”
Tony Sanchez, “Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.”
The Ganges River originates in the Himalayan foothills in north-central India, and flows roughly south-east for about twelve hundred miles, emptying into the Bay of Bengal near Calcutta and Bangladesh in a massive, hydra-like delta known as ‘The Mouths of the Ganges.’ Along the way, approximately halfway between New Delhi and Calcutta, sits the city of Varanasi.
Varanasi is the holiest city in the Hindu religion. It is roughly to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam or Jerusalem is to Christianity. It contains, officially, about a million people, but Indian cities always seem to consist of a large number of ‘unofficial’ people. Varanasi’s proximity to the sacred Ganges is what gives it its significance.
I arrived there by train early in the morning, about six or so. The town stretches back from the banks of the Ganges like New Westminster does from the Fraser, except unlike New Westminster the land stays flat. The Ganges is about as wide as the Fraser. The oldest part of the town is near the river, a labyrinthine maze of narrow, twisting streets and exotic, Indiana Jones-like midaeval buildings.
The train station is about a couple of miles from the shore. I had read about a guest house, right down on the shore of the Ganges, that was noted for being reasonable and reliable. I decided to walk. I would have had to haggle for a motor-rickshaw, and the negotiating that seemed to be part of every frigging transaction was wearing me out.
I was also getting the distinct impression that I was something of a walking dollar sign. A few weeks earlier, in the western town of Jaisalmer, I had paid a kid about five rupees after he guided me to a hotel. I saw him the next day, and he recognized me.
“Five rupees to walk down that street,” he said as I wandered down a little alleyway. He ran after me.
“Five rupees to look at that building.”
Things got wose in New Delhi. After being swarmed by shoeshine boys day after day, I finally relented, figuring that once I got my footwear polished they would lay off. The next day a kid came up to me, telling me he’d shine my shoes for two rupees.
“I had them shined yesterday,” I said trumping him. “I don’t need them shined.”
“They don’t look shined,” he said, shaking his head. “I can do a better job.”
“No no no. They’re perfectly fine.”
“They’re still very dirty. I use special polish. I’ll make them look much better.”
This went on for a few exasperating minutes, with the kid running beside me the whole time.
“Look,” I said to him finally. “They’re fine the way they are. I like them the way they are.”
“You like them the way they are?”
“Yes.”
“You like them like that?”
“Yes.”
“You like them dirty?”
“Yes,” I sighed wearily.
“For two rupees,” he said with a smile, “I can make them dirtier.”
Getting right down to the shore of the Ganges may not have been possible by rickshaw in any case. There was a huge crush of people coming back along the main road from the river, even at the early hour. In fact, the early morning is a busy time, as many people bathe in the river at first light. There was also a major Hindu festival going on. I got down there by foot, and found the place I wanted.
That night, I sat on the roof of the guest house with a small cadre of travellers, looking down on the murky silhouette of the Ganges. There was a very beautiful girl from Naples; she had darkish skin but blue eyes, who said that the guesthouse was "verry seeemple but verrry goood.” There were a few standoffish English people. There were two haggard forty-something Austrian guys who spent chemical summers in Khatmandu and relatively non-toxic winters in India (“we come down here to cleanse our systems,” said one of them to me), and a guy from Montreal, happily the only Canadian I met in India, who was carting around an accoustic guitar that he scarcely how to play. He was French, and though he knew a bit of Pink Floyd, he asked me to show him some other songs. I chose 'Come Together,' by the Beatles, intending no significance; it was the only one that came to mind.
And then, as it got very dark, an enchanting event unfolded. Imagine the Illuminaires festival at Trout Lake. Then multiply all the laterns you would see there by ten or twenty or thirty times. Then imagine all of them being placed on tiny rafts or floats, and set adrift on a river in the dark. That’s what happened. They looked like a flowing constellation of stars, some big, some small, making their way past the shadowy shores of a very ancient and exotic city.
In the morning I would get up early. My room was on the ground floor, and it had it’s own shower, which was a bit of a luxury. I would go up to the roof, and hang out until this local kid, apparently known as ‘the boy,’ would show up and take orders for breakfast.
I had been in the country for a while, and knew enough to order ‘black tea,’ as opposed to ‘tea,’ which would in fact get me a cup of chai, the milky, sugary version of tea common in India. I learned that if you wanted toast, you asked for ‘toastbutterjam,’ so that you would get something to put on the toast as well as the toast itself.
I didn’t order omelettes or eggs of any kind, out of a sort of respect for the proprietors, who were clearly vegitarian. They offered omelettes as part of the unofficial menu, but seemed uncomfortable about making them. I decided to be a vegetarian for the time I was in the city, and it seemed, along with the fact that I didn’t smoke pot, to endear me to the owners of the guest house.
I spent a number of days in Varanasi, generally wandering around by the river, through the old town, and simply sitting on the roof, soaking the sun and observing all the activity below me.
Much of it centred around the ghats. A ghat is a series of steps leading right down into the river; the bottom steps are actually under the water. There are bathing ghats and burning ghats. Burning ghats are the sites of cremations. Bodies are burned at the edge of the river and the ashes usually scattered into the Ganges.
The purpose of fire is to cleanse the soul on the way to heaven. The bodies of young children are not burned as they are deemed to be pure already. I took a ride on a little rowboat one day at dawn, and was stunned to see the body of a dead baby boy float past the boat.
In the boat with me were a middle-aged English couple. The man was so complete a caricature of the pompous Englishman that it hardly seemed possible that he even existed. His wife wore tan fatigues and a pith helmet. Back on the banks of the river, we numbly dug into our pockets to pull out a couple of hundred rupees or so for the boatman. I wasn’t sure if we had given him enough.
“We just paid him the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average person in this country,” said the English man protested to me. “Oh, I don’t care,” he then shrugged. “Pay him what you want.”
A day later I was heading out. I figured I’d go to Darjeeling, up in the Himalayan foothills. I asked the owner of the guesthouse how to get to the train station. He gave me directions.
“You’ll have to get a motorickshaw,” he said. I asked him how much I should pay, telling him that Indian motorickshaw drivers seemed to be getting the better of me.
“About ten rupees,” he said. “Maybe twelve at the most. If you want, I can send the boy with you to negotiate.”
I sheepishly told him no thanks. I made my way through the maze of old town streets to a plaza full of taxis and rickshaws, and found one to take me to the station.
I paid twelve rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents. I was pleased with myself that had I paid no more.
Tony Sanchez, “Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.”
The Ganges River originates in the Himalayan foothills in north-central India, and flows roughly south-east for about twelve hundred miles, emptying into the Bay of Bengal near Calcutta and Bangladesh in a massive, hydra-like delta known as ‘The Mouths of the Ganges.’ Along the way, approximately halfway between New Delhi and Calcutta, sits the city of Varanasi.
Varanasi is the holiest city in the Hindu religion. It is roughly to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam or Jerusalem is to Christianity. It contains, officially, about a million people, but Indian cities always seem to consist of a large number of ‘unofficial’ people. Varanasi’s proximity to the sacred Ganges is what gives it its significance.
I arrived there by train early in the morning, about six or so. The town stretches back from the banks of the Ganges like New Westminster does from the Fraser, except unlike New Westminster the land stays flat. The Ganges is about as wide as the Fraser. The oldest part of the town is near the river, a labyrinthine maze of narrow, twisting streets and exotic, Indiana Jones-like midaeval buildings.
The train station is about a couple of miles from the shore. I had read about a guest house, right down on the shore of the Ganges, that was noted for being reasonable and reliable. I decided to walk. I would have had to haggle for a motor-rickshaw, and the negotiating that seemed to be part of every frigging transaction was wearing me out.
I was also getting the distinct impression that I was something of a walking dollar sign. A few weeks earlier, in the western town of Jaisalmer, I had paid a kid about five rupees after he guided me to a hotel. I saw him the next day, and he recognized me.
“Five rupees to walk down that street,” he said as I wandered down a little alleyway. He ran after me.
“Five rupees to look at that building.”
Things got wose in New Delhi. After being swarmed by shoeshine boys day after day, I finally relented, figuring that once I got my footwear polished they would lay off. The next day a kid came up to me, telling me he’d shine my shoes for two rupees.
“I had them shined yesterday,” I said trumping him. “I don’t need them shined.”
“They don’t look shined,” he said, shaking his head. “I can do a better job.”
“No no no. They’re perfectly fine.”
“They’re still very dirty. I use special polish. I’ll make them look much better.”
This went on for a few exasperating minutes, with the kid running beside me the whole time.
“Look,” I said to him finally. “They’re fine the way they are. I like them the way they are.”
“You like them the way they are?”
“Yes.”
“You like them like that?”
“Yes.”
“You like them dirty?”
“Yes,” I sighed wearily.
“For two rupees,” he said with a smile, “I can make them dirtier.”
Getting right down to the shore of the Ganges may not have been possible by rickshaw in any case. There was a huge crush of people coming back along the main road from the river, even at the early hour. In fact, the early morning is a busy time, as many people bathe in the river at first light. There was also a major Hindu festival going on. I got down there by foot, and found the place I wanted.
That night, I sat on the roof of the guest house with a small cadre of travellers, looking down on the murky silhouette of the Ganges. There was a very beautiful girl from Naples; she had darkish skin but blue eyes, who said that the guesthouse was "verry seeemple but verrry goood.” There were a few standoffish English people. There were two haggard forty-something Austrian guys who spent chemical summers in Khatmandu and relatively non-toxic winters in India (“we come down here to cleanse our systems,” said one of them to me), and a guy from Montreal, happily the only Canadian I met in India, who was carting around an accoustic guitar that he scarcely how to play. He was French, and though he knew a bit of Pink Floyd, he asked me to show him some other songs. I chose 'Come Together,' by the Beatles, intending no significance; it was the only one that came to mind.
And then, as it got very dark, an enchanting event unfolded. Imagine the Illuminaires festival at Trout Lake. Then multiply all the laterns you would see there by ten or twenty or thirty times. Then imagine all of them being placed on tiny rafts or floats, and set adrift on a river in the dark. That’s what happened. They looked like a flowing constellation of stars, some big, some small, making their way past the shadowy shores of a very ancient and exotic city.
In the morning I would get up early. My room was on the ground floor, and it had it’s own shower, which was a bit of a luxury. I would go up to the roof, and hang out until this local kid, apparently known as ‘the boy,’ would show up and take orders for breakfast.
I had been in the country for a while, and knew enough to order ‘black tea,’ as opposed to ‘tea,’ which would in fact get me a cup of chai, the milky, sugary version of tea common in India. I learned that if you wanted toast, you asked for ‘toastbutterjam,’ so that you would get something to put on the toast as well as the toast itself.
I didn’t order omelettes or eggs of any kind, out of a sort of respect for the proprietors, who were clearly vegitarian. They offered omelettes as part of the unofficial menu, but seemed uncomfortable about making them. I decided to be a vegetarian for the time I was in the city, and it seemed, along with the fact that I didn’t smoke pot, to endear me to the owners of the guest house.
I spent a number of days in Varanasi, generally wandering around by the river, through the old town, and simply sitting on the roof, soaking the sun and observing all the activity below me.
Much of it centred around the ghats. A ghat is a series of steps leading right down into the river; the bottom steps are actually under the water. There are bathing ghats and burning ghats. Burning ghats are the sites of cremations. Bodies are burned at the edge of the river and the ashes usually scattered into the Ganges.
The purpose of fire is to cleanse the soul on the way to heaven. The bodies of young children are not burned as they are deemed to be pure already. I took a ride on a little rowboat one day at dawn, and was stunned to see the body of a dead baby boy float past the boat.
In the boat with me were a middle-aged English couple. The man was so complete a caricature of the pompous Englishman that it hardly seemed possible that he even existed. His wife wore tan fatigues and a pith helmet. Back on the banks of the river, we numbly dug into our pockets to pull out a couple of hundred rupees or so for the boatman. I wasn’t sure if we had given him enough.
“We just paid him the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average person in this country,” said the English man protested to me. “Oh, I don’t care,” he then shrugged. “Pay him what you want.”
A day later I was heading out. I figured I’d go to Darjeeling, up in the Himalayan foothills. I asked the owner of the guesthouse how to get to the train station. He gave me directions.
“You’ll have to get a motorickshaw,” he said. I asked him how much I should pay, telling him that Indian motorickshaw drivers seemed to be getting the better of me.
“About ten rupees,” he said. “Maybe twelve at the most. If you want, I can send the boy with you to negotiate.”
I sheepishly told him no thanks. I made my way through the maze of old town streets to a plaza full of taxis and rickshaws, and found one to take me to the station.
I paid twelve rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents. I was pleased with myself that had I paid no more.
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