Vancouver General Discussion Thread - Page 11

WarrenC12 · #**201** Posted **Sep 21, 2015, 5:05 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by red-paladin

No one would complain as long as the toll is cheaper than the ferry anyway.
(No one in their right mind)

Even at the same rate or moderately higher it's far, far more convenient.

Certainly a gold rush for property values if this becomes a reality.

Klazu · #**202** Posted **Sep 22, 2015, 9:09 PM**

I am currently for few days in Atlanta. So this is what a true car-oriented city looks like. Downtown skyscrapers have empty lots next to them and there are parkades up to 16 floors tall. A 14-lane freeway runs through the city core. There is almost nobody on the sidewalks even during Tuesday midday and after dark there are only homeless people.

I found even Dallas and Houston having more walkable city cores than Atlanta appears to have. Maybe it's a different story in Midtown and Buckhead areas, which I plan on checking tomorrow.

On another note, they do have some brilliant-looking skyscrapers in this town. there must have been some huge boom in the early 90s when most of them are built. Not much since then.

I was also interested to learn how their 73-floor Westin skyscraper had very similar problems to One Wall Centre after a hurricane went through Downtown in 2008. Instead of replacing 500 broken windows with different tone glass, they went onto replace all 6000 of them. Now that's how One Wall Centre should have done as well!

Anyways, interesting trip to the part of US I have never been before.

SFUVancouver · #**203** Posted **Sep 22, 2015, 10:19 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

I am currently for few days in Atlanta. So this is what a true car-oriented city looks like. Downtown skyscrapers have empty lots next to them and there are parkades up to 16 floors tall. A 14-lane freeway runs through the city core. There is almost nobody on the sidewalks even during Tuesday midday and after dark there are only homeless people.

I found even Dallas and Houston having more walkable city cores than Atlanta appears to have. Maybe it's a different story in Midtown and Buckhead areas, which I plan on checking tomorrow.

On another note, they do have some brilliant-looking skyscrapers in this town. there must have been some huge boom in the early 90s when most of them are built. Not much since then.

I was also interested to learn how their 73-floor Westin skyscraper had very similar problems to One Wall Centre after a hurricane went through Downtown in 2008. Instead of replacing 500 broken windows with different tone glass, they went onto replace all 6000 of them. Now that's how One Wall Centre should have done as well!

Anyways, interesting trip to the part of US I have never been before.

Thanks for the dispatch from your travels, Klazu. Please, keep them coming if you can.

Klazu · #**204** Posted **Sep 24, 2015, 1:42 AM**

I find Atlanta interesting as it so opposite to Vancouver, but what Vancouver could have become if freeway plans would have materialized.

I wonder why do cities like Atlanta have even ended up building skyscrapers in their Downtowns? Land cannot be of much value since there are empty ground parking lots everywhere and half of the buildings seem to be parkades.

So why build tall skyscrapers which are expensive to build, when you could easily fit the same amount of employees in 3-4 adjacent buildings? Did they over-estimate the demand in the late 80s when most of them were built or is it just that corporations like having huge landmark offices?

Actually even Vancouver seems to have looked similar to Atlanta before our condo boom that began in the 90s. So I guess there is a possibility to fix even a cityscape as broken as in Atlanta. I walked around the Midtown area today and there seems to be lots of condo towers going up in there. Not the same street vibe as we have in Vancouver, but compared to Downtown I found the Midtown much more pleasing.

Caliplanner1 · #**205** Posted **Sep 24, 2015, 3:17 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

I find Atlanta interesting as it so opposite to Vancouver, but what Vancouver could have become if freeway plans would have materialized.

I wonder why do cities like Atlanta have even ended up building skyscrapers in their Downtowns? Land cannot be of much value since there are empty ground parking lots everywhere and half of the buildings seem to be parkades.

So why build tall skyscrapers which are expensive to build, when you could easily fit the same amount of employees in 3-4 adjacent buildings? Did they over-estimate the demand in the late 80s when most of them were built or is it just that corporations like having huge landmark offices?

Actually even Vancouver seems to have looked similar to Atlanta before our condo boom that began in the 90s. So I guess there is a possibility to fix even a cityscape as broken as in Atlanta. I walked around the Midtown area today and there seems to be lots of condo towers going up in there. Not the same street vibe as we have in Vancouver, but compared to Downtown I found the Midtown much more pleasing.

As an American I'll say this........our urban planners seem to be also driven a lot by ego and the desire to have the tallest buildings possible in their respective CBD's. In short, this country (in being the so called center of global capitalism) is a big/wasteful economic behemoth!!!!

Klazu · #**206** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 12:56 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caliplanner1

As an American I'll say this........our urban planners seem to be also driven a lot by ego and the desire to have the tallest buildings possible in their respective CBD's. In short, this country (in being the so called center of global capitalism) is a big/wasteful economic behemoth!!!!

Maybe that's it. Who knows, but it is quite interesting.

Klazu · #**207** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 12:58 AM**

Did some sales tax just go up rather significantly or why am I suddenly paying quite a bit more for fast food? Teen Burger combo is now $10 which begins to be ridiculous.

GlassCity · #**208** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 1:07 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

Did some sales tax just go up rather significantly or why am I suddenly paying quite a bit more for fast food? Teen Burger combo is now $10 which begins to be ridiculous.

Minimum wage just went up, but only by 20 cents. They could've just raised their prices since they can blame it on that? I haven't had fast food in a little while so I haven't seen the prices for myself

Klazu · #**209** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 1:18 AM**

It seems that they have added that directly in the prices and some more. Subways nearby me increased their prices by 30-40 cents, so quite significantly. I think also Teen Burger used to be almost 50 cents less earlier, so quite an increase.

Fortunately also salaries keep going up... What, no?

WarrenC12 · #**210** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 1:23 AM**

Beef has gone up 40-50% in the last year.

Pinion · #**211** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 1:45 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

Fortunately also salaries keep going up... What, no?

I don't have any say in my employee's wages and they are basically starving to death and constantly on the verge of eviction while working more than full time. Starting wage hasn't gone up since I started in 2005. It's pathetic. This city is so miserable if you aren't rich.

mcminsen · #**212** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 3:45 PM**

If anyone else here is using Imageshack for their pics they may have noticed that the website is down. This has been going on since late yesterday afternoon. I use Imageshack for all my pics so some of them may not have been visible during this time. It's a dynamic situation and it's hard to tell if and when they might be back up and running again. It's very unusual for them to be down this long. When it's happened before it's usually been just a few minutes or maybe an hour or two.

I was checking out some websites that track when other websites are down and there are a lot of comments from people around the world that are pretty anxious about not being able to access their accounts and do their usual stuff with their images and videos. One comment I saw was this:

=====================

"Jack Levin · 24 mins ago 1
· · Chrome 45.0 on Mac
Hi, this is Jack Levin, we run facilities that power ImageShack. ImageShack is having massive outage related to a management system that span out of control, and engineers are working to restore services. We are hoping that its going to be partially up in 24 hours, and fully restored in 48-72 hours."

=====================

I'm leaving on Thursday for a couple of weeks in New York so I may not be posting anymore pics until after October 15th.

Tetsuo · #**213** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 5:28 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

Did some sales tax just go up rather significantly or why am I suddenly paying quite a bit more for fast food? Teen Burger combo is now $10 which begins to be ridiculous.

Just use one of those A&W coupons, 2 teens for 6$ or 2combos for 11$

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcminsen

If anyone else here is using Imageshack for their pics they may have noticed that the website is down. This has been going on since late yesterday afternoon. I use Imageshack for all my pics so some of them may not have been visible during this time.
I'm leaving on Thursday for a couple of weeks in New York so I may not be posting anymore pics until after October 15th.

Use Flickr or Imgur instead

Klazu · #**214** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 6:30 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcminsen

If anyone else here is using Imageshack for their pics they may have noticed that the website is down.

Well, even Facebook has been globally down twice this month and Gmail was down a few years ago, so even the biggest ones can fail occasionally. There was a popular blogging service in Finland that experienced a power failure and as a result lost lots of their data. Turned out that they had never taken any backups of their servers, which resulted in huge migration over to other services. I hope Imageshack is a bit better in that front and can restore everything.

Enjoy New York!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetsuo

Just use one of those A&W coupons, 2 teens for 6$ or 2combos for 11$

(Thankfully) I don't get any ads delivered to my mail, so I wonder where I could snatch some coupons from?

mcminsen · #**215** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 7:35 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetsuo

Use Flickr or Imgur instead

Thanks. I'm on Flickr now.

mcminsen · #**216** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 8:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klazu

Well, even Facebook has been globally down twice this month and Gmail was down a few years ago, so even the biggest ones can fail occasionally. There was a popular blogging service in Finland that experienced a power failure and as a result lost lots of their data. Turned out that they had never taken any backups of their servers, which resulted in huge migration over to other services. I hope Imageshack is a bit better in that front and can restore everything.

Enjoy New York!

Yes, I think this will be bad for Imageshack as all kinds of users will be moving to other image hosting websites. I had used Imageshack for a long time so it's a bit of a learning curve for me getting used to another website. Oh well, something for me to do on my iPad while I'm away.

Klazu · #**217** Posted **Sep 29, 2015, 8:28 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetsuo

Use Flickr or Imgur instead

Flickr seems to be stable, but Imgur is often given the hug of death by Reddit users.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcminsen

Oh well, something for me to do on my iPad while I'm away.

Yeah, it's not like there is anything interesting to do in NYC than to sit in front of an iPad.

s211 · #**218** Posted **Sep 30, 2015, 5:11 AM**

I may be late to the game, but notice that BCAA will be opening a location at the SW corner of 6th and Cambie. I wonder if that will have any impact on their location at the NE corner of Oak and Broadway?

Spork · #**219** Posted **Sep 30, 2015, 6:39 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by s211

I may be late to the game, but notice that BCAA will be opening a location at the SW corner of 6th and Cambie. I wonder if that will have any impact on their location at the NE corner of Oak and Broadway?

Doubtful. They have been wanting to expand locations for years, but have been struggling with internal incompetence, indecision, and the unavailability of Autoplan licenses. At best, it might mean that Oak and Broadway would move downtown or a bit further East. Keep in mind that they have a Kerrisdale location as well.

mcminsen · #**220** Posted **Oct 1, 2015, 3:03 AM**

Third day now of the Imageshack site being down. The latest they're saying is that they're working on it and maybe by the end of the week they will have it restored. No reason offered yet for the outage. The comments on various sites like Twitter are scathing. A lot of people from around the world are unable to carry on their business without access to all their images.

Most of my older images are no longer viewable where I've posted them. The only images of mine that seem to be showing consistently now are the new ones from Flickr since I just started using them. It would really suck if all my old pics don't come back. I have the originals of course but it would take a long time to reupload thousands of images. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.