Photos of Vancouver (Downtown, Jericho Beach, W 4th, and Kerrisdale) - December 2006 - Part III

Here's Vancouver's version of Toronto's Union Station: Waterfront Station - a huge transportation hub of SeaBus (ferry service to North Vancouver), SkyTrain (a medium-capacity metro system), West Coast Express (commuter train service that links Downtown Vancouver to the Tri-Cities, Ridge Meadows, and Mission), and conventional and rapid bus (98 B-Line - which will be replaced by the Canada Line subway line in 2009) services.

Terminal City Club Tower, a mixed-use residential and hotel complex, on W. Hastings and Hornby (A Chanel store is located right across from here)












The addition of extra floors (and office space) at Bentall 5 on Burrard and Dunsmuir has not finished as of December last year.













The Shaw Tower (with Jean Claude Van Damme having a penthouse suite) overwatching the tireless cranes that are used to construct the convention centre extension (scheduled to be completed on time for the Olympics).








A window to the City of North Vancouver (Lonsdale, where the quay and SeaBus terminal are located).




I don't know what is the point of having the a house along the northern seawall overlooking Stanley Park, but I think it's better than nothing.


An early evening shot on the expensive apartments dotting along Coal Harbour.







An angle shot along Denman St. outside King George high school. Props to the planners who made West End a neighbourhood that is friendly to all people, not just empty nesters and seniors.

Hell has certainly frozen as this is the first Starbucks that lost out to competition.







Even the bus is getting into the festive mood by having decorations on it!







Davie west of Bute, outside of Rogers Video (for those of you who are not familiar with Vancouver, Davie is the city's answer to Church St.) on a quiet Friday evening when everyone heads home for dinner.

A glimpse of Yaletown... which becomes a ghost town except for the numerous restaurants located in the area. Should this be the model for downtown redevelopment in other areas? I don't think so.

The Granville St. Entertainment District between Robosn and Davie, a few hours before hordes of clubbers flood the scene on a beautiful Friday evening.

One more glance at the intersection of Robson and Thurlow (infamous for having two Starbucks at the NE and SW corners) before heading home.

Photos of Vancouver (Downtown, Jericho Beach, W 4th, and Kerrisdale) - December 2006 - Part II

The neighbourhood of Kerrisdale has been long recognized as a trendy yet pleasant neighbourhood littered with affluent people as well as students from UBC. There is a feel of being an outdoor shopping mall as major international and national chain stores occupied key locations in the area, mainly along W 41st on the western side of the rail tracks. (Heck, this is my first time touring Kerrisdale on foot after living in Greater Vancouver for 17 years before commencing my studies at York University!)

The fate of this lonely set of tracks (between East and West Boulevards) that carried freight traffic across expensive homes in the west side of Vancouver has been subject to a lot of debate in the past decades. Nonetheless planners at the City Hall still are dreaming of having streetcars running along these tracks. (Pic taken at Kerrisdale)



The section of W 4th between Macdonald and Burrard is becoming the second coming of Robson Street, as hip and trendy stores are starting to occupy storefronts. Fortunately there are still signs of a healthy neighbourhood with local mom-and-pops stores visible in the landscape.

This has to be one of my favourites in the outing. I took five separate pictures and combined them in Photoshop to produce a seamless Downtown Vancouver skyline that stretches all the way to the Siwash Rock in Stanley Park. (Picture taken at the northern point of Dunbar, east of Jericho Beach)

A row of beautifully restored homes on Dunbar and Point Grey, near Jericho Beach. If you don't have around $1.5 million, don't even think about buying one of them! Hopefully things will be better once Winter Olympics conclude in 2010.

Photos of Vancouver (Downtown, Jericho Beach, W 4th, and Kerrisdale) - December 2006 - Part I

A shot immediately outside Stadium SkyTrain station overlooking the condos at CityGate. It is strange to see a Costco is located immediately at the bottom of the condo on the left-hand side of the picture.

The internal square just outside Vancouver's Central Library. One can notice the drastic difference inside and outside of the actual library, as the outside is bustling with energy with people sitting down on a table and start chatting while a sense of peace and quietness can be felt once a person is inside.





Here is a zoomed-in look from the previous picture.
















The Centre (formerly Ford Centre of the Performing Arts), immediately adjacent to the central library. Now it becomes a showhouse featuring mainly Chinese-made shows (as the owner of this place is also himself Chinese).

The coliseum wannabe: Vancouver's Central Library. It was once a unique building until Salt Lake City decide to ask Moshie Safdie, the architect, to build a replica down at the capital of Mormon State. A taller structure situated on the back of it is occupied by the federal government. Here is one last look before proceeding down along Robson at the SW corner of Robson and Homer.

Here is a look at the future version of Yonge and Bloor for Vancouver: the intersection of Robson and Granville. Like in Toronto, we have smaller TVs blasting advertisments to passersby.

Why the fence at the left hand side of the picture? That's because of the construction of the Canada Line subway line, which will intersect with the existing SkyTrain line at Granville Station, forming a mega underground transfer point for transit riders (hence the comparison with Yonge and Bloor).

A shot of the Vancouver Art Gallery (formerly the Supreme Court of British Columbia - front centre), Hotel Vancouver (back centre with the copper roof), and Cathedral Building (immediately to the right of Hotel Vancouver) at the SE corner of Robson and Howe.

A funky-looking Chapters flagship store at Robson and Howe, with residential units placed on top.






I don't know how many pics have I taken on the same spot at Burrard and Robson. But I have an excuse since I lost all the previous ones :D

I wish Virgin is still here rather than the huge pink sign of HMV (maybe because it is rare to see a Virgin store in North America compared to Britain?) Well at least there is a small Virgin store over at the Vancouver International Airport.

Robson Street on a typical Friday afternoon as it is packed with people and cars, similar to Queen W or Yonge around Dundas in Toronto. What else can I say as the area (along with Burrard between Robson and Georgia) is becoming a semi-Rodeo Drive with medium- to high-end stores paying premium rents to do business here?

A Short Notice

Due to the recent creation of sex-related blogs that have similar names as my clean blog, therefore I have taken some defensive actions to protect my name from being associated with the "dark" side.

I will post pics from my short return trip to Vancouver in December 2006 and the field trip to the Junction area in Toronto between Dundas West, Bloor, and Dupont a little later during my semester break, for I am having a hard time catching up with my work.

Stay Tuned!

Some Pics of Toronto Taken in December

It has been a month before I updated my blog on the 3rd of January, for I was too sleepy after stuffing too much turkey and having too much drinks during the holidays. But I still have some pics to upload when I was strolling in Downtown Toronto and snapping pics along the way. With the exception of a detour to the Distillery District and Moss Park, the route was pretty much north along Yonge St. between Front St. and Bloor St. and west along Bloor from Yonge to somewhere between Dundas St. West and Keele St. I guess I covered more than 10km on foot in a pair of leather shoes.

When you get the angles right, any building can instantly become the "Tower of Power!"














I believe most people have taken a pic at the famous arc inside BCE Place during their visits to Toronto. But this is my first time seeing it decked in Christmas lighting.











It's pretty obvious for planners to place a medium-sized grocery store within a community, as I have mentioned for quite a few times that people do not always have the time to go to the park but they always reserve time for grocery shopping. Having a grocery store livens the streetlife (just take a look at the Dominion store at Bloor near Spadina).

Yes it is proper for the City of Toronto to provide a safe environment for the little children, but not everyone who enjoys David Crombie Park are pedophiles! No wonder the park is deserted during these times.

A form of resistance to the media status quo can be seen in this picture, as some independent outlets just couldn't face the onslaught from global media giants or they are purchased outright by the same group of people with money in their hands.








If I came to the Distillery District a little earlier, I would have taken the same picture under better lighting.













This is my best shot of the entrance to the Distillery District. I shook on the rest of them as soon as I turned off flash.




I didn't know this is a high school for the artistically gifted until my friend Lauralyn told me about the place and its strict rules during an ENVS 5121 field trip.



We have some pretty unique architecture right here on a quiet street in Corktown, a former haven for Irish immigrants in the early days. Now gentrification is almost complete.

A pretty cool graffiti along King St. East, though I do not know what it says on the wall.







Pic taken in front of an architectural firm along King St. East within the boundaries of Corktown.







This pic could be featured on a Toronto tourist postcard. Before these billboards were placed a few years ago, Toronto is referred to as the "Small Apple," which is obviously symbolizing the relationship with New York. Following the footsteps of Times Square, Piccadilly Circus in London, Tokyo, and along Nathan and Hennessey Roads in Hong Kong, cities around the world are constructing billboard plazas to reflect the glamour and vibrancy a city offers (the ones in Tokyo are in Japanese rather than in English).

The facade of this building on the northeastern corner of Yonge and Dundas St. should be covered with billboard advertisements as authorities in Nathan Phillips Square wanted the best of Times Square (the ads) and Piccadilly Circus (like the space with the Eros fountain, a large public square that is... ahem ... not highly public).

A night scene along Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst, also known as the Annex, with lots of restaurants and pubs catering to the hungry students at University of Toronto nearby.

A Christmastime symbol of entry to Koreatown on Bloor between Christie and Bathurst.






"I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus... in a bridal outfit!" - Pic taken in front of bridal shop near Bloor and Ossington (? - I couldn't remember)




After a lengthy walk along Bloor St. from Yonge St. to somewhere between Dundas St. West and Keele St. (a little west of Bloor GO Station), my legs forced me to take the subway back to St. George Station, where a gathering between planning students of Toronto, York, and Ryerson took place nearby.

New Buses for TransLink

During my Christmas break back in Vancouver (Port Coquitlam to be exact), I have noticed the presence of new buses decked in the colours of grey, black, blue, and yellow, in contrast to the existing ones which are mostly white in colour. Also citizens in Downtown Vancouver got a sneak peek at the next-gen trolley buses servicing mostly on routes 5 (Robson) and 6 (Davie), which are highly popular with tourists.

There were a few things I have noticed when I was in these new buses:

1. Most of them run on compressed natural gas, though some of them still run on diesel (which drew TransLink -- the transportation authority responsible for all municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District-- a lot of criticism).

2. Since only the Port Coquitlam bus depot has natural gas pumps and related maintenance facilities present (someone please correct me if this is not the case), most of the new buses therefore ran along major routes in the Northeast Sector, New Westminster, and Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows (though the small fleet of new diesel buses are serving other areas such as Burnaby and Richmond).

3. The seats are not as comfortable as the ones on previous generation buses, though they offer better back support. The steel based seats however do provide cleaners a faster solution in removing the large amounts of graffiti, which I admit is a huge problem (at least compared to buses operated by the Toronto Transit Commission).


4. The new trolley buses (pictured above) seemed to offer more standing space compared to older-generation trolleys. Good to see TransLink in finally addressing the needs of the disabled by introducing low-floor replacements to the current ones that are over 20 years old. Also the trolley poles on the new buses are apparently less likely to fall off. Scenes like the pic to the left are not funny to bus operators, passengers, pedestrians, and motorists (as both buses blocked the intersection of Howe and Robson during one afternoon rush hour).

Random Urban-Related Thoughts of the Day

Someone might have said what I said earlier, but oh well...

On architecture: "People should not love a building because of its aesthestics. People should love a building because of the wonderful experiences and the limitless possibilities of being inside it."