#72 D, so not being a pinhead denier with my head up my ass and 'outing' the cheerleaders is grounds for a torch bearing mob in your view? Thats so Douche-couver.

Sorry Dude, but I don't hide from the facts. I calls 'em like I see's 'em and from the majority of support the truth as I 'see's' it gets on these boards by people who are tired of the BS there are plenty more spankings to come. The proof is on the upticks of support and down on denial.

Any place that is so needy for recognition that it makes up it's own is sooooooo deserving of a kick in the ass.

Apparently there are some ( like maybe three) deniers who just get outraged when they are faced with the truth, too bad. I'm happy that I've set your hair on fire for the crew on the board.

Why are you so outraged that I point out public information on roaches , rats, sewage etc etc? Dude , shake it off, maybe you're smoking too much. I am not the only one in the world who acknowleges Vandipshit as a 'World Class Shithole'.

Because of what I do I send this same information regarding Lie-couvers whacko cover up denial game to anywhere from 20 to 50 international news orgs a week. I hope it's me that has put Van Shitty on the radar for the whore pamphlets scandal, the sewage scandal, the crack war scandal info, the murderous police force cover up scandal etc etc etc and all the bad things you have read about on this blog. But I know there are many other researchers who also have been spilling the beans, so I guess you hate us all. Dude Vanshithole has been outed, it's no secret, you aren't number one. Are you and the Slav warming up the ovens? Did you buy some marshmellows and invite Booby McCondo and the grunts at Global?

I recommend everyone does the same thing and maybe we can embarrass the plethora of deniers in this town to wake up.

The secret police have been visiting Olympics protestors and intimidating their employers and neighbors. Is that the type of society you want to live in?

Are you so far up your ass in mortgage payments that if the truth gets out you'll have to live with the fact that you really screwed yourself. In any case dude, don't hate the truth. If you can't take the truth, it's probably because you live in a phony world.

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

We get it you don't like Vancouver. When are you leaving?

Current score: -3 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

June 8th, 2009 at 11:32 am

"jesse – two to three years ago, I was reading some of those American bubble blogs religiously. So that’s probably why the term was rattling around in the back of my brain

I was on a rare trip downtown yesterday. Even on the toniest parts of Robson Street, you will find empty storefronts now with “for lease” signs in the window. Is anyone here in that biz? I’d love to hear some stores."

Head lease rates on prime Robson are $170-200/sq ft triple net. You'd have to be doing $15,400-17,000/month on a small 1,000 sq ft store just to cover the rent – excluding "little" things like utilities, inventory, wages, marketing, etc. Given how quickly rents are falling in NYC (incl 5th Ave), Robson may be the most expensive street in N. America.

When you combine these lease rates with falling consumption and smaller tickets, it's no wonder businesses would think twice about Robson (that is, if they already haven't gone under and vacated their Robson digs). The most profitable business might be the JapaDog cart around the corner.

In a related story, a few months ago I was at the Shell on Arbutus. 2 young dudes pulled up in a shiny Mustang that probably had $20k + in mods. They go inside and proceed to order… $5 worth of gas!

Just think about that the next time you're stuck in traffic and see all these expensive cars around you.

Current score: 2 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

#69 OAS, I feel so sorry for your in laws having nothing in their lives except to have their kids play on the most obviously shit stained beach in Denial-couver. The sludge from the freshly dumped feces left over from the receding tide is half a foot thick. I really hope that none of them are subjected to a life threatening case of E-Coli. The kids in Harare play in sewage littered public areas too. Kum By Ya. The police also beat people to death without sanction there, just like Van-Shithole. I guess we have a lot in common with Zimbabwe, is that the plan?

The question the Economist study posed was "is your immediate lifestyle in jeopardy?". The twisted local media interprets this as "we're number one'. What yellow bullshit! All lower case for your reading pleasure. Actually, my lifestyle is being endangered by a pack of cynical ploticians who have fronted up a little retarded boy into the mayors office and they are running a luddite agenda against the free flow of traffic in an already gridlocked city. The little retarded boys backers are increasing the number of tweaking crackheads by failing to address the problem of homelessness and the crime rates are soaring to Jo-Burg equivalents. Drunkeness and drug addiction is rampant amongst young people because the city has decided to force them into 400 sq ft micro condos and they can't stay at home due to claustrophobia. STD's are the highest in North America and the bed bug infestation is officially being denied along with the explosion of rats and cockroaches. FYI , I know a guy who has a pest control business and he says that the rats&roach problem is so out of control that if you saw what he sees in the kitchens of Van Denials best restaurants you'd never eat out again.

Anyone who falls for this cheerleading BS is seriously deluded and desperate for auto-justification from a deep insecurity. Sorry Dude, propaganda doesn't work on an independant thinking man. I don't care how many times they repeat the mantra. This shit excuse for a town is shit on a shitty stick. I'm not a refugee from some worse off shithole. I expect better.

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

There are many things to do here; you just have to search a little harder than in other places. For a metropolitan area of 2.5 million, there aren't many cities in the world that can compare. Does Vancouver have its problems? Of course it does. But all other cities have their own problems.

As for your claim that the beaches of Spanish Banks/Point Grey are beyond the reach of most suburbanites, I disagree. My sister and brother-in-law, and their three kids, survive on the income of one wage earner, and they make the trek in from Coquitlam to the west side beaches on a weekly basis.

There are some Vancouver attractions that are beyond the reach of many suburbanites, but do you think that most of the people who live in the Greater New York area are having cocktails at the Trump Tower on a nightly basis?

Realpaul, I apologize for the Chad comment. I could have sworn you had written Chad in your response. But, once again, you say why doesn't the Economist Intelligence Unit compare Vancouver to other (presumably Western) cities, instead of shit holes like Harare. Are you being willfully ingnorant here? I'll put this in capital letters so that you won't miss it this time: THEY SURVEYED OVER 100 CITIES AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING ALL MAJOR CITIES IN CANADA, THE USA, AND EUROPE. DESPITE THIS, VANCOUVER ENDED UP #1 IN THEIR RANKING. Now, I ask you again, does the ranking of any of the other top 10 (or 20) cities have you in an equal state of apoplectic rage?

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

This city is boring with too few good jobs, too much hype and too many drug-addicted, mentally-ill poor.

I glimpsed the good life when I visited Robson St. and the beaches of Point Grey yesterday. Nice, but that's not the reality for the wage slaves out in the suburbs with their crushing mortgages. That's the way it is for most people here.

Current score: 5 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

#63, I said nothing about Harare being in Chad. I've been into Chad through Libya, its an isolated mindless cultureless featureless government controlled insensitive stinking shithole like Vancshithole. By the way, they also say they're number ONE, and there is raw sewage everywhere, just like Vancshitholecouver.

They also have a lot of people who are destitute sleeping outside and getting screwed by a population that doesn't give a shit. The media there also plays propaganda about the greatness of the government all day long. And just like the BC Liberals the Chadian government has made new sweeping legislation to control the private water supply. The one thing that Chad has going for it is the people that have taken up arms to get some justice, unlike the mindless brainwashed screw ups who can't get their heads out of their asses in WAHHHHHHNCOUVER.

I said that to compare Vancouver to Harare is leaving a lot of shitholes for Shitcouver to compare itself to and have an "self serving pretentious wannabe something other than a shithole cheerleading gloat-town bust up". Why not compare Crackouver to Angola, there must be something bad enough about Angola or maybe Bangladesh that Vancouver can pretend to do better.

I worked the communications racket, the government tourist admins hire stringers all the time to develop puff pieces for magazines. Heres the truth about what you read in a magazine, believe nothing you read in a magazine. They are running a buisness not a social services agency funded by the government.

Lets all pretend that we're number one for awhile and spend a lot of money advertising sound bites like 'we're number one' and quite possibly some douchebag is going to start believing that it's OK to buy a condo. Just forget about all the other stuff that Van shithole is famous for. Crack whores, Whalley crackwhores, homeless, crack wars, bedbugs, one billion liters of creamy shit into the waters, no cultre, no life except mindless boozing after 5, etc etc. Dude have your fantasy, I'm stuck on the real channel.

Don't be so defensive about the shithole AKA Shitcouver. I don't find any redeeming quality about a strip mall that is based on mindless bushwalking and self deluded denial about what number they are.

Current score: -1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

however, the "study"'s comment about "petty crime" was funny – a spree of gangland shootings is "petty crime", is it?

Current score: 1 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)