Vancouver, City on the Edge of Tomorrow

(Alright, so we've stolen another title again, though props to whoever knows where this one's from!)

For quite a few of us here at The Daily Wenzel, Vancouver is like a home away from home, though in recent years we have not been able to spend as much time there as we would wish. With the city speckled with friends and relations, we always manage to find a welcome as warm as the summer days. However, as we said, the last few years have found us making only periodic trips, every other year or so. This somewhat spotty record has caused the recent construction boom in Vancouver to hit home hard. Our last visit came in 2005, after Vancouver had been awarded the 2010 Olympics, and already the construction crews were at work, converting old homes into row townhomes, such as we had seen in Calgary and Montreal. This time, office and apartment towers were sprining up along the banks of False Creek, while the suburbs of Burnaby, New Westminister, and such, were in the process of growing proper downtown cores of their own, anchored by the now ubiquitous office/condo tower complex.

With all this building, traffic in the City With No Left Turn Lanes has grown almost interminable, as rush hour no stretches unalleviated throughout the day. One of our enduring images from this trip was flying over the Lower Mainland early in the morning and seeing the long lines of cars already slowing down the main arteries. At three hours behind the eastern stock markets, businessmen begin their commute by six o'clock, starting a day that ends early in the afternoon. To capitalize on this rush, the city's numerous coffee workers also move out onto the streets to welcome the captains of industry with a warm cup of java. Flex-time workers in involved in national organizations and shuffle between home and office, also awake early to see how the rest of the world has unfolded, before making there own way into the downtown cores of their respective conurbations by mid-morning. All of these staggered arrivals and departures means that the streets of Vancouver have very few moments of respite.

Speaking of streets, we were very happy to spend time on one of our favourite strips in Canada, Commercial Drive, whose development we have enjoyed greatly over the last fifteen years, including one moment in time where it housed some twenty-seven coffee houses in nine blocks.