Charles Campbell over at the Tyee has an interesting take on the proposed new casino at BC Place, one that I haven’t heard before. To wit: the real problem with the current casino being planned is that it’s just another low-rent operation, not the kind that’s destined to attract the big spenders, but just another mechanism for wringing more money from the class of gamblers just above bingo halls.

A worthy entry to what I’m sure will be an ongoing debate about this strange proposition.

The city posted its report on who got tickets to the Olympics and my brain is working overtime to try to figure out what the pattern was behind some of these allocations: the oddest mix I’ve seen in a while.

Nice to see Dave Rudberg, the city engineer who steered the city’s Olympics efforts for years before quitting just prior to the Games, got tickets to the opening ceremonies. Though he seems to have insisted on paying them for himself.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your comments on what you make of this list.

This interesting story unfolding in Victoria, news that Paragon Gaming told the B.C. government quite some time ago that it would be a “deal breaker” for any new development built by them if BC Place didn’t have a retractable roof. Sean Holman at publiceyeonline reporting on this here.

Cities all over the Lower Mainland are falling over themselves these days to attract businesses, but Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is the champ at delivering her message the loudest and clearest that the door is open in her city — complete with property tax holidays and fee breaks.

Yet again, she gets lots of attention for that message at her State of the City address, where her speech was almost completely focused on getting jobs and business for her growing city.

GUESS WHICH MAYOR GOT TO PLAY A GUEST TURN WITH THIS TOP EUROPEAN CLUB?

There was a scary moment last week for sports fans when it looked like Vancouver wasn’t going to get the UFC. Now that seems to be on.

And sports fans have something else to celebrate: We will be getting Manchester City FC, my sources at city hall tell me. The scuttlebutt is that English Premier League club, just down the road from the far more successful Manchester United, is thinking of staging several games of its 2012-13 season in BC Place Stadium.

Our footie-loving mayor was over in Manchester on the weekend, finalizing a deal he’s been working on since coming to Cambie and 12th. His dream finally came together due to a confluence of factors.

ManCity’s pitch at Manchester City Stadium is slated for repairs in the year when the newly-rennovated BC Place will be open for action.

The broad outline of the deal was put together in London a few months ago when condo king power-broker Bob Rennie met at the Tate Modern cafeteria with friends in the Abu Dhabi United Group, who bought the club in 2008 from Thai mogul Thaksin Shinawatra. Rennie got on the phone with Mike Magee, Joel Solomon and Rich Coleman in Victoria – and Bob’s Your Uncle.

Gregor apparently also had some help from his green buddy-billionaire Richard Branson, a City fan.

A final key factor was Shinawatra’s departure from the club’s ownership group. It was felt that the presence of the deposed former Thai prime minister, who was accused of corruption and abuse of power, could anger Gregor’s left-wing base around Commerical Drive and undercut the fragile coalition he needs for re-election.

Anyway, Man City was so delighted with the new arrangement that they allowed Robertson to participate with the club in the warm-up before its weekend game against rival Wigan.

An old Vancouver Sun photographer-buddy of mine, Gareth Barry, sent me some photos of the mayor wearing the Manchester jersey on the pitch.

[Read more →]

The province is tightening up its lobbying rules a little bit on Thursday, making it clearer who needs to register as a lobbyist and removing the $150 fee to encourage people to do so.

No attempt made to regulate what lobbyists can do, except for what is being called the “Ken Dobell” amendment, which prohibits lobbyists from lobbying government when you have a contract from that same government to give advice on the same matter. (Likely proceeding from the same philosophy as that being expressed by Community Development Minister Bill Bennett, who says people want information about who is giving political donations in civic elections but they don’t necessarily want to see a ban or limit on donations. If the public has the information, that solves the other problems, goes this way of thinking.)

I am no legal expert on lobbying, but former attorney-general Geoff Plant is and this is the memo he sent out in his firm of Heenan Blaikie to explain in lovely, clear, non-legalistic language what this means for people who think that they aren’t really lobbyists but actually are.

[Read more →]

Whether you think Mr. Tsisserev is a loyal employee who was unfairly dumped on or a dogmatic ,righteous and disgruntled ex-employee (people I talk to at city hall generally say the former) and whatever you think of Alex’s questions, this interview is a fascinating glimpse into the backrooms of city hall.

http://alexgtsakumis.com/2010/03/30/exclusive-on-the-record-with-former-vancouver-city-electrician-ark-tsisserev-the-interview/

The province is hoping to get through the city’s rezoning process, complete with public hearings, for the downtown casino in the next eight months so that Paragon can start digging and, soon after, start paying its lease to the province to help pay for the roof.

But city types are already sending warning shots across the bow that they’re not just going to approve any old thing. More fun for all of us to watch. The last time we went through this was with the convention centre addition, which the province also took through the city’s design process. That was not a happy time, with many in the city feeling that they were making the best of a bad and unfortunate inevitability.

We’ll see how this one goes. In the meantime, I can’t help but add my two cents’ worth (two cents that I’ll never be spending on slots, no matter what, because the one and only time I tried using a slot machine on a one-day visit to Las Vegas, I was too dense to figure out how to work the machine).  Isn’t it kind of strange that Vancouver would have a big casino downtown? That’s usually something that you see in loser, rust-belt cities that can’t figure out what else to do with their depopulated downtowns.

Again, I appeal to people with more time on their hands to do research than I currently have. Is there another healthy Vancouver-like city that has a big-butt casino in the middle of its downtown?

Though I must add here that when I talked to Pavco chair David Podmore, he made this whole megaplex sound more like a second convention centre/concert venue in the city than a casino resort. He says the new arrangement, with the new roof, will allow about 40 more nights of BC Place use during the summer, likely primarily for entertainment. As well, he says it will enable Vancouver to bring in the kinds of conventions that require seating for 50,000 (the Lions, Rotary or AA were examples he cited).

Good or bad, hmmm.

An interesting letter from artist Roy Arden that has made its way to me.

I submitted the letter below to the Vancouver Sun ‘Commentary’ section. Although it is under the word count limit, they wanted to publish an edited version. The edited version did not correct grammar but removed the reference to the media and changed the tone and intent of the letter. Rather than enter a back and forth negotiation which, I doubt would end in a letter I would agree with, I am circulating this email. Please feel free to pass the letter along or post it on any blog – but in full. Thanks, Roy

Dear Editor,

I am appalled by the efforts of some people who want to thwart the Vancouver Art Gallery’s efforts to create a new home. I am disturbed by some of the leading and blatantly biased journalism that has recently appeared around this issue. The media is meant to report on controversy not manufacture it. A new building will do nothing to harm the historic courthouse as a structure or civic meeting place, it will surely find good use either for the Vancouver Museum or another cultural purpose.

[Read more →]

I have seen culinary street-food heaven and it is this: travelling street-food trucks. 

Los Angeles has become a home for this new form of gastronomy, which has also become the site of a new form of fusion cuisine, the Asian taco. 

I’d been hearing about this new thing for a while now — trucks roaming around the city, notifying customers by blog and Twitter where they’d be parking at what hours — and decided I just had to try it out. It fit with the other theme of my visit anyway, which was going to as many restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s list of 99 essential LA restaurants as I could.

(For those not in the know, Gold, the reviewer at the alternative LA Weekly, has developed a cult following and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on his adventures into ethnic cuisine in the far suburban reaches of LA, where he has discovered the best fish tacos, pho, and Oaxacan cuisine to be had in this sprawling city.)

So of course, I did some of the regular — well, what qualifies as regular in Gold’s world — rounds, like the wonderful Peruvian-Japanese restaurant Mo-Chica in a weird little mall buried in the industrial district south of downtown and the southern Thai mecca Jitlanga, in one of the many mini-malls that proliferate in west Thaitown/east Hollywood.

But I just had to try out the trucks. My first was Kogi Barbecue, the most famous, which Twittered on the day I was hunting that it would be at corner of South Hope and Ninth near the Market condos. After only a few circles through what is LA’s emerging downtown condo district, around the Fashion Institute, we found it. Yes, tacos with kimchi and barbecued beef, which we ate on a bench at the Institute’s park, in the sunshine.

But it was kind of tedious trying to track the trucks and get there at the precise time, so then I opted just for going to the areas where it seemed like they most often hung out. As it turned out, Abbott Kinney, the hipster street near Venice Beach was a prime spot, which we hit up the next two days. That’s where I fell in love with the Komodo truck’s spicy shrimp burrito, which all by itself provided dinner for two. 

But by my third Asian taco truck, I was starting to get tired of flour tortillas and Korean barbecue. Unfortunately, we had to leave town the next day, so I didn’t get to track down some of the other trucks I’d read about in the city: bakery trucks, the Nom Nom banh mi truck, and others. 

Once again, it brought to mind one of my perennial complaints about the city: bad street food. And here’s a potential solution. The trucks I saw were very high tech, almost like a recreation vehicle, silver and shiny and clean-looking. That should solve the health-department problems.

The main issue remaining — parking and other angry merchants. I noticed that LA has started to clamp down on these trucks parking for longer than an hour, partly because of complaints from nearby rooted businesses that they’re competing unfairly.

That’s something a wise city bureaucrat should think about in advance of approving this new form. Maybe they’re best suited to areas that get lots of people and not enough food for them: parks, beaches, festivals, industrial areas filled with workers needing lunch.

Or perhaps the street in front of my house, permanently.