The question of what to do about the Vancouver Art Gallery is stirring up debate in circles all over the city. People who care about art, about architecture, about urban planning and about money and fundraising all have strong opinions on whether the gallery has outgrown the current site and absolutely has to move in order to be successful. Or not.

Here is one group’s opinions, although I know there are equally strong opinions out there on the other side (or sides).

Lots of fascinating debate swirling around the Vancouver Art Gallery, as it officially puts an end to the idea of moving to False Creek but continues to look at moving to the old bus depot site on Georgia.

Marsha Lederman and I have a story today in the Globe on the decision and what gallery director Kathleen Bartels is hoping to do. I’m sure this is not the end of the discussion.

I know a lot of people are already in the dumps, with the party gone and nothing but litter, fencing, and the return of bad weather around. Hate to add to it, but here’s my story on how it’s going to be a long haul to ensure that all those things we loved about the Olympics — extra shelter space for the homeless, streetcars, pedestrian party streets and more — get put into place permanently.

If anything proves that reality is subjective, this pair of articles from American reporters and their observations about the experience of the Olympics in Vancouver ought to do it.

Here’s one and here’s the other.

Politicians in B.C. are reeling from the enormous success of the Games in Vancouver and the smart ones are scrambling already to try to cash in on the aura, in terms of getting things they want. Gregor is off to Ottawa to do same. At least he doesn’t have a horrible budget to try to minimize at this point, the way the province and the feds do.

Somehow I don’t think this piece of news, sent out over the news-release wires this morning, is going to make most people feel that great about the Games. Their worst nightmare, actually.

Vancouver real estate developer strikes gold

$46.76 million sold during Olympics: $31.8 million to Olympic visitors
With the 2010 Winter Olympic Games now over, one of their most notable legacies will be a massive boon to Vancouver’s luxury real estate market.

Between the Opening Ceremonies on Feb. 12 and the Closing Ceremonies on Feb. 28, Aspac Developments sold seven suites at its luxury towers at UBC (The Wesbrook) and Coal Harbour (Three Harbour Green) for a total of $46.76 million. Three of those suites, including Three Harbour Green’s $22.3 million-penthouse, were sold to visitors specifically in town for the 2010 Winter Games.

“The Olympics were instrumental in putting our properties, especially our Three Harbour Green tower next to the International Broadcast Centre, on the world stage,” says George Wong, principal of Magnum Projects (Marketers for Aspac). “The weather really showcased Vancouver’s natural beauty and the Games brought an international flair and level of excitement to our city that, coupled with everything else we have to offer, made Vancouver extremely attractive. Add to that the affordability of luxury real estate here, compared to other world cities, and Three Harbour Green’s downtown waterfront location was an irresistible choice for our buyers.”

I missed the game (too much tension), following its progress by the screaming around me.I felt like I had to get out afterwards, because it was all just too much like an unreal Disney movie to me. Really, could old Walt himself have dreamed up anything better? Sports mega-event comes to (in global terms) relatively small town of nice, wholesome types. They have great dreams of glory, but those dreams are deflated early on as things go wrong. After a few early triumphs, but the team falls apart, things start to go wrong. It looks as though it’s all going to end in disaster. Spirits sag. And then … miracle. The team comes together. They start winning gold medals. And in the movie’s finale, the team overcomes great odds to win a gold medal that gives the little town the greatest medal count the country has ever seen.

Sheesh. And it HAD to be the movie-star hero, Sidney Crosby, who scored the winning goal. You know, if someone submitted this screenplay to Hollywood, it would be dismissed as too mushy and unbelievable.

So, as an antidote, I headed downtown later to enjoy people taking over even more streets than before. Police were posted at the top of the escalators of the downtown SkyTrain, relieving the 18-year-olds of their six-packs of beer. Thank god they’re so dumb sometimes.

Best idea I saw of the night: Someone who brought a boombox down and set it up outside the mall north of Georgia on Granville, producing an instant dance party on the street. Now maybe that’s what we need every Friday and Saturday night to soak up all the excess youthful energy. Get them dancing and they won’t have any energy left to pick fights.

Next best idea: the wooden basis under the Chinese lantern trees, which people have been using as found soundscape devices. The builders didn’t intend to have them use as stamping pads, but that’s what they’re being used for (even though a few stampers have actually broken through) and it creates a great drumming sound down the whole street.

Further down Georgia, I ran into a posse from the Vancouver police: Chief Jim Chu, along with deputies Doug Lepard and Bob Rolls. Before I could ask any questions, a young guy came up, asked if the chief was John Chu and then thanked him profusely for making the Games so great for everyone.

Then they continued on their way getting a feel for what was going on in the streets. Apparently there’s a massive system of information loading that tells them how many people are arriving downtown on transit, how many are leaving, and, through CCTV, how big the crowds are so that they can tell if there’s a big influx of kids from the suburbs about to hit.

From there, through an empty Chinatown, accompanied only by posts arriving through Facebook on my blackberry, informing me of how atrocious all my friends thought the closing ceremonies were as they were unrolling. (“When they bring out the giant inflatable beavers, you know they’ve jumped the shark,” said one.)

And then a bus home,  as the traffic returned to the streets, with an inexplicable jam of cars headed … not away from downtown, but towards it.

There’s a lot of post-op Olympics delirium floating in the air these days, with everyone drunk on the successes and the street parties and the sight of people choosing to come downtown every day dressed in Canadian flag capes. And now, like summer-camp attendees who’ve had a really great week, we’re promising all kinds of things.

Instead of promising that we’re going to stay friends forever and we’ll all get together every year and we’ll all go to each other’s towns for visits, we in Vancouver have gone wild with ideas for how to keep the Olympics spirit going. Let’s shut down Granville Street every weekend! Let’s have a streetcar line! Let’s keep the zipline going at Robson Square! Let’s ditch our cars and take transit forever! Let’s never go back to work and just walk around downtown with our red mitts and Canadian flags painted on our faces forever! Whoo-hoooo!!!

Well, sad but true, we are going to go back to the old Vancouver and then we’ll have to figure out what is really a good idea that can be embedded in the future and what, unfortunately, depends for success on having an international party in the city with 200,000 people a night. As well, one of the things we need to think about is what the Games showed us we’re weak in, what we should have had but didn’t.

I’m sure all of you have great ideas and some more profound than mine, but here are a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.

[Read more →]

Okay, some international media coverage appears that reflects a little more some of the real preoccupations of a significant number of people here.

But I don’t get why even the NY Times can’t get some basic things right. The taxpayers are not carrying $1 billion in debt for the village, at least not the way the NY Times has written it, as though this is a bill we have to pay off over the next 30 years.

They may carry some debt if the condos don’t sell for enough, but not $1 billion. Likely not even $100 million. And why do they write that the real-estate industry came up with the plan for the Olympic village? That was the city’s dream from day one. The city assembled that land, committed itself to building a village for VANOC, and sold it off to the highest bidder.

I think I speak for all of us when I say: It’s been a blast, but we need some sleep plus a couple of days where the most exciting thing that happens is getting a free shampoo sample in with the mail.

Although I know some of my harsher critics (as opposed to my quiet ones or my passive-aggressive ones) will start eye-rolling and muttering “girl” at this, I don’t recall going through a roller-coaster experience like this since my days of one-month (or one-day) affairs with Dangerous Boys in my 20s.

You know the trajectory: You avoid that bad boy because everyone in town has said he’s trouble. But, before you know it, you’re embroiled in a fling. And it’s tempestuous, up and down, you hate him, you love the excitement, you’re not getting any sleep, you feel as though you’ve been transported outside your normal life, every day you’re more hung over and more wired.

This is the same, but without the sex and with a lot more sharp blades.(Though I understand from single friends, excited about the invasion of our city by non-Canadian men who actually check out women and don’t have weird facial hair and jobs in “video-game testing,” that the first is a definite possibility.)

As I’ve run around doing some news coverage of protests and news conferences and urban-planning issues, doing some just walking around to see what everyone is so excited about downtown (apparently, just the sight of each other mostly), going to a couple of figure-skating practices, visiting the Downtown Eastside from time to time, passing time occasionally at the Robson Square media centre, watching a lot of television, and hanging out with all my new best friends on Twitter who care deeply about how much Johnny Weir was ripped off because the judges are scared of out-there gay figure skaters — it’s been an emotional and psychological adventure every day.

I’ve had my choice of how to connect to people: milling around in crowds on Sunday afternoons, hunkering down with deeply committed skate fans at 7 a.m. at the Pacific Coliseum, or communing with the world via Twitter, Facebook and Google as I simutaneously watch events on television and track conversations about them on my laptop.

Along the way, I’ve experienced the gamut from laughing out loud at some of the outrageous comments posted (“It looks like Evan didn’t leave any hair gel or bronzer for anyone else in Vancouver”) to getting all weepy when a whole stadium full of Canadians belted out O Canada for Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. (And I’m so hopeful that I’ll eventually learn all the words by the end of this.)

And the Games, as they’ve done for the last five years, also prompt a lot of soul-searching about the nature of mega-events and the people who run and promote them. I’m sure that some people who read this post or have listened to me on various radio programs might think I’ve succumbed to being a blithering Games booster. I’m not. Nor is anyone else who is currently enjoying themselves, but still has a brain.

There are many questions to ask and they will be. Just like most of us did wake up one day from those flings with bad boys and think: Wait a minute. Something’s not quite right here. I’ve got to get out.