Kibune Sushi  is one of my three favourite restaurants in Vancouver. I would have promoted it more in the past, but like many others, I suspect, I’ve selfishly tried to save it for myself. However, on behalf of the lovely owners and staff of this restaurant—Endo-san and Yoko and all our other friends there—I wanted to give it the recognition it is due. I wanted to remind Vancouverites that older, perfect restaurants like this still exist in Vancouver despite our runaway development problem. Kibune has been in this Yew Street location for 31 years, owned and run by the same people, people who have never let the quality of the food drop and who have kept the beautiful interior virtually changed.

The place was a favourite of Bill Reid, who lived nearby—my aunt and I used to take him out for lunch there when he was ailing. It was his choice. I sometimes see David Suzuki there, and the walls are lined with messages from many illustrious types who’ve visited.  Ask to see the lovely killer whale drawing Bill Reid made for Endo-san (it’s a copy, since the original was becoming threatened by theft or wear and tear).

I only expose this secret now because in Vancouver’s distorted real estate climate, I want to support smaller, non-franchise restaurants to make sure they survive and thrive. I really hope this place remains a beautiful refuge for decades more.

A few doors up Yew Street is Hapa Izakaya, full of giant TV screens, hockey and the same clientele you’d see at a sports bar. It’s more busier than Kibune is, which seems a travesty. In any other city you wouldn’t even be able to get a seat at Kibune.

As far as the menu goes, the goma-ae spinach salad (actually closer to an ohitashi in style) is by far the best one in Vancouver. Even for those who shy from the idea of eel, the barbequed unagi is completely addictive. For those who love tuna, the tuna bowl (tekka donburi) contains some of the best sushi tuna you’ll ever find. Any of the sushi is good. Try the gobo (burdock root) salad too – faintly spicy in an interesting way. It’s worth trying the specials on the board or just ask what’s good.

Lastly, for a designer, the interior of Kibune Sushi is perfect in every detail. (I’ve written about it before, in the context of the poverty of most Vancouver restaurant design.) In particular, notice the joinery’d eaves and shingled roof over the sushi bar as well as the beautiful handmade booths with peeled log posts and ricepaper screens. One of the screens is missing its ricepaper, and I’m almost certain my nephews had something to do with that, for which we apologize.

If you know me and are wanting sushi, or are coming in from out of town and want to see it, contact me and I’ll join you there.

Kibune Sushi , 1508 Yew Street at Cornwall (next to the Starbucks), Vancouver. Ph: 604-731-4482

It might be hard to fully appreciate the brilliance of this performance unless you’re familiar with the vocal mannerisms of British Columbia’s Premier Christy Clark. But this mimicry is easily as good as Tiny Fey doing Sarah Palin. I’m almost sorry that Clark  and her unliberal “Liberals” will be skunked out of office in the May election because I could watch years of Caitlin Dodds doing Christy. In the Bublé bath. With rosé.

Many more videos by the Deep Rogue Ram collective here.

Sorry, another post on politics, not design (but see About). And this is one that will annoy my more partisan friends, though perhaps not as much as partisanship is annoying me.

So here’s Joyce Murray‘s idea for how to get Harper—Canada’s Republican/Tea Party equivalent—out of office in the next federal election. And it’s an idea that’s coming from a party I only vote for except when tactically necessary to ensure a defeat of the Conservatives. This candidate is making a call for cooperation among all the non-Conservative parties, parties which, when combined, always receive the vast majority of Canadian votes.

Within the federal Liberal party, Joyce Murray is the only leadership candidate pledging to do this. Nathan Cullen pledged this within the NDP party but did not win the party leadership; Mulcair won and he’s not talking cooperation. Nor is Justin Trudeau, who’s touted to win the Liberal leadership bid. On the other hand Elizabeth May, leader of the Greens, has stated  Greens’ willingness to cooperate from the beginning. And now David Suzuki has endorsed Joyce Murray.

What are your thoughts on this suggestion? Whatever they are, please let’s not allow Harper to be elected again through vote-splitting. Please let’s step away from party tribalism for a minute and throw Harper out before the country is plastered in prisons, fighter jets, bitumen and public asset fire sales.

Everybody works but the vacant lot, Henry George as quoted by Fay Lewis

This is a parody artwork at Vancouver’s 221A Artist-Run Centre, parodying the “Micro Loft” building being erected next door to it in the current lightning-fast condo land rush taking place in Chinatown.

From their website:

221A is pleased to present Cube Living (Phase 2), a 4-week artist-in-residence with artist and designer Alex Grünenfelder, running from January 23 to February 25, 2013. Grünenfelder will examine how real estate developments operate as containers that capture living space as urban spatial commodities through the packaging of bodies, objects, lifestyles, identities, capital and politics.
Grünenfelder will begin a limited release of micro-properties measuring 1 cubic foot. This innovative product addresses the stagnation and endemic unaffordability of Vancouver’s real estate market. In developing a spatial commodity that can be purchased in very small units, Cube Living is able to offer affordable properties at prices under $50! Micro-properties are an accessible solution to the inflated real estate market crisis that threatens to push Vancouver’s economy into decline.

Many Vancouver residents find it difficult or impossible to enter the market. Despite government urban densification policies that have brought 10,000 new condo units to the city each year, [1] Vancouver remains the second least-affordable city in the world. [2]

Vancouver has experienced explosive real estate development since 1986. In the 2000s, then-mayor Sam Sullivan’s Ecodensity program initiated radical urban densification with the aim of promoting housing affordability and environmentally sustainable neighbourhoods. Pundits declared that flooding the market with new condos would result in more affordable—or at least stable—prices, so that new buyers could purchase small units and eventually trade up into a larger living space. Buildings got taller and condos got smaller, but prices have kept rising. Development and construction hasn’t been able to meet the goal of affordability and now the city is faced with a dire situation.

“The current property market is almost saturated. Sales are in decline because people can’t afford to lower their asking prices. We need to expand into new markets, and the only way to produce a lower tier of affordable entry-level properties is to create highly liquid, easily tradeable micro-spaces. This is the only way to address the affordability crisis within our market-driven real-estate economy.”

[1]RBC. “Vancouver’s housing market: moderation in store but vulnerable to a harsher outcome.” April 2012. Page 6. http://www.rbc.com/economics/market/pdf/vancouverhouse.pdf

[2]Demographia. “9th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survery: 2013”. Page 2. http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf

Ha.

221A website, twitter, Facebook event.

UPDATE: this is getting better and better. Parody twitter of Vancouver’s condo-boosting blog, Vancouver is Awesome. And this expose in Business in Vancouver magazine, one of the few press outlets that doesn’t take advertising dollars from the developers who dominate this town. BIV also ran this follow-up story on the Vancouver Is Awesome blog/Bob Rennie/condo marketing relationship. Thanks to Glen Korstrom and Bob Mackin for those stories. Here’s a Storify of some of the Twitter fracas that ensued.

Here’s the story. It’s the case of a condo marketing company, MAC Marketing, posing two of its own employees – who are not even actually sisters – as sisters scouting for condos before their parents arrive from abroad carrying wallets. The photo above is a screenshot from a CTV news broadcast. This little bit of fraudulent theatre is a bald-faced attempt to drive speculation in the condo market, which is currently in an unprecedented slump, in the hope that it will start up again. Obviously the danger is that local buyers will pay far too much for starter condos if they believe the hype that money from abroad will reignite the still-inflated yet stagnant Vancouver real estate market. This story is reprinted from the Globe and Mail, in response to the blog that originally broke the story. Read on:

“A Vancouver real estate marketing company is apologizing for having two employees pose as prospective homebuyers in televised news segments on a supposed spike in sales around the Lunar New Year.

The two young women – presented as house-hunting sisters, whose parents would be in town from China for the New Year to help them purchase a condo – are in fact an administrative assistant and a sales assistant with MAC Marketing Solutions, president Cameron McNeill confirmed to The Globe and Mail.

“All I can say is that I deeply apologize for having misled the media for being there,” said Mr. McNeill, who said he was out of town over the Family Day long weekend when the news segments aired on local stations, including CTV and CBC. “We were busy and I don’t know if the girls were put up to it, or just put on the spot, or if it happened spontaneously. Regardless, it was wrong and I take full responsibility, on my own shoulders.”

The news segments were on the supposed spike in sales activity in the weeks around Lunar New Year – a pattern Mr. McNeill insists is “100 per cent true.” In one news segment, the women tour a suite in downtown Vancouver’s Maddox condo development – which is being marketed by MAC. One woman tells the camera they cannot afford to buy on their own and must rely on assistance from their parents.

“We definitely like it here, but we have to talk to our parents,” she says. “Maybe tomorrow we will bring them here.

“If we like this place, we have to tell them and they make the decision. Usually, Chinese people like to buy during this time.”

In reality, the women are not even related.

The misrepresentation was first spotted by the local online community and then dissected on local blogs, message boards and comment sections. Some noticed that a Google search of one of the women’s names turned up her Facebook and LinkedIn pages – both since deleted – which stated she worked at MAC.

Mr. McNeill said there have been discussions about the incident within the company but it is not yet known who is behind it.

“I’m trying my best to figure it out,” he said. “Will there be some heads rolling? I don’t know.”

When asked if the ploy may lead to terminations at the company, Mr. McNeill said it would depend on the depth of responsibility.

“If it was blatant and on the hands of one person, then I think there might be some severe repercussions, but it’s hard for me to answer that without knowing all the details surrounding it.”

He said he is not aware of anything like this having happened at the company before.”

More to come.

No comment.

Photo by Dan Toulgoet , Vancouver Courier - Elvy Del Bianco presents rare films shot in Vancouver between 1964 and 1988 at the Waldorf Hotel in 2011.

This is one of the more interesting short talks I’ve listened to, and I’m posting it here in the hope that it gets wider distribution. It was presented by Elvy Del Bianco, a researcher with major BC credit union VanCity, itself a cooperative. Del Bianco’s position at VanCity is quite unique; his job is to research the relationship between arts and innovation and promote a cooperative business model in an attempt to foster social capital locally. What is social capital? Well, the short answer is that it’s the various benefits of cooperation. Del Bianco explains using the model of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, one of the most profitable in the EU thanks to its “lego economics” in which smaller businesses (balsamic vinegar, parmesan, even Ferrari) combine resources to leverage economic power. Culture both plays a role in and benefits from this model. It is also interesting to note that the region is not just wealthy but is one of the most democratic anywhere, with a small income gap in what is historically a left-wing Italian heartland with a long history of employee-owned companies.

Below is Del Bianco’s 6-minute talk at Vancouver’s Pecha Kucha, and it’s well worth watching no matter where you live. The audio is a little challenging at points, and as I found out when I spoke at Pecha Kucha, you have to speak quickly if you want to fit complex ideas into a 6 minute spiel. But it’s an extremely interesting talk. His comments the challenges facing arts and culture in Vancouver are interesting; he talks about condo development speculation driving unaffordability, as well as the massive, unique-in-Canada massive cuts to cultural investment on the part of BC’s provincial government.

Bianco is himself an artist, having worked many years as an actor after training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He grew up in East Vancouver.