Bank Robbery Capital of North America

According to this article Vancouver is the Bank Robbery Capital of North America!

Maybe they're just trying to pay their mortgage fees?

Vancouver Nightlife

I knew there was something wrong with Vancouver's nightlife when I finally got into the Roxy.

I had been waiting in line for about half an hour, and it was only 10pm. In line, I remember thinking that the bar I was getting into must be amazing, since it had such a huge lineup so early. Boy... was I disappointed.

It's not fair to generalize a city's nightlife based on one bar, or one street, but I don't know of another city in the world where people would line up for half an hour at 10pm to get into a place like the Roxy. And it's not just the Roxy, it's every other place on Granville. None of those bars would would even be half full in any other city in North America, but in Vancouver there are ridiculous lineups at a dozen shitty bars.

People say to me "that's just because they have a policy of making people wait, so they look cool"... fine, bars do that too in other cities. But if a *SHITTY* bar starts doing that, people start going elsewhere. As someone who has studied economics, I know that if people are lining up to buy a sub-standard product, there's a problem with the marketplace, and that's what's up in Vancouver.

The fact is, you need a special license to have a dance floor in this city, and you need a special license to have live music in this city, and the city doesn't hand them out. So dancing is pretty much banned everywhere in town but Granville, and when you have the market cornered, there's no incentive to provide a good product or treat your customers with respect.

And as a consequence of this, Vancouver's nightlife is terrible, Granville street gets crowded with hooligans on a nightly basis, and violence erupts. They blame the problems on people from Surrey.

Every other city in the world scatters it's bars and clubs and concert halls around a couple neighborhoods. This allows for different neighborhoods to have different styles and feels, and allows the nightlife of a big city to be manageable. Vancouver doesn't do that, because the townies are convinced that if they borrowed an idea from any other city in the world, their city would immediately turn into a stinky old eastern city like Toronto.

And they stay home and say "who needs nightlife anyway!"

Worst Ghetto in the Western World?

I want to provoke a debate here, to get to the bottom of something.

Everyone knows the Downtown East Side is a bad neighborhood, but really, where does it rank? the townies seem to think that, while the Downtown East Side is a crappy neighborhood, it's not that remarkable.

But I disagree. I suspect that the Downtown East Side is the Worst Ghetto in the Western World. Perhaps by a significant margin. But I haven't been to a lot of ghettos, so this is just a suspicion.

So I ask you, have you ever been in a neighborhood that had more poverty and drug use and suffering than the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver? Anyone? Anyone?

Townie Flogs Vancouver

The Future of the Hottest Real Estate Market in North America

This quote is hilarious....

"There are world class ski resorts, beaches, dining, and shopping, and an efficient rapid transit system. Vancouver as a city is clean and beautiful, with low pollution and potable water right from the tap. It is the Host City of the 2010 Olympic Games, and has always been a cosmopolitan city because it is Canada’s gateway to Asia."

That's right everyone, potable water right out of the tap!!! And what other city has both dining and shopping??

Is City Hall ready for the property bubble to burst?

I've noticed a few alarming things in the news recently.

Homelessness is up
Taxes are up (and due to rise)
Crime is high
Property is overvalued. And probably headed down

These are all red flags to me.

I don't know too much about the municipal budget, but it seems to me that City Hall should NOT be struggling to balance it's budget during the biggest revenue boom in the country, especially when it's simultaneously failing to address a poverty, crime and drug problem. If the city is hard up for cash now, it will face some reall tough choices in the event of a downturn.

Raising property taxes while the property market is falling would accelerate the housing decline. More importantly, any politician that did this would be crucified.

As for cutting services, Vancouver already has a high crime rate and a homelessness problem, so cutting those services should be a non-starter. Parks and Recreation has a huge budget and could be cut, but will townies freak out when things start getting dirty?

And then finally, the third option is to go into debt, which would just put off the comeuppance for a while longer. Given that the city will likely be already carrying a great deal of debt after the Olympics, this could lead to long-term financial troubles for the city.

In the end, it probably won't be the end of the world, but don't be surprised if five years from now, the Downtown Eastside is every bit as crummy as it is today, the beautiful parks that everyone raves about are looking pretty shabby, and the property taxes are pretty high on your newly-affordable downtown condo.

Vancouver Housing Sucks!

Everyone knows that Vancouver's housing market is really hot these days, and people are flipping condos like crazy in advance of the Olympics. But is the market really sound? After everything we've seen in the US property market, can Vancouver really be that different?

Let's dissect the arguments that the townies tout justifying the ridiculous price of housing here.

- The Baby Boomers are going to retire to Vancouver:

Retirees are cheap. How many retirees are going to be willing to pay $500,000 for a studio apartment in a very expensive city which also happens to have the highest rate of property crime in North America? Especially when you can buy a nice place for way less on Vancouver island, which is even more suited for retiree living.

- Everyone wants to live here because it's so nice:

Vancouver's rent/income ratio has always been a bit higher than other Canadian cities, indicating that people are willing to accept a slightly lower standard of living to live here. However, the recent run up in property prices goes WAY beyond the regular premium people are willing to pay. Did Vancouver get that much better in the past 6 years?

In the end, how much people WANT to live in Vancouver has very little impact on the market. The big factor is how many people CAN AFFORD to live in Vancouver. 99% of the population buys property by deciding the price they can pay FIRST, and then finding the best property for that price. Unless people are getting richer, the average price of a home should stay roughly the same.

- The Olympics will make everyone want to live in Vancouver:

Aside from the fact that Vancouver in February is rainy and miserable, the idea that vacationers are going to buy up huge swaths of property downtown is probably a lot of wishful thinking. Maybe a few hundred luxury condos will sell, but in a market of two million people, a few hundred rich buyers can't significantly raise the price of housing for everyone.

- Property is a safe investment:

Hahaha, that's what they said in Miami.

- It won't happen in Canada

Canada doesn't have a lot of subprime loans, but we do have a silly 40 year mortgage which is almost as bad a deal. Prices have bubbled almost as bad in Canada as in the US, and even worse in Vancouver. We might not have a crash as bad as the US, and probably the housing crash won't hurt the banks as bad as the subprime mess did in the US, but there WILL be losses.

Finally, the strongest evidence I can see that there IS a housing bubble: The absolute certainty expressed by townies that a bubble is completely impossible.

Vancouver's Top Ten Bars 2008

This is my official list of Vancouver's Top Ten Bars for 2008.

#1 - The King's Head - A funny, weird, fun and low key place to go.

#2 - The ANZA Club - Unpretentious with great live music.

#3 - The Biltmore - Again, great live music.

Stay tuned for next week, when I rate Vancouver's top ten places to go dancing.