The weather is rather decent, given that we are now in December. Temperatures around eight, nine or ten, a bit of rain, not too much. and the air is lovely. Only problem is that we still have record homelessness in this fabulously wealthy city in this fabulously wealthy country, and there is still no political will to declare this a humanitarian crisis so that boots are put on the ground and people get properly housed.
I have written before, and now I am writing again, that if Vancouver were a person, then she would be a dumb blonde. A very beautiful woman, coming to the big city from a small town and expecting to make it big. I believe that our most fabulous dumb blonde of a mayor, Gregor Robertson, wanted to make this a World Class City. So, Vancouver, the dumb blonde from the Toolies, decided to convince everyone that she could sing. She was, it turned out, tone-deaf, and flatter than she was before she saw the cosmetic surgeon in Yaletown.
Then she tried her hand at acting. Her performance was every bit as wooden as the last remaining old growth forests. So she danced, but she could only disco dance, but then her agent persuaded her to take her clothes off and sit on the lap of the Chinese billionaire seated at the front table. The Chinese gentleman is a real estate developer. There has been no turning back.
This city, Vancouver, like a dumb blonde from the sticks, is never going to make it on the world stage. It could partly be from her callous indifference towards the poor and vulnerable who shiver and suffer on her sidewalks and underneath her seismically upgraded bridges every night. It could also be because, very simply, this city has no soul. Lovely mountains, lovely trees, lovely ocean, lovely climate, oh so very pretty. While I understand that sex worker is the politically correct term, I would say that hooker or prostitute would be more suitable a moniker for the Dumb Blonde Vancouver. She has sold out to the tourists, to international real estate, to the film industry, to anyone who comes over the blue Pacific or the green Atlantic carrying bags full of cash. Bitcoin preferred, one would imagine.
World Class, by the way, is a privilege, not a right. It is an honour bestowed, not worked for. It cannot be earned. It is more than a confluence of history, culture, geography and all those other invisible bits and pieces that no one can identify. Whatever the real world class cities, such as London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, New York or San Francisco might have, Vancouver will always be lacking.
Should ever arrive that unlikely day, before climate change and rising sea levels have made this coastal burg into a tiny uninhabitable little island, that Vancouver will have become a World Class City, we will know it, primarily not because the visiting film crews will no longer be disguising our neighbourhoods as features of New York or San Francisco. Vancouver will finally be allowed to play herself in studio movies, but when the film crews will be going to other cities to play them up as Vancouver's own Kitsilano, Downtown Eastside, Stanley park, Chinatown, or pick any one.
In the meantime, even if this Blonde is dumb, she is one happy little hooker. She may not be cheap, but boy, is she easy!
(no radical feminists were injured or harmed in the writing of this blog.)
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