Welcome Back, Welcome Back…

The trip to Vancouver was a mixed bag, mostly a success, but hard work. Vancouver has not gotten any cheaper, in fact it’s generally more expensive, especially in terms of transportation… Skytrain is a whopping $2.75 per zone (of which there are four, more or less) and add five dollars if you need to get to Vancouver International Airport.

Is it useful? Absolutely, just about everything you might need to get to in Vancouver is accessible by Skytrain or Bus. Lets just say I probably spent in the area of ninety dollars in three weeks on transit alone, and that’s with a lot of casual forgetfulness thrown in to soften the expense.

The city looked pretty as ever.. Olympic-ness as far as the eye could see, and characteristically bustling with metropolitan activity, most of it reserved and polite. I was considering a relocation on this trip, and visited upwards of sixty different Design-related business over a two day period. Almost all of them were in stages of post-Olympic-business shock or at a near standstill and praying for signs of economic life. If someone is reaping the boon of Olympic spending, it’s not your average boutique design firm.

One thing I loved about the Vancouver Olympics was the level of support for local artistry and culture. There were tonnes of art installations, and the Native component of BC’s cultural landscape was pretty well represented, even in the official merch’ offerings. There was plenty of discontent around, but many of the admittedly disgruntled were proud of how Canada was getting behind the Olympics.

For all its issues, if you can afford to live there, Vancouver is probably one of the prettiest, safest and friendliest cities in the world!

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