Olympic Hangover - Goodbye To the 5-ring Circus

Great write-up, Cam. It definitely feels pretty surreal around town now that the games are over… It's like no one wants the party to stop!

yes - I drove across town with the biggest Canadian flag I own zap strapped to an old hockey stick yesterday - honking my horn like a complete moron.

14 Gold medals! :woot:

Last year, in the depths of the economic crisis when me and my partners were getting seriously worried about whether we would survive as a company or not - when we had to make those terrible lay-off decisions and when we all had to cut back our hours, I did a bit of research. I was looking for anything that would show us a ray of light in those dark times. What I found was startling, Expo 86 was the precursor to a trend that represented unprecedented growth in population and economic might for our province. I am thinking we could see the same thing again…

read this: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/pubs/bcbi/bcbi0801.pdf

Fantastic closing ceremonies, the crowds, the performances, everything made me feel very proud to be Canadian and to live in this beautiful place - Vancouver.

I heart CANADA!

14 Gold medals! :woot:

that's better. :clap: :heart:

The downtown pedestrianized zones went a long way toward making the city feel more alive, more vibrant. People love communal, pedestrianized hubs which is why most cities have them. Vancouver doesn't yet but hopefully the past two weeks will make planners realize how much of a difference it can make to the feel of the place. Build it and they will come.

^^^this.

The downtown pedestrianized zones went a long way toward making the city feel more alive, more vibrant. People love communal, pedestrianized hubs which is why most cities have them. Vancouver doesn't yet but hopefully the past two weeks will make planners realize how much of a difference it can make to the feel of the place. Build it and they will come.

yes please.

I must be the only one that thinks Neil Young's voice sounds like dragging your fingernails across a blackboard.

I grew up w/ him so his voice always reminded me of heart and soul. I could
listen to him sing his folk stuff all day long.

The downtown pedestrianized zones went a long way toward making the city feel more alive, more vibrant. People love communal, pedestrianized hubs which is why most cities have them. Vancouver doesn't yet but hopefully the past two weeks will make planners realize how much of a difference it can make to the feel of the place. Build it and they will come.

I think cities will need to go this route in the future as the population grows.
I think cities like Vancouver, Victoria, New York, SF could very easily go no cars.
All they need to do is have a few "service roads" for public transport, taxis and
delivery vehicles, and make all the other roads into pedestrian zones. Make
a whole bunch of park and rides on the outskirts of the city and you could
have more arteries leading to the park and rides and alleviating much of the
traffic nightmares.

on topic
Nice write-up Cam, as someone that never really watches the Olympics except
for a few hockey, short track and snowboard finals, I watched more in the last
two weeks than in my 44 years of life. While not a Canadian, I am proud to call
Canada my home.

I grew up w/ him so his voice always reminded me of heart and soul. I could
listen to him sing his folk stuff all day long.

I think cities will need to go this route in the future as the population grows.
I think cities like Vancouver, Victoria, New York, SF could very easily go no cars.
All they need to do is have a few "service roads" for public transport, taxis and
delivery vehicles, and make all the other roads into pedestrian zones. Make
a whole bunch of park and rides on the outskirts of the city and you could
have more arteries leading to the park and rides and alleviating much of the
traffic nightmares.

many places in Europe are like this, Lyon has a huge area of Pedestrian/Commercial only.

you could even do it on like evenings/weekends only. just have bollards that pop out of the road at certain times to block it all off.

This little tiny town in Italy we were in Monteonie had them, the locals could put the bollards down with a remote, so they could park, but otherwise it was walking only.

Grafton Street - Dublin - busiest commercial district in the City:

It was over too quick and it far exceeded my expectations.

I'm kind of bummed out today… Best way to get over this Olympic hang-over? In my opinion it's a biking road trip… I've got one planned for this coming weekend.

*Funny sight from last night - I was downtown on Granville [HTML_REMOVED] Robson following the gold medal game and 5 cops were standing in a line, one of them was pouring out a can of beer while looking at and speaking to the other officers… The person whose beer was being poured was crouched over with his head below the can lapping away as it's contents emptied onto the street and into his throat! The other cops were just laughing. Everybody was in a good mood.

Great games indeed….despite y'day's OT win. ;)

We were up last Sunday for the first US-Canada men's game and watched it at the Live City on Cambie and Georgia. So much fun….and not because the US won that game either. We had a ton of great banter with the Canadians around us (we were slightly outnumbered) and had such a killer time…even with the $7.50 Molsons!

Congrats to the folks of Whistler/Vancouver for a great winter games and showcasing why B.C. is one of the best places on the planet. Lots of reasons to hang your heads high.

Cheers,
EB

I'm thinking on a larger scale like a city I read about, I think it was in the Netherlands.
Basically a very large city is now pedestrian only. The only vehicles allowed on the
few streets are registered delivery, taxi and public transport.

Vancouver could start small say from:
Howe to Nanaimo st
and
the river to Broadway.

That whole area would be pedestrian and special vehicle only. With streets for bikes
of wheeled human powered (bikes, skateboards, etc) only.

it was a 3 week party we got home saturday night and kept partying which I recognise as a familiar symptom of a big road trip

now its time to come down so I have stayed indoors ,cut back on the booze ,eat better eat less and rest up to go skiing when the hill opens

all those buses at whistler were great you could anywhere really quick and easy no worries about being drunk

I never made it down to vancover ,we even went home the back way but whistler had cops from literaly everywhere in canada