735 replies to this topic

[todd]

People say it’s a **** hole, I like to stay positive and remember some places are ****tier holes.

[Nparker]

Ahh...the "things are worse elsewhere" strategy. My mother used a version of that to try and get me to eat liver. "Eat it! Don't you know there are children starving in China/Africa/elsewhere?" I suggested she send them my portion of the liver. She was not amused.

[todd]

Ahh...the "things are worse elsewhere" strategy. My mother used a version of that to try and get me to eat liver. "Eat it! Don't you know there are children starving in China/Africa/elsewhere?" I suggested she send them my portion of the liver. She was not amused.

I don’t think I’ve ever had liver.

[Matt R.]

Get thee to a foie gras terrine.

[Nparker]

Get thee to a foie gras terrine.

I still won't eat liver served hot (like liver and onions) but I love terrines and pâté .

[todd]

I guess I eat pâté sometimes.

[LJ]

Liver and onions and bacon, yum yum.

[aastra]

Do y'all think those electrically-assisted bicycles will ever catch on?

 

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Daily Colonist
June 6, 1902

Edison believes that he has solved the difficulty of long-distance electric automobiling, a battery which he has just finished being capable of a 100-mile run without recharging. The storage of electricity is a field that will repay exploration by inventors. Lord Kelvin, in his recent address in New York, spoke hopefully of overcoming the difficulties of electrical transmission, but he had nothing to say concerning the storage of the elusive fluid.

 

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Daily Colonist
February 10, 1906

The novel combination automobile of M. Henry Pleper, the Belgian inventor, is claimed to be an important advance in several respects. The car, which is known as the "auto-mixte," is equipped with a gasoline motor, a dynamo, and a storage battery of 24 Tudor cells having a total weight of 340 pounds. The gasoline motor is of ordinary four-cylinder type, with a magnetic gas throttle for regulating the speed. When the gasoline motor is running with a light load, the dynamo acts as a generator to charge the storage battery, but on rising grades and hard places it can be run as a motor on current from the battery, and its aid gives a greater average speed than can be had from a simple gasoline machine of the same power. The distance run is not limited by the charge in the battery, as with the electric automobile, while in case of break-down the battery can be depended upon to run a certain distance. No special starting device is needed, and speed-changing gear and various other devices are made unnecessary.

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Daily Colonist
September 14, 1900

Some pretend they can see that the American will take to the new sport by equipping his present form of bicycle with some sort of light motor, thereby making it what the yachtsman would call an auxillary. Such a vehicle is a hybrid, and to the sportsman thoroughbreds alone appeal. The motor bicycle, while being very much heavier than the unmotored, would have none of the stability that is developed by the addition of one or two wheels more.

The two-wheeler would afford no possibilities for companionship, for luggage-carrying, or for touring, while the inclination to side-slip, by reason of its added weight being largely above the centre of gravity, would make this motor bicycle a dangerous machine to manipulate. The motor tricycle or quadricycle avoids all of this, and thereby appeals at once to large and influential classes of purchasers.

To the energetic, record-seeking, century-riding wheelman, the motor bicycle will not appeal, because it does not afford him either exercise or excitement enough; his less energetic brother of the pedal, the so-called tourist, will have none of it, because it will not go to the gait its three or four-wheeled brothers will. For this and other equally good reasons, the motor bicycle is, in its chances of success, far outstripped by the tricycle and quadricycle; and it is along these lines that in America the greatest improvements will be brought about, and the greatest commercial fortunes made, during the next decade.

Where increased cost and extra-heavy weight do not act as barriers, the limited range of electrically driven vehicles finds compensation in the cleanliness and self-sufficiency of the propelling force within the strength of the batteries employed. There is satisfaction and fascination in driving a vehicle with a reserve power independent of frequent fueling. Well-calculated use in city and suburbs will not exhaust the proven capabilities of electricity, and recharging stations are always within a reasonable radius. For these and collateral reasons, the storage battery type is safe in its present favor with residents of large towns. Weights, as a rule, exceed 1,500 pounds; prices are $1,500 and upwards.

A determined effort is being made to add to the range of the electric automobile, and to cut down the time required for recharging.

 

[Love the rock]

I don’t think I’ve ever had liver.

Your lucky 

[aastra]

One more about electric cars:

 

 

Daily Colonist
March 31, 1912

Packard Island Service

The Dominion Motor Car Company Limited... have opened up a complete service depot at 923 Fort Street. The Victoria service is under the capable direction of Mr. H.C. Berg, who is a factory technical expert of wide experience. Owners on the Island of Packard and Baker electric cars will hear with pleasure that this home service is at their immediate command...

The local office with Mr. Berg in charge will handle the complete Island agency for the Packard and Baker Electric cars.

[aastra]

Methinks modern Victorians really downplay the San Francisco connection. And methinks they do it because it doesn't really jibe with prevailing narratives re: Canadiana and "the Canadian experience".

 

 

"Victoria was still easily the largest city in the colony although its population had declined by almost half since 1863, and a corresponding decrease had taken place in the number of shipping companies, realtors, saloons, boardinghouses, tobacconists, and gentlemen's outfitters. Cricket was to be seen on a Sunday afternoon, and something of the city's pre-gold rush character had re-emerged, although in 1867 many of its businesses were owned in San Francisco, and some were simply branches of San Francisco firms. These same firms advertised in the New Westminster and Cariboo papers.

To some extent Victoria remained as it had been in the early days of the gold rushes -- the channel through which commercial interests in San Francisco penetrated the Fraser River settlements. But there were also British or Canadian firms in Victoria, and former employees of the Hudson's Bay Company who operated successfully in both Victoria and San Francisco. In 1862, the London-financed Bank of British Columbia had opened in Victoria, and five years later had several branches in California, its bank in San Francisco quickly becoming the second bank in that city. Victoria was not simply a dependent of San Francisco; rather, both cities participated in a triangular pattern of trade and finance dominated, in many ways, by London."

From "Canada Before Confederation", by R. Cole Harris and John Warkentin (1974, Oxford University Press)

 

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I've posted the following bit before re: San Francisco's brief crisis of confidence during the Fraser gold rush:
 

 

"The first public school (in San Francisco) was established in 1849. In 1855-1856 a disastrous commercial panic crippled the city; and in 1858, when at the height of the Fraser river gold-mine excitement it seemed as though Victoria, B.C., was to supplant San Francisco as the metropolis of the Pacific, realty values in the latter city dropped for a time fully a half in value."

from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1911)
Volume 24, page 147

Edited by aastra, 10 May 2023 - 12:42 PM.

[Vin]

I don’t think I’ve ever had liver.

Have you ever had hot dogs?

[aastra]

We're reaching a bit now, you think?

 

Victoria News
May 15, 2023

The demise of single-family starter homes: ‘Municipalities have to have their hands forced’

Local policies not geared towards multi-unit builds warns advocate

With single-family home ownership OUT OF REACH for many income levels and thousands of units needed to meet supply demands in Greater Victoria, residents are calling on different levels of government to make changes.

 

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Times-Colonist
July 10, 2019

"Put focus on rentals in next phase of housing strategy"

"We don’t need more housing that is OUT OF REACH of the average-income earner,” the strategy says, adding that high-end development “is frustrating for some Victorians, and devastating for others in desperate situations, who are forced to move into substandard or overpriced housing because there’s just nothing else available."

 

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Daily Colonist/The Victoria Express Weekend Edition
May 18, 1974

Developers have problems too

-Lack of available serviced land;
-the dramatically rising price of land;
-lengthy re-zoning hassles with municipalities;
-inflated prices for building materials and maintenance;
-and the current psychological difficulties of people not wanting to live next door to apartments.

McAdams (of Park Pacific apartments Ltd.) says he and other developers have no objection to the government's subsidizing tenants "who can't pay the market price, the people who really need help."

"But," he said, "why wreck a market which is supplying an essential commodity with blanket rent controls?"

"Whenever you alter supply and demand you create a synthetic market, and in the end, whatever is available is available at higher prices."

The real problem -- not only to the developer but to the public seeking accommodation -- is the prospect of fewer and fewer apartments being built.

"We have to pass on costs," McAdams points out. "The moment we can't pass on our costs, we quit doing it (building apartments.)"

The next few years, McAdams says, will see "fewer and fewer apartments built" as a result of higher costs and controlled rents.

Condominiums will likely become more and more popular, not only to the prospective builder but also to the public for whom single-family homes are becoming priced OUT OF REACH.

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Daily Colonist (The Victoria Express)
February 23, 1974

Zoning Veto Advocated

The time has come for the provincial government to give itself the power to overrule municipalities on matters of residential zoning, says Victoria Real Estate Board president Eric Charman.

He said the four core municipalities in the Victoria area are strangling the housing market with restrictions against multiple-family construction.

"It is all very well to be against high-rises but people have to live somewhere," he said.

 

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Daily Colonist
April 2, 1969

Rigid Bylaws Blamed for House Shortage

A Victoria architect-planner - D.M. Cowin - Tuesday blamed the housing crisis on municipalities because of their rigid bylaws and told Saanich housing committee that its municipality was one of the worst offenders.

The committee later was less than enthusiastic about Mr. Cowin's proposal for helping to ease the housing crisis in Saanich by the construction of at least 20 patio dwelling units.

He said Transport Minister Paul Hellyer's housing report stressed the need for freedom of choice but a home-seeker has only two options - "a single-family residence at a cost he can't afford or a filing cabinet unsuitable for family living."

[Mike K.]

So if housing costs were only a small multiple of annual incomes in 1969, what would have made homeownership so challenging back then? Was it the lack of credit? Ie, the house might have cost 4x your income, but you had to have 100% of the purchase price?

Today the house costs 15x your income, but you can get into it for just a fraction of its cost, then mortgage the rest.

[aastra]

Politics is 100% genuine and legitimate. Who could possibly dare to argue this unarguable fact? People just need to be patient and understand that pedestrian malls are a complicated endeavour. It takes time to properly plan these things and iron out the kinks. By proceeding with caution we can learn from our mistakes, make a few tweaks, etc.

 

The city of Victoria is ~160 years old. We've been working on pedestrian-only concepts for Government Street and other downtown streets for about one-third of that time.
 

 

May 19, 2023
Times-Colonist

Victoria council endorses continuation of pedestrian-friendly Government Street

Victoria’s Government Street will remain a pedestrian-focused thoroughfare for the foreseeable future after city council confirmed on ­Thursday that it stands behind the Government Street Refresh project started by the previous council.

Following a staff update on plans for the street, ­council unanimously supported ­continuing the work and ­maintaining Government Street principally as a pedestrian zone.

Coun. Jeremy Caradonna said it made sense to signal both to city staff and the public that this council endorses the current direction.

“You guys already have a wonderful plan and you’re ­moving in the right direction..."

...Coun. Matt Dell said his only regret is that it’s going to take so long. "But that’s the same with everything in the city. You want to snap your fingers and make it happen," he said.

The design continues to be honed, with implementation expected to take more than five years.

Dell said, however, that he appreciates the cautious approach taken by staff so far, which has allowed them to learn from early mistakes and tweak the design,

 

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Daily Colonist
February 14, 1973

Seattle Consultant to Draft Mall Plan

City council's planning committee recommended to council that a Seattle consultant be hired... to prepare a feasibility study on the proposed Government-View pedestrian mall.

...the assistant traffic engineer is to visit a number of U.S. cities which have already built pedestrian malls.

It was that item in particular which was questioned...

"First, the traffic engineer gets an eyeful of malls in Europe last summer, now the assistant gets another eyeful of malls in the United States,"

The city hopes to have the mall completed by June, 1974. According to the plans, Government will be closed to car traffic from Humboldt to Yates, and View from Government to half a block beyond Douglas, but without interrupting the Douglas-View intersection.

 

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Daily Colonist
May 29, 1973

Merchants Knock, Praise Concept of Broad Mall

The carnival-like activity on Broad Street during last week's Victorian Days has aroused some controversy among the merchants along the temporary mall.

One merchant says the week-long partial closure of Broad and the complete elimination of parking on the street during that time has been bad for his business. He views the possibility that Broad may someday become a permanent pedestrian mall with some misgivings.

Another merchant, however, says his business may have picked up last week as a result of increased pedestrian traffic. He would like to see Broad Street converted to a permanent mall.

A third merchant says the partial closure last week could have been a success, had it not been botched by poor planning and poor administration.

The merchant who never wants to see a repetition of this year's "debacle" is Donald MacDonald of MacDonald's Furniture Mart... at the corner of Pandora.

What he objected to most of all was the "shoddy arrangement" of cheap stalls, barricades and food stands doing business out of trailers.

"It was a bloody mess. Why didn't they use planters with flowers to block off the street? That's what we were told would be done. Instead there were dozens of cheap barricades from Farmer's Construction..."

"If this is an indication of what a permanently closed Broad Street would look like, they can keep it," he said, referring to Mayor Peter Pollen's statement last week that he hoped Broad would eventually be a pedestrian mall all the way from Fort to city hall.

MacDonald added, "I admit that, probably with the proper planning and preparation, a permanent mall on Broad might be a success, but this brief debacle hasn't helped strengthen my belief."

 

[todd]

Have you ever had hot dogs?

I had stopped eating them for about 10 years, but I’ve started eating them again lately, only the highest quality ones

 

Always wondered what was in them.