According to a National Geographic ranking, Vancouver is the #10 best city in the world for beaches.
Photo credit: ng.kelven on Flickr
Here’s why they chose us: “Canada’s most adventurous metropolis is home to ten beaches, from the family-centric Jericho to the clothing-optional Wreck Beach, many of which offer commanding views of the Vancouver skyline and majestic North Shore Mountains. Sporty types prefer Kitsilano or “Kits,” a six-minute drive from downtown, for its free tennis and basketball courts, and its super-size heated saltwater pool.”
Photo credit: qousqous on Flickr
While some think our water is too chilly or cloudy, I think the main attraction here is how close the beaches are to the city. Within 10 minutes I can walk to English Bay, 15 to Second...
GM Place is slated to be renamed today in an announcement coming at 2:00pm PT per an update from the Canucks media guy, TC Carling on Twitter today.
According to CKNW, “Canucks Sports and Entertainment and General Motors of Canada limited will announce a new sponsor partnership this afternoon.”
Currently nicknamed “The Garage”, General Motors Place has been the home of the Vancouver Canucks since 1995 and enjoyed a short stint as “Canada Hockey Place” during the Olympics.
This seems to b a trend lately in Vancouver as Nat Bailey Stadium was recently given the name “Scotiabank Field at Nat Bailey” and also Telus Wold of Science or Telusphere at Science World.
I’ll post an update once the announcement has been made or you can follow...
Vancouver’s Chinatown is looking for a mascot and needs your help to decide on the final character.
Given the success of Miga, Sumi and Quatchi during the 2010 Olympics it kind of gives the impression that Vancouver is a mascot kind town. The two finalists, who will rely on a public vote in order to get instated as the official mascot of Chinatown, are Punkie and Muse.
Punkie
Punkie was meant to be the 13th Zodiac animal, but because he was born with a noticeable punk-mohawk hair, he didn’t make the Zodiac ‘cut’ and was seen as an outcast. In search of a new home, Punkie discovered Vancouver at around the time the Chinese began to settle in as immigrants and labourers. He easily found refuge with the Chinese and called the soon-to-be Vancouver Chinatown his new...
Yesterday the Sun reported that City Hall is poised to expand Vancouver’s street food menu by launching a pilot project this summer that will allow mobile kitchens on wheels to operate alongside our existing hotdog and chestnut carts.
Photo credit: stevelyon on Flickr
The move will likely expand the menu available on city sidewalks from pre-cooked packaged foods such as hotdogs to more freshly prepared fare. The city soon will issue a call for expressions of interest seeking vendors who want to offer streetside food service, according to the acting manager of streets administration…
…Vending trucks are governed by national standards, the same standards that apply to mobile catering, according to health protection manager Angelo Kouris of Vancouver Coastal Health....
The Vancouver Art Gallery is icon in our city and was a central hub of activity during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games and although the building won’t be going anywhere… it’s what’s inside that counts.
Photo credit: rodefeld on Flickr
A relocation, that would see it move out of the old courthouse building, has been in the works for a few years. The first plan was to build a new facility for the art gallery in North East False Creek to accompany the expanding collection however plans have changed.
The 604 Homes Blog covered the then-approved move in 2008:
“Late last week the City of Vancouver approved the plan to build a brand new art gallery on the site of the old Plaza of Nations. The re-development would also include the a number of new highrise...
Twitter was experiencing the effects of a bug this weekend that exploited the following/follower method (as this post on Mashable explains). This morning, as an after effect of this bug, all users have noticed their following and follower numbers have dropped right down to zero. This means the little corner store down the block has the same follower count as Ashton Kutcher or CNN at the moment.
I’m certain Twitter is working to rectify the problem and it’s not something permanent as timelines are still filling with updates. However, things like this always seem to cause panic, mass hysteria, and the inevitable shouting at inanimate objects such as a computer screen or iPhone. To alleviate some stress in the future, here are a few ways you can back up your Twitter account....
This afternoon City Council passed a motion to support Fair Trade, making Vancouver the first major city in Canada to achieve “Fair Trade Town” status.
The application process has taken about a year however this afternoon’s vote sealed the deal. From a press release issued today, “The city’s endorsement of the application was the last step required by TransFair Canada to bestow Trade Town status on Vancouver. This award officially recognizes two decades of work by local and international Fair Trade supporters, as well as a civic ethical purchasing policy that was enacted in 2005.”
Mayor Gregor Robertson said, “We want to be the greenest city in the world, and a part of that is ensuring that our goods and services are produced and delivered in a...
This afternoon a grey whale (probably the one spotted in Howe Sound earlier) wandering into False Creek. The whale swam right past Science World and Granville Island where a few lucky onlookers were able to snap some photos.
Photo credit: @katerainy on Twitter
If you were able to capture the grey whale in a photo please consider adding it to the Miss604 Flickr Group and I’ll showcase it here (with credit of course).
I mentioned this on Twitter but I think this can be nothing but a good omen with regards to the Canucks playing their first game of round 3 at home today....
Yesterday a crowd gathered in what used to be Workspace to welcome Disney’s Pixar animation studio to Gastown.
The Georgia Straight took some video at the event which you can view on YouTube. Thanks to the Province of BC for also sharing their video of the event on YouTube and including the cute introduction that has animations running through the streets of Vancouver.
Pixar Canada is now looking for animation talent to create short films at the new studio featuring some of its popular characters, such as Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story. The short films will experiment with Pixar’s well-known characters and introduce new ones. Some short films will also be produced for specialty TV…
…Pixar now has 1,000 employees in California. It is owned by Disney, which plans to...
This evening the Vancouver Parks Board voted unanimously to ban smoking in parks and on local beaches.
Photo credit: anasantoson Flickr
Vancouver Fire Captain Gabe Roder says if we have another hot and dry summer–like we did last year– then it’s only common sense to have cigarette smoking ban in place. He says it’s a health hazard, a matter of safety and it will be a great way to protect our parks. “We’re in favour of a ban of any type of incendiary type products, fires, barbecues in parks. Those sorts of things don’t go well with the heat and the dryness.” [source: News1130]
The update on the vote came from @News1130Radio on Twitter.
The park board gathered public feedback when it conducted an online survey on the matter last fall. Of...
At a press conference at the CBC Vancouver broadcast centre this afternoon it was announced that legendary BC anchor Tony Parsons would be co-hosting the local supper-hour newscast.
Tony Parsons, who I grew up watching on BCTV, anchored his final newscast on Global TV’s News Hour in December of 2009.
Around that time but published a book but Parsons was off the air during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
He then returned to television with CHEK-TV in Victoria as the anchor of their 10:00pm newscast in March. According to today’s press release, a deal between the CBC and CHEK-TV has been made that will see the local news from CBC Vancouver simulcast on CHEK-TV in Victoria.
“Tony Parsons has been synonymous with local news in Vancouver for 35 years and we’re...
I enjoy a good debate about media-related topics pretty much any time, even when I’m supposed to be on vacation with the family in Florida. Today, in between playing shuffleboard and bocce and taking the kids to the swimming pool, I had a rousing back-and-forth on Twitter with Howard Owens — who was formerly with Gatehouse Media and is now running a local news site called The Batavian — about the evils (Howard) and virtues (me) of anonymous comments. Along the way, we sucked Steve Yelvington and others into the fray as well. Did we settle the issue? Not even close. In fact, I’m not sure it can ever be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
In a nutshell, Howard said that anonymous comments were an abomination (I’m paraphrasing somewhat) and were in fact...
Copyright © 2010 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2010/02/vancouver-2010-alexandre-bilodeau-talks-about-gold.html.After winning the first Canadian gold medal on home turf freestyle moguls skier Alex Bilodeau had a press conference this morning. The media asked him about his career, his defining moment, and just how much partying he has done already.
Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr / 2010.JohnBiehler.com
The very humble Bilodeau replied in both French and English, offering much praise to the Own the Podium program, his family (in particular his brother), and his fellow athletes. “This extraordinary effort does not come in isolation,” said Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. “First and foremost we are thanking...
Copyright © 2010 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2010/02/vancouver-2010-protests-on-day-two.html.Unfortunately Day Two of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games got rung in with the sound of smashing glass at the HBC store downtown. From what I hear, 100-200 protesters moved from Georgia Street, down to Denman, looped up Robson Street and are currently being penned in by police on Robson Street between Broughton and Jervis.
Yesterday the Olympic Torch Relay was re-routed due to protesters in the downtown Eastside but it was a peaceful protest. Today it seems like a different group of people with anarchy signs, masks, hoods, and actions such as knocking over newspaper boxes, spray painting cars, and smashing windows.
John went down to take some photos and...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/11/goodbye-talk1410.html.There have been many changes in the Vancouver radio landscape over the last year or so and while some have been great (such as the addition of The Peak 100.5 and Shore 104.1), the mics of many beloved personalities have been turned off.
This morning I hopped into a Zipcar and while the tuner said “1410″ I heard the call sign “Team 1410″. I thought this must instantly be a mistake since Chum Radio Vancouver hosts both stations. The message was followed by a show intro and then men talking about basketball.
Instantly flipping over to Twitter I saw an update from John Bollwitt that included this link:
A message from James Stuart – Vice President...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/11/vancouver-washington-a-tale-of-two-vancouvers.html.Vancouver Washington, near the Oregon border and lying on the outskirts of Portland, is tired of playing second fiddle to the big cities especially ours which bears the same name. As such, the Washington city is considering changing its name so they can stand out on their own.
“The Vancouver Columbian in Washington reports that a vote Tuesday could mean a majority on the city council in favour of sending the proposal to voters. Supporters of the name change say it would avoid the long-running confusion with Vancouver, B.C. But detractors say it’s not a first priority for council and that residents should get over the fact that the city...
No matter how many times people like Clay Shirky or Mike Masnick try to pop the bubble of faith around micropayments as a cure for what ails the newspaper industry (or even the media industry as a whole), another believer emerges to argue that a secure and extensible micropayment system is a big part of the answer. The latest to make an impassioned plea is Jeff Reifman, the co-founder of NewsCloud, a “community-driven news aggregator” funded by the Knight Foundation.
In a recent blog post, Reifman outlines why he believes that micropayments can solve the newspaper industry’s problems. His post is a response to one by Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher, which carried the somewhat argumentative title “Your News Content Is Worth Zero To Digital Consumers,”...
There are plenty of ways to find the news on the Web – everything from CNN.com and Google News to Techmeme and the New York Times. Some new services are based on links, some are curated, and some are single source.
A new player on the scene is Thoora, a startup that I’ve been working with for the past several months. Thoora is taking a new and different approach to discovering the news attracting the most attention by exploring the entire blogosphere, Twitter and thousands of traditional media sources.
Thoora’s algorithm identifies the strongest “signals” coming from each silo, and then aggregates these signals to put the spotlight on the news attracting the most attention and buzz. It’s a way of blending what’s going on within social and...
In a recent article on the end of India’s inaugural moon mission, the BBC reported:
Soon, the spacecraft started overheating due to the intense summer heat on the Moon. Isro scientists say it was deft mission management that saved it from a total burnout.
I’ve got news for whoever wrote that: summer in the northern hemisphere is not summer in the whole solar system. It’s not even summer on the whole planet. There is no such thing as “summer heat” on the Moon. There’s just heat. The same heat, all the time, from the same sun, all the time. The Moon doesn’t have a large enough tilt relative to the sun to have significant seasons, nor the atmosphere to support them if it did, and they wouldn’t affect a spacecraft in orbit above it anyway....
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Space,
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physics,
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seasons,
bad astronomy,
Chandrayaan,
Isro,
summer heat,
news
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/08/sludge-dumping-at-burns-bog.html.Burns Bog is the largest domed peet bog on the West Coast of North America and is vital to our entire region’s ecosystem. Over the last 40 years, it has been used as a landfill by the City of Vancouver although what they are now proposing is even more vile.
[City of Vancouver] proposes to deposit 85,000 cubic metres, or 8,500 dump-truck loads, of sewage sludge (they call it “biosolids”) from the Iona treatment plant onto the landfill’s 12-hectare Phase One closure site. Vancouver has applied in writing to the Ministry of Environment for an amendment of its landfill operational certificate so the sludge from Iona can be used. It said shortages of regular...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/08/wednesday-morning-link-fest-news-roundup.html.Every morning while getting ready for work, my husband listens to the local news radio station. As I slowly wake from my slumber I hear sports scores peppered with weather guarantees and the latest Hollywood gossip that all somehow work their way into my half-conscious dreams. As such, this morning’s Link Fest is dedicated simply to what’s making headlines around the city.
Photo credit: mysighTs on Flickr / Miss604 Group Pool
Grow-op busted on Mount Seymour. For those who do not live in BC, a “grow-op” is a Marijuana growing operation and this particular one involved about 300 plants that were spotted from above in a helicopter....
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/07/like-tim-hortons-im-heading-to-new-york.html.Tim Hortons, Canada’s favourite coffee and donut pit stop, is rolling into New York with many locations opening up today. This means that at this time tomorrow (even though I don’t take sugar in my coffee) I could be getting a double double from their new Broadway, Madison Square Garden, Penn Station or Times Square locations. Two locations are also planned for Brooklyn.
Photo credit: markolson on Flickr
I’m flying out to New York today and although it won’t be a long trip, I’m looking forward to seeing this amazing city once again. I was last there six years ago for a quick weekend stay while I was living in Boston —...
A great new site for Canadians who want to get their news and opinion (mainstream media and blogs) from a “one-stop shop”: The Canadian News Reader. I especially like the separate blog section, which provides a side-by-side view of left-wing and right-wing blogs. Having a “Local” section is also very helpful, I find. From the “About Us” tab: Canadian News Reader is largely an automatically generated news aggregation site. Unlike human-generated news aggregation sites which only update their sites two or three times per day, our site is updated instantly and constantly; you are guaranteed to get the latest news......
So you’ve decided to visit Toronto and enjoy it’s #2 outdoor attraction (second only to The Beaches Jazz Festival, according to their site). Regardless of who tells you their numbers are numero uno, Toronto Pride reels in a crapload of cash for the city (The Gay Community has it’s own subsection on Toronto’s tourism website – take THAT Caribana!). It’s a good idea to research your options before opening your wallet and organize your fun before hitting the street.
That’s where I come in! Hello tourist! So glad I could help!
You may recall my article last year: Pride Tips for Out of Towners. I’m bitter happy to report that not much has changed. The bar you are drinking in will have a draconian liquor inspector grumpily wander through to see...
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Bush,
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Canadian,
Money,
iphone,
Queer stuff,
doors,
queen,
gay,
gays,
pride,
dishes,
longing,
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faces,
wellesley,
drinks,
coolness,
suggestion,
torontonian,
maitland,
woodys,
crowds,
crowd,
twists,
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organisms,
rifles,
Travel,
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flickr,
Photos,
news
I have nothing new to report about Disney, per se. Yes it’s still the pinnacle of customer service. Yes the rides were just as fun. Yes, Stacey was the first person you saw when you turned on the hotel TV. It was all the same yet the familiarity was like going to a friend’s house who has 1000% better home electronics than you do.
Not much has changed since my last vacation there, except for a few tweaks (for the better) to their services and a couple new rides. I won’t repeat myself for the sake of old time readers. Know that while there wasn’t any bed-jumping videos of excitement, the emotion of being there was just as strong.
Collectively between three cameras (not including the Photopass service Disney provides), I estimate we took close to 2500 pictures....
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world,
laugh,
robot,
collection,
joke,
disney,
Sake,
tea,
posting,
colours,
navy,
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sayings,
mannerisms,
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Recently there have been a number of news stories popping up about minors being charged with child pornography related offenses because of naked pictures they have taken of themselves which end up in the hands of the wrong people. This week’s episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit touched on this issue as well.
Benson: How is sending naked pictures to two boys your own age kiddie porn?
Cragen: The law hasn’t caught up with new technology.
Benson: And we’re criminalizing private behaviour.
Cragen: It’s not private when these kids begin sexting. College admissions officers, future employers, even their own children might see these pictures one day. They don’t realize the consequences of their actions.
The judge trying the case expressed a similar...
In
Facebook,
facebook,
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Musings,
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the internet never forgets,
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Copyright © 2009 Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt. If you are not viewing this post through the Miss604.com feed then this content has been republished WITHOUT permission. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/05/phoenix-coyotes-potential-move-to-ontario.html.The Phoenix Coyotes have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie has put in a $212.5 million offer for the team, which is contingent on the team being moved to Southern Ontario.
You can see the dream. Bringing more of Canada’s sport back home. Shane Doan a captain in Canada. Wayne Gretzky coaching a team that likely won’t ever be aware that purses have strings, rather than one strung up by them, likely to be just a short drive from his hometown of Brantford, Ontario....
Copyright © 2009 Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt. If you are not viewing this post through the Miss604.com feed then this content has been republished WITHOUT permission. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/04/red-fm-canucks-play-by-play-in-punjabi.html.Local ethnic radio station, Red FM 93.1 will be broadcasting play-by-play of the Canucks playoff home games in Punjabi to their radio and internet audiences.
“TEAM 1040 is proud to help build and support this unique radio partnership with ReD FM,” said Robert Gray, Program Manager, TEAM 1040. “For the Punjabi community to now be able to enjoy all of the excitement of Canucks home playoff games in their own language speaks to how sports can bond cultures together.” [source: news release]
Starting with...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt. If you are not viewing this post through the Miss604.com feed then this content has been republished WITHOUT permission. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/04/new-vancouver-convention-and-exhibition-centre-open-house.html.The new Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre is now open and the public are welcome to stop by and check it out all weekend. [CBC]
Work in Progress - Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr
April 4th and 5th will be your chance to view this 473,532 square foot meeting and convention space that already has over 180 events booked straight through to 2018.
Work in Progress - Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr
“…between 10am and 4pm on Saturday April 4 and Sunday April 5 for a behind...