Top Five Unsexy Things About Yaletown
I came across a ridiculous piece of news via the ever-amusing condohype blog: Yaletown is being dubbed the “sexiest neighbourhood” in Canada. Really? I can think of at least five reasons that this isn’t the case (and yes, I’m channeling Nick Horby’s Rob Gordon here):
- Pretentious: Tiny dogs, overpriced restaurants, snotty attitudes, and waiters and hairdressers who seem to think they’re &*%$ing James Bond (where I’m using “&*%$ing” as both an adjective and a verb). Turned on yet?
- Costly: Given the cost per square foot of housing in Yaletown, you might end up doing it in the street. But maybe that’s “up your alley”, so to speak.
- Smelly: Garbage dumpsters in the street. Mmm. Sexy.
- Annoying: 1 way streets, no parking. This has no connection to sex – it’s just a bloody pain in the ass.
- Cramped: When all else fails and you can’t get laid, there’s always the Internet. Except your wireless router keeps cutting out due to interference from your eight adjacent neighbours’ own wifi networks. Guess you’ll have to exercise your imagination (and no, that’s not a euphenism).
Have I missed any? Shall we try for a Top Ten? Add yours in the comments.
Now, in the interest of disclosure, I have to say that I lived in Yaletown for three years – not because I was sexy, but rather because I was lazy. The location allowed me at one point to walk across the street to work. I have since recovered, and now live in Cambie Village.
Ha, you beat me to making such a post.
I reckon that their “results” mean that Yaletowners are the loneliest, and most likely to hole up in their towers browsing dating sites.
Is pretentiousness the same as wankerness?
The Tragically Hip gets better and better as a band name the more time you spend in Yaletown.
What’s funny is that this survey -which has gotten WAY too much attention- (somewhere some PR hack is rubbing his hands together) was based on residents of those neighborhoods and cities own image of themselves. That the residents of Yaletown gave themselves the highest ratings should come as no surprise.
After all, they have James Bond for a hairdresser.
Let me correct myself- it was based on how they rate their potential dates in their neighborhood. Still, the neighborhood bias skewing the results is a factor.
Sirens at all hours. Early morning gun shots. Mufflers designed to be loud. Poo and pee in the elevator. So many kids that the schools can’t handle them.
Oh, I totally forgot: Yaletown’s embodiment of Vancouver’s “livability” myth, a myth that stands in stark contrast to the reality of living in a 600 to 900 square foot apartment. Yeah, because families are totally about living in one or two bedrooms with their elbows embedded in their ears.
Yaletown is so profoundly lame. In many respects it’s like everything that’s wrong with Vancouver concentrated in a few blocks: absence of culture, dreadful architecture, unthinking consumerism, and so on.
I was staying in Edinburgh’s New Town last weekend (by “new” they mean street after street of beautifully preserved Georgian architecture). Returning to Vancouver, this city seems so completely lacking in any kind of authenticity or real sense of identity.