BC’s fearless premier was inspired by the Summer Olympics opening ceremonies, and wants the 2010 opening ceremonies to be equally inspiring, both to Canadians and the rest of the world.

He’d like to feel everyone knows “a little more about Canada as the opening ceremonies close.” And the best way to achieve that lofty goal, of course, is to hire an Australian to coordinate the spectacle.

Will he be equally inspired by Beijing’s brilliant cash grab of charging a fee to locals who can’t afford tickets to an event, just to walk around outside the venues?

We may be in much better shape financially than the denizens of Beijing, despite the steep costs and looming overruns for venue construction, security, traffic restrictions, and “non-Olympic” projects like the convention centre, the Canada Line, and sweeping boulders off the Sea-to-Sky Highway.

This is because local hotel rooms will be in very short supply and we have the opportunity to suck blood cash out of Olympic tourists. An average home will command $400 per night per bedroom, with conveniently located and more luxurious properties going for upwards of $3,500 per night. No doubt this windfall ease could some of the post-Olympic spiralling taxes and diminishing property values pain.

Vancouver may get a sort-of Christmas present this year, when the cut-and-cover construction part of the Canada Line construction is supposed to be finished. We may be able do drive up and down and across Cambie Street with a minimum of fuss again, but don’t expect sidewalks right away. Over at Cambie Village, says Leonard Schein, they’ve been waiting for theirs to be finished since last November.

And if none of this moves you, maybe August 21 will. It’s going to be National Sex Day. At least on Facebook.

In 20 short days the big show in Beijing will be all over. Criticism of China’s poor human rights record and smog (created as a result of our insatiable desire for cheap consumer goods) will be old news.

Media eyes have been playing cursory attention to Vancouver’s upcoming Winter Games for some time, but it seems the level of attention is about to ramp up.

Anne Casselman at Scientific American updates readers on the environmental costs of the Eagle Ridge Bluffs highway expansion, and in a sidebar, provides a tepid endorsement of LEED construction and hydrogen and fuel cell technology.

Jake Mohan at Utne Reader highlights homelessness and the dark side of Vancouver’s Olympic development, and includes a link to Briarpatch Magazine, which in this month’s issue has provided an excerpt from Christopher A. Shaw’s “Five Ring Circus”.

Mark Hume over at the Globe and Mail has saved his fellow journalists a whole heap of time and trouble by thoughtfully providing a lengthy and unflattering list of Olympic story ideas.

But never mind the doom and gloom. Your next chance to make a killing in Vancouver real estate, pollute our local shores with bunker fuel, and get great seats to Olympic events comes with a price tag as low as $189,000. “Affordable” cruise ship condominiums are coming to Vancouver. We are finally a world-class city!

We don’t yet know how much the budget for the 2010 security costs has increased. The original estimate of $175 million was laughable, considering Salt Lake City’s security costs in 2002 were close to $500 million. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is being coy, but plans to release the adjusted estimate soon.

Plenty of discussion at the Pacific North West Economic Region’s annual summit, here in Vancouver this week, including the aforementioned Olympic security costs, and the announcement that the road from Vancouver to Whistler will be closed to non-Olympic traffic during peak Olympic times. If you aren’t on a bus going to an event, then you can pretty much forget trying to drive the Sea-to-Sky Highway, or to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry. Does this mean BC Highways Minister Kevin Falcon will finally get that helicopter he’s been coveting?

BC Ferries will be increasing their fares by as much as 17.6%, depending on the route, starting August 1. Considering that gasoline prices have increased by 26.9% over the past year, the ferry increase could be worse.

It does lead one to wonder whether cost increases like this will discourage tourism, which is experiencing zero growth, according to Candice Gibson, manager of consumer marketing at Tourism Vancouver.

The cure for flat tourism numbers is lesbians, according to Gibson and Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson, who has been mysteriously quiet for the last year. Lesbians, says Stevenson, have plenty of money and no children, and would spend more time in Vancouver if Vancouver bought a $33,000 advertising contract with Curve magazine.

Meanwhile, it’s also been revealed by Candice Gibson, that Vancouver is already a top spot for gay and lesbian tourism, based on a survey done by San Francisco-based Community Marketing. It’s hard to fathom how $33,000 and four print placements in Curve mag would make a discernible difference in our travel destination cachet.

If you’re too poor to travel this summer, you can always take in the Victory Square block party this Labour Day weekend.

Or check out the new Cactus Club at Bentall 5, which along with food concept architect Rob Feenie’s new menu items, Veuve Clicquot by the glass, and three Basquiats, a Warhol, and a Brent Comber hanging on the walls, still offers many reasonably priced “pre-Feenie deep-fried pub standards.” All that and a minimum 1 hour wait. Globe and Mail food critic Alexandra Gill’s review is here.

While we moan about declining tourism numbers and decide where we’re going out for dinner tonight, Monsanto et al are having their way with South African farmers. Over the past decade, South Africa has entered trade agreements with large, multi-national agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto, which promote the subsidisation of patented GM seeds. Through an incentive system supporting monocultures, small-scale farmers are systematically integrated into commercial agriculture. Small-scale farmers who sign up for GM deals quickly lose control over seed management, production, and eventually their land.

Dump the New Garbage Plans, from the Tyee.

Save Vancouver’s Heatley Block, from Viaduct.

Olympic Drug Lab Largesse from David Eby.

Via Materialicious, an article in USA Today on shipping container housing, including mention of SG Blocks, who are constructing temporary container-based staff housing in Whister for 2010.

Forget Olympic cost overruns and the premature burn on the construction contingency fund. Something far more wicked might be coming this way.

Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit is on the lookout for the bad guys. V2010-ISU includes forensic accountants, construction specialists, and undercover officers to protect the Games from what the IOC has described as a constant threat from organized crime: Inflated contracts, theft, and immigration irregularities, topped up with sub-standard services, materials, and labour practices.

There haven’t been any criminal charges so far. The ISU has apparently provided the IOC with “information” although it’s all very secret and hush hush. Hopefully this isn’t because they’re embarrassed about $700 toilet seats or million dollar washers.

In what should be a surprise to no one, Concord Pacific Group has bought half a block of Hastings Street very near to the Woodwards Development.

Bob Rennie, the condo king who sold all 536 Woodwards condos in a single day, is moving his office to Chinatown. Rennie laments there is no land left downtown on which to erect and sell the visually vacuous residential edifices which have made him a very rich man.

“The urban core,” says Elvin Wyly, chair of UBC’s urban studies department, “is becoming a truly elite market.”

Pivot Society lawyer and housing activist, David Eby, who is not one to mince words, wonders if Concord cares about people as well as profits. Mark Townsend of the Portland Hotel Society thinks they do, and Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project thinks they don’t. But Concord has cared and will continue to care, providing that any care they dispense makes sense to their single bottom line.

Everyone knows the Downtown Eastside has got to change, preferably into a vibrant, mixed-income neighbourhood, and not Coal Harbour East. But how are we going to house all the people that revitalization will displace?

Last March, the Inner City Inclusive Housing Table, under the auspices of VANOC, published a report that contained 24 recommendations to end homelessness by 2010. Participants at the table included David Eby, Salient Group developer Robert Fung, City of Vancouver housing guru Cameron Gray, and the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association’s Peter Simpson.

The Housing Table’s report recommendations have been endorsed by more than 100 organizations. Economist Marc Lee’s article in the Tyee demonstrates that it would be feasible to construct 3,200 units of affordable housing in the next 1,000 days.

But we all know it probably won’t happen. Despite the city’s participation on the Housing Table, the NPA-dominated council voted to accept the recommendations with reservations and political posturing about “provincial funding constraints.” Funding constraints, just like the poor, are always with us, but where there is political will, there is almost always a way.

Councillor Kim Capri says she doesn’t know if the city could, or should be doing more on housing. But no one is really sure whether the city is doing anything but spinning and spamming.

This post isn’t about the civic strike or the smell of uncollected garbage that is about to pervade our fair city.

Doug Struck at the Washington Post has written a spot on article about Winter2010 goings on, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and unfulfilled Olympic housing promises.

Wendy Waters, over at All About Cities responds to Planetizen’s post. Ms. Waters is a Vancouver-based academic, and apparently pro-Olympics.

Despite her credentials, she doesn’t cite any hard facts or figures, and I find her post a bit rah rah. Mind you, I left the academy as a bachelor, and she could probably wipe the floor with me in a debate.

Still, any academic who loves the Shawshank Redemption and the Poisonwood Bible can’t be all bad.

Planetizen says the Olympic overlords will go to almost any length to foist their version of progress on the chosen cities, even to the extent of letting garbage pile up in Beijing doorways to drive out the undesirables.

It’s a good thing we’re having a Winter Olympics. At least we know that if if Sam & Co’s “last offer, good faith bargaining” can’t settle the civil strike before Winter2010, the rain will wash away the worst of the stink.

Given the approaching food shortages, we may all be eating carboard by then anyway.