Moving to Seattle from Chicago was one of the smartest things my wife and I ever did. For me, as a writer, Seattle's nutty politics is a constant source of inspiration. It's a great place to raise kids - assuming that if you live in the city you can work around the lousy public schools. And, you get to explore the Northwest. We've enjoyed mountains, water and especially cities; including San Francisco, Portland and Vancouver.
Our favorite Vancouver neighborhoods include the funky commercial districts of Kitsilano, and the Commercial Drive strip, aka "The Drive." The southern suburb of Richmond has some of North America's best Chinese food, plus (in the southwest part of Richmond, away from the roar of airplanes landing at Vancouver's international airport), great waterfront hiking and biking paths. Right there in the Steveston district are also restaurants, shops, and a sprawling fish market where you actually walk out on the docks to inspect boats full of catch before you buy. It's called Steveston Heritage Fishing Village; and here are 100 things to do there. Surrey, another suburb, just a bit further south, has a great, expansive, hidden-away beach. Back in the city, there's Stanley Park, a marvellous, bayside facility packed with a U.N.'s worth of jabbering tongues, a place that totally captures Vancouver's international feel and gorgeous setting.
But one place I never, ever go in Vancouver is Gastown, a sadly tacky and downtrodden tourist trap, full of historical buildings and social pathology bleeding over from the neighboring Downtown Eastside District, where socialized heroin-injection parlors, rampant street drug sales, and prostitution have drawn one of every two miscreants in a thousand-mile radius.
Now, the Globe and Mail reports today, there's a plan afoot to fix up Gastown.
In 1971, Vancouver's Gastown was declared a historic district by the province of British Columbia. In the years following, its many turn-of-the-twentieth-century buildings on and around Water Street were given a much needed facelift. The district, gussied up with art galleries, antique stores and ethnic restaurants, quickly became one of Vancouver's prime tourist attractions.By the 1990s, however, Gastown had lost its lustre. Gastown abuts the Downtown Eastside, by then notorious for its high unemployment rate and drug dealing, and many former businesses lay empty, disfigured by graffiti. Chic boutiques had given way to tacky souvenir shops, and Woodward's, the iconic century-old department store on West Hastings Street (it borders the Downtown Eastside and Gastown), closed its doors.
Specifically, the City of Vancouver is pushing a "Heritage Management Plan" to bring Gastown back to life, with grants to repair and restore historic buildings, and property tax exemptions of up to 10 years for participants. There are 11 development proposals on the table.
I wish 'em luck. But two things. First, as a discerning tourist, even a spiffed-up Gastown is still going to be a tourist trap that does not reflect the real feel of the city, historic buildings notwithstanding. Two, the bleed-over from the Downtown Eastside scum parade means Gastown will always be hurtin.' Too much tolerance breeds dystopia. They need more jail capacity, more policing, and an end to Vancouver's unofficial Full Employment Act for social service workers. But that's not the Canadian way, eh?
Vancouver, which celebrates its "progressive" approach to heroin addiction with government-approved "safe injection sites," will find, that as with addicts, in Gastown as well they are treating the symptoms, not the problems.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 18, 2005 10:43 AM
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