Okay, so on one hand we have an overwrought numpty who single-handedly destroyed the educational software sector who likes to go Dunning-Kruger about everything having a performative freak-out on a network that's persistently trying to push the narrative that cities are all post-apocalyptic...

Oh, Little BonBon Ice Cream (by Yelo'd) soft-opened in Chinatown for the long weekend. They were quite busy on Saturday afternoon.

In the past, whenever WestJet ran the flight, it was seasonal. Delta makes its hubs at SEA and LAX, so they're not going to have the connection feeder dynamic. SFO is one of the more expensive airports for an airline to operate out of, to boot. If Air Canada or United can't make year round daily...

It was run by CRJ-900s. Given the sorts of load factors I was seeing on it consistently, even when the US still had vaccine restrictions, it's one of those routes that's kind of screaming for an A220. I would be booking six to eight weeks out and already that flight would be heavily sold...

It's actually fine. I don't go down there for tourism, but the city is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be (and 1980s San Fran had some serious sketch to it, including rather more by way of gang shootings in Chinatown and the Mission, with violence in general peaking back in 1993). If I...

Weird one to cut. Any time I've flown it, it's been pretty full, and I'm usually going down there February-March.

So, this morning I took the Metro line from Blatchford to downtown, and there were crews out actively working on closing the final gap between Alpha Blvd and the NAIT-Blatchford Market station.

Chinatown is seeming to be much more active lately. It looks as if the entire strip on the west side of 98 Street might actually be occupied, and many previously empty spaces on 97 street seem to either have new occupants or are in the process of receiving new occupants. Not all of these are...

It's never really been lifeless, except perhaps in the early phases of the pandemic. But it is definitely picking up.

The Valley line really seems to have been a hugely positive influence on downtown. That whole stretch of 102 Ave is much less desolate than it was even before the pandemic. And it seems to be managing decent load factors any time I see it coming into downtown. I'm a bit surprised that I even...

Weirdly, the city has shown that they have the capability to just replace paver blocks. They just fixed a bunch on Rice-Howard Way. The nice thing about them is that even though they're slower to install than typical sidewalks and streets, most repairs can be done by a few guys with fairly basic...

The other half and I were out not to see the game, but to hear the Don Berner Big Band perform with the Royal Canadian Artillery band's "Rhythm Gunners" Big Band at MacEwan's Triffo Theatre. We came out into that whole surge of blue and orange, and a rush of not just honking car traffic but bike...

Thing is, the closest space to the LRT stations was always going to be reserved for the highest density, and I can't picture anyone wanting to go ahead and start with that as the first project for the entire development. Starting where they did made sense because Encore seems to have been the...

Sorry. Where are you getting that it's 20 years early?

Took a walk with the other half last week by drainage pond in Blatchford. It seems much better done in terms of making it into a recreational space than most such features usually are. There were a couple of birders out there with binoculars and there was a decent diversity of them being drawn...

Yeah. Driving to a bar is something suburbanites do, and they were never going to drive downtown (especially since back then Kelly's was the most generic sports bar ever and the suburban landscape was littered with equivalents). As an added irony, the guy also tried to play the "avid cyclist"...

As big as I am on bike lanes, 104 Street is one of those streets that's sufficiently calmed that it's not hard to ride on as is. I would just give it a paver block surface , bump outs and such basic traffic calming features and turn it into a "shared street" like Rice-Howard or 108 Street. Given...

Yeah, it was telling to me that Kelly's was absolutely cleaning up, and Slap Shot was struggling despite being best positioned to catch spillover and having all of that foot traffic. Side note: when a manager at Kelly's freaked out on Facebook years ago that the downtown bike grid was going to...

I was at the corner of 105 and Jasper a few weeks ago waiting for the light to change and a couple of younger guys asked me, "Do you know where there's a bar around here?" I ended up gesturing wildly and basically repeating the word, "There," over and over and over. And I don't know. Maybe the...

That explains why literally everyone was drinking bottled beer when I walked by. I was wondering if they just had a special on Corona because that was all I saw anyone drinking.