When Rob Ford Becomes Mayor... [EXCERPT] But here’s the most disturbing truth of all: it’s not worth going into detail about the city Rob Ford promises because it’s pure fantasy. Mayor Rob Ford has absolutely no chance of enacting his agenda and will, as a result, grind the city to a halt, undoing seven or more years of progress and creating a situation much like the one he claims he’s addressing now.
Reality One: basic math Ford’s numbers simply do not add up. The cuts he proposes to “waste” at City Hall are almost purely symbolic — a footnote to the budget — and are dwarfed by the $250 million a year in revenue that would be lost from his elimination of the vehicle-registration tax and land-transfer tax. That scenario alone would make his expansion of customer service, police service and subway building impossible. Meanwhile, cancelling new streetcar orders and discarding the ones we have while buying fleets of new buses would create hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs and vastly increase the operating shortfall of the TTC. We simply could not afford it.
Reality Two: he can’t boss the province around Much of what Ford wants to do — notably cutting the size of council — would depend on provincial legislation McGuinty or any other premier would never approve. And his great transit scheme? At the moment, the province is paying for $3.7 billion worth of the Transit City plan Ford wants to scrap. Do you think they’ll continue giving him the money to use for his own devices?
Reality three: He can’t really boss anyone around Finally, even before things get to the provincial level, Ford wouldn’t have the authority to get his ideas past the council level. He could set the agenda and make appointments to committees, but he — as outgoing Councillor Howard Moscoe put it — “could not pass wind” without winning a vote at council.
This is a problem for Ford more than any other candidate because he has shown no history of being able to work with anyone on anything. He proudly told me in 2006 that even council’s right wing hated him (“I don’t want to eat lunch with those guys anyway,” he said). It’s easy to forget now that even Mel Lastman considered Ford an enemy.
So who would accept the kamikaze mission of being his budget chief, charged with making his magical numbers add up? Who would sit on his transit commission, trying to keep the trains running while negotiating the stiff penalties and absurd demands of his platform? No one who knows anything about finance or transit, that’s for sure.
A CITY IN DECLINE What we’re actually facing is gridlock and regression. Why? Because we’re looking at four years of angry shouting and a loud, probably unproductive argument between Ford and council (and between Ford and the province and between Ford and the city’s labour unions and between Ford and city staff…).
He might well succeed in stopping progress altogether in a few areas: grinding Transit City to a halt, cutting some taxes and slashing spending on arts and cultural programs. The city’s years-in-progress bike plan might be scrapped or halted, environmental progress rolled back. But Ford would replace those with nothing.
The opportunity cost — what we’ll miss out on by taking no action — will be huge. Development will slow as the planning department becomes paralyzed by political deadlock. Transit growth will stop and basic maintenance and service will be cut as the commission endlessly debates how to square financial and contractual circles. Basic infrastructure will be neglected. In short, the city will start to rot.
And, most distressingly for a penny-pincher like Ford, our financial hole will just keep getting bigger following tax cuts while pressing budget and revenue problems go unaddressed, forcing steep tax hikes or drastic service cuts or, most likely, both.
Then by the time the next election rolls around, everyone will be even angrier and perhaps we really will be a city in decline.
Welcome to Web 3.0 LETTER TO THE EDITOR As is so often the case, Joshua Errett has no idea what he's talking about. Apple's App Store isn't the anti-Internet: it's just another online store. It isn't elitist and it isn't policed, at least not in the totalitarian way Errett alludes to. All stores, whether online or bricks-and-mortar, decide what they will and will not sell, and can and do change their minds. Is that a problem?
Do I have a right to walk into a store and demand that they sell my product? Should I be able to install a Toyota part in my Honda?
It's clear that Errett hates Apple, like so many of the fanboys who litter tech blogs.
The New York Post Explained in One Cropped Photo COMMENTS Maybe I'm dense. I don't get why having this woman cropped out of the photo is scandalous. Is she somebody we should recognize? Was she mentioned in the article? How does leaving her in the photo add value - or, how has removing her decreased the value of the photo?
[...]
missdelite: People want stories, not the truth, which brings me back to that godawful photo. The Post published a version that was palatable to their audience, because they're in the business of reinforcing racial stereotypes that some people find comforting and familiar. It's their niche, which they exploit to great success. You claim you're not a Post reader, but your lack of understanding of the issue makes me wonder how different you really are from them.
I acknowledge that someone over the age of 10 can be blissfully unaware of racial bias in the media without actually sporting a Klan hood, but it's depressing to see how resistant you are to questioning your lack of insight into the matter when it's brought to your attention. You will never see how egregious it is for a major media publication to willfully ignore a segment of the population based on nothing other than skin tone, and I've grown tired of trying to point it out to you.
I don't know if it's the stubbornness of your age, the privilege of your position or a combo of the two, but any way you slice it, it stinks. _______________________________________________
Keith Olbermann has established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining prominence for his pointed criticism of major politicians and public figures, directed particularly at the political right. [...] ________________________________________________
COMMENTS There will never be enough said about this subject. Ever.
That aside, this is one of the biggest reasons I can think of that being a woman is so difficult. Think about it. We're brought up by the world to value a man's opinion. We're taught to place enormous value in our appearances, and if we fall short of the ideal, we're made to feel worthless. We're taught to accept catcalls and comments about our bodies-from strangers, even-as compliments. We absorb the world's edict that we are not ourselves; we are Women. A pretty surface onto which the world's expectations and desires are projected. This starts so early in our lives; it's so sudden and impossible to prepare yourself for. And eventually, you notice that your older peers-who once stood exactly where you are standing-sometimes can't conceal their dislike or distrust for you. They look at you suspiciously, as though the purpose of your existence is to undermine their own. This is NOT a broad indictment of all women. At all. But I'm sure many of you have experienced this very thing at the hands of, say, a coworker, or a mother-in-law, or a boss. In my eyes, being a woman is a struggle that never ends. It just changes shape. The weapons get sharper, the enemy starts to look more and more familiar as we grow into adults. Now, at twenty-seven, I'm no longer worried about men. I share my life with a good one, and that's where my focus is. So no, men and their opinions don't hold nearly as much power as they used to. No. It's the women I worry about now. The attractive older woman who fawns all over my SO, right in front of me. The women I worked with in a doctor's office, who were all older than me by a decade, who shunned me and ignored me and treated me like shit because I was only twenty (and probably a little hussy) and made me so miserable I eventually quit. The woman who eyed me up and down and then told me my outfit was....."fun". All of these little tiny things that women can do to one another to cut eachother down, that each and every one of us has experienced-or committed- at one time or another, know no age, it seems. I hope that if I ever have a daughter, I'll be able to somehow prepare her for this, and let her know that her strength will often be tested, and that she should never forget what she's really worth. I hope, too, that she'll understand, and that she won't let anyone-male or female- make her feel small or powerless or like she's only her body and nothing else. This is a long shot, I know. But I have to hope these things, or I'll feel as though all of my own little sufferings, and the strength they've fostered, will be in vain.
I'm less bothered by men who are attracted to youth than by men who are attracted to innocence. Youth has a lot of good associations--energy, enthusiasm, optimism, open-mindedness, iconoclasm. But innocence is only good for a few things--patronizing, ruining, or taking advantage of. ((shudder)) Excellent distinctions. Innocence has an emotive connotation that seems to elicit predatory behaviors, like a neon sign announcing the path of least resistance. ________________________________________________
LINK Prison Photography - women “There is beauty and there is truth and most truth in this present world is ugly.” ________________________________________________
Toronto’s a tweet capital and a start-up hot spot, but while the rest of the technoverse zooms ahead, our city’s in perpetual beta. Can our hardware handle an upgrade?
Standing at the podium at City Hall, Mayor David Miller whips out his BlackBerry, his fingers dance around the keypad, and he faces the crowd.
The most tech-positive politician in Toronto’s history, Miller is usually at ease talking to the normally adoring group gathered in front of him for last November’s Web 2.0 summit.
But this question vexes him: when will Toronto get its own Google Transit map?
After a quick smartphone consult, he’s got a reply.
Google Transit for the TTC, a Toronto version of the much-loved map that puts public transit routes, schedule and service info in an at-your-fingertips format, would be ready in the spring, he said to applause.
For transit enthusiasts and those just wanting to know the quickest route from Chinatown to the St. Lawrence Market, it was about time. The Google partnership is already in place in nearly every other Canadian city with public transportation, from Fredericton to Victoria and Vaughan, just north of Toronto.
Only now, almost a year later, there’s still no map, and it would take another map to retrace the failed promises, starting in 2006.
For its part, all the city would have to do is hand over TTC data to Google to produce the useful map – at no cost to taxpayers.
But when it comes to technological advancements like sharing data, Toronto is one tardy jurisdiction.
It’s in the world's top 10 in Twittering, in the top 20 in overall Internet use, and has loads of Web start-ups. Tons of small tech conferences like ChangeCamp are held here, with the online activists to go with them. Mozilla, maker of the popular browser Firefox, even has an office in Toronto.
But when it comes to ranking the most cutting-edge cities in the world, T.O. is a pretender – from the failure of city-wide wireless to the absence of big-name Web firms and the lack of work-friendly Internet cafés.
Most importantly, while cities like Vancouver, Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh (of all places) zoom onward to the future, Toronto’s moves toward more participatory city government, using democratizing open-source technology, are snail-like.
Is it time for an upgrade?
***
To get a sense of how other jurisdictions manage to incorporate online activism, consider what happened with Vancouver’s garbage pickup earlier this summer.
Public policy expert and Internet activist David Eaves mused on his blog that trash service in his city was convoluted, involving zones and changing schedules. He wrote that email reminders or a map of pickup schedules would vastly improve matters.
For that to happen, he said, the city would have to make available all the data – the digital information around its garbage service – to the community of Web developers. Vancouver had recently passed an openness initiative, so the trash schedules were handed right over.
Two young Web developers made the program Eaves described, calling it VanTrash, and gave it to the city.
Another participatory breakthrough is Pittsburgh’s iBurgh, a mobile application that lets residents instantly upload photos of potholes, unremoved snow and other problems to the city from their iPhone, minus the bureaucratic run-around of trying to phone some office. (This app was also donated free of charge.)
In the digital age, “openness” has a new definition. It not only means making information available, but also doing so in a technically accessible format – that is, opening the source data. Toronto makes lots of information available on its websites, but not in a usable format to build online services. The TTC data requested by Google is a prime example.
Web developers, essentially working for free in exchange for exposure, could build Internet-based solutions to civic problems with that data. Imagine the outcome: interactive maps of restaurants charged with sanitary violations, historic neighbourhood walks, searchable databases of swimming pool hours, Facebook widgets of city festivals.... The possibilities are endless.
Free data also makes social activism that much easier; think of having all committee or council minutes or city staff documents relating to a hazardous condo project, for example, arriving in your email in an easy-to-digest format. Stopping unwanted developments could be a matter of touching an iPhone screen.
By these standards, Toronto is closed.
But according to David Wallace, T.O.’s chief information officer and leader of the Toronto.ca redesign, the process of freeing up data has begun, and local developers will be invited into the fold.
“Toronto has a very good software development community, larger and more in-depth than any other city in Canada,” says Wallace. “That means we have a large advantage, as we get our data out there, to get very advanced products developed.”
Thus far, Wallace says, there has been some reluctance to “just throw stuff out there” for fear that no one will do anything with it. He complains that when developers were asked what data would be useful to free up, there wasn’t much of a response, much like when the city appealed to the public for input into its site redesign and got a paltry 90 replies. (Go to toronto.ca/comment to add to that number.)
Regardless, Wallace says the city will put some of its data on a labs page in the fall, where developers can submit different programs.
Good news. The downside, though, is that Toronto will pick and choose which data it releases. He mentions one idea that’s unfortunately dated: an events calendar that citizens and organizations can upload, something like the one that appeared on blogs like Torontoist and BlogTO in 2006.
Compared to the complexity of material in the city’s domain, the TTC’s mandate is straightforward: release its routes, schedule and service data so developers can make online and mobile transit tools.
Last year, a developer in his early 20s, Brian Gilham, created TTC Updates, a service to deliver updates about delayed trains, detoured streetcars and any other TTC disruptions. Riders could get reports delivered to their cellphones via Twitter.
On the site, a disclaimer reads: “TTCupdates is not affiliated with the TTC. I mean, well, please don’t sue me.” Gilham is referring to the TTC’s nasty reputation for suing those who use its name, logo or subway map to create transit guides, mashup maps or other tributes.
“It used to be a lot tougher for developers, but things are slowly improving,” says Gilham.
The TTC has never integrated Gilham’s service, which he provided free of charge.
As for the Google Transit map, the arrival time is apparently approaching. TTC chair Adam Giambrone says the data the search engine company would need to build the map – routes, times, schedules in technically accessible form – simply did not exist and therefore couldn’t be shared. Putting data in a shareable format and displaying it cost $2 million.
But there’s more. Giambrone says he’s reluctant to partner with a third-party company. This is, after all, publicly financed information – Toronto can’t just go making deals with multinational corporations. What if Google were to change its mind and charge for the map?
Giambrone bristles at the suggestion that the TTC isn’t open. “The TTC Website may not be as sexy as other sites, but it scores high in accessibility.”
Like the team rebuilding the Toronto city site, he agrees with open-sourcing solutions. He promises the TTC will release the data to everyone, including Google, in the fall.
“By January 2010, Toronto will have the most wired transit system in the world,” he says. Expect “a pretty impressive suite of applications” that will make an outing on the TTC easier to plan, like an SMS message service that will alert riders when to expect the next two vehicles at any given stop.
Also coming is an interactive trip planner, evidence of which can be seen on the TTC home page. It has read “Future home of the trip planner” for months.
This translates into a years-long delay for the handy Google Transit map, already in use in more than 400 cities. But it’s also an indication of Toronto’s unpreparedness. Sharing data was the future when cities like Washington did it in 2005. Now it’s the norm.
Also worrisome is the fact that key corporations are missing in action. In the last year, Google moved to town, but its location at Yonge and Dundas is, alas, strictly a sales office. Any creative or development work takes place elsewhere, like Waterloo.
Apple opted to take its offices outside Toronto as well. Not far outside, but it is Markham.
This scattered approach is the anti-Silicon Valley, according to Richard Florida, creativity guru and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute.
“Northern California, specifically the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, has benefited from clustering. Technology talent in those areas have the opportunity to share information and communicate face to face,” he says.
“This, in turn, is causing human capital and highly sought-after talent to concentrate in select communities, causing the clustering effect.”
Does the presence of companies like Google attract Internet types?
“Toronto isn’t as well known as a technology hub,” says Mark Surman, exec director of the Mozilla Foundation, a Web firm dedicated to open sourcing. “We don’t have a strong identity, but community and industry and movement are all here.”
Surman says that’s the reason Mozilla, which hails from Mountain View, the same California town Google calls home, runs a 15-person space over a Beer Store south of Bloor on Spadina. (It should be noted that ValleyWag, a popular Silicon Valley blog, rated it as one of the worst tech offices in the world.)
He says that convincing governments, business and the public that Toronto is a hub of innovation is the main hurdle. For example, do Web users know that the bulk of the work on the globally popular Firefox browser happens in Toronto? Surman thinks not.
But he disagrees large companies will serve any purpose. “People look for Google or recognizable companies. Those are not the story of the Web. The Web is a small patchwork of people. They tend to be independent developers,” he says. “That’s fabric of the industry in Toronto, and the fabric of the Web itself.”
He points to the dozens of small, informal conferences held all over Toronto, often called camps, as in TransitCamp for transit innovation, and ChangeCamp for social change technology. These are tech events where ideas are tossed around and keynote speakers interact with audiences. They’re more like storytelling sessions than lectures, like where the mayor promised Google Transit.
In both public and private space, the Internet is about the individual. Behemoth organizations are always outsmarted by a chorus of independent creative minds. But what happens when ideas have nowhere to go?
That’s Toronto at present. There’s no local outlet for innovators – at City Hall or at big Internet companies. There’s not even a popular local technology blog.
What’s needed is support, recognition and places to direct our online efforts. Once those are in place, just uncork the talent.
COMMENTS [NowToronto.com] Nice analysis. The most troubling is Wallace's reluctance to "just throw stuff out there for fear that no one will do anything with it." I certainly hope this quote was taken out of context. The whole concept behind open data is that you *don't* know what people are going to do with it. The city already knows what developers want - they demanded it in an extensive session at ChangeCamp last year. We crafted a list of at least 50 different types of data that would enable us to build cool stuff for the city.
Toronto - we're ready to start building this stuff for you. Now it's your turn. Open up.
If you look at the history of tech innovation over the last thirty years, a couple of things stand out. One is having a university that encourages innovation and that has a strong tech background. Stanford was the incubator for HP, Apple, Google. Also you need a good VC market. You need to have money to get the start ups going.
You may knock Pittsburgh but CMU is one of the top engineering schools in the nation and it has developed a good reputation in encouraging technological innovation.
Mozilla was originally developed at the U of I but Andreesen took it out west in part due to lack of VC money.
So does U of T have anything that can match that? Does it encourage its engineering department to be innovative and develop new products? Does it try to partner with the business community to develop new products?
You have RIM up there which is one of the most successful tech companies out there right now.
Is it involved or encouraged to partner with other startups or the university?
Chicago is a case in point we have some very good universities but none of them have done a good job of spurring innovation or partnering with the business community. The result is that Chicago is more of a user of other peoples products than a developer.
Are TransitCamp and MyTTC so under the radar that they don't even warrant a mention here? Surely if you're discussing ChangeCamp there was an effort to reach out to the organizers to ask if any transit related Camps had happened. In any case, http://myttc.ca was a product of the first TransitCamp and is under ongoing development, including discussions and efforts with the TTC to gather the best data available. In other words, there's no need to wait on Google but if David Miller isn't aware of MyTTC, it's time to send a Tweet and get him behind it.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR I am a small business owner in the Toronto Business Development Centre's self-employment training program. I've developed a platform for streaming video and Internet radio to smartphones and mobile devices.
Your article "Stuck in Version 1.0" hit me hard because of my experiences in Toronto. WTF is going on?
We are stuck in Version 1.0 for two main reasons: 1) advertising agencies have a stranglehold on media; 2) Toronto is about making money and stamping out the little guy.
It's become next to impossible to carve out an existence as a small digital media company. Getting through the front doors of Toronto companies is next to impossible.
Thank you for your amazing article and insightful analysis. I feel less alone and more sure of why Toronto is a place where I cannot continue to work. --Kevin Grant _______________________________________________
There's a world of ideas to steal from cutting-edge digital capitals
Portland Home to the first-ever interactive transit map, Portland leads in developer-made transit applications. The firm TriMet even assisted Google in preparing data for maps. Creative apps tell you when the next vehicle arrives, find the nearest stop to your location and alert you when you’re nearing your destination.
San Francisco What about copying the Bay Area’s most cherished invention, the Internet café? Sitting down to a high-speed connection on a brand new iMac with a chipotle fish taco in your hand is one of life’s great pleasures. Anyone looking to copy one of SF’s better Interweb spots should research Quetzal, Golden Gate Perk or Chat Café.
Austin As well as hosting SXSWi, North America’s definitive Web conference, Austin has a reputation as a smart place to launch a tech start-up. That’s because the city’s attracted successful tech venture capitalist firms like YCombinator and TechStars, but also because the city itself acts like a VC: Austin’s Capital Factory initiative funds five new tech start-ups a year.
...They give their time and energy to help you with nothing expected in return.
Washington, DC A historic DC walking tour on your iPhone. A Facebook widget that checks where city money is spent. These are the types of Internet applications submitted to Apps for Democracy, a program under DC mayor Adrian Fenty inviting local developers to identify city problems and solve them online. The project yielded 47 apps in 30 days – a $2,300,000 value.
"Park it DC" actually makes parking in DC a lot easier: if you put in an address you can see whether or not cars have been stolen in that area...
Vancouver Vancouver is leading the way in Canada in the open government movement. A motion passed at City Hall in May for open data, open standards and open source means programs that map out all public washrooms in an area and email alerts for water quality on city beaches are in the works.
Munich The capital of Bavaria is also a capital of open-source. In 2006, the city switched all of its 15,000 computers from proprietary Microsoft Windows to the open Linux system. A bold move, considering that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a desperation visit to Munich to convince the city not to leave his company.
Bangalore A cluster of software, electronics and Web companies make this India’s version of Silicon Valley, though it’s not a valley at all, but a plateau. Three micro-neighbourhoods dedicated to tech work and the presence of multinationals like AOL and Qwest attract talent from all over the country.
Singapore Apart from the heavily armed guards randomly demanding to see passports, Singapore’s Changi Airport is an easy place to work online. Internet kiosks are plentiful, with a fair five-minute usage limit. Or for those carrying laptops or netbooks, there’s free wireless. The airport’s site also has a an interactive map of the place to help you avoid last-second scurrying for a flight.
Seoul WiBro sounds like a nickname for the beer-drinking, backwards-hat-wearing neighbour but is actually proof that our telecoms aren’t competing. WiBro, wireless broadband, is Seoul’s new high-speed wireless-everywhere coverage. It’d be like sitting on the 511 Bathurst dialing up Gmail and downloading The Hangover at the same time.
Tokyo Any place that sells smartphones in vending machines deserves mention in a high-tech list, even if not many other ideas can be stolen (well, besides scramble crosswalks) from a crazy-busy city like this one. Tokyo also rivals London for top wages paid to developers and high-end Internet ITers, though that’s a bit of a red herring considering the cost of living.
Hong Kong Cyberport is a city-made, brick-and-mortar space dedicated to IT and Web innovation. It’s as exciting to visit as it sounds. The world’s first Internet ’hood boasts local start-ups and houses a tech-savvy five-star hotel and close to 3,000 permanent residents in a futuristic city. Should T.O. create a designated online neighbourhood? (HK is also a great place for electronics, both buying and developing.) ______________________________________________
RELATED The 10 Most Connected Cities in the World 1. Seoul, South Korea Boasting a metropolitan area population of more than 22 million people, Seoul is the second most populated metro area in the world and second to none in terms of modern technology. Seoul is home to some of the biggest telecommunications and technology companies in the world, including SK Telecom, KT Corporation, Samsung and LG. If you're looking for the latest and greatest cell phone or miniature wifi gadget, Seoul should be your first stop.
When it comes to broadband penetration, South Korea is the world leader with an 83 percent penetration rate. This is in part due to the full blown broadband revolution that has been taking place in Seoul for the past 8 years.
Seoul is full of Internet cafés, wireless hotspots and gaming areas (called "pc baangs") making it the ideal city to use the Internet on the go. In most areas, a pc baang can be found on every corner. How's that for service?
Koreans have a fascination with PC gaming unlike any other country in the world. In South Korea, there are multiple television channels dedicated solely to broadcasting the day's video game events. Talented video game players are treated like celebrities similar to famous basketball players in the United States. At the center of all of the gaming is Seoul, which has played an important part in expanding Internet usage throughout all of South Korea.
Internet access in Seoul is extremely cheap, averaging around $20 per month for a 10Mpbs connection -- that's more than 4 times as fast and half the price of the average broadband connection in the United States. Some areas of Seoul boast commercial Internet speeds of more than 100Mbps for merely $30 per month. With speeds that fast it would only take you 5 minutes to download a two-hour high definition movie.
Seoul's current expansion plans include a $439 million project to add wireless Internet access to the subway trains. "The plan would be to create a wifi network, and then charge roughly $20 per month for access."
With such a huge broadband presence and a dedication to offering cheap, fast Internet solutions, Seoul is the definition of wired.
What is a 3G Network? Japan and South Korea were the first countries to successfully launch this (3G) network. The Japanese company FOMA launched in May 2001 and South Korea's SK Telecom launched in January 2002. British Telecom in the United Kingdom and Monet Mobile Networks in the United States followed suit. By 2007, most countries had implemented the technology. ______________________________________________
My Visit to Fat Central Confession time. I am a fattist. I find obese people unappealing in almost every regard. They are physically unattractive, they lead unhealthy lives, they take up too much space on public transport, and (most of all) they are a strain not only on their clothing but on NHS (National Health Service) resources.
The secret of their size? Their outsized appetites are matched by a lack of self-control and even less self-respect.
There, I've said it. Just as I have said it many times in my column for this paper. And each time I do so, it's greeted by the same howls of outrage.
COMMENTS Why is it that these people who purport to be so concerned about the "health" of overweight people feel like they need to attack overweight people themselves for their assumed lack of will power instead of, oh, say, the consumer goods companies shoving saturated fat and sugar and preservatives into everything on the supermarket shelves? Or maybe the FDA whose regulations are so lax as to allow this shit because they're led and staffed by the former leaders of the food producers? The giant corporations that create monopolies over the farmers, making sure they're fattening up their livestock with as much hormone as possible? Aren't these the bad guys? It'd be a lovely world indeed where we could all pluck fresh produce from trees and plants in our backyard, but it ain't the world we live in lady. So shut your damn pie hole and quit trying to mask your simple aesthetic disgust with some sort of global concern for health.
Fat shaming does not work. If these people really cared about obesity, they would take a different track.
There's more at work here than socio-economics. There's also attitude, both hers and of the obese. Hers is unhelpful at best but some of the obese take pride in their size and eating habits I'm sorry to say. I've gotten flamed for dressing down some Mom online for feeding her 9 month old chocolate formula. Then there was the Mom that bragged about her 10 month old being able to scarf (her word, not mine) down an entire slice of pepperoni pizza. We're not talking the economically depressed here, we're taking about soccer Mom's that have full access to fruits/veggies. Look don't get me wrong my kids get french fries etc. But not all the time and not at the expense of real food. I hate the authors attitude here. I agree w/pp that Jamie Oliver does a muuuch better job.
Jamie Oliver's response to the fat epidemic was to go to a provincial city in England and use it as the start of an incentive to get people in non-posh areas more aware of eating healthy. THAT'S how you do it, miss.
You don't need to shop at Whole Foods to get healthy food. I shop at Fry's because I'm a poor college student, and I'm able to find a pretty good selection of produce. Not the best, admittedly, but adequate. Also, frozen fruits and veggies are both cheaper and more convenient. For me the temptation to buy junk and ready made food comes more from convenience than price because the cost difference in making a good, healthy home-cooked meal and buying something from McDonald's is small. One just takes a lot more planning and effort.
There's a lot of misdirected anger and hatred in her article... Makes me wonder why this is so personal to her. Perhaps she or some close family members have dealt with weight issues. (Or maybe she's just an asshole.)
Yeah, because every person who isn't a fatty must be a super health-nut, right? I work with models and actresses that are so skinny and most of the time they fall into two categories: a) genetically blessed mutants who can (and do) eat anything and everything and rarely exercise. b) adhering to incredibly unhealthy "activities" to maintain their size- drugs, extreme dieting, eating disorders. It really frosts my cupcake that thin people get a free-pass when it comes to prejudice. It is also completely insensitive to the people who have a medical condition (because, you know, those things do exist) or those of us (myself included) who are trying to change our habits and maintain a healthier lifestyle. It upsets me to no end the amount of insecurity that is placed on the shoulders of those of us that are trying to get healthier. Everybody likes to watch and make fun of the "fatties" no matter what. Human beings have this interesting paradox of wanting to be accepted and to exclude simultaneously. I've heard stories of women running and exercising in graveyards or at odd hours of the day- because they don't want to get hassled. You can't imagine the looks I get, when I go out to eat with my best-friend (one of those previously mentioned genetic mutants). In the grand scheme of sizes, I'm not even that big (I'm a 14) compared to the national average. Note to Platell- you catch more flies with honey, than you do with vinegar. Don't complain about a problem that doesn't concern or affect you, unless you've actually come up with a plan of action that is supportive, comprehensive and not based solely on the "otherness" of people who don't look like you.
Amanda Plattell is concerned with nothing more than the greater enrichment of Amanda Plattell. She's an Australian hack for hire who will write anything for a buck and who has no real strong opinions on anything. In contrast to MeMe Roth she almost certainly doesn't believe any of this but considers it 'good copy' in much the same way that she considers repeatedly attacking female celebrities in print 'good copy'. Whether her complete amorality makes this piece worse I leave up to everyone else to decide.
Honestly, it's days like this that make me silently, painfully want to stop existing. If I could be smaller, I would. I generally like the way I look, with a curvy bum and wide hips and yes, even bits that jiggle. I'm a big woman, but not, I hope, a repulsive one. But the visceral loathing that comes pouring off this woman and her intellectual comrades really jab sharply at my sense of self-worth. It makes me quietly relieved that it's actually rather difficult to commit suicide, for I would have done it many, many times over if only to escape such vituperative loathing. Today is one of the tough days. I hear you. I used to be small; now I'm not. Even though I'm mobile, active, strong, work out with a trainer three times a week, take care of my own house, have a job I'm good at, animals that love me...the only thing people like her (and most other people, frankly) see is that I'm fat. Most of the time, I'm either ignored or pitied; once in a while, though, I run into this sort of loathing. And it surprises me *every time.* I guess it shouldn't; God knows it's out there in plain sight for us to be bugged by. But it does. I ran a mile today in ten minutes, then lifted weights for an hour. I felt great about myself until I read this article. Now I wonder if I ought to just give in, be less mobile, be less active, and just sit the hell down and become invisible. It's hard to keep getting out and doing in the face of people like her.
Ten years ago I would have laughed at the idea of an addiction to food. Now I'm not so sure. There are many people out there (including my own parents) who are highly educated, have access to good food, live in areas where they can safely exercise, know what they should eat, know that if they keep eating crap and remain sedentary it will kill them, and yet they cannot stop. They cannot change the way they are eating or the way they are living. And these are not people with a death wish or generally self-destructive people.
I'm an ignorant-assholist. Everywhere I go, there are these obnoxious, ignorant assholes. I can't escape them. Women and men, spouting diarrhea of the mouth and brain, trying to pass it off as concerned journalism. I went to a therapist about my level of disgust with these offensive people, but she advised that I continue my current theraputic regime of mockery and alcohol.
The Daily Mail has one use: identifying the bigots before I have to find out in the course of conversation.
Do I think to myself "hmmm, 5 people could sit there instead of 2" sometimes on the subway when I have nowhere to sit with my heavy laptop bag? Yes. I don't think that makes me a bad person. I don't think it's fair, personally. And I know it's going to get me in trouble. But just like I don't think it's fair for someone to put a bunch of bags on the seat next to them so no one can sit...it's kinda unfair for someone to take up more than their share of room on a subway seat with their body. But I would never be mean to someone about their weight. My sister is obese and I would freak out if someone was mean to her about it. Do you feel the same way about tall people, too? Because they often take up more than one seat just from sheer size. Or bigger boned people. Or conjoined twins- one set of legs, one seat, I say. Seriously, though, seats are based on biometrics that make assumptions about "average" size. These averages are based on one particular archetypal shape, which is generally slender and white and perfectly proportioned and of a very specific height, all things which many people are not. It's simply...weird to resent someone for not fitting this particular and ever changing type.
The thing that drives me crazy is this recent trend where it's like, as long as you admit that you discriminate against people, then it's ok. Imagine if instead of "I am a fattist" she wrote "I am a racist" or "I hate Jews," "I hate gays," or any other ridiculous discriminatory sentiment. She would lose her job. Why is this OK? Discriminating against people for any reason, in such a public forum, should not be applauded in this "oh, you just tell the truth!" sort of way, the way it has been recently.
Disgust is inextricably linked to moral taboos. Her morality is such that she sees the very existence of fat as fundamentally wrong. An example: some people oppose gay marriage because it disgusts them, so they just KNOW it must be wrong. The same arguments were made in support of sodomy laws. Also, disgust is tied to the idea of pollution. It is clear from her remark about people wanting to be fat to fit in that she thinks obesity is a pollution, a plague on society. It's not just about seeing other fat people, it's seeing fat as actually taking over. The thing about morality is that it's taught--in ancient Greece, people were disgusted by eating in public and now that is one of the most common activities I can think of. So many restaurants! Our culture has taught her that this kind of disgust is appropriate and that the accompanying hatred is equally okay.
Speaking as a former impoverished student who lived in London for several months on a food budget of about 10 pounds a week, I can tell you that it's MUCH much cheaper to buy packets of crisps and knock of Jaffa Cakes than it is to buy proper food. On the weeks where I nannied and had extra spending money, I could afford to buy fruits, vegetables, Innocent smoothies and meat. But to get the most caloric bang for my buck, it was sadly all about sweets. Oddly enough, I didn't gain any weight during those months (I had no Oyster Card so I had to walk everywhere), but if I drove/bussed it, I'm sure I would've packed on a few pounds.
I'm tall, I'm a drinker, and I'm a smoker. I take up space, and am a strain on health care. But I guess because I'm slim I'm not a problem. Good to know. That's funny. As a smoker, you contribute second- and third- hand smoke, which actually DOES affect the health of those around you. Last I checked, you can't catch fat on the subway.
And on the other hand, you have people who will die out of their efforts to be thin. It's all about a happy medium, and I hate to say this, but doesn't it seem that she has major issues about her own body, if she has to hate on others? Why do you hate to say it? You don't enjoy being right?
Amanda knows which side her bread is buttered. Nothing pays the big London mortgage better than a bit of bitchery in the Daily Mail.
[jezebel.com]
********************************************************* Trainer Struggles to Lose Weight It's actually a lot more expensive to be overweight than it is to be in shape. __________________________________________________
LINK The Worst Book-to-Film Adaptations The year 2000 saw Ron Howard get his big hacky hands on the Grinch, turning a simple, iconic children’s story into a bloated, awful, cruel, and just downright idiotic feature-length live-action film starring Jim Carrey, whose rubber-faced antics were old by the end of 1994.
Ballard Camera's going out of business sale is "officially" the "We Quit" sale. It's on tags around the store. Note that this shop is about three or four blocks away from the former location of "Mandrake's Antiques, Custom Furniture and Great Things" which announced their closing with signs reading "Uncle." [flickr.com - Jne.09]
This week I refinanced my mortgage at a new, better rate, lowering my monthly expenses with a stroke of the pen. Even as I was doing the paperwork, I had to dodge calls trying to offer me similar and even better rates. If you're creditworthy these days, banks can't shovel money at you fast enough.
This got me thinking about all the other ways in which this recession might be a good thing. Job losses and property devaluations have inflicted much pain, but relentless focus on catastrophe leaves out the flip side of market logic: Prices will tumble until goods find buyers, making it a very good time to go shopping. The recession's benefits also go beyond the purely tangible. Last week I met an artist, Kendrick Mar, who compared the downturn to a "purifying fire." We were talking about the end of high prices for bad work. But there's something else going on too: a burning away of dross in our personal and working lives.
To start with the most literal example, there's a global sale on, so if your own income hasn't plummeted, the getting is good. Interest rates are down. Property prices too. Residential and commercial rents, even in New York City, are down--not, perhaps, south of 14th Street in Manhattan, but elsewhere in the city, mere mortals are negotiating better deals with their landlords, or moving to neighborhoods they had thought were out of reach.
Financial blogger and investment adviser Barry Ritholtz singles out a few more goods that are going cheap: boats, jewelry, Picassos and Monets, second homes. "Make a list of the favorite things that you want, and put in a low-ball offer, and tell people the offer is good for six months," he says. "Your spending habits should be countercyclical; You don't buy, buy, buy when the economy is great."
The downturn has procured a related outbreak of pleasant behavior: Tradesmen, salespeople and restaurant reservationists have lost their standoffish attitude. "Walk into a car dealer now, and that whole veneer of obnoxiousness is gone," Ritholtz says.
GM is going out of business, their bulky, expensive-to-run vehicles to be lost, perhaps, in the purifying fire. But new ventures are starting too. Michael Benstock, CEO of Superior Uniform Group, explains what his company has been up to. Faced with shrinking demand--higher unemployment means less need for uniforms--Superior Uniform laid off staff and posted a loss in the first quarter of 2009.
On the other hand, it's cutting deals with vendors and looking for other companies to buy. "We feel the timing is great for acquisitions," he says. "There are a lot of weakened competitors out there." And after nine decades in the garment trade, the company last year branched out. It needed to outsource more customer service functions to save money and figured other companies did too. So it turned an in-house call center in El Salvador into a separate business, The Office Gurus, that now serves not only Superior Uniform but also other U.S. firms. "Our timing was impeccable," Benstock says, though that was as much because of luck as design. The 150 Salvadorans employed by The Office Gurus have profited.
Then there are the opportunities for change in individual careers. If you still work for a newly downsized company, in all likelihood there is not quite enough labor to go around. That can be exhausting, but it's also a chance to seize new responsibilities. Raises may not come back into fashion for a while, but you can be first in line when they do.
A layoff can be gut-wrenching. But it's also a chance to ask yourself: Were you really happy about the job before it ended? If not, what can you now change that you couldn't before? The Web magazine RecessionWire (subtitle: "The Upside of the Downturn"), whose founders were themselves laid off from other companies, has nursed this idea of reinvention over the last half year, with stories on poverty-provoked spiritual awakenings and musings on next steps. As adults we rarely get to ask ourselves, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" The unemployed may fantasize about financial stability, but the fully employed fantasize about having just a darn minute to think. All the focus on "Plan B" is infectious, causing even the employed to ask themselves, if only as a parlor game, what would I do?
The juiciest personal recessionary benefit, though, may be getting out of things we didn't want to do in the first place by pleading financial hardship. A friend's back-of-beyond wedding? Too expensive. A conference in another city? Company cutbacks say no: Watch the Webcast instead and be home in time for dinner. With so many people out of work, the pressure to keep up financial appearances has disappeared. It's easier than ever to gracefully decline going out for a mediocre $60 meal. We should have better aligned our budgets with our desires all along, but now feel more bold about doing so.
In my neighborhood, the number of empty storefronts has crept upward over the last six months. I wonder if I should be alarmed. It's eerie, but also suggests a neighborhood on pause, taking a breath before chugging along in some new direction. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, writing recently on the glories of 1970s New York, noted that the population shrank by 10% over the decade. He observed:
"It was hell on the tax base but, for those who migrated to New York and secured a foxhole while the city bled out, terminal conditions weren't all bad. There were upsides to a downward spiral. Having fewer people clogging the scenery aired out the city nicely, opening corner pockets of private and public space where all sorts of termite creativity could take place, and did."
We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame. Economists are predicting a recovery, anywhere from an optimistic "it's already started" to a cautious 2011. Enjoy the recession while it lasts.
Elisabeth Eaves is a deputy editor at Forbes, where she writes a weekly column.
COMMENTS "We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame." What a ludicrous piece of crap. Here's hoping the writer never has to face down a mugger or carjacker. Keep the doors locked, hon!
One thing Elisabeth failed to mention (by design I assume) is that such a deep recession caused by industrial greedheads and their compliant government is also a chance for workers and unemployed people to unite in a cause. There is time and motivation to topple the structure that favors the wealthy and change it to favor the middle and working classes. Check out United Professionals.
I'm glad the recession is working out so well for someone. My spouse lost his GM job in hospitality four months ago. He's spent his entire career managing hotels/resorts and now can't even get an interview for a position at a limited-service property (ie, Hampton Inn). When we relocated for the job he lost, I left my job and didn't return to work because we had a baby and he was working 90-100 hour weeks. Now I'm looking for a job and can't get an interview because I've been a full-time parent for two years! We're both well-educated, hard workers who have lived well within our means (our child's crib and other furniture are hand-me-downs from friends/family; our house is extremely modest but we do have a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage to pay). We have some savings, but we can't keep going for long with both of us out of work. My spouse has worked hard for over 20 years to build his career, which he loves. Your comment about layoffs is insulting and cruel. Enjoy your good fortune of full employment and a great credit rating for now, because it can end in an instant. Oh, and do our friends who are still employed in hospitality (most of whom have taken pay cuts) a favor--travel and leave big tips.
You are horribly insensitive! People are getting laid off left and right and you go on to cheer about shopping and jewelry. People are struggling to put food on the table and you think this recession is great?? What is the matter with you? What about all of the murder-suicides we are hearing about in the news? People are SUFFERING and you think this recession is great? What is with your "Let them eat cake" attitude? Again, you are horribly horribly insensitive.
Bankers and currency speculators have been crooks ever since Jesus threw the money-changers out of the Temple, and probably long before. We should have done much the same, and in fact that's what we ought to be doing now. What part did Forbes Magazine play in lulling the public into inaction, and thereby paving the way to the current debacle - either by what they printed, or by what they refrained from printing?
Ms. Eaves, You are a moron. The recession is great? I graduated from college a year and a half ago and have already been laid off from three jobs. I guess the bright side is how amazing it was that I was able to find and get hired by three different jobs. Many of my friends who worked very hard during their college years received job offers before they graduated. Most of them were actually laid off before starting one day of work. I had to move in with my parents so that I could remove rent and utilities from my already growing debt. At 24 I am starting my life $27,000 in debt between student loans and credit cards. Please stop writing about things that you clearly know nothing about.
This is really a phenomenal article. Sometimes you might forget just how staggeringly out of touch the top 2% of wealthy Americans are with the other 98%. This is not optimism. This is not a good thing. Remember - for every good deal you are getting, someone is losing money. People are losing their life savings, their homes, their jobs. This is nothing short of vulturism. Picking at the carcass of the economy looking for the good tidbits before all the other vultures land and join in. Elisabeth - you must feel really good about yourself right now. You've got a good job and good credit and the opportunity to profit from the misfortune of others. Personally, I don't feel so hot. As my assets evaporated, my good credit soon followed. The value of my primary asset - my house, which my family and I enjoy living in - has plummeted. Now my debt to equity ratio is so off that my credit rating is falling fast. Despite having a good six-figure job, I'm talking to a lawyer about bankruptcy. I just hope when I'm done, I can scrape up enough cash for one of those bargain Monets you're talking about here. PS - Know anyone that wants a bargain on a few hundred bottles of well cellared California wines? I've got to sell the wine to pay the lawyers so I can keep the house with the empty wine cellar. I have to sell them at a loss, of course, so that bargain hunters like you can enjoy the benefits of the recession.
If you and/or your family members have health or disability issues, you and they are going to suffer big time no matter how thrifty you are. If you're female and over 55, nobody cares how qualified you are, nor how hard you work, nor how pleasant and helpful you are to everyone. Nobody. They give the good techie jobs to a male under 35. And they give the clerical jobs to somebody who isn't "overqualified." Does Eaves never expect to live past 55? My finances are already pared to the bone and have been so for a very long time. The recession hit the IT profession before it hit everybody else, and it hasn't been pleasant. And no, I am not saddled with debt. Due to previous government tax and regulatory policies, the entire industry I was working in came to be outsourced overseas. At my last job, after I was laid off, I applied to work in India at a fraction of my previous salary. If I had been hired at that time, I would have gone, without complaint. But I never got a call back. About half of my savings was lost in the crash. Evidently, it doesn't help all that much to be frugal unless you are also lucky, or have a lot of inside information. I didn't. I'm trying very hard to make a career change at my age and it isn't easy, and at the same time, I'm too "overqualified" (i.e., old) to be given a blue-collar or pink-collar job with insurance benefits. Just today I saw a job that I badly wanted given to a much younger male. Despite all my efforts, somehow I wasn't even given an opportunity to apply for that particular job, and I'm feeling absolutely sick about that. And yes, it is a job that I am very much qualified for. When just about everybody gets into their new, frugal lifestyle, what's the first piece of useless, time-wasting, money-wasting clutter that most people cut from their budgets? You guessed it - magazine subscriptions! Here comes the "purifying fire"!
I think it's the retirees I sympathize with the most. Their homes are worth less, their IRAs and 401ks funds are worth less, most are too old to go back to work even if anybody would hire them, and you can't make a dime on savings accounts at today's extremely low interest rates. I must be getting paranoid because what I initially viewed as a disaster brought on by a government asleep at the switch and greed-driven financial "wizards", I'm now beginning to see as possibly a planned occurrence.
WoW!!!! What a bunch of nonsense. I was laid off from the engineering firm I was working for and I started my own firm with one of the other guys that got laid off the same day I did. It's been difficult and we are barely making it so I guess I can say that I'm not unemployed. I sold my truck to get out of the $570/mo payment and had to pay $2,000 just to sell it because I could not get what it was worth. I am selling my other vehicle as well so I can be payment free. This must be the glorious fire sale she is referring to. My how wonderful it is to get stuff at such cheap prices from people who just can't afford them anymore! Why just look, America has become a gigantic pawn shop of goodies. How good this is for me, I can even buy a $300,000 home for next to nothing. Isn't this glorious? Unemployment used to be for those that failed to apply themselves or had drug and alcohol issues. These days the best of the best can find themselves out in the cold. I made it through eight rounds of layoffs before I got the boot so I must have been good at what I do. Ironicaly those who got 86'd before me got 3 months severance but by the time they got to the rest of us, they were out of severance funds. That's special. This economy is hurting "GOOD PEOPLE" and there is nothing good about that.
You must be kidding me. Perhaps this is a humor piece, and I am not getting it. I do not see how in the long run that this recession is good for anyone -- except maybe a financial vulture. Most people are struggling to stay afloat, survive, and remain sane; and while times like this allow us to pause and reflect upon the things which matter most to us, it's not what I would say, oh, a likable situation. Sometimes it is as dire as it looks, and rather than being, what I will graciously say, "eternally optimistic," perhaps it's best to call what we are facing what it really is -- a fine mess 20-plus years in the making, of which we have yet to see the end.
Ms. Eaves, You're right, I've noticed that it's so much easier to get a good table at a four-star restaurant these days. And if you can't pay for the meal because you've lost your job and your home went into foreclosure you can always try and sneak out through the bathroom window. P.S. Mortgage rates have gone through the roof in the month or so since you refinanced. I guess those who were less timely are SOL.
This is a vapid, stupid little girl. Like so many others in both the print and broadcast media, she is an icon of the decline and impending death of the so called main stream media. Steve, can't you afford some adults?
Oh yes, this recession is so wonderful, if you live in a gated community and never leave it (just order the Picasso paintings online). Nice people? I see hateful people along my commute every day, cursing at me and each other in traffic more than ever, and it's obvious at least to me that it is only a matter of time before major spikes in the crime rate begin. But I can buy some million dollar paintings at a discount. Wonderful. My employment situation is unaffected so far and technically the lower prices have improved my standard of living for now, but I believe this country is in a very precarious situation and my fear of civil unrest is a little more significant than my elation over discounted art and jewelry (two things that are ALWAYS a ripoff anyway). JMHO!
An amazingly vapid piece. Anyone who cites NYC in the 70's as some "glory time" has no grasp of the city's reality of the era. I was there and entire areas of the city were effectively out of control (and served as inspiration for the "Death Wish" genre of movies). Have fun at the unemployment office Ms. Eaves and enjoy that "purifying fire" - you may learn that its burns hurt like hell.
Yes, it's "juicy" to be able to "get out of things" we didn't want to do because we're unemployed, underwater and in ruinous debt. Sorry kids, I didn't want to pay your tuition anyway. Now I can't. Sorry hon, I didn't want to pay the mortgage this month anyway. Sorry taxman, I didn't want to pay your inflated bill... You get the picture, right? I'm so glad the great transfer of wealth from 40 and 50 somethings to 20 and 30 somethings is a cause of some rejoicing on their part. Keep up the good work! __________________________________________
Art Deco Ballroom Most of these were shot on the top floor of an historic building on Main Street. On this floor is what was once a ballroom and restaurant. The ballroom hasn't been used in over seventy years.
Asylum for Lunatic Chairs This former asylum is now flanked by a State Correctional Facility. The building is beautiful, a tangible reminder of how society cared for it's less fortunate members. After admission to this facility, the majority of the patients were to spend the remainder of their lives here. Presently, the asylum mainly houses lunatic chairs.
The Light of Decayis a continuous project which simply aspires to document destitute structures and by extension, illuminate the past experiences contained therein. If it is true that a measure of society can be found in how it cares for the elderly , then I believe it is analogous to say that society can also be judged by how it treats the structures those same citizens built.
Jeremiah's Vanishing New York a.k.a. The Book of Lamentations: A bitterly nostalgic look at a city in the process of going extinct ______________________________________
[theawl.com] Sorry, Sam. You get zero sympathy from this journalist.
Do what the rest of us did when we graduated from J-School…get off your ass, get in your car and find a damn job. Most of the world isn’t “handed” a job…they have to actually FIND a job. I’m curious about what is actually taught at Harvard that you are just figuring that out, on the cusp of graduation. At my cheap, state school, it was drilled into our heads EVERY SINGLE DAY by all of our journalism professors that WE had to find a job…and it wouldn’t be easy. And all of us did find jobs(except for the marketing girls who just married rich guys and it turns out that was the best career path of all).
Yes, I know. The world has changed. And you are LUCKY, you big goof. All the 40 somethings, toiling away in print in a dying medium are rightly panicking. Their kids are approaching college age, their 401Ks are gone and the future is bleak. YOUR future is wide open. Employers aren’t hiring them, they’re hiring YOU.
I’m not sure if the internets reach Harvard, but you might have heard about something called THE INTERNET. Print is dead. I have NO idea how content is going to be delivered to folks in the next two, five or 10 years…but the thing is, Sam…YOU will be delivering it. Get a job with Twitter (they’ll be doing some sort of news, soon), get a job with The Awl, call Murdoch and be his web czar,figure out how to edit and become a backpack journalist…whatever.
My point is, the world is open in front of you. If you really want to be a journalist, step out and explore.
@__: The salary shouldn’t be the thing at 23. The opportunity is the prize. And hopefully Sam is smart enough to realize that.
And Sam, if you are reading this…I am not attacking you personally. Graduation without a job is the beginning of your career, not the end of it.
The promised land: One Bloor East has been sitting empty since the old buildings were demolished a year ago
A Whole Lot of Nothing by Richard Poplak [Toronto Life - Jne.09]
One of the biggest, priciest, most-hyped condo projects in Toronto history has turned Yonge and Bloor into a windswept reminder of our financial insanity. Is the empty lot a sign of the times or of something more troubling?
It was the lineup that did it: on a chilly November day in 2007, 100 salivating condo zombies queued in front of the sales office of One Bloor East, and the spectacle entrenched the $500-million tower (its name shortened, with Hollywood action-movie panache, to 1BE) in the public imagination. Many of them were hired by real estate agents for as much as $2,000. They huddled in the cold for over a week, determined to claim one of 612 luxury units gussied up with Miele appliances and lanais (Hawaiian for covered balcony). The hysteria was as inflated as the prices: newspapers reported that an unnamed Hong Kong businessman had offered $25 million for a two-storey penthouse suite with an infinity pool gazing out over Lake Ontario.
At the time, the real estate market was as fat and smug as a Wall Street hedge fund manager, and 1BE’s developer, Bazis International, milked the frenzied crowd accordingly. As people waited in line, staff came outside and changed a sign displaying unit prices, hiking the range of $300,000 to $2 million up to $500,000 to more than $8 million. According to Andrew La Fleur, a real estate agent and an active blogger who was there that day, when the prices were raised the crowd let out an exasperated “Come on!” Still, 80 per cent of the units were sold in a matter of weeks.
One Bloor East was by no means the only condo project to inspire such fervour during the boom. The Shangri-La hotel and condos at University and Adelaide, the Aura condo at Yonge and Gerrard and the Trump Tower at 311 Bay all garnered their share of excitement and controversy. But there was something special about 1BE. It cast its spindly shadow over the entire industry. Roy Varacalli, the in-house architect for Bazis International, described the Yonge-Bloor intersection as “the crossroads of the city and the country.” The tower promised to transform a moribund jumble of low-rise retail into a bustling urban nexus. Its 78 luxurious storeys would perch atop a three-level, gilded podium of retail; celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay was reportedly approached to run the restaurant of a five-star Sofitel Hotel. No aspect of the project went unhyped: an e‑vite depicting a backhoe scooping up a clump of oversized gems asked people to “come and be a part of demolition” on May 29, 2008. Yet since the demolition, One Bloor East has been as quiet as a mausoleum. The project has become an emblem of our collective financial insanity. The questions of industry watchers, condo purchasers and curious passersby are twofold: what stalled the tower’s heavenward march? And will it go up at all?
Toronto is home to the most active condo industry in North America. One reason for this is our greenbelt legislation, which has encouraged developers to build up rather than out. Another is that most of the city’s apartment buildings were constructed in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and little purpose-built rental accommodation has been added since. The condo market has become our rental market.
In 2007, at the height of the boom, the number of new condo units sold in Toronto was 22,654, up a whopping 40 per cent over 2006. There were 103 new condo projects launched that year in the census metropolitan area (or CMA, which accounts for most of the GTA). In 2008, sales of new condos dropped to 14,469, with the number of new projects reduced to 78. This year, by the end of the first quarter, only one project had been launched. If the market doesn’t improve, the current supply of new condos (i.e., those already or nearly built) could be quickly absorbed over the next couple of years, and there won’t be enough supply to meet the demand of a growing population and a changing demographic.
Jane Renwick, executive vice-president of the real estate consultancy Urbanation, projects there will be a further 45 per cent fall-off in new condo sales this year. For developers, it’s a vicious circle: new condos rely entirely on pre-sales (in Canada, projects can’t qualify for financing until 70 per cent of units are sold), and when consumer confidence is low, buying a property before it’s built seems like an especially risky proposition. You are essentially buying a promise.
“Overall, things are not in irredeemable shape,” says Renwick. But the spotlight is on one or two mega-projects, and their fate has the power to chill an entire buying population. That spotlight, once carefully cultivated and guarded by eager developers, has now become an inconvenience. Companies are learning that there’s no off switch when things go awry.
Bazis International is new to the Toronto condo scene, with three other developments currently in the works: Crystal Blu at 21 Balmuto, the stalled Emerald Park at the southwest corner of Yonge and Sheppard, and the proposed Exhibit opposite the ROM Crystal on Bloor. Loquacious to a fault when its projects debuted, Bazis has lately gone quiet; its only recent contact with buyers was a notice of extension informing them that, in accordance with standard purchase contracts, digging at 1BE would be delayed until June 15.
This sudden coyness has not ingrati-ated Bazis with One Bloor East buyers or industry watchers. Real estate blogs are rife with scuttlebutt on the seeming complexity of the project’s financing. “We’re freaking here. What’s going on?” wrote one person on the UrbanToronto forum. “We’ve waited for decades for something to replace the eyesores on that corner,” wrote another. “If this doesn’t get off the ground, it could be a decade before anything gets built there.” One poster, bemoaning the lack of communication from Bazis, said they’d written the local councillor instead. “It’s better than nothing.” To date, there are at least 3,550 posts related to One Bloor East.
Bazis comes to us by way of Kazakhstan, an oil- and gas-rich nation nestled between Russia and China, once a favoured location for gulags and hydrogen bomb testing. At first glance, it seems baffling that a Kazakh company would choose Toronto as a location for a half-billion-dollar mixed-use tower. But the reasons aren’t hard to discern. Through the boom times, Kazakhstan, like other commodities-jacked insta-countries, grew at twice the average rate of the world economy, and the wealth needed somewhere to spread. Toronto represented the relative stability of the western world at a massive discount. Even at the height of the bubble, prices here were extremely low compared with those in other major North American centres, to say nothing of London and Paris. For a signature plot of land at the city’s vital axis point, Bazis dropped a mere $78 million. Michael Gold, Bazis International’s 45-year-old president, still thinks Toronto is the best city in North America in which to invest. “This is not the United States, where the leverage situation was out of control. We are politically and economically stable,” he says.
Though Bazis International is based in Concord, Ontario, it’s directly linked to economic conditions in Kazakhstan. Bazis‑A, its sister company, is headquartered in the former capital city of Almaty. It has also been actively involved in the Dubai-like renaissance taking place on a stretch of the Kazakh steppe that president Nursultan Nazarbayev designated the country’s new, post-Communist capital. He called it Astana, and it’s a jaw-on-the-floor hallucinatory mind trip. Buildings rear up into the sky, glinting like costume jewellery on an ugly debutante. There are towers with gold domes, skyscrapers housing hanging gardens, a glass pyramid designed by the architect Sir Norman Foster. On a clear day, Astana looks like something dreamed up by George Lucas.
Recently, thanks to the drop in commodity prices and Kazakhstan’s loose banking regulations, the country has been walloped by the financial crisis. Its biggest bank, BTA, has been nationalized; the chairman, a one-time opposition leader, is on the run. And Bazis has not gone unscathed. Its biggest development, the three-skyscraper Emerald Towers in Astana—which was designed by Roy Varacalli and was the inspiration for the project at Yonge and Sheppard—has been halted mid-construction. The rest of Astana is scarred by open foundations, abandoned scaffolding and the stumps of towers. A place of promise is now an example of a city in collapse. It is a warning.
Will One Bloor East share the Emerald Towers’ fate? There is one glaring problem with the project’s financial situation: Lehman Brothers is on the title. The plot was assembled over the years by Kolter Group, a real estate investment firm that left Toronto to concentrate on its holdings in now financially decimated Florida. In December 2006, Kolter sold over 40,000 square feet of the site to a limited partnership between Bazis International and Lehman Brothers for $62,812,670. The southwest corner of the lot was owned by Scotiabank, who sold it to the same limited partnership for $13,750,000; the city sold the lane running off Hayden Street for about $1.7 million. (Lehman Brothers is also on the title of Emerald Park.)
On September 15, 2008, the world woke up to learn that one of the largest investment banks on the planet had collapsed, sending tens of billions of dollars into the economic ether. Lehman’s unravelling had a double impact on the 1BE project: not only did it sink the financing already in place, but it also froze credit markets around the world. Bazis, like everyone else, was caught off guard. “In 2007, if you said that Lehman Brothers would go bankrupt, people would have laughed at you,” says Gold. “It was bigger than all the Canadian banks combined. How could we have known?” For the development to continue, Lehman Brothers will have to be removed from the 1BE title. The process has been dragging through the U.S. court system. On June 15, Bazis will enter a 31-day period during which it can notify buyers that it is cancelling construction and returning their deposits (currently held in trust by a law firm). If the company doesn’t cancel construction during that period, the purchase agreements become binding. Beyond the 31 days, the longer the construction is delayed, the more difficult it becomes for buyers to recover their money. Gold says the company will consider its options come June, but that he’s confident 1BE will go ahead. “It’s a great plot,” he says. “It’s just that the rules have changed on us.”
If One Bloor East fails, there will be significant ramifications for the city. Toronto has become addicted to the tax dollars generated by condo developments, especially luxury ones. Cash-starved municipalities dream of million-dollar homes piled on top of each other, which explains Yorkville’s transformation from low-rise coziness to high-rise haven. Fully occupied, One Bloor East would generate millions of dollars for the city on an annual basis. It would also create four to five thousand jobs—a miniature economic universe at Yonge and Bloor.
Hersh Litvak, an agent with RE/MAX Realtron Realty who was first in the infamous lineup, is resolute about the building’s future. Litvak has sold 50 condos to a host of clients. “They aren’t nervous; they just want to know when it will be built. I’m telling them that Bazis doesn’t have a financing problem. It has a legal problem.” But the legal problem becomes a financial problem: the dormant site is an enormous money drain. There are architects, consultants, lawyers and contractors to pay, and a $78-million dust bowl can run up a hefty property tax bill.
Frustrated though they may be, buyers have no recourse at this point. Bazis is well within its rights. “The company is going to do everything it can to get this going,” says Litvak. “It’s at the mercy of the courts and the litigation system in the U.S. Anyone in their right mind will do the financing.”
However, lending has become a lot more complicated in the past six months. Regulations are tighter, and each bank is limiting the amount of money it’s willing to throw at a project. So instead of dealing directly with one deep-pocketed institution, developers must now appeal to a consortium of lenders. Gold confirms that Bazis is in conversation with eight to 10 financial institutions, including European pension funds. “It’s better than it was six months ago,” he says, “when none of the banks trusted each other.” He’s hoping to have financing arranged for the moment Lehman Brothers is off the title, and construction plans in place this month. Despite all the uncertainty, the company continues to peddle its remaining units: the tiny Life 690, a one-bedroom, is currently listed at $569,900; the expansive Dream 2580 (two bedrooms with a library and family room) will run you a tidy $4.2 million.
Toronto has been lucky. It has not suffered the partially built towers that litter the Astana skyline and creep ever closer to home: Chicago’s Waterview has stalled at 20-plus floors, and Vancouver has several gaping holes that will be there to greet Olympics spectators next February. Nonetheless, One Bloor East has been a lesson in pre- and post-crisis real estate development. The global embrace that defined the boom’s mega-deals—where a company originating in Kazakhstan could get American financing for a Canadian skyscraper—are now recalled with nostalgia. Until all the deals are inked—and perhaps for sometime after—the spectral 1BE teeters like a jury-rigged hut. It has yet to be built, but it is already a relic of another time.
Biggest Real Estate Losers In 2003, Dubai announced it was building the world's largest theme park around the world's largest shopping mall. No one batted an eye. By mid-decade, real estate speculation was so rampant that every other television show demonstrated how to "flip" houses to turn a quick profit. No longer. With global economies reeling and banks taking few risks, financing for ambitious real estate ventures has all but disappeared. In March, 126,000 U.S. construction jobs were lost, and a recent report by Emporis found that construction has stalled on 142 of 1,324 skyscrapers around the world. Five-star hotels and luxury condominiums are particularly vulnerable in this new era of frugality, as are many Persian Gulf projects that were green-lighted when oil was still $100 a barrel.
And what about all the "starchitect"-designed buildings that aspired to be the tallest on their continents? They seem more hubristic than optimistic in 2009. In a fitting metaphor for the stunted market, buildings designed by the likes of Frank Gehry and Norman Foster are being downsized to more modest heights.
Here's a look at 20 ventures that have suffered setbacks, or even frozen completely, in this new real estate Ice Age.
Chicago Spire Location: Chicago Architect: Santiago Calatrava Developer: Shelbourne Development Financial Backers: Garrett Kelleher (Shelbourne Development), Anglo Irish Bank
This spiraling tower on Lakeshore Drive was set to be the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere. Currently, it's a pit—110-feet wide and 7-stories deep. Developer Garrett Kelleher (pictured) sank $180 million of his own funds into the venture, stalled since January, and Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava filed a lien claim against the project for the millions he is owed. With few other financing prospects, Kelleher is reportedly in talks with the AFL-CIO, which may loan the funds in exchange for the thousands of union construction jobs it would generate.
Waterview Tower Location: Chicago Architect: Thomas Hoepf (Teng & Associates) Developer: Teng & Associates Financial Backers: Ivan Dvorak (Teng & Associates), LaSalle Bank (now owned by Bank of America), Export-Import Bank of China
Construction on this Wacker Drive high-rise came to a screeching halt in summer 2008 when a $400 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China was suspended. The mixed-use building, which was scheduled for completion in 2010, was to house residential condominiums and a five-star Shangri-La Hotel. But the Hong Kong-based hotel chain pulled out in March, and the sad concrete frame is stalled at 26 stories—out of a planned 90 floors.
Xanadu Location: Meadowlands, N.J. Architect: Rockwell Group Developer: Meadowlands Development Financial Backers: Colony Capital, Dune Capital Management, Credit Suisse, KanAm, Xanadu Mezz Holdings
Xanadu, one of the largest commercial real estate ventures in the U.S., was extravagant even in boom times. The sprawling mall, which sits on 4.8 million square feet of land, was to contain more than 200 stores, an indoor ski hill, a Ferris wheel, and a chocolate waterfall. However, the $2.2 billion project, originally scheduled to open in 2007, has been plagued by delays and vacancies. Some tenants have filed for bankruptcy or backed out of their leases, while others are negotiating with the developer to delay their openings. In March, a non-bankrupt Lehman Brothers affiliate defaulted on its loan, jeopardizing the mall's completion and leading a New Jersey state senator to dub it the "Mistake at the Meadowlands."
Harmon Hotel Location: Las Vegas Architect: Foster + Partners Developer: MGM Mirage/CityCenter Holdings Financial Backers: CityCenter Holdings, Dubai World
The Harmon Hotel is part of a $9 billion mixed-use development being built by the MGM Mirage on the Vegas Strip. The hotel's opening has been postponed to 2010, and the future of the whole glitzy complex, dubbed CityCenter, is in question. MGM Mirage, controlled by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, is hemorrhaging money and venture partner Dubai World is suing over the project's busted budget. Now the builder has decided to shrink the Harmon Hotel by half, eliminating the residential portion. The developer is blaming a construction flaw for the change of plan, but less than half of the condos had been sold and the new blueprint is expected to save CityCenter at least $600 million.
Trump International Hotel and Towers Location: New Orleans Architect: Adache Architects and Harry Baker Smith Architects Developer: Poydras, Trump Organization
If anyone is vulnerable to the violent swings of the high-end property market, it's Donald Trump. His $400 million luxury hotel, which will be the tallest building in the Big Easy if it's ever built, has been put on ice until the credit market rebounds. The hotel has been plagued by bad timing from the onset, having been announced just days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. And it's not the only venture bearing the Trump name to suffer setbacks. Construction on the Trump Tower in Dubai was suspended in 2008; Trump Tower Tampa never got off the ground; and the colossal Trump Tower in Chicago remains largely vacant.
56 Leonard Location: New York Architect: Herzog & de Meuron Developer: Alexico Group
The Swiss architects' fame quotient rocketed during last summer's Beijing Olympics thanks to their acclaimed Bird's Nest Stadium, and 56 Leonard was to be their first residential high-rise. This TriBeCa skyscraper (image taken from the construction's flashy Web site) was to feature glass cubes stacked in a precarious-looking cantilevered tower, with the least expensive units priced at $3.5 million. The foundation was laid in November and occupancy was scheduled for fall 2010, but work has been shut down temporarily.
ICON Brickell Location: Miami Architect: Philippe Starck Developer: Related Group Financial Backer: HSBC Realty Credit Corp.
The Sunbelt has been hit hard by the real estate bust, and no region has seen as dramatic a reversal of fortunes as South Florida, where the once-hot housing market is now languishing. Jorge Perez, the "Condo King" of Miami, knows this better than anyone. ICON Brickell, his three-tower luxury complex in Downtown Miami, threatens to be the undoing of the Cuban billionaire. The sprawling development is shaping up to be the $1.3 billion embodiment of mid-decade excess. By the end of 2008, only 55% of the 1,646 luxury condos were sold, and many buyers are attempting to wriggle out of their contracts. Perez's company is facing nearly $2 billion in debt and recently implored banks for more time to repay loans. _______________________________________
You Should Have Bought 2 Months Ago [truecondos.com - May 09]
The Toronto condo market is hot right now. No seriously, it is.
After months of writing to my readers about how slow the market has been, there has been a fundamental shift in the marketplace over the past 4 weeks. Multiple offers are back with a vengeance. The best properties are selling over asking and in less than 1 week. Buyers are feeling the pinch and I am starting to get used to the phrase ’sorry, that property is sold’ when I go to book appointments for my buyer-clients.
The stats for April should be released by the Toronto Real Estate Board any day now, and they will almost certainly reveal that sales are up and prices are up beyond what anyone was anticipating for this month.
Why? What happened? Has Barrack Obama worked some kind of magical spell over our economy? Are things not nearly as bad as everyone thinks they are? Are we all just living in denial and making things worse on ourselves by buying up all this real estate?
My thoughts on what has caused this recent upswing in the market:
1. Affordability. Prices have come down about 10% overall since the peak about a year ago. Interest rates have been basically cut in half since about 18 months ago.
2. Spring Fever. Every year at this time the market is at its hottest. This is always the busy season, so in that sense this upswing shouldn’t surprise us.
3. Changing Attitudes. Sellers are more realistic on their asking prices, and buyers are more aggressive as many have been waiting to buy for 6 months or more.
4. Canadian Pride. People are starting to see and believe that maybe it’s true - things here in Canada are not nearly as bad as they are in the rest of the world. Where is the best place for your money to be long-term? Many are thinking once again the answer is real estate.
5. The Investor Equation. For the past couple years, it was very difficult to find a cash-flow positive condo in Toronto with 25% down. Now, due to lowered interest rates and lowered prices, with rents staying pretty flat, it is.
All this is leading many people to wonder if the bottom of the market was back in January or February. Certainly there were some great bargains had during those months compared to what we are seeing today. _______________________________________
When Rob Ford Becomes Mayor...
