After

I finished up my re-build of the road bike. In the end, I had to do a bit more than I wanted. Turns out the guy had thrown a 27" wheel on the front, so when I went to swap tires the old 700c's wouldn't fit. So I bought a nice new front wheel with a Mavic Open Pro on an XT hub. So in the end, it was:

New cables - brake and shifter
New housing
New bar tape
New brake pads
New tires
New tubes
New pedals
New seat

It's pretty damn fun to ride around on. And I'm finally learning how to handle the thing. Still, it's much more unwieldy than a mountain bike. I know from experience that 700c wheels on their own make a bike act kind of crazy. Throw in the drop bar though...I honestly can't think that the aero or hand position advantages outweigh the handling advantage you get with a flat bar. But I guess I haven't ridden the thing for more than half an hour.

Pitchfork

First up, Someecards finally has a create your own option. Not sure when they did that, but it's awesome. Check out stuff other people have made as well. I made two today, but I haven't quite hit my stride yet.

So, Pitchfork and me have a strange relationship these days. I still like to hear what they say, but I'm less and less interested in hearing about a bunch of shit that is beyond obscurity. I tune each day with half a cup of enthusiasm. So it took me until today to realize they were running a best 500 songs of the 2000's this week. Say what you will, but those mofo's are thorough. This thing is a thing of beauty. Links to each song. Write-ups on the top 250...I think it's the top 250...Sorry, top 200. You must check it out.

I decided that I was going to come home and make a playlist of all the music I had in that top 500. I figured it would take a half hour or so, but it's slowly consumed a chunk of my evening, although I have been multi-tasking. And as I dig into it, it's bizarre to say the least. I think they throw some red herrings in there just to fuck with people. There's some stuff in there that is bizarre. It seems like the get the right band and the right album but the wrong song a whole bunch. Allow me to elaborate.

DJ Shadow - You Can't Come Home Again - Excuse me? You've got Six Days sitting right there and you choose that?

The Libertines - Time for Heroes - An okay choice, but why not Up the Bracket?

Wilco - Handshake Drugs - Yes. A fine song. But you also have Hell is Chrome, Muzzle of Bees, and...shit, most of the album to pick from. Okay. Tough call.

The Walkmen - In the New Year - Okay, of all the Walkmen songs to pick, they picked this one. I had a hard time stomaching this, but as I listened to my playlist and this came up, I can see it. Still, not the best Walkmen song, by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe something shows up in the Top 10 tomorrow?

The Streets - Blinded by the Lights - Booooooring. Fit But You Know It.

Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains - This is the worst song ever. I don't get it.

Japandroids - Young Hearts Spark Fire - Okay. They stole this song from somewhere. I will figure out where. That bass line is an exact copy from...something. Help me out here.

The Twilight Sad - Cold Days From The Birdhouse - That Summer, At Home...is far better.

The Constantines - Nightime/Anytime - I'm glad they got a song on here from their one good album (which is amazing). But it should have been National Hum, Shine a Light, Young Lions...

Trail of Dead - Another Morning Stoner - Baudelair? Relative Ways?

Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up - I haven't even heard this song, but over To Be Young? Bizarre.

The Fiery Furnaces - Here Comes the Summer - Okay, maybe the most radio friendly Fiery Furnaces song, but far from their best.

The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt - Right album. Good song. Wrong song. Here's Your Future is the only choice.

The Liars - Plaster Cast of Everything - Once again. Right album, good song, wrong song. There's 3 or so better choices.

Les Savy Fav - The Sweat Descends - Come on! Yawn, Yawn, Yawn!!!

Ted Leo - Timorous Me & Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone - No. Bad choices.

McLusky - To Hell With Good Intentions - Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues? Collagen Rock?

The Shins - New Slang - Fuck the Shins. But if you're not going to, it should be Caring is Creepy.

TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me - I've never gotten TV on the Radio. Except for Playhouses. So to pick this...over that...off the same album...crazy.

LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great - What the hell?

It goes on. Of course, some were spot on.

Ghostface Killah - Shakey Dog
Girl Talk - Smash Your Head
Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat (could have been others, but I'll take it)
Broken Social Scene - Cause=Time (this album will be a classic in 20 years...the first three quarters anyhow)
Interpol - NYC and Obstacle 1
Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken - I know. Not very masculine of me. But catchy as hell. I've been pushing this song on people for a long time.
Beirut - Postcards from Italy
Modest Mouse - 3rd Planet

Anyhow, the top 20 goes up tomorrow. Of the 480 given so far my playlist has 205 of them. Not quite 50%, but I'm surprised. And I have no idea what's in that final 20.

Oh. It's also very interesting to see how many of the songs are either #1 or #2 on the album. As I was told once...start with a Banger.

Update - The rest of the list is up. I think in seeing the top 20 there's a bit of redemption for Pitchfork. Nothing too surprising. Adding The Walkmen - The Rat and LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends kills a couple of my previous comments.

Interestingly, there's a pretty good representation of mainstream pop, hip-hop and R&B on the list. But there is absolutely nothing to do with mainstream "Rock". Radiohead? Other than that, nothing. What does this say? Are Pitchfork a bunch of rock snobs, refusing to listen to anything that might show up on the radio, or is mainstream pop, hip-hop and R&B just more in touch with what actually doesn't suck?

My final playlist tally is 220 songs at 16 hours, 15 minutes of listening. So it will take me a while to get through it all.

Oh. Priceless. The Pitchfork 500 Cool-o-meter.

My new ride

I have an illness when it comes to bikes. It's never "good enough". I always seem to just slowly creep up until I've created something ridiculous.

For example. I've been trying to build a city bike for some time. I built this guy up a while back. But it was too nice to lock up. I wanted drops. And it got geared out rather quickly. So I stripped it down and sold the frame to a friend.

I decided to build a cyclocross frame. So, I started with a SOMA frame. Which became a Salsa, because they're close in price and the Salsa is so much nicer. And that needed discs.... and on and on. Pretty soon, I'd only spent $1500, but I had something that I absolutely, positively, could not lock up anywhere.

So I re-set and started searching Craigslist for old road bikes. There's a lot of crap out there. And the hipsters are creaming the city out. So I finally found this guy, and I had to have it. Yes, it's not super pretty yet. I probably could stand to have a size larger. But with some minor modifications (new pedals, tires, tubes, cables, housing, brake pads, handlebar tape, seat...that's about it) I'm going to have an almost bone stock, classic Bianchi. Call these the before pictures.

Oh. I'm going to have to completely re-learn how to ride a bike. I just rode it up the street. My quad kills (I did about 10 pedal strokes) and braking is absolutely crazy. But it should be fun.

What's wrong with Vancouver

When I first moved back to Vancouver, I started looking at buying a place to live in. I started looking in spring, 2003. I was looking mostly just at 1 bedroom condos in Kits. The problem I had was that I couldn't wrap my head around paying double (to own) or what I was currently paying (to rent) for just about the same place. I decided to invest my money elsewhere. In hindsight, if I had bought, I would have made a serious chunk of cash on the property. But the cashflow of it didn't make sense to me back then. And now...

As things slowed down in the fall, I started looking again. Actually, this is the second time that it happened. The first time was when things slowed down a bit in...Winter 2007? Each time I told myself that I'd just start looking at some listings and hopefully find something that makes sense. But it's very easy to get caught up in the moment.

This time around, I haven't been out to look at any specific properties. My intention was to keep my eye on the market and as the slowdown continues, pick something up in the fall or winter. But now shit has gone crazy again. Lets look at just how crazy.

Option 1 sees me picking up a 1 bedroom condo. This isn't really an ideal option and is most likely a short term solution. For about $325,000 you can buy a decent 1 bedroom in a nice neighbourhood. You can definitely go cheaper if you head further East, but this is probably a good starting point for determining the bottom of the market. So, if you look at this purchase, assuming a 5% down payment and a 5 year mortgage (4.3%), 25 year amortization:

Out of Pocket:
$16,250 - Down payment
$2,000 - Legal and other closing fees
$5,500 - Property transfer tax (you get around this for a first time purchase)

$23,750 - Total up front, out of pocket expenses.

Monthly:
$1,727.51 - Mortgage payment ($317,000 mortgage which includes CMHC payment)
$180 - Strata fees
$66.67 - Insurance
$125 - Property taxes

$2,099.17 - Total monthly payment

So, all of a sudden, you're paying almost $25,000 out of pocket for the privilige of paying $2100 per month to live in a place that you could rent for $900. This is crazy. This doesn't even take into consideration the potential for some of the things you could end up paying for (new fridge? broken toilet? special assessment?). I know. You won't own anything. I get it. But my point is that when you compare the rents paid to the cost of owning, Vancouver is in a crazy, crazy league of its own.

So I started to think about another way of doing things. What if I extended myself a bit more and bought a house? Of course, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy a house and live in it. But what if I bought a house, lived in the basement and rented it out? Surely this would make sense?

The problem with this is that in order to buy a house that somebody would want to rent, you have to pay a lot of money. There's definitely cheaper houses out there, but it seemed to me it would cost me about $800,000 to get a decent house in a decent neighbourhood. This would most likely get a house with a finished 2 bedroom basement suite and maybe 3 bedrooms on the main floor in a decent neighbourhood quite far to the east. Lets look at this with the same criteria as above:

Out of pocket:
$40,000 - Down payment
$2,000 - Legal and other closing fees
$15,000 - Property transfer tax (at best, you might see $4,000 of this disappear for a first home buyer)

$57,000 - Total out of pocket

Monthly:
$4252.33 - Mortgage payment (including the CMHC charges)
$125 - Insurance
$358.33 - Property taxes

$4735.66 - Total monthly charges

This neglects water, hydro, etc. As well as inevitable repairs and maintenance. Of course, renting out the top floor of the house gets you some money. But have you looked on Craigslist? There aren't too many people asking for more than $2000 for 3 bedrooms in a house. Maybe you push it to $2200. But you're still going to be paying $2500 to live in a 2 bedroom basement suite. It's crazy.

Which brings me to this. I've seen something similar to this chart a few times, but I dug it up again. For the longest time, housing cost remained more-or-less flat, relative to inflation. There were some peaks and valleys, but it didn't stray too far. Then...

(Link to this and other charts and graphs here)

What happened? What's going to happen? We paid a relatively constant amount of our income towards housing for a long period of time. Now, all of a sudden, we're pumping huge percentages of our incomes into our homes. The assumption is that the value will go up and that everything will be okay. The US proved how precarious this assumption is. Vancouver dipped a bit, but it's still stayed strong. But what the hell is going on? Where is all the money coming from? Who can afford this?

Lucky for me, I really have no choice but to sit on the sidelines. I don't want to pump a whole bunch of money into a 1 bedroom that will only work for me for the next few years. I don't want to move to the sticks. I can't afford a house, unless I live in a tent in the backyard and rent the whole thing out. So it's very easy for me to throw stones and call this crazy. But I have a decent job with a decent wage and if I can't afford this stuff, who can?

Saying goodbye to an old friend

If you would have told me 12 years ago that I'd be sad the day they closed Richard's on Richards, I'd have told you you're crazy. But here we are. It was Richard's last night last night and I'm sad.

Richard's seemed to take it's place in Vancouver by default. Everything else closed down or was too big or too small, so Richard's filled in. And that was the thing that made Richard's: It was actually a lot bigger than it seemed. The Commodore holds just under 1000 people (depending on where you look) but seems massive. Capacity at Richard's was about 5-600 (good luck finding an accurate number) but was exponentially more intimate than the Commodore. It was nearly impossible to be in Richard's and not have a great view of the stage. The sound was good and it was seedy enough to feel like you were really at a show. It pretty much had it all.
Of course, "all" included a bunch of shit. Any decent show came with plastic cups for beer (including the final show last night). The floor was eternally sticky in an unnatural way. The smell in that place was inhuman, and nearly impossible to scrub from your clothes long after you'd left. The bathrooms were always flooded. The booze was expensive. Weekend shows were shuffled to an unnatural hour to allow the cheezeballs to get their dance on. But all that made it more special. Except for the early weekend shows, of course. Although, as I get older, I have learned to appreciate the joys of a show ending at 10PM.
But what's left? I'll still get excited about a Media Club gig, but their capacity limits the amount of things to look forward to here. The Biltmore is picking up but pretty much sucks balls. The Commodore...

So. This is a sad day, my friends. A sad, sad day.

Nothing ever happened while I was there.

I find this story (and video) about an Enzo burning in OK Falls interesting for a number of reasons.

1) I used to live there.
2) The only exciting thing that ever happened there was....
3) While I was there, I thought about joining the volunteer fire department.

That is all.

Gymkhana

Oh man. I wish I could do something this well.

Ken Block and his car doing crazy things. Gymhkana 1 and Gymkhana 2.