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Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 4:22 AM
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Wink UPDATED: vid visits vancouver!

After 10 months of waiting, it's finally here. I even made a fancy logo for it~!

So before I start let me tell to you some things:

First off, I can type like 100 words a minute and I totally intend to take advantage of that ability by throwing more text than photos at you.

I won't be offended if you ignore the words, since I usually forget what I wrote immediately after writing it anyway.

B: The photos look like they were taken 10 years ago because the camera I took them with was made 10 years ago. I was poor at the time and only

had access to ancient technology, forgive me. When I go back to Vancouver in ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓, I will have a better camera. Promise!

Also, the program that I used to watermark them seems to have compressed them to the point that I might as well have not watermarked them at

all. Oops.

Secondlastly, all the photos were hosted on Flickr. I'm required by the site's TOS to tell you this.

Lastly, I have over 240 photos to share with you, which means I am uploading them in several parts as I am no longer able to spend 18 hours in

a single day playing around with photos. (Today was a rare exception.)

Oh, and one more thing...







Hahah the anticipation is probably going to have been better than the photos in the end.


Enjoy.





So to start off I actually had to get to Vancouver. I spent an extra $50 to get window seats on all four flights there and back. We

stopped in Winnipeg for three hours on the way, because that always makes sense. Here are some photos I took from the plane. It was my first

flight in a commercial jet. WestJet is like Greyhound, except with leather seats and shittier snack options.


The intersection of the the Trans-Canada Highway and Manitoba Highway 12. The village in the centre is Ste-Anne, and it's located on the Dawson

Road which has connected Thunder Bay and Winnipeg since the 1880s.






These last two were Diefenbaker Lake in Saskatchewan, the province's largest waterbody.


South Saskatchewan River, a bit west of Swift Current.




Flying over the mountains was cool. We went directly over Calgary but it was covered in clouds.




Vernon, BC and area.

So after all this I landed in Vancouver and holy fuck does it hurt your ears when you're descending to sea level. I didn't have any issue when

taking off or landing in Thunder Bay and Winnipeg so I was expecting just more of the same. Nope. And it even happens when you go up hills in

Vancouver, it's terrible. I don't know how people manage.

I stayed with my aunt in Surrey because if I had to get a hotel this would have been the "Vid spent $600 to go to Vancouver for an afternoon

because he can't afford a hotel".

Surrey reminded me of only the worst parts of Thunder Bay. Yeah.










Scott Road (aka 120th Street) has a really delightful mix of 50 incarnations of the same 3 businesses in every building style that shouldn't

have been popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Some pretty good food though. Thai by Thai near the intersection of Scott and 92nd is really good, I

spent over $60 dollars there. For two people. (15 of those dollars went towards Thai ice teas.)

It actually wasn't too bad, the Central City part has some nice bits. I didn't get any photos around the bus terminal at Central City, though.

What a shithole that is. After coming in from the airport we got off at Surrey Central to get the bus to my aunt's house and the entire

terminal smelled like rotten fish. Half the stores in the strip mall across the street were different than what was there when she left to

visit us four months earlier. It was certainly interesting. And on a later day during my trip we actually walked through there around 1am after

dinner at my cousins house and boy was that a weird experience. I felt exactly the same way I do when I walk alone at night in Thunder Bay:

cautious of my surroundings.




Surrey Memorial Hospital


This is probably from whatever decade The Jetson's aired in.


These towers are pretty imposing from street level.




OK so let me tell you about this building: It's the Surrey Tax Centre, and if you take photos of it a securty guard will come running out of

the building and tell you to stop. But he won't get to you in time and you'll have finished taking photos before he tells you this. Dear

terrists please don't use this photo to attack the Surrey Tax Centre it's very important to us thank you.


I waited 15 minutes for this one. Worth it!






I joined SSP not long after Central City was completed, so it's part of my earliest memories of the site.


Aaand with this we're out of Surrey. Though I probably spent half of my time there, sleeping, I only took photos of it once.

Now that we've got all that out of the way, here is the first photo I took in Vancouver itself:


Much urban. Such composition. Very people. Wow!!

BTW, the Skytrain is awesome. The sound it made when it was going around a curve reminded me of the sound the fridge at my local deli makes

when its compressor starts up, it's so cool.






$18.95 to park all day. You know what it costs to park all day in Thunder Bay? Two dollars.






This is what bike lanes should be like. If you city can't do them like this (mine can't) then it shouldn't be doing them at all.




One of the attractions we had planned to visit but didn't.




Granville Street has a lot of really interesting stuff. (I go on about Surrey Central and all I have to say about Granville is "it's

interesting".) If I ever refer to it as Grenville Street, that's because Thunder Bay has a Grenville Street.








I bet a lot of really interesting stuff happens here.


This is one of my favourite photos from the trip. It almost looks like it was taken by a professional. Thanks to Bulliver for selling me a

better lens and polarizer earlier in the summer!






In both Winnipeg and Vancouver I found it kind of weird to see street front locations of stores that we only have in shopping malls and power

centres here in Thunder Bay.


My mom told me not to go to East Hastings so naturally... This isn't even East Hastings, it's Pender. I didn't take many photos around here

regardless. It was basically a part of Winnipeg that moved out to the west coast because it's wanted by the police back home and I try not to

hang around with those types.


I actually called her and told her "Guess where I am!"








You can never have enough photos of the Dominion Building.


This arch reminded me of something you'd see in Winnipeg's exchange district. I found it sort of out of place because in spite of Vancouver's

age (it's pretty much just as old as Winnipeg and Thunder Bay) the entire city felt very new and clean to me.


According to Google, this is low cost apartments for formerly homeless people.


This shot reminded me of Thunder Bay. The buildings are bigger but the general idea is the same.

So after walking down East Hastings for a bit I caught one of the electric trolley buses and went all the way through downtown to the
other side of False Creek, then walked back over the bridge.

Part two will be posted next weekend. Probably. It will feature what my map calls "Mount Pleasant", as well as Stanley Park
and English Bay.
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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 5:03 AM
ninjakafi_81 ninjakafi_81 is online now
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Those are some very nice pictures you got of North Delta, Surrey, and Vancouver. And also those shots from the plane were very nice, can't wait to see part two
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Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 5:19 AM
trofirhen trofirhen is offline
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Fabulous. Thank you.
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  #4  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 6:29 AM
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You should win an award for your incontrovertible captions, nice photos too. We in Vancouver generally don't go to Surrey without a really valid reason, I was last there about nine years ago.
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Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 8:35 AM
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Great set of photos, and even better captions. Thanks!
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Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 10:09 AM
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Excellent work.
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  #7  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 1:15 PM
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Somehow, someway you actually made Vancouver look eerily similar to Thunder Bay. That's craze amaze!
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  #8  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 3:06 PM
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The camera may be old, but you created a damn nice thread!
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  #9  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 3:12 PM
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I like that you got photos of grittier parts of Surrey. Everyone sees the same few blocks of downtown but forgets that roughly 95% of the population lives outside of that.

Like how you got the roofline of the Dominion Building to line up with that of Woodwards.
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  #10  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 3:44 PM
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Thanks for the comments, guys!

I didn't want to make this another "Look at the same 2sqkm area of downtown Vancouver" thread, but unfortunately I only got two decent days to take photos. Tuesday was when I arrived, Wednesday and Thursday were beautiful, but then Friday was rainy. Saturday the 28th was apparently the worst September rainstorm the city had gotten in a long time, I had the fortune of getting caught outside in it.

The one thing I do regret is that, in spite of the rain, I didn't take any photos of Langley, Richmond or Coquitlam when I went to those places. (I went to all of Metro Vancouver's Chapters locations looking for the now discontinued MapArt city plans series, if you're wondering why I bothered to go to those places. Got a really good haul, too! Maps of San Francisco and Manhattan which I've wanted since I was a teenager.) Port Moody looked kind of nice from the B-Line but since it was raining I didn't walk around much. I did try Taco Bell in Coquitlam. My sympathies to anyone who eats food at that horrible, horrible place. It was like puke in a pita.

Needless to say, had it been sunny the entire time we wouldn't be seeing this photos for a couple years at the rate at which I was able to process them. The D7000 produces better results even though I am doing the exact same thing as I did with the D70 so future visits won't have such a delay.
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Old Posted Jul 20, 2014, 4:12 PM
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wow Vid..nice job!

What a stunning looking city...Thanks for these.
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  #12  
Old Posted Jul 21, 2014, 1:14 AM
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Solid pictures, vid!
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  #13  
Old Posted Jul 21, 2014, 3:09 AM
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Nice pictures
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  #14  
Old Posted Jul 22, 2014, 6:51 PM
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Quote:
Scott Road (aka 120th Street) has a really delightful mix of 50 incarnations of the same 3 businesses in every building style that shouldn't
This really cracked me up, as did this:
Quote:
It was basically a part of Winnipeg that moved out to the west coast because it's wanted by the police back home and I try not to hang around with those types
Great photos and even better running commentary. Look forward to the next set.
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  #15  
Old Posted Jul 23, 2014, 2:45 AM
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That was a fantastic tour you took us on. Loved it!! I too just HAD to troll down E. Hastings when I visited Vancouver. Definitely not a place you want to get cozy in.

Thanks for the thread!
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  #16  
Old Posted Jul 23, 2014, 4:08 AM
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Great pics, vid, and I did read all the text.

I really like this one. I thought they were the same building for a second, then I felt like an amatuer for not knowing it was the Dominion Building.
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  #17  
Old Posted Jul 23, 2014, 11:01 PM
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Very nice! I'll visit Vancouver some day.
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  #18  
Old Posted Jul 24, 2014, 1:13 AM
Beedok Beedok is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce View Post
Somehow, someway you actually made Vancouver look eerily similar to Thunder Bay. That's craze amaze!
I'm not seeing it. Looks much more like a Prairie town to me.
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  #19  
Old Posted Jul 24, 2014, 2:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Beedok View Post
I'm not seeing it. Looks much more like a Prairie town to me.
And with this sentence alone I know that you are originally from Port Arthur.
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  #20  
Old Posted Jul 24, 2014, 7:55 PM
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Aye, 'tis a gem my friend. Dandy photos.

But i was left wondering...........they actually let you out of Thunder Bay?

And I thought the RCPM had some restrictions.
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