This man just purchased a Tornado Potato.

I’d be skeptical of any food named after a natural disaster as well. I’m thinking of rolling out more devastation based food treats, for example: Cyclone Carrots, Tsunami Salami or Hot Beef Sundaes (while not specifically named after a natural disaster, eat one and you’ll see why they fit in this category).

How many other cities have a landfill open house? I don’t know… but Vancouver does. And people were certainly obsessed with it. Children and everyone were everywhere, even on the machinery. Kids were getting their faces painted and all other sorts of craziness was occurring.

Vancouver has a nice landfill. One of the better ones I’ve seen. The people of the metro area should be proud that we only dump 500kg/person/year… which if assume that involves 1.5 million people that is only 750 million kg per year. Way to go!

Sarcasm aside, Vancouver does have   of the smallest ecological footprints of any world city. This city only requires a little over 300X its footprint to sustain itself. NYC needs around 1000X.

Clearly, I had a lot of fun at the landfill open house. Thanks @robynchirps for the invite!

“Believe it or not, somewhere between the cigarettes and the philosophy, this is where culture is born” captured @ Emily Carr on Granville Island. I found this sign particularly relevant because it demonstrates some of the local angst around the Olympics.

Taken during the Olympics; this sunset was particularly beautiful! Much better than the rain that’s falling on Vancouver these days.

While I didn’t spend a lot of time in the tent village, I swung by a few times. When I was walking along Hastings on Saturday most of the tents were gone. Here’s to the inhabitants of the tent village during the games and for all the homeless that have become the residents of Hastings St.

The Year of the Tiger rolled in with a bang on Sunday as Jane and I hit up the Vancouver Chinatown Chinese New Year Parade. In China, I’m sure they just call it New Year though. This was an awesome parade with all the dragon dancers and costumes but these dancers really captured the essence of the new year in my mind.

Fortunately, my visit back to Charlotte overlapped with the grand opening of the Bechler Museum of Modern Art. Charlotte’s architecture is largely bland and corporate, the same glass and steel that’s typical of un-imaginative “efficient” building designs. Now that the Bechler is open, I hope it becomes the face of the city. Housing some awesome pieces only bolsters its amazingness. Who knew there were so many modern art tapestries? Or that said tapestries were woven by Picasso?

Sure, its far from perfect as @thediscochicken will tell you. But this is the kind of challenging provocative space Uptown CLT needs desperately. The only awesome building in Blandcouver is the downtown library… the only structure that stands out from the countless towers copied and pasted from Hong Kong.

in waiting for the Santa Parade to start, I captured a lot of great shots… I like this one because of the flag in the background and the colors of the foreground, i’ll be posting the rest on my flickr stream which you can access below

the wind was so strong on Jericho Beach yesterday! sand was whipping everywhere and the windsurfers were out in strength.

I’ll be posting more from my road trip this summer very soon, but ’til then you can enjoy the trailer.

Charleston, SC has tons of great architecture and the famous rainbow row is exemplary of the beautiful aura surrounding the city. In the mid-1700s these buildings were the center for commerce but now are restored and serving as homes.