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Let's not forget the hideous vertical lights on downtown Granville Street, the light-squirting phallus-poles on Cambie Street, the putrid colours of the lights installed on buildings at the Olympic Village (keeps low-flying planes from hitting them at night I suppose), and of course the giant and particularly obscene advertising billboards that are popping up all over Vancouver, wherever somebody can find a place to put one. Every one of these repulses me. The city of Vanada is becoming a playground for advertisers, who probably all live in West Vancouver and don't have to see their own hideous glow beaming into their windows.
Even public art has been turned into glow-in-the-dark crap. This started with a building on the shoreline in Coal Harbour, where the "public art" installation was just a 30 storey high light bulb, pointed at North Vancouver. A similar needless and offensive project was installed on a new high-rise on Pender Street, the one with the oh-so-meaningful horizontal LED's that change colour. OOOOH, wow, super, fabulous. Of course nobody bothered to ask the folks in the residential towers right across the road if they wanted their entire view filled with this wall of light. Actually, they protested vigorously when it was turned on. Thanks to the Mare and the team for not caring about anyone but themselves. I think the the hours it could be turned on were restricted, then it seemed to keep breaking down.
Let's not forget the owners of the Empire Landmark installing a huge collection of putrid neon on the top of the hotel. This offended hundreds of people in the West End, including me. The rancid glow from this advertising crap lit up my bedroom so much I had to black out the window. I'm not interested in doing shadow-puppet shows on the back wall of my bedroom in a nauseous pink and purple glow. After numerous protests, the city made them take some of it down, but not all.
Apparently they never had a permit to do any of it, they just did what they wanted and the city let them. Hopefully everyone doesn't try that, because they'd probably get away with it. I see that the tower is to come down and be replaced with two towers with bigger floor plates (actually not very hard to accomplish) but supposedly lower than the Landmark. They will probably become higher as time passes once the DP is approved.