PricePricePrice TagsTagsTags Issue 100 February 4, 2008 A-Z Issues/Contents Click on “Contents” anywhere to go to Contents this page. Click on any letter to go to that page. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z 2 Issues/Contents Click on “Issues” anywhere to go to Issues this page. Click on any number to download that issue. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7a 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 3 Wel-com: How Price Tags Evolved Issues/Contents PricePricePrice TagsTagsTags … began as a simple Word document in October, 2003 - two pages of typewritten text and a couple of links. The first link went to ‘Surreal Estate,’ an online column in the San Francisco Chronicle by Carol Lloyd. The article - "Blame It on Canada“ - is still active. PT was a bit of self-promotion. The Chronicle column featured an interview with me, but mainly as a foil for Carol's observations on the Vancouver Style and what it might mean for San Francisco. Since I was no longer at Vancouver City Hall, I thought it might be helpful to send out links to stories in which I was interviewed. Hence Price 'tags.' I barely knew how to attach a Word document to email, much less do layout. Though the pages and font size doubled in subsequent issues, PT remained merely black type and blue links. That changed when, after the seventh issue, Michel Desrochers sent in some maps and charts to illustrate a special issue on comparative park areas in San Francisco and Vancouver. I realized I could add digital images. Colour! Pictures! The visual evolution of Price Tags began with a classic shot of the North Shore. 4 Wel-com Issues/Contents PT 11 was the breakthough: an actual cover, a title, an image of San Franciscans on tour who had come to see what Vancouver was all about. I attached their newsletter - a pdf file - and realized, hey, Adobe was the way to go. I could do my own magazine, from layout to email, as a stream of bytes. The cost: only the time I put into it - but I would learn so much. By the next issue, I started with blank PowerPoint portrait slides instead of Word for the layout - a method I still use. And I was starting to include items from the Internet or sent in by readers. Issue 12 had one of the most popular features Price Tags has ever run - the Panoramas of False Creek. The link was picked up and passed on to so many readers that it actually slowed down the server at City Hall. I figured if people weren't interested in getting a megabyte in their mailboxes, cancellation would be the best (and most brutal) feedback I could get. A kind of negative billing. So long as readers thought PT was worth the trouble, then it was worth it for me. 5 Wel-com Issues/Contents The first themed issue was on Granville Street. By No. 15, Price Tags was becoming an urban-wonk Satellite Debris. Then the big idea gelled: Price Tags was not only a great way to self-promote, to share ideas, to learn design skills, but I could document Vancouver, this amazingly transformed place, as it was being transformed. Issue 16 was Vancouver As It Might Have Been - a story of the Daon Building and the men who shaped it. Issue 17 explained How They Sold the Revolution, a blend of condo advertising and commentary that got picked up and linked elsewhere on the Net. Text was getting lighter, pictures bigger. And my hard drive was getting filled up with more and more photos. The ten-to-one ratio they say photo- graphers shoot to get a handful of good images was more like a hundred- to-one for me. But I was learning to see the world as light through a lens, Vancouver as a subject to document, and Price Tags as a gallery. Today we call that a blog 6 Wel-com Issues/Contents A blog, in fact, eventually followed – a place to deposit the small items and observations that otherwise went into Price Tags, the magazine, allowing the latter to focus on one or two major stories. Blog: www.pricetags.wordpress.com But it was also clear, long before the blogosphere, that I needed my own web site. (Thanks to the generosity of the Sightline Institute, I had been able to upload each issue to their server and provide a link for readers, rather than email an irritating five-megabyte pdf file. They are still hosting the archives for Price Tags, which I very much appreciate. Thanks, Sightline.) I also realized I needed technical Web site: www.pricetags.ca support - and fortunately had Phase2 Consultants. Zaman Now I had a place to store recent Valli-Hasham and Hanif Jessani issues, previous writings and my not only helped set up the web site bio. It also keeps my name at the but are on call to get me out of top of Google (one step ahead of digital jams. “Gordon Price Music” – no relation). 7 Wel-com Issues/Contents I started to get reports and responses: Mary Jo Porter’s review of the new Seattle Library, Greg Wyatt’s praise of Phoenix, Larry Beasley’s speeches (there would be three, from the East Side to Abu Dhabi.) Though my background was as an editor, I realized that the photos ultimately deserved priority – and that text should be short and, in its own way, a graphic element. Good composition balanced them both. 8 Wel-com Issues/Contents I incorporated commentary, often my columns from Business in Vancouver – particularly those on the folly of the Gateway freeway. But I tried to keep the issues positive: the simple pleasures of discovering a new space, a new city, a new season. I could share my favourite places -like the region’s trails, from the Seawall to Seymour, with which we in the Lower Mainland are blessed. I also shared the pages of Price Tags with other writers who shared my passion for cities – in particular, Derek Moscato, who started with Lonsdale and ended up on the pages of The Province. Whenever I was able to travel, usually on a speaking tour about Vancouver, I walked and biked around with a camera, photographing whatever captured my eye. Better yet, I was hosted by people who knew what they were looking at. Soon I was com- posing stories through a lens. In 2004, I experienced Australia for the second time, only now with the intent to document the characteristics of our Commonwealth cousin. Three trips generated ten issues of Price Tags. 9 Wel-com Issues/Contents Price Tags 18 First priority was always my own changing city, and how people were actually occupying the places that had been so carefully designed with ambitious but top- down intent. What was it like on the ground? Had we succeeded in creating ‘livable density’? There were so many new spaces to document: the parks of False Creek and Coal Harbour, a sculpture to celebrate herons, a restaurant opening in Stanley Park, a bridge restoration - all the befores and afters. 10 Wel-com Issues/Contents Some issues were no more than a loop around nearby neighbourhoods, observing what was happening, making personal comment. I was never quite sure how far to narrow the perspective. To be honest, I never got that much feedback. Save the most important kind – more readers. The subscription list was constantly growing as PT was passed around. There are now well over a thousand subscribers, split mainly between Canada, Australia and the U.S. I added more personal profiles as a way of providing insight into the character of the city. Sam Sullivan’s life in Yaletown (before he was Mayor) said as much about his neighbourhood as him. There was a multi-part survey of architect Richard Henriquez’s West End portfolio and Barrie Mowatt’s public-art ambitions,. 11 Wel-com Issues/Contents If there is a repeated theme – the need to pursue more sustainable urban regions - my job was to illustrate the successes and the lessons learned. But not too heavy on the preaching. I try to show how urban history (surveying, streetcars, sprawl) relate to the ways we do things today, connected to real places that are making more progress than often their own citizens realize, from St. Paul to Port Moody. No matter where I travel, the lens through which I filter my impressions is called ‘Vancouver’ – the percep- tions I’ve gained after thirty years of residence, half of which were on City Council. Sometimes the comparison between places is direct, particularly with my second favourite city, Portland. But the perspective of home and away is always there. And, according to the survey PT readers took last month, you like that. 12 Wel-com Issues/Contents About 60 percent of you open PT when it arrives in your mail box – and about the same percent pass it along.