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Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

justinmcelroy.com

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Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#61

Post by jabbany »

cgh wrote: post #41
upupandup wrote: post #7

BC in the 80s, 90s seemed like completely different worlds compared to today. Vancouver especially seemed to have peaked early 2000s before the housing bubble took off. Rainforest Cafe, Playdium, Indy 500, Vancouver Grizzlies, Canucks. It had so much going for it. What was once a fun, soulful city is now something completely different.

The Achilles heel of Vancouver was the insane liquor licensing, which lead to the moniker of "No Fun City". That's what you get when your city is founded by a bunch of Scottish Calvinists. But otherwise, I have great memories of my early 20s seeing bands at the Niagara Hotel and hanging out three nights a week at the Ivanhoe while paying $500 a month for a decent studio in the West End. Commercial Drive was in full s…

> sleek and generic

> Hong Kong

Idk, but I would not call Hong Kong sleek and generic... If anything it's kind of the opposite.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#62

Post by jabbany »

guerrilla wrote: post #54

What a beautiful place... > everyone was ordered to leave town. Hmm well that seems to be the problem. A shame it wasn't allowed to grown on it's own and then maybe something would have come of it... Weird that it's private property, that is a bit creepy.

Ahh yes the rich history of exploitative company towns :)

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#63

Post by danans »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #34
danans wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and not accessible by road... That doesn't seem to be true: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Port+Edward,+BC,+Canada/Kits...

The author even mentions driving in "Which means, for a fee, you can drive two hours down a barely passable road. The caretakers will open the locked gates"

Seems like a ferry would make sense to access it. BC already has a ton of those.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#64

Post by olyjohn »

jabbany wrote: post #58
nsxwolf wrote: post #51

The house has so many design and decor cues from the house/neighborhood I grew up in in Redmond, WA. I wonder if there's a name for that design movement of orange carpet, wood panelling, wallpaper, linoleum, popcorn ceilings...

Yeah, this kind of split-level design was super common in the PNW and 1980s isn't even particularly old when it comes to housing (plenty of houses in the Seattle metro area that are from the '20s...). Like here's a random listing from 30 seconds of searching that has light renovations: https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/10201-23rd-Ct-SW-98146/hom... and if you spend enough time looking for "affordable" options in subu…

There's a common thing that I've noticed when going to Canada. As soon as you cross the border, you see tons of houses built in the 70s and 80s that are sided with stucco. They look so out of place in BC. In Washington, our climate is pretty much the same, but nobody here has stucco houses. I'm curious why so many up in Canada, but not here. They look like they would fit in nicely in Southern California.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#65

Post by Kibae »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #59
thfuran wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but if someone asks if you have any relatives in town, you probably don't need to mention that technically everyone is related. You definitely don't need to also mention that the geese are also distant relatives.

Welcome to Hacker News, enjoy your stay!

Are you closely related to Brian Armstrong, creator of Coinbase, by any chance?

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#66

Post by StrictDabbler »

InCityDreams wrote: post #36
StrictDabbler wrote: post #4

FYI: This Justin McElroy is a respected Canadian journalist. He is not closely related to the Justin McElroy of MBMBAM though they do look very similar.

Why the italics on 'closely'?

McElroy is a specific name that originated in two small geographical regions with tightly tied genetics and the two Justins bear a strong resemblance.

Most Scotch-Irish people in Canada are related in some way because the initial colonizing wave was quite small. The podcasters are from Milwaukee which shares a border with Canada, is near Canada's most populous city, and was largely settled in that same small wave.

Asserting that they're "no relation" would be quite a stretch.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#67

Post by cgh »

rr888 wrote: post #43

Looking at the map I only just noticed how small the BC coastline is and how Alaska takes most of it. Looks like it goes back to agreement between England and Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Saint_Petersburg_(18... And there were never more than 700 Russians in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America#Sale_of_Alaska...

The Alaska Panhandle (the part of Alaska that extends down the west coast of BC) and the coast of BC are actually roughly equal length (BC's coast is slightly longer, I believe). You are probably looking at a Mercator projection which distorts sizes. Try looking at a more accurate map projection.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#68

Post by duxup »

jabbany wrote: post #58
nsxwolf wrote: post #51

The house has so many design and decor cues from the house/neighborhood I grew up in in Redmond, WA. I wonder if there's a name for that design movement of orange carpet, wood panelling, wallpaper, linoleum, popcorn ceilings...

Yeah, this kind of split-level design was super common in the PNW and 1980s isn't even particularly old when it comes to housing (plenty of houses in the Seattle metro area that are from the '20s...). Like here's a random listing from 30 seconds of searching that has light renovations: https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/10201-23rd-Ct-SW-98146/hom... and if you spend enough time looking for "affordable" options in subu…

Upper Midwest had those split levels too!

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#69

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #60
rr888 wrote: post #43

Looking at the map I only just noticed how small the BC coastline is and how Alaska takes most of it. Looks like it goes back to agreement between England and Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Saint_Petersburg_(18... And there were never more than 700 Russians in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America#Sale_of_Alaska...

I believe BC has more coastline than every U.S. state other than Alaska, so don't feel too bad about it.

Yes, since US states are much, much smaller than BC, that's not surprising.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#70

Post by cgh »

jabbany wrote: post #61
cgh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Achilles heel of Vancouver was the insane liquor licensing, which lead to the moniker of "No Fun City". That's what you get when your city is founded by a bunch of Scottish Calvinists. But otherwise, I have great memories of my early 20s seeing bands at the Niagara Hotel and hanging out three nights a week at the Ivanhoe while paying $500 a month for a decent studio in the West End. Commercial Drive was in full s…

> sleek and generic > Hong Kong Idk, but I would not call Hong Kong sleek and generic... If anything it's kind of the opposite.

I was speaking mostly of the financial district and all the glass and steel. But yeah, maybe not the greatest comparison.
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