[Editor's Note: A big welcome to Matt, one of our newest columnists on city news and ideas!]

I first heard about W2 in the buzz surrounding Woodward's opening, and as a continuation of development's 'cultural components.' The Woodward's central atrium, for example, features a massive Stan Douglas photograph recreating the Gastown Riots, and the condos themselves stand around SFU's new School for the Contemporary Arts, complete with a cinema, art galleries, and an 'experimental theatre.' For the time being, W2 (read as 'post-Woodwards') exists as a 'Culture + Media House' just across the street from the Woodward's complex (where W2's final home is still under construction).

Taking up all four stories of a vacant Hastings masonry building, the Media House vaguely resembles something like a clean and well-lit artist squat, provocatively combining the building's decrepitude with the program's tech-oriented identity. Passing by one night last month, I noticed it had actually been 'set on fire' by way of a digital projection.

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see, and everything to do with the way you see them." -- Elliot Erwitt

So, I was idly browsing through the Beyond Robson Flickr photo pool tonight and realized that there's an awe-inspiring variety of great photos in there -- snapshots which, when viewed as a group, provide an essential picture of Vancouver through locals' eyes. As a result, I'm going to publish a piece every few weeks which showcases five of the most outstanding of these photos -- paying tribute to the citizen photographers who shared amazing shots of our city through their own eyes.

This round's group of photos are all about the celebration of Vancouver's colour -- whether that colour is seen in the brightness of a public art installation, through bubbles and laughter on sun-drenched streets, street performers playing in bright costumes, or the chaotic motion of public spaces.

On the eve of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, publishing houses are crossing their fingers that books about the host city will fly of the shelves as souvenirs, guides and walks down memory lane.

For an urban centre, Vancouver is a bit of a light-weight. With a population of just over 600,000 (its greater area being over 2 million), it falls far behind the metropolises found in most of the rest of the world. Between its size and its young age of 124 years, it's easy to scoff at the suggestion that Vancouver's history and culture could possibly make an interesting story. Historically speaking, the extent of a Vancouver-themed book collection would include coffee-table books showcasing the ocean, mountains and trees, a few Arthur Erickson buildings, Douglas Coupland, Emily Carr paintings, totem poles and that sparkly science ball. But that is a bit Expo '86.

This year's Eastside Culture Crawl is the 13th and opens up artist studios for three days so the public can wander around and check out some of the 300 artists that participate.

The event runs on Nov 20, 21, & 22.

As a part of the culture crawl, there's the 4th annual Echo Chamber, which has an "after hours live art explosion" on Fri Nov 20th from 9 - 1am, and also on Sat Nov 21st from 8pm - 1am. This takes place at Chapel Arts 304 Dunlevy and apparently sells out every year. There's a cash bar.

The Echo Chamber costs $10 or $5 if you're a crawl artist, and features DJ Rebound, NFB award winning filmmaker Robert Riendeau, and a host of other acts.

Okay seriously, the cut in the arts and culture sector really didn't affect me personally -- especially since I work for a non-profit arts organization with little funding, but now it has. A friend of mine has been laid off -- about 6 months early! From a relatively big festival coming up, and you'd think they wouldn't be affected - but nope! Big and small organizations are taking a hit.

All because the Liberals want to cut over 80% of what has consisted of only 1/20th of 1% of the provincial budget. There will be a big rally tomorrow at the only place rallies take place in this town - Vancouver Art Gallery! Tomorrow! Wednesday at 12:00 noon!

Nearly done! from UPPERCASE gallery on Vimeo.

Hopefully I can squeeze it into my Saturday afternoon schedule of hanging out by the pool and uhh.. hanging out by the pool with drinks but tomorrow the Regional Assembly of Text is hosting an event with Janine Vangool the designer of owner of Uppercase Gallery in Calgary and also runs Uppercase Magazine. The magazine is a cute and some would say the cutest magazine for the "creative and curious". It's all happening in the lowercase reading room (which by the way is not an room located in the basement of the Regional Assembly like I originally thought but a small closet converted into a reading room in the store)