You know, I never thought there were that many yuppies in this town, overpriced real estate aside. Sure, we have Rich Wankers who live high on the hill in their sprawling pseudo-Craftsman mansions -- I know this because I have accidentally become trapped in their cul-de-sacs of doom -- but I didn't think we had many yuppies. We don't seem to have much in the way of yuppie jobs, yuppie clothes, yuppie restaurants, or even yuppie behavior. We don't have super-trendy restaurants where everybody wears an Italian suit and orders off the menu and spends the entire meal talking on their cell phones to LA or New York.

But some developer apparently thinks there is an underserved yuppie market here, and to tap into it Bellingham needs a sparkly tower of in-your-face yuppiness like what you might find in the lower mainland of BC, or San Diego, or some other locale with moderate weather and stratospherically overpriced real-estate.

Now, I abhor this manner of architectural abomination anywhere, and this particular project is hideously out of scale and out of character with the buildings around it, and, worse, if it is successful it will just encourage more of that sort of thing, which I will hate so much it destroys my ability to think straight, so, anyway, I will be praying every night that the project fails miserably, preferably before any ground is broken, like maybe whoever is behind it isn't really a real estate developer, but is in fact a con artist, and will be skedaddling to the Cayman Islands with all the money gullible yuppies have paid to reserve spaces in the proposed Towering Infernal.

Sigh. One can dream.

But I also despise this kind of stupid high-concept marketing for condos or apartments or whatever, where they always call them "homes" and try to make it seem like, somehow, if you live there you will have exquisite taste, fashionable friends, a personal maid, and a renewed dedication to your fitness regimen.

Oooo, and note the little slogan, so carefully spelled out with lower case letters, but periods, as if each word is a sentence all to itself, but somehow understated at the same time, like some moronic little post-modern poetic exercise: water. sky. home.

A condo is not a LIFESTYLE, okay? It's a BOX where you KEEP YOUR STUFF.

Addendum: As of March 2, 2008 the developers of Bay View Tower are refunding deposits. According to project manager Robert Howe, the project isn't dead. But they have vacated their sales office. Bay View Tower update.