Vancouver ILXors

good place. i'm glad to see it still doing well. sort of miss it, even when i'm in china.

im going to be in vancouver in march for 3 weeks visiting my girlfriend and apart from seeing her im pretty much just stoked for the dining.

this is such a weird place to live imo (n.b. i have always lived within 15 miles of glasgow prior to moving here at the start of july):

1. i live in a neighbourhood that i would describe as beautiful, quiet, and pleasant (strathcona), and where i could never afford to buy a house in a million years, but sex workers and johns do it just outside my gate, and last night someone took a huge dump out there which i will have to clean up at some stage before my girlfriend gets back on sunday.
2. booze is so fucking expensive it makes my head spin. most expensive liquor store prices ive seen anywhere.
3. not that there's "nothing" going on, but kind of not as culturally interesting as a city of its size should be.
4. tons of great places to eat.
5. dtes totally astounded me first time i walked thru there, yet it's weirdly so much more sketchy than it is scary, i feel safer walking these streets than glasgow streets (and prob with good reason).
6. b.c. is the most beautiful place ive ever been and you can travel so little distance and be somewhere so unspoiled and beautiful.
7. im aware that it's about to rain for 5 months and im not sure how much this will colour my future opinion of the place.

1. right, it was weird to live in kitsilano, 4th and dunbar, paradise of stucco mansions and heritage homes and private schools, a concrete stairway away from a beach full of yuppie ubc biz students playing beach volleyball, and still come across dudes shooting up in my alley.

3. i think the high cost of living sort of adds to some of the cultural lameness. the more time i spend in vancouver, the more i feel like the real interesting stuff is happening/will happen in the suburbs and beyond, where rent is cheap, rather than in traditional enclaves of hipness, where developers are changing the architectural and cultural landscape with condo projects (oh look, an apartment building with a lululemon and a starbucks on the ground floor. just what vancouver needs). on property values: it's interesting to hear everyone in van saying that shit has changed and it's possibily feasible to buy there now but the bubble will never burst.

4. it's true but. the foodcarts all suck. every new place in gastown... eh. judas goat? wildebeest is worth the hype, though. sardine can is an interesting addition to the area. sad to see cafeteria close. sad to see refuel close (where i got my illfated start in the restaurant industry, went from working as a dishwasher at a taiwanese fusion fake euroclass place in richmond [starry night, beside costco, i'm sure it's still there], dropped in one day after i saw an ad on scout, got a garde manger job that made suicidal). and i feel like the amazing asian/other selection is overstated. there are, i contend, two places to eat chinese food in vancouver. one is a stall in the richmond public market and one is on an anonymous stretch of kingsway and has signs for a lunch buffet that doesn't exist and is just a great mean local that happens to serve great homestyle chinese food and also features lax enforcement of smoking bylaws. (honorable chinese mentions: bushuair in richmond, which is decorated with gold dragons and pictures of the chairman and menus only in chinese for max intimidation factor but they don't give a fuck, big chef for canto [same pricetag and kitchen talent and finesse of the big luxomaxe temples to cantonese cuisine but a bit more approachable], and bamboo grove, also in richmond #3 road, which looks divey and has an anonymous sort of name but has hardcore hk-calibre cantonese food and a great wine list [still weird to see tables of people eating three digit priced entrees at red star or wherever, drinking naked grape pinot]). good food is in the suburbs. i remember when the only good pizza in vancouver was in abbotsford r.i.p. ah beetz.

5. i lived in chinatown for a year, joined the shocktroops of gentrification. interesting to watch the creep of developers and hipsters and the entrenched social disaster meeting head on. i like walking by the bottle depot on hastings to check out what the boosters are selling, while hispanic dope dealers eyeball me.

consider abbotsford to be "in vancouver" = not a real vancouverite

anyone here like cameras? love leo's on granville

SHOOT LIKE THE PROS, SHOP LIKE THE PROS

4. have never walked past a foodcart i was even remotely interested in. actually that's a lie, there was a vij's one outside my bank once but i'd just eaten.

unfortunately i am never going to the suburbs to eat. remembering that i am from a place with a fairly small chinese community (and p much no japanese, vietnamese, cambodian, etc. community) im quite happy with eating options.

nine dishes i can do. probably will do.

im never going to the suburbs for anything tbh. going "up the hill" to mount pleasant is a journey for me.

kafka's at main & broadway = best coffeeshop in vancouver and pulp fiction is just down the street

my favourite coffee in the city is actually up the hill at fraser and kingsway: matchstick. i like pulp fiction but i usually go to the one on commercial.

Guys, there is nothing cultural going on in the suburbs. Nothing.

Also Jim, the rain in Vancouver won't seem too bad if you come from Glasgow.

Mildest winter of my god damn life.

Same in Seattle: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-most-boring-winter-in-seattle.html

I'll be all up in you tonight

What's the best strategy for vij's? Get there when they open, basically!

(I'm here tonight through Sunday. Seeing NoMeansNo & Ford Pier at the Rickshaw on Sat)

Wish I'd known about that show before I made plans for tomorrow night.

Bryan! We gotta meet up somehow.

i spent the last few weeks in vancouver and it's great and dull as it ever was

favorite place to eat cantonese food in richmond right now:

1. big chef in richmond on alexandra road, eat street richmond, in the same complex as beijiang 北疆 the weird fake fancy xinjiang restaurant with plastic marble tabletops and gold chopsticks and oil paintings of sexy ethnic minority girls. this place is kitschy lots of frosted mirrors and garland and blinding lighting borrowed from a north van grow op. i like: the egg custard with dried seafood and preserved egg, creamy salty fishy with pungent submarines of translucent black-green, fish with bitter melon and black beans, "auntie song" fish soup (white pepper, gooey potato starch and fish broth body), steam pork with salt fish (so boring but they're good at boring cantonese staples)
2. hoi tong. across from richmond public market among the bakeries (小麦田饼 wheat garden is my favorite / cheaper than kam do across from richmond brighouse) and closet sized seafood places. this place has maybe 8 tables? same menu as places like red star or shiang garden, legit wine list, but small small small. thick soup with black eyed peas and chicken feet, pork hock with sour plums, geoduck with bitter melon and tangerine peel, taro duck.
3. bamboo grove in richmond looks grimy as fuck and i hear it used to be sort of like an early low standards hk café type place but it's like if i was directing a movie about hk heroin smugglers in richmond, there'd be a long dinner scene here. unexpected flash behind the FREE DELIVERY ON ALL ORDERS signage on the exterior, wine list heavy on expensive french reds, crisp starched waitstaff. sharkfin and crabmeat steamed eggs, taro duck, sea bass + black bean. when i have to walk to richmond public market up to the skytrain i always cut through the parking lot in the back because it's car show level assortment, ferrari california parked in the mud between quattroporte and panamera.

Mackro: you're going back south Sunday? I won't really have time this weekend, unfortunately, but I think you're back up often, right? Probably more often than I'm in Seattle. We'll figure something out one of these days. Hope that show was good in spite of it being at the Rickshaw.

Not to sound too defensive, but the common claim that vancouver lacks for cultural activities kinda misses the point of vancouver: half the city is outside on the mountains/ocean/seawall/etc, while the other half is having a quiet night in anticipation of a big hike/ski/run/etc the next day. Outdoor culture *is* culture in vancouver. It's why the biggest company in vancouver is (somewhat sadly) Lululemon. Even hipsters hike the chief.

/local rant

This was a stellar weekend. I haven't been here since 2007, but I will be back more often now.

bert OTM

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/31/signs-you-grew-up-in-vancouver-90s_n_6317820.html

i visited vancouver, i went to the post office and the courthouse, it was a great trip. maybe you guys should just go to the post office and the courthouse if you want 'cultural activities'

only took me 2 and a half years to get totally fed up with this city :/

ugliest dump ever.the naturally beauty is all very well and good but the majority of your view as you traverse the city is the horrendous,cheap,gross late 20 century architecture.the mountains are backdrop,the Vancouver special,the rain stained 1970s apartment building and the newly constructed high rise condo building is what you're going to be seeing close at hand.

i would trade my beautiful apartment and stable job in edmonton and snowy commute in a new car for my one room--carved up portion of the upstairs of a vanc special-- with shared bathroom and kitchen on number three road in richmond and a skytrain ride into the city and the nightbus home.

jim, sorry to hear. i love vancouver for personal reasons, i guess. i'm also interested in going to scotland one day--glasgow and edinburgh, of course.

whereabouts are you headed now?

xpost to j. - Post Office is going btw. Probably the Courthouse too.

I really like that post office building downtown for some reason.

not leaving Vancouver,we live in bc cause my retired mother in law lives in victoria,we could live anywhere in western Canada but tbh Vancouver trumps Calgary and Edmonton as a place I want to live.

I'll go back to liking it in July when the skies are blue and i can sit in the park drinking.

The city planning, construction and endless discussions about real estate etc are a real drag, it is true.

When I lived there, I went to Seattle and Bellingham whenever possible.

what's in Bellingham? Dislike Seattle too,ha! like portland but it's not as convenient obv.

Bellingham's a nice little college town. I would totally live there if there were any jobs. I live in Seattle now. Way better than Vancouver and Portland, too.

jim, earnest question. what is your favourite city in the pnw?

Bellingham is chill and pretty.

xpost. I visited the pnw before i moved to vancouver and spent time in vancouver, victoria, seattle, and portland. i liked portland most.

subsequently ive only spent enough time in vancouver and victoria to really have any proper grounds to assess the cities. i actually like victoria and def feel like it could be a place to move to, but not at this stage of my life (im 30, married with no kids, if i was 40 and had a kid then it might make more sense). it's v parochial, white, small, and quiet. but i just really love being on the island, the climate is p great (it rains way less than vancouver), and its def p picturesque and charming in parts.

seattle i didn't really get much of an impression of but just have found it quite bleh and also somewhat similar to vancouver in a bad way. portland is obv smaller than those two cities, the least built up by condo development etc., and a bit easier to get to know just by walking around or whatever which may be why it struck me as the most pleasant to be in, ive also spent a couple more days there than in seattle. feel like in seattle i maybe just didnt ever go to a dece neighbourhood, was like downtown, belltown, capitol hill, around there, and like georgetown or something? yeah, didn't really make much of an impression.

been on two trips to seattle + portland, and spent like half a day in seattle due to flying through seatac airport and having forever between bus and flight. once i renew my british passport, and with my handy new canadian permanent resident card i'll be able to go back to both those places, getting out of canada for the first time in 2 years or so.

that's cool, jim.

i feel like most of my friends (they're from vancouver) really dig portland

Seattle, Vancouver and Portland are all about the same size: 580k to 610k people or so living within city limits. Seattle's metro area is almost 1.5m people larger than van and pdx, though.

oh hey yeah metro vancouver isn't much bigger than metro portland, i had always assumed that, hmm.

Metro Vancouver (22 municipalities) has a population of more than 2.5 million.

she's comparing the lower mainland/'vancouver proper' to portland, though. the wiki on it is kind of confusing/mixes things up

if you go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Vancouver

and scroll down to the table, you see that city of vancouver has a population of 603k

um thoughts on transit plebiscite?

The whole thing is a waste of time and money.
If politicians at every level are rooting for Yes, why didn't they just jack up sales tax themselves?
If politicians are convinced there is "no plan B" then maybe they could move aside and make way for some politicians with more balls/vision?

Voters have every reason to refuse Translink more money when they still, after 29 years, haven't worked out how to charge people for riding skytrain.

Yeah. Christy Clark is a fine blend of gutless and malevolent, and it's not going to pass. Voting yes anyway

shasta otm w ajisai. hachi was more convenient but i'll take the 41 to kerrisdale now.

That really sucks. Dandelion is a record store I visit regularly but rarely find anything, but the owners were really nice people, they are very into music and it was cool shop. Relieved the other stores on the block are relatively unscathed.

I haven't gone record shopping in years but i have a very fond memory of discovering Dandelion with a friend when I was like 15 and being so amazed by all the cool records they had there... sad to hear about what happened

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-jeff-amp-laura-at-dandelion-records-amp-emporium