Vancouver ILXors

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.

best ramen fyi: tsukemen or cheese tonkotsu at taishoken franchise in chinatown, white miso at nanchu on alexandra in richmond, kintaro

More food talk please; seafood in particular.

octopus's garden imho

Go on...

Reasonable price and fun: Go Fish (near Granville Island)
Very cheap fish and chips: Windjammer on Commercial Dr
Expensive: uh...Joe Fortes? Feels like there are lots of higher end seafood places that I know nothing about.
Chinese: Western Lake on Victoria @ 33rd
Fresh seafood in general: Granville Island.

octopus's garden is ???overrated/overpriced and i used to avoid it but i had the tasting menu there recently and they have the freshest fish in town and creativity and FLAIR.
ajisai is my more traditional sushi choice.

those i can recommend enthusiastically

not really my thing/rarely have the opportunity or enough friends to really go but the huge cantonese high end places like kirin's richmond branch, empire seafood, red star. peninsula seafood, which is in a mall. but also bamboo grove in richmond even if they're known for maybe they're not known for anything except being in a horrible location and having a dirt parking lot full of maseratis but if you're pre-ordering a set menu, it's always heavy on seafood and always good. same with big chef, also in richmond.

more conventional, less enthusiastic but on a list of "known for seafood and i would take someone there that asked for seafood" yew seafood + raw bar, blue water, raw bar at vpr.

i never liked joe fortes.

i'll have to go to a few these places you guys are mentioning when i'm in town in august

I was being a bit facetious by mentioning Joe Fortes. The world of nice restaurants is largely unknown to me, though I have been there once.

in other news, i can't believe they're building a zipline at queen elizabeth park. i always liked the tranquility of that place.

Yeah, that's gross. It's the fault of the Parks Board, who have a majority of members in the business-friendly (aka. fascist LOL) Non-Partisans Association. It's just a tiny reminder of why we are better off with the current municipal government instead of these fuckwits.

Thanks y'all

I love queen e park, that zipline thing is dumb!

the smoke has been a real drag. sunday was just totally horrendous. wish it would rain :(

i know! i'm hoping no more major fires before august, because that's when i'll be showing the missus around town (her first time in canada, as well)

i heard it's going to rain this weekend, though?

I never trust the forecast past a day or two in the future but fuck here's hoping