An American in Vancouver

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’m here on my 2nd trip to Vancouver in 3 years. No reason, really, I just like the place. I like Canada generally, but Vancouver especially. In fact, I liked it so much last time I was here, I almost didn’t go back to New York. (I’ve got issues with New York; see below.) I was seriously thinking about relocating and seeing if I could make a go of it, at least part-time, maybe meet some great gal, get married and, well, you know, go native.

Anyway, I’m reading up to prepare for the trip and I come upon this thought in a guidebook…roughly paraphrased: “Vancouverites will spring to your aid if you have a map and look lost. But go to a bar and no one will speak to you for hours.”

Hmm, I think. Sounds a lot like NY right there. The best people in the world if you’re in trouble. But if you’re not in trouble…you’re really in trouble. Try and find a context, a group, some buds to hang with, and you run up against the old “what have you done for me lately?” Everybody’s got a life, and there’s no room for you in it.

Anyway, I’m reading much the same thing and then some about Vancouverites, and hoping to hell it isn’t true: that they’re mindless fitness nazis; that they have a particularly severe strain of the classic Canadian superiority/inferiority complex; that a gentleman is expected to present complete financial statements on a first date; that they’d really just rather you left them the hell alone.

So, Vancouverites, I ask you. Is there a place in your dynamic, diverse city for an iconoclastic, verbal, quick-witted, saxophone-playing heterosexual bachelor media consultant in his late 30s who likes long walks, mountain biking, pine trees and sunsets but could not really be called outdoorsy, athletic, careerist or trendoid, has been known to affect snap-brim hats and similar retro affectations, and has been known to be a bit shy and standoffish himself on occasion?

I’m leaving town Tuesday, so no worries about that. And don’t bother filling me in about nuts and bolts like employment, immigration, etc.; I’m a big boy and I can nail all that down myself. I need intangibles here, folks. I like Vancouver; I just wonder whether it will like me, or whether I’ll end up a bitter, isolated old barfly, something I can do just as well anywhere.

2

I’m currently living in Victoria, but I grew up just outside of Vancouver, and I can assure you that we are not all fitness-obssessed outdoorsy types. I can’t deny that the Canadian superiority/inferiority complex is present, but it’s almost directed as much at Central Canada (i.e. Toronto) as it is at the States; I can’t speak for every woman in the city, but I’d never dream of asking for financial statments before a date, other than running like hell from any guy who seemed like some kind of shiftless drifter who would constantly be asking for “loans”; and I doubt that Vancouver has more people who’d rather just be left the hell alone than any other big city.

Admittedly, for all that I grew up there, my experience of Vancouver is primarily as a student, which is a whole other kettle of fish than arriving in a new city as an adult with a career and so on. I’ve been in Victoria for about a year now, and I’m finding it a bit hard to break in socially, but Victoria also has a reputation for being worse for that than Vancouver - I suspect a combination of small-town cliquishness and the fact that, at least in my age group, everyone’s left town after finishing school, among other things - not least that I’m shy and not good at breaking into established groups.

At any rate, while I don’t doubt it would probably be difficult at first, I’m sure you’d find yourself a niche in Vancouver, Beware of Doug. For what it’s worth, your little self description sounds like someone I’d like to meet at any rate.

3

Intangibles?. Sounds like you’re looking for opinions instead of a specific question with a specific answer.

Moved.

samclem GQ moderator.

4

Yeah, the Drive. Or the West End, if you’re already set for work.

If you want to have a coffee or a beer sometime, I could introduce you to a couple of folks. Nobody of consequence, unfortunately. :smiley:

I’ve lived in Vancouver my entire life, and it seems to me that I’m therefore the least-qualified person to tell you what it’s like to live here. Fish/Water problem.

I think there’s something in the standoffishness, although I’ve always taken it for granted. I was recently in Edmonton, and was at first unsettled and then intrigued by some cultural differences related to personal accessibility.

For example, I was thrown for a loop by their LRT. Our ALRT (SkyTrain) cars, like our buses, have seats that are strategically-positioned to minimize eye-contact. The first time I got on the Edmonton LRT, I was at a loss as to where to sit. No single seats. Certainly no single seats facing empty space. Double seats, arranged like an old-fashioned passenger train’s seats, so that you sit knee-to-knee. :eek: But that’s not all: I sat down, reluctantly, facing a woman who was scribbling in a notebook. At least she was occupied. Then she put her notebook away and started talking to me. She asked where I was going, and told me where she was coming from. I bravely answered as laconically as politeness would allow, but didn’t encourage further conversation, because everybody knows that only deranged and possibly dangerous people start conversations with strangers.

She got the hint and picked up her notebook again… until another fellow sat down beside me, when she started talking to him. Surprisingly, he reacted as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Uncomfortable, I began looking around the car, and I noticed, after a few stops, that some of the people who had been engaged in animated conversations with each other got off at different stops. As if… as if… they hadn’t got on together, as I’d assumed. As if they were just passing time on the train with strangers.

Blew my mind. I was reminded of a Toronto TV show called Train 48 that I had often ridiculed. Poor production values, crappy writing, terrible acting, but worst of all, an impossible premise: People who commute on the same train every day talk about what’s going on in their lives with each other. Obviously, I had often said, the people who conceived and written the show had never taken public transit. I now began to suspect that not everywhere was like Vancouver in that regard.

Whoa.

And yeah, I think most people here think of a bar as someplace to go with friends, not to make them, or even acknowledge that other people exist.

Anyway, sorry for that long anecdote. The offer of a beer or coffee still stands, if you’re not worried I’ll bore the tits off ya. :smiley:

5

I’ve lived in Vancouver for a year, and I have found a boyfriend purely by accident, but other than that absolutely zero friends. I did meet a couple of people at school and work who I like, but we don’t see each other outside of school and work. And I have a friend who I’d known online for years. But other than that, I haven’t met anyone here. I am quite shy, though.

One thing about Vancouver that I noticed, which may or may not concern you as much as it does me: Chocolate milk is not as good here as it is in Nova Scotia. Not only is it mostly 1%, but it’s very light coloured and thin even when you do somehow manage to find 2%. I miss the thick, rich stuff of home. If chocolate milk is one of your loves, Vancouver cannot deliver, make alternate arrangements!

6

Hey thanks, everyone! My faith in Vancouver is (for the time-being anyway) restored. Or maybe I did the SDMB equivalent of standing around with an open map and a duhhh face…

rinni, this may boggle your mind, but as a kid in the wilds of Iowa I used to make my very own choca’milk! You can too. It’s not hard. Get you a quart of whole; get you a container of chocolate goo; get you a spoon; get 'er done. :stuck_out_tongue: Yum! (I still have to do this, as my chocolate goo, and my lifestyle, are now sugar-free.)

Larry, you’re most kind. Let me think it over. I usually don’t bare all to strangers, then go F2F with them. As for chatting them up in the commuter train, we rarely do it in NY either (mostly for professional networking purposes), but you can develop “train buddies” there, who may or may not respond to efforts to hang out off the rails. Subway socialization however is strictly taboo: courtesy = “give others no cause to be angry or scared.”

I actually am staying in the West End and I dig it. What’s the Drive? (I hope you don’t mean the British sense of “you’re down the drive,” ie: get lost.)

Ms Macphisto, I have difficulty everywhere, so BTDT. I actually think these people may be more like me socially (somewhat reserved) than like NYers.

samclem, I posted to General Questions because I didn’t have a specific question. Ya dig?

7

Making it yourself isn’t the same! In order to get the thickness, you have to add ungodly amounts of syrup, which makes it waaaay too sweet and chocolatey. No, no, the secret is the seaweed!

8

Geez, you’re desperate! Have you considered chocolate half-and-half?

9

Ex-Vancouverite checking in. If Larry Mudd’s ‘The Drive’ is the same as mine, he’s talking about Commercial Drive, the eclectic, international, ethnic, ‘hole in the wall’ street in Vancouver. Lots of little shops, funky restaurants, diverse cultures and weird people. It’s in the Eastern part of Vancouver, less touristy. Good times.

www.bcpassport.com/itineraries/thedrive.html
www.thedrive.ca
www.commercial-drive.com

Have a good time!

10

Oh yeah, that’s the one-and-only capital “D” Drive – Vancouver’s second coffee district. It’s gone through some huge changes in the last twenty years.

Originally, it was a sort of “Little Italy” (although in reality about half Portugeuse.) Where you went to get good coffee, baked goods, and import foods. The parks were almost exclusively occupied by old men engaged in various forms of gambling – lawn bowling, cards, chess.

In the late eighties, the “alternatives” started drifting in, attracted by the scent of coffee and the total lack of yuppies cluttering up the cafes. (Not to mention the new Skytrain, that made the area much more accessible.) Shops started opening up that catered to them – vegetarian specialty shops, purveyors of incense and paisley clothing, etc. Dirty hippies playing hackey-sack and bongos shared the park with the old men. For a while, it was actually a bit tense, as the cultures clashed – I think the watershed moment was when Joe (of “Joe’s Cafe and Pool Hall”) ejected a lesbian couple from his establishment for a public display of affection, prompting the freaks and reactionaries to choose sides. Boycotts, harsh words, and even fist-fights became commonplace.

Now things have settled down and everyone seems to get along pretty well, and it’s one of the big three hot areas to live. It has many of the same attractions as the West End, but is a little funkier (and rougher) and a bit more affordable, although real estate prices down there have shot up astronomically, compared to what they were in the eighties, before all the development.

Another great thing about the Drive: The Van East Cinema. They used to play arthouse movies (like the Pacific Cinematheque, downtown) and for a bleak (for me) while they played only lowbrow asian films, but now they play first run mainstream films at a huge discount. Woot!

11

I like Vancouver, but Victoria has an old-world charm and quirkiness to it Vancouver kinda lacks. Sort of like the difference between Montreal and Quebec.

12

:frowning: Victoria’s charm and old world feeling have been lost forever under a massive amount of development. In my humble opinion, of course.

New condos are everywhere, and the densification is really making a difference in the quality of life.

It’s not the same city that it used to be.

Dang, it used to be that you went to Vancouver if you wanted to experience city; now it’s right here.

13

I live in Vancouver. Beautiful spot. Other than that, I don’t really know what to tell you. I don’t really talk to anybody.

14

[Minor hijack]It’s funny how perspective works on stuff like that. I grew up in the suburbs of Vancouver, went to school in Montreal for 4 years, then came back and went to school in Vancouver, living right in the city this time. In other words, Victoria is by far the smallest place I’ve ever lived, and I find that it’s small and I’m looking to get back to either Vancouver or Montreal within the next year.[/hijack]

15

So if one were to go out for a beer, where would one go (if one liked good frou-frou beer and non-corporate vibe)? What about places west of Kits, say, in the direction of the University? Where would one go grocery shopping, if one were an organic-eating, caper-loving, not overly wealthy culture snob? Where would one find a great video rental place? What’s the best Mexican in town? Day to day, do you use metric or English units (like, measuring a couch,say)? Who do you get delivery pizza from?
Just askin’. No hijack here. . .
(moving Sept.3)

16

If you’re at UBC and like beer, go to Koerner’s pub on campus. (I have several shirts given to me during my tenure as First Man.) Fancy-dancy grocery stores abound. You’d probably like Urban Fare down in Yorkville.

Vancouver’s bar nightlife isn’t that great, but its restaurants more than make up for it. But you can’t walk up to a girl eating lunch at Samurai Sushi and join her :wink: No, you’ll probably have to find people online and arrange meetings IRL. Or you could try dance classes, dragonboat teams, hash house harriers, yoga, or hiking groups. Heck, if you’re a moderately outdoorsy guy, wander over to MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) on Broadway and look at the message board behind the cashiers.

My preferred slice was from Pizza Pizza, but Panago (formerly Panagopoulos) is ubiquitous. Skip Mexican, and enjoy the Argentinian cuisine at… umm… that place where the 10 and the 99 stop between Broadway and 10th on Alma. Make sure you go to Banana Leaf on a regular basis. Enjoy the sushi (One More Sushi at UBC is very good.)
And they use metric for everything except weight. Except when they don’t.

17

And when you return to New York, please go down to the Granville Island Brewery (on Granville Island, funnily enough) and bring me back two 750 ml bottles of whatever seasonal beer they have at the moment. I’ll be much obliged.

18

Barbarian-- good info! Thanks.

19

I’d recommend going to Granville Island before returning to NY. :smiley:

20

I’m liking it as much as ever. I’m finding people friendlier than advertised: give a passerby a nice comment about their doggie or the cool old landmark building or a passing vintage convertible or whatever and they respond in a quite pleasant manner. Why, at times, they seem almost human! :wink:

(Even the junkies on Hastings at Main are friendly, sorta…stop to tie a shoe or even use a trashcan and you’ll definitely be noticed. I guess it has to do with not having gaunt cheeks and a week’s shine of grease on your skin.)

So Barbarian…is group physical activity “the” way to meet members of the preferred sex? I do get the sense that people like books, movies, yada yada etc., but not necessarily hanging out having long soulful conversations. (Maybe they’re a little Californian that way.) See, I do well in the hanging-out category but not so well in group physical activity: I tend to get all tangled up in how well I’m “comparing” to the other males and don’t have any fun. (Maybe that’s the point: a nice social way for women to gauge men’s manliness?)

There’s a certain “earnestness” to Canadians that this Yank sometimes finds refreshing, but still takes some getting used to. Even when having fun, I sense in these folks an undertone of seriousness, of “trying,” of having something to prove. I feel that maybe my big, overbearing, dominant country might be to blame. I almost wish I could make up for it in some small way…

All this is in a way academic; I’m flying back on Wednesday morning, but I have been entertaining the idea of spending some serious time here. And there aren’t a lot of places I feel that way about.