Just some quick comments/clarifications/opinions on the points raised here (and yes, I am a Vancouverite as well):
- Terminal City, run by the inestimable Brian "Godzilla" Salmi, has recently started up again after a lengthy hiatus.
- Under the heading of local disgraces, the city was run for what seems like generations by the so-called "Non-Partisan Association" -- a breeding ground for a number of conservative, anti-intellectual politicians (and, as of January 2003, drunk drivers) such as our current Premier, Gordon Campbell.
- One bemoaned aspect of Vancouver that recently got the residents in a flap was the fact that the place now has a reputation as "the City of No Fun": the NPA had to strike a committee to look into it. Inevitably, this became known as the "No Fun Committee". See below for more details.
- Vancouver, and British Columbia in general, has suffered from a particularly bad bout of class war for some time now.
- We do like our BC Bud. Speaking from personal experience only, I can say that it is generally of a consistently higher quality than just about any other pot on the planet. Blunt Bros. is a very laid-back cafe that welcomes cannabis users from all over the world.
- Vancouver was featured in urban planning textbooks as the worst-planned metropolitan area in North America.
- BC Transit could almost be called adequate, given the challenge of having an enormous area to cover. It was given a "Best of America" award in 1995/6, which amused Vancouver residents to no end while waiting (and waiting, and waiting) in the rain. This organisation also spent C$22m refitting transit buses with expensive electronic fare boxes that still do not even make change from paper or coins, and had the chutzpah to debate charging for printed bus schedules.
- ShadowNode's piece on BC Transit referred above offers insight on the "No Fun" rap listed earlier. Twenty years of anti-drinking and driving campaigns have resulted in the public transit stopping at inconvenient hours -- specifically, just at the same time as bars' typical closing.
- Despite the poor reputation otherwise, Vancouver is justifiably famous for its West End: it boasts urban densities amongst the highest on Earth, just behind the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Japan, and Manhattan, and does so in a particularly livable and intelligent way.
- The Vancouver Grizzlies pro basketball team is no longer. They moved to America, after the owners tried just about everything to milk the city of support, moral and financial. They were, I believe, at one point the lowest-scoring team in the NBA. Good riddance.
- Greenpeace: Not to steal thunder from the node, but the organisation actually did begin in Vancouver itself.
- .. as did Adbusters.