Oftentimes I find that I have nothing to do here, I’m bored. This happens pretty much every weekend. I think that there aren’t enough people here, not enough options in terms of activities. I don’t think all of the outdoorsy stuff is available year round. The worst part is that it’s hard to make friends here so I don’t find that I have the company to do those types of things with.

I don’t think people are as open and sociable here as they may be elsewhere. I’ve been to Europe, and it’s much different there. I really don’t know how to explain it, I would say there’s a level of self-absorption here that makes it really hard to talk to other people, or that keeps people from talking to each other. It really gets to me. Maybe I need to be different. I don’t think I’m experienced enough to be able to say what needs to change, I can only tell you what I’ve already expressed, which is that people are cold. That’s it.

In Europe I visited Paris and Belgium. I went on my own. I met lots of people. People there were much more open and willing to talk to strangers than they are here. The same goes for Israel, another international country.

The winter here is depressing. It gets dark so early. I’m not sure if I plan to live here forever, but for now I have a good job and a good life here. Starting new elsewhere is a deterrent from leaving. Still, I wish people would be friendler to each other. I don’t get angry when people have a frown on their face and I don’t mean that everyone needs to talk to strangers. I just find that it’s hard to find people in Vancouver that are genuinely interested in getting to know you, even people who you work in close proxiomity to, and that people in Vancouver, in general and in my experience, are way too into themseleves to really bother trying to make new friends, especially those like me who have been here their whole lives. We already feel that we have “enough” friends, and that’s a problem.

Coming from NYC this city is piss poor. People are not very friendly, engaging, or somewhat interesting. Driving here is a complete nightmare, I have never seen a city so poorly designed in my life. There is 1 highway and it doesnt even connect with downtown. Living here is expensive, the nightlife is embarrassing, taxes on anything and everything. I have never seen a city allow bums to take over 4 square blocks (hundreds of them!) and shoot heroin in plain sight with cops standing around watching. Unbelievable!! For years have been debating what to do with the East Hastings scene…..Ill give you the answer…..arrest all of them!!!! Damn bleeding hearts here thing they need more love so maybe we should just hug it out lol! If you allow that behavior then people will continue to do it.

It is beautiful scenery which is amazing. Thats it.

-Yo Yo Ma

I think other people also like Vancouver because it has a good variety of culture and people. The food here is really good. There’s lots of sightseeing. What I don’t like is the atmosphere between people. There’s this weird, insecure feeling here. People don’t really know how to talk to each other. It’s something that everyone seems to complain about here. And I know from personal experience, I have a lot of trouble speaking to people here, compared to other cities, like Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, you go to a casual place there like a juice bar and people order their juice and drink it by the counter by themselves, and they talk to whoever is around them.

I think it’s easy to meet tourists here, but hard to meet locals. I think that Vancouverites are kind of trapped in that fear I was talking about earlier. Everyone is paranoid. There’s this weird thing, I don’t know where it comes from, but everyone’s got their heads down and they don’t look at you in the eye. It’s like they’re scared to look at you. When I went to Regina two years ago, I was walking around and it seemed so much more friendlier. People were looking at me, talking to me. I was sitting in a restaurant with my best friend and it seemed like we were talking with more people around us, like the waitress, the manager. They stopped and made a point to talk to us, just casually. It wasn’t just about business.

What can we do about this? We have to all recognize that it’s a problem. The more people that do recognize this is a problem and the more that we want it to change, the change will eventually happen. I try to help the situation by being really conscious of it without forcing it, because I think that can also be pawned off as phony and people can see right through that so I don’t try too hard. But I try to make jokes now with people I don’t know. When I was running today I ran past this lady who was singing and I said, “Not too high,” and I mentioned something about going to the highest octave and she laughed. That’s what I think we need to do more of if we want to shake this stigma of being an “unfriendly” city. We need to stop being so scared of each other and just say “hi” when we pass each other on the street.

There are also a lot of different classes of people here so I think it’s really important to bridge those gaps, too. So if you see somebody who looks different than you, you shouldn’t try to not make eye contact with them. I think it’s more about eye contact. You can get a feeling whether you want to say hello to somebody when you make good eye contact. When I was living in Coquitlam we used to drive around Friday and Saturday nights and if we looked at somebody the wrong ay, we would get into fights. That has a lot to do with how people are scared to look into the eyes of somebody else, especially guys to other guys.

Despite all of that, I don’t think it’s that hard to meet new people here. Because of the sports that are thriving in the city, it’s easy to meet new people. If you decide to join a sports team, instantly you can make 10 friends. The eye contact thing – it may have to do with how so many people here are kind of “square.” Like shutting down the city so early at night, when other big cities are open 24 hours a day – there are a lot of squares here. The biggest piss off was them shutting down the basketball courts at Kits Beach early each night in the summer and totally shutting them down in the fall, winter and spring. Who are the people who were responsible for making that happen? It’s bad because it’s a waste of land, it’s a wasted facility, it’s not giving kids a chance. It’s this mentality that so many Vancouverites have: “I want to be in my house with nobody bothering me, and I need peace and quiet.” But really it’s taking something away from the city and the kids that want to, for example, play basketball. The parks are locked up at night. They have these big fences to keep kids out. When I was living in Coquitlam, me and my friends could play hockey and basketball until two in the morning because we had a facility that had bright lights and there was enough space that no one would complain that we were being loud late at night, but in Vancouver it seems like there’s nowhere to do that.

I think that we have a homelessness problem here, too. I think when there’s so much homelessness around, it creates a fear in the city. People make assumptions that there’s a lot of thieves around when there’s not, kidnappers, murderers, they see crazy people in the streets and they think that the streets are dangerous, they don’t let their kids go anywhere. I’m not just talking about the Downtown Eastside. Even in Kits. There’s certain areas where people will be scared, and you can see it. But the worst thing is that we don’t seem to know anything about the homeless situation. It’s rarely talked about in the news, or that’s how it seems to me. We don’t know what types of programs are happening, if there’s any improvements being made. We’ve learned that lots of the homelessness in Vancouver comes from people migrating here from the East because it’s warmer. It’s our problem once they get here, but I think the rest of Canada should be helping us out with this.

Then there’s drugs. How come so much heroine is getting into the city? Where is it coming from? I wish that the local media would report on this more. Maybe I don’t watch the news enough, but I feel like we never hear about the root cause of these types of problems in Vancouver.

I lived in Rio de Janeiro for six months. The difference between Rio and Vancouver is there’s no rules in Rio. People can park wherever they want, they can drive however they want, the people are their own enforcers. The cops there look after the major situations like drugs, but the people have to police themselves. This has its good points and bad points, but I think more good. There’s an example of a guy who parked illegally and blocked the whole the street for half and hour. No cop came, no tow truck came. This whole corner of people ended up throwing food at him to get him to move. I think that unites people. They make their own rules and they talk amongst each other to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s not a judge or some higher authority deciding what’s right or what’s wrong; technical things don’t always solve problems. I think parking tickets aren’t as effective as a mob of people embarassing this guy.

The last thing is, I think we need more transit – skytrains, buses. We need to get more cars off the road, The Canada Line was a good start but we have to keep going, we need more of that here. Other than, that I think Vancouver will keep getting better with age. The more people that realize the problems in this city and start to talk about those issues openly, with each other, the more they’ll try and come together and fix them.

Ever wondered what’s wrong with Vancouver’s nightlife? Just go to the Roxy. The answer will become blatantly apparent when you finally get in …

I had been waiting in line for about half an hour, and it was only 10 p.m. In line, I remember thinking that the venue must be amazing, since people were willing to queue so early. Boy, was I disappointed.

Granted, it’s not fair to judge a city’s nightlife by one bar but I don’t know of another city in the world where people would line up for half an hour at 10 p.m. to get into a place like the Roxy. And it’s not just the Roxy, it’s every other place in the downtown core. None of those bars would would even be half full in any other North America city, but in Vancouver there are ridiculous early evening lineups at a dozen shitty bars.

The common excuse for this practice is that bars perpetuate a lineup to make them seem desirable. Fine, that happens in other cities, too. The difference is this: when *SHITTY* bars in other cities start doing it, people start going elsewhere. As anyone who’s studied Economics 101 knows: if people are lining up to buy a sub-standard product, there’s a problem with the marketplace – and that’s what’s up in Vancouver.

The fact is, you need a special licence to have a dance floor in this city, and you need a special licence to have live music in this city, and the city hands these licences out with an iros fist. So drinking and dancing is pretty much banned everywhere (save the odd, isolated venue here and there) but downtown. And when you have the market cornered, there’s no incentive to provide a good product or treat your customers with respect.

Consequently, Vancouver’s nightlife is terrible. Every other city in the world scatters its bars and clubs and concert halls around several different areas. This allows different neighbourhoods to have different styles and feels, and allows the nightlife of a big city to be manageable. Vancouver doesn’t do this because the townies/yuppies that seem to have a stranglehold on the city are convinced that if they borrowed an idea from any other metropolis in the world, their city would immediately turn into a stinky old eastern smoghole like Toronto.

Instead, they stay home and say, “Who needs nightlife anyway?”

Vancouver men. I’m up to here with them. Up to here with flaky, say and never do, metrosexually obsessed, self involved, lack of consideration, dishonest, status oriented, rude, afraid of eye contact, more interested in what they are doing, instead of who they are doing it with– Vancouver, BC– Canadian A-HOLES.

In fact, Vancouver men should be ashamed of themselves. For a city rated in the top three as most “liveable”, according to a 2007 report by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, one would hope the quality of men is exceptional. So far from the case.

Only in Vancouver can a dumpy guy with a protruding belly and gigantic nipples get away with standing up an attractive, smart, and disgustingly funny woman. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Only in Vancouver can a troglodyte be measured on the model of his car, rather than his character.

Only in Vancouver there exists a type of man who is educated, intelligent, handsome, even accomplished who feels he has the god given right to date like an 18 year old. Ensure Hugo Boss shirt is pressed. Add just the right amount of hair putty to create messy/sexy/cool look. Slip on Pumas,ensure burglary alarm is set in 490 sq. foot condo. Pick up woman in troglodyte car (see above). Stop at Central for a beer, chat her up, give the impression of “connecting”. Walk by the seawall, gush and call her beautiful. Both of you enthusiastically agree on a second date. She calls a few days later, you “accidentally” hang up on her. She calls back, you feed excuses. You feel teenage boy guilt, then call to propose coffee. She can’t, too last minute, another time? Oh yeah, definitely another time. She never hears from you again.

Cause hon, that’s the way Vancouver men roll. They’re too busy wakeboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, hockey watching, dope smoking, hiking, rock climbing, rollerblading, volleyball – indoor and beach, skateboarding– to ever STOP, examine their inner selves and seek out depth in people. It ain’t about keeping it real– it’s about keeping it biz-eee. If you’re a lady itching to be overlooked, ignored, or fit in between 5 to 6 p.m., possibly on either Tuesday or Wednesday – THIS is the town for you.

Vancouver men are similar to a Yaletown condo, full of dense concrete, shiny and transparent. The surfaces are all glass, wiped clean with nary a streak to be seen. When a Vancouver man makes eye contact, much like glass, he prefers to be seeing a reflection of himself. Who are women, except an add-on like the latest chair from EQ3, or an itouch to plug into.

I wipe my hands of Vancouver men; I cry Uncle.

It haunts me, what you’ve turned me into. A person suspicious of true intentions, nutritionally lacking in basic consideration or honesty. I use to smile randomly, now I notice how many don’t smile back. I use to chat with anyone, but stopped. It’s challenging to attempt conversation with someone looking through you or glued to their social group like frightened 5 year olds. What’s most disturbing is my brainwashing is complete. I honestly believe men are like this. It’s uber normal to cruise around in a BMW, eat at Lumiere and outfit yourself from Richard Kidd (Balenciaga suits $3,000.00). It’s disgusting, I actually turn my head to check them out. Randomly think to myself, oh he’s cute. He’s hot, he’s this…. BULLSHIT, I say.

I have to remind myself there are other living, breathing cities full of men. Men who are authentic and accessible. An island of men that practice manners and extend respect. Boatloads of men interested in connecting instead of procuring. Men that don’t give two shits whether I’m stylish or cool enough for them.

I know what you’re thinking. She’s just bitter. Pissed at being burned. Ah, middle finger her, she’s probably fat with the face of a boxing glove. Probably a raging cougar, nursing a humungus chip on that botched boob job.

Dig deep Vancouver boys, am I any of those things? Or could I just be a teensy bit right?

Cause, I’m outta here. Get wise VL’s (Vancouver losers), this woman plans to start smiling and chatting again. This woman is all about new doors opening, as the old ones close.

I heard the saddest statistic recently, men in Seattle are more open and friendly than their Vancouver counterparts. Ouch, sucks to be you.

“The Best Place on Earth” is one of those over-the-top self-satisfied slogans that is unbecoming of Canadians (or anyone). We are more used to hearing such things from jingoistic Americans and authoritarian leaders in China.

How many times have you cringed when Americans call their country “The Greatest Country on Earth” or “The Greatest Democracy” or the “Birthplace of Freedom.”

Now some B.C. government officials have jumped on the hype bandwagon and endorsed “The Best Place on Earth.” It is meaningless, and I’m sure feeds into the stereotype that British Columbians are too smug.

(Not to mention: isn’t it illegal to advertise with a claim that can’t be proved?)

I have never understood bragging rights around home geography.  Every time government stationery crosses my desk with its cynical, Olympics-imposed slogan for B.C. “The Best Place on Earth,” I want to scream an apology to all in our biosphere.

Besides being one of most embarrassing bits of sloganeering I’ve ever heard, I’m sure it’s what everyone goes around saying in the Downtown Eastside, or when old-timers remember you could actually regularly catch salmon off our shores or when young people earning minimum wage in the service sector struggle to pay exorbitant rent.

Please, people. Less of “best” and more on “lucky us” for the bounty bequeathed to us. Let us be humble about our good fortune to be able to call this rich space home and not be forced by ill circumstance to have to leave for a less ideal and idyllic place.

Vancouver, get over yourself. I left the city years ago and have never once regreted it. Beautiful? Absolutely, especially on a sunny summer day. But mygawd, for most of us, there’s more to life than sitting slack jawed at Jericho Beach or Kitsilano drooling over the sunset. Sorry, folks, Vancouver is absurdly expensive, ridden with gang violence and drugs (the city’s biggest industry, although the media will never report this), and suffers from a kind of adolescent narcissism you’d never find in the world’s truly great cities. Time to grow up.

- hayliedog

When my ex and I split, I did what any brokenhearted girl would to try and fill the resulting void: I got a dog.

Oh, I also trashed my photo albums, packed up my Toronto apartment, boarded a Boeing 737 (love that seatback satellite TV) and moved back to Vancouver … back to my parents’ house, back to my old bedroom in the basement, back to my single bed. Needless to say, the hunt for a pet-friendly rental pad began immediately.

Now, I’ve always thought of “604” as a dog-friendly area code. Ask anyone to describe a (stereo)typical Vancouverite, and a gleaming golden retriever with a graceful gait is usually part of the image (along with head-to-toe yoga gear, an off-road stroller and a Venti latte in hand). Whenever I go to the beach, run the trails in Pacific Spirit forest or detour through a city park, dogs abound. Big, small, fluffy, yappy, purebred, hybrid – when it comes to man’s best friend, Vancouver ’s population isn’t lacking.

So you can understand my shock and disappointment when I made the following realization: it’s nearly impossible to find canine-friendly rentals in this city.

Which makes me wonder – where do all these dogs I keep running into live? Five years in Ontario and I never had a problem finding living space for me and my furry friends. Thanks to that province’s Residential Tenancies Act, a “no-pets clause” in a lease is legally invalid. Only if your pet is dangerous or causes allergic reactions or other problems to tenants or landlord must you get rid of it or consider moving out.

Not so in Vancouver, where owners can to include and enforce no-pets clauses in leases – and most do. Trust me: even the biggest animal-lovers in the GVRD will impose a strict no-pets policy on a rental unit just because they can.

It seems an awfully ill-sighted form of damage control: better no dog than sorry. Rowdy students with fake IDs? Cool. A couple with colicky twins? Fine. A friendly, obedient dog with a mature, hard-working owner? Too risky; consider the carpets!

If you don’t think I have a legitimate bone to pick, visit any online rental listing. You’ll find at least one variant on the following plea in the “housing wanted” category: “Female, 27, with small dog, desperately seeking pet-friendly suite. Cooper is fully trained, and part of my family. Space will be kept clean and quiet; call me!” Usually, a photo of said pooch looking up at the camera with big puppy eyes is included, should a soft-hearted landlord happen to surf by.

Not that I can’t see both sides: landlords have the right to protect their property through a set of thoughtful, lawful rules. I’m just saying, pound-for-pound, dog owners are a pretty responsible breed. If I can care for a puppy on my own, I can certainly keep a clean, quiet, damage-free apartment, and pay the rent on time.

Passing up potentially perfect tenants because of a pet doesn’t make much sense. If, as a Lower Mainland landlord, you’re truly concerned about leasing to a tenant with a pooch, try meeting with dog and owner before making a decision – you’d be throwing us renters (and, quite possibly, yourself) a well-deserved bone.