I’ve been in Vancouver for three weeks now, and let me tell you—the place is downright… um, city-like. Random notes from a Torontonian:Vancouver is sketchy. I went to high school in downtown Toronto for six years, got lost in New York City at 11pm, and walked halfway acrosss downtown Montreal after I got off the evening bus from Kingston, having never stepped foot in the city before. And despite all that, I’d never met a drug dealer or a junkie on the street until I moved to Vancouver. The panhandlers are more aggressive, and there are more of them. There’s a gaping black hole of crime and destitution where Hastings and Main meet, the effects of which seem to ripple through most of downtown.Most unsettling, though, is what Vancouver lacks that the aforementioned cities don’t, and the reason why I could actually go out at night in those cities and feel relatively safe even when alone: nightlife. Aside from Granville (and possible Davie, I haven’t checked yet) the entirety of downtown seems to shut down past midnight, leaving the streets to the homeless and the desperate. Intellectually, I know something needs to be done to help these people find their station in life, that most of them want to stalk the empty streets about as much as I do. Emotionally, I want them all to get the hell away from me and stop freaking me out at Skytrain stations and outside concerts.Vancouver is small. With a quarter of Toronto’s population, this was to be expected. But what’s notable is just how empty the place can seem at times. Broadway Street is a main drag around here, with tons of shops of all shapes and sizes—except that it still feels, for the most part, like a Bayview and Eglinton versus, say, a Queen Street or King Street. Broadway and Main has a remarkable resemblance to a ghost town, and while the Kitsilano portion is nice, it’s still very much an amped-up version of a big town’s main street. And once you exit the downtown core, you enter the suburbs—old at first, then newer as you go further out. The city centre is big enough that there’s a financial district, but small enough that it’s only a few blocks at most. As a result, the core is too small and homogenous to really anchor the city, as are the other possible focal points, like Granville and Broadway.On the other hand, it’s this small size that allows me to essentially walk to school in fifteen minutes while still being in a fairly quiet neighbourhood. Where people routinely dive into dumpsters (see point 1).Vancouver is hilly. Of course it is—there are mountains everywhere. Putting those aside, it’s clear that Vancouver has enough gentle valleys and peaks to make things interesting. Like the hobo I saw surfing on the back of a shopping cart with a practiced ease a seven-year-old in a supermarket would envy. Or the sightlines down Davie to English Bay. Of course, if I ever get a bike, those hills and valleys will be my undoing, I just know it.Vancouver is expensive. $770 a month for a decent studio apartment. I think I got off lightly, too. If I want to stay here (and the jury’s still out there), I’ll need to find a decent-paying job, and stat. A Vancouver Sun report about a slum hotel being shut down talked about transients paying $350 a month for a room. My advice to them: if they can afford $350 a month, find some friends and move to a smaller town—you’ll live like kings.
I don’t know if I like the place yet or not. It’s definitely not the best place on earth, as some of my friends led me to believe. And, by all accounts, I haven’t unwittingly gotten involved in a gang war or been accosted by prostitutes yet. I have, however, seen prostitutes. And my friends were right about the view of the ocean and the mountains. Everything else is up in the air. And if nothing else, I’ll remember the long first days mostly spent reading books at a blistering pace in Robson Square, watching kids breakdance underneath the big dome and old guys playing chess.Oh, and my first day in Vancouver, but I’d like to forget that. If you don’t know the story, I’m probably never going to tell you anyways.
