City of Vancouver

shawn

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Aug 24, 2002
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I grew up in the city of Vancouver I always loved this city and still do. When I was 27 which was 6 yrs ago I got a job offer and moved to the USA in Northern Cali "Sillicon Valley". I took the job because of of the tax advantages and there was no way I could make the same amount of money in Vancouver.

I still get to visit Vancouver and I notice some good things that have happenned since I have left, some good, some bad. Lets start with the good.

The Asians sure are hotter now than when I was growing up, gone are the meeky looking girls with the long drab dresses and big bi focals. They have been replaced with hot looking girls with short skirts kick ass bods and a fuck me look. Every time I go to Metrotown, it makes me want to go to a MP ASAP. The selection of Escorts and MP's are so much better now thanks to PERB, back then all we had was the west ender and the Yellow pages The economy seems to have also picked up.

Now for the bad. Traffic is awful. the freeways are packed and roads like Kingsway and Hastings are wall to wall even in the miiddle of the day. I think my biggest complaint is the crime. What is with these drive by shootings, stabbings in mid daylight, aggessive panhandlers and a ever growing meth and crack problem. I was always a big supporter of Legalizing Pot caus a little bit of bud doesn't hurt anybody right? now I'm not so sure. It seems with lax drug laws in Vancouver, the crime element is off the Chart. People are getting killed all time time over bud. Woman getting attacked in parks by 13 yr olds?

I remember growning up, even though it was not the nicest area, I could walk 2am in the east end "Cordova and Hastings" with no fear. I would not even think about it now there a good chance of being stabbed . I always thought when I made enough money i could come back to Vancouver to retire I might now have a change of heart. I never thought these words would ever come out of my mouth, but I think the USA might be better place to raise a child than Vancouver. Don't get me wrong, I will always love this city, but it seems to be going downhill, I hope they clean it up before the Olympics.
 

Cock Throppled

Well-known member
Oct 1, 2003
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Upstairs
It was always, "look at the bad USA. They jail tons of people and still have rampant crime." Well, the tide has turned. Seems their crime rate is plummeting and ours is increasing. So just what is the argument for not harshly penalizing repeat offenders and chronic criminals? The worst thing the Charter did was get rid of ability to lock away career criminals indefinitly. Now, you can have 50 - 60 convixtions for property crimes and still do almost no jail time. It's insane unless it's a plan for job security in the police, counsellor, court and lawyer business.
 

The Lizard King

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Jul 8, 2003
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You're right. One of guys the police thumped in Stanley Park, had 28 criminal convictions. I guess the only potential deterrent he's seen up until now was the little walk in the park. Not that I'm advocating criminals getting thumped in place of countless, meaningless court appearances.
 

luckydog71

Active member
Oct 26, 2003
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Shawn, we have similar stories although I am a lot older. I was educated in Vancouver. I love the city. I have been to every continent (except Australia) and there is no place in the world that can compare to Vancouver. I too have walked Main and Hastings in the wee hours with not even a hint of trouble.

I was also in the position to choose, Canada or USA? It was the toughest decision I have ever made. It took me 3 or 4 years before I could finally decide. I choose to live in the US because it is the land of opportunity. It is not handed to you on a silver platter you need to work for it, but you can achieve your goals. That was the deciding factor.

Now let’s look at the positive of Vancouver. The best looking women period, no city has more great looking women than Vancouver. No city is more tolerant of cultural diversity. No city has more cultural diversity. I am very fortunate to live within a short drive of the city and still be out of the reach of the tax man in Ottawa.

God Bless America….Long live free BC. "Vive le B.C. libre!"
 

dittman

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Jan 22, 2003
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i do have to disagree with you on beautiful women ld, but just got back from bangkok and without a doubt they do have the most beautiful women un the world.
 

luckydog71

Active member
Oct 26, 2003
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dittman, I have been to other parts of Asia, but not Thailand.

I found the ladies there cheaper than Vancouver, but I did not find them as attractive.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
 

shawn

New member
Aug 24, 2002
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Imigrants

Yes this city has the most tolerence for diversity, anywhere in the world. I remember in the late eightys people were freaking about the lax imigration policy and letting so many people come here from foreign countries. What people did not realize is that the government needed the money and spending power of those imigrants to keep our economy alive. The enviromentalist put a huge burden on the forestry and mining and fishing and the only thing we had left was tourism.

The same holds true today. I would say that Asian and Indo Canadians represent about 70% of the spending power in the Lower Mainland. Those imigrants had chidren that were born here and are in their late teens or early twentys by now. These kids either

A.: Are hard working students
B Working Proffesionals
C Family Men and Women

Or D: the lowest of the low that give the hard working imigrants a bad name. The ones with too much money to spend and waste it on cars and have street races which kill and injure people at a alarming rate. The ones that go to movie theaters and stab people. They do drive buys at Clubs. The ones that sell drugs to young teenages. Pot is one thing, but more and more kids in this Province are getting hooked on speed and Meth and Crack. I hope there is something done about it, but unfortunatly I do not know what that would be. It obviously did not work in the States. They spend 10's of billions of $ on the war on drugs. but they just keep pouring in. Legalzing hard drugs are no solution either.

I live a few miles to probably the most mult culteral city in all the USA, like SFMIke i am in or close to San Francisco. It is pretty cool here, with the exeption of Hawaii or Colorado, it is the only city that even comes close to the beauty of BC. Like Vancouver it is close to the water. The MP and esort scene is pretty good here also and prices are also similar. It is also not Vancouver and with all its faults, I really miss it.
 

westwoody

Well-known member
Jun 10, 2004
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Westwood
I lived in Van until '79, now it seems just a hilly version of Toronto. Burnaby Mountain and the area around SFU was a great playground, now it's just a big mess of ugly cookie-cutter houses. I too can remember walking around the Davie-Denman-Robson area when it was a ho stroll, even at 2 or 3AM I never felt unsafe. Last time I visited my brother we parked on Beach and walked around Stanley Park for the afternoon and somebody smashed his car window to steal about a dollar in change from the console.
Pot doesn't make people do that, but crack and meth do. I've seen so many people screw up on crack that the self-cleaning oven theory is starting to make more sense:that is you allow the junkies all they want and soon enough they either quit of their own volition or kill themselves. Not a popular theory with social workers-it makes them redundant. First learned the expression from a DEA report, of all places.
It hurts me to admit this, but I actually like Calgary better.
 

zlmmm

Mysterious Adventurer
Sep 16, 2003
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Vancouver, BC
My opinion

As a former Californian now living in downtown Van I love this city and still feel it much safer than most mid-to-large US cities and would not hesitate to walk anywhere at any hour at any level of drunkeness here.

My opinion regarding the crime here is that in the last 10-20 years or so, BC has attracted much of the seedier elements from Canada and the US Pacific Northwest because of the tolerance on pot (hence the amusing recent monniker Vansterdam). Get too many of the bad seeds together and bad things are going to happen and I think we are now just dealing with the social ramifications here. I feel a smaller part is that mj is a gateway drug (there was a thread from last fall on that), but were it not for the fact that there was already a larger concentration of addiction-prone users about I think it would not be so much of a problem.

The same attraction happened in San Francsico in the 60s/70s (starting with the Summer of Love) and it was not until the 90s until the city moved beyond that stigma (partially due to the extreme enforcement and tenement housing demolition, but probably mostly due to insane cost of living inflation driving lower income individuals away).

The same attraction also happened in Amsterdam as it became a haven for seedy people many years ago and still is unable to move beyond that image despite the beautiful city and countryside around it and despite marijuana being legalized or fully tolerated more recently in other parts of Europe.

Before I am flamed by the 420 club (of which I am no longer a member), I am pro-legalization, but I feel that has to be a national movement in order to prevent a large migration of unwanted elements who do not contribute to society and who perpetuate the crime in searching for new sources of quick cash.

CAN $0.02
 

wolverine

Hard Throbbing Member
Nov 11, 2002
6,388
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E-Town
Probably not so much the pot, but that Hastings has become a tolerance zone for drug abuse that's drawing the seedier element to Vancouver.

westwoody alluded that Van is starting to become like a West Coast version of Toronto. The last couple of times I've visited there, I was finding the traffic more unbearable, the COL becoming even more expensive, and the people becoming a tad more rude. And there's no Second Cup places at all, and I get cranky if I can't get my mochaccino!! :mad:

But all that said...it's a city I'd still love to move to if I had to pull out of my current burg.
 
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