A no messing around guide to the coolest things to eat, drink and do in Vancouver and beyond. Community. Not clickbait.

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If It Had A Mirrored Espresso Bar In Stanley Park

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The point of VWBCI is to open local minds to outside practices, concepts, and ideas that might stand to improve our greater civic situation in a parallel universe where coolness was valued more than practicality and funds spent on public works of art were raised by way of a special NIMBY tax levied against rich, self-absorbed assholes.

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(via) The concession at Third Beach is OK if you want to have a nostalgic – be honest now – miserable food and drink experience, but there is not a drip of redeeming consideration to their coffee game. Worse, the concession is only open from April through October, so in the months when you most want to enjoy the hell out of a warming cup of coffee on your seawall walk it’s just not going to happen. So we propose a heated, year-round standalone fixture like this trembling mirror-tiled beauty designed by Russian architecture studio Metafizika in Moscow. Not only would it beautifully blend in with the surroundings, but we could also treat it as a temple to BC coffee roasters. It could serve up local beans employing a variety of methods, from pulled shots of every strip to patient pour-overs. But really, it’s all about those tiles! As you can see in the video below, they really do tremble in the wind…

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Photos by Dmitriy Chistoprudov

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If We Had More Safe Indoor Spaces for Skateboarding

Its vaulted ceilings may have once carried the tenors and altos of Catholic choirboys, but nowadays the acoustics of the abandoned St. Liborius Church have been repurposed to carry the screeches and echoes characteristic of a DIY Skatepark. We think Vancouver would be cooler if we had an all-inclusive indoor community skatepark of our own...

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If It Had a Massive Floating Housing Project at the Port

Imagine a colourful, mixed-used, housing complex like Amsterdam's Silodam floating at the foot of Victoria Drive.

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If It Had Floating Camp Sites in False Creek

Imagine Belgium's Vlot Kamp - essentially eight floating campsites accessed from the shore by canoe - next to Olympic Village.

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If It Had a Cocktail Bar Hidden in a Skytrain Station

This 15-seat speakeasy-style bar is located behind a nondescript door in New York City's 28th Street subway station.