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

What If Vancouver Followed Berlin’s Lead and Froze Rents for Five Years?

Vancouver Would Be Cooler If is a column that advocates for things that exist in other cities that could serve to improve or otherwise celebrate life in our own.

(via) Skyrocketing rents aren’t unique to Vancouver. Many city’s around the world are similarly suffering the same ‘phrenomenon’, but very few local politicians are effectively taking on the greed of those corporate landlords who see nothing wrong with pricing residents out of their own neighbourhoods. But that might be changing in Berlin, where rents have doubled in the last decade. The Senate of Berlin identified the situation for what it is – an emergency – and recently approved a citywide rent freeze for five years. The bill becomes law when it passes through Parliament in January (it is expected to do so) with the freeze being retroactive to June, so landlords can’t jack up the rent in one last frenzied orgy of avarice. Vancouver would be a lot cooler if it had the courage to do the same.

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.