1000 Cool Things About Vancouver is a pretty self-explanatory Scout column that gives equal weight to the common attributes and obscure intangibles that make our city well worth living in. Getting to a thousand is a pretty ambitious goal, but we believe in our city and are already well on our way.

Downtown’s beer-forward restaurant, The Magnet, is a trove of quirky details from bar to bathroom; you just need to know where to look. The mounted art is a good place to start. At first glance the colourful abstract canvases seem like beautiful – if innocuous – wall decorations. Not so. In actual fact they are repurposed t-shirts, originally worn by artist Perrin Grauer while creating the gorgeous mural on the wall across from the bar. Pretty cool! Perrin explains:

“When I paint, I use my shirt as a rag (that way, I never forget where I’ve wiped my palette knife). All the paint marks flow in the same direction because I’m right-handed. I’ve somewhat instinctively been saving my old paint shirts for years, even when I get rid of the paintings. Nigel was watching me go through shirt after shirt at Magnet and suggested we try framing them. Turns out, something magical happens when they’re mounted on a stretcher; all the same colours as the mural, expressed in a completely different way. This trick has since become a regular consideration for my paint practice.”

Magnet, The

Neighbourhood: Gastown

309 West Pender St.

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