Canada CityDome: Montreal vs. Vancouver

[qrj]

Vancouver has the only actual bad neighborhoods in Canada and lots of crack cocaine.

Montreal has poutine and The Dirty Tricks.

No brainer for me.

Other than Hastings St., where else is there that's bad in Van?

Hastings is just like any shitty area of a typical U.S. city, with far less homicides, and condensed into one street.

[Casimal]

Vancouver has a lot of hedges from what I remember. Lots of tall hedges and modest topiary.

I remember marveling at the hedges on ride into town from the airport along Marine Drive, all these hills and tony houses with enormous fussy hedges trimmed into curvy blocks along the edge of the lawns. Woody brushy stuff grows to a kind of alarming density and greenness there.

Top-notch seafood, excellent Asian fare, great domestic hash, and quality beer that comes in cans. But other than those aspects, and its fantastic natural setting, it is a terrible terrible city. Prissy and vicious all at once, and everything costs a fortune for no clear reason. The chief asset of Vancouver is easy access to wonderful wilderness and countryside that is not Vancouver, which is not exactly a point in its favor.

I could spend every waking minute of my life on the island of Montreal. The winter is like an annual group psychosis, a test of our species' claim to that part of the earth, and I feel a faint shame at only spending the summer there this year.

[Marsupialized]

We showed up in Vancouver with like 40 bucks to our name after touring all the way up from San Diego and had a great 4 days there. It's not expensive unless you make it expensive. We ate and drank and got high and did everything else we wanted to do no problem at all. The hostel in junkietown was like 6 bucks a night and really nice, we found cheap food at a grocery store and had a blast just walking around.
Montreal, we showed up with like 500 bucks and spent 500 bucks in 6 days. Everything's relative.

[qrj]

It's not expensive unless you make it expensive.

For sure, there's this killer sushi place somewhere in Vancouver where you get like 3 rolls, some miso, and a drink for close to $5.

[J. Burns]

You can eat on the cheap super easy in Vancouver. There are 99 cent pizza places everywhere you look. Lots of rad records in thrift stores, too. I bought someones Gang Of Four collection for $6 at a Salvation Army and flipped it later for ten times as much money.

Now that I think about it, when I went to Vancouver, I was 18 and straight out of the suburbs in Bellingham. It was the first time I'd ever been hassled aggressively for drugs. Ten years later I walk by way worse shit in Belltown in Seattle at least once a week. Yeah, it's all relative.

[qrj]

Speaking of pizza in Vancouver, I think it's called Love at First Slice; cheap ass, fucking delicious pizza.

[qrj]

DEL

[mackro]

Montreal doesn't have Nardwuar.
Vancouver doesn't have SUPER SEXE.

[Hosoi]

Vancouver has a lot of hedges from what I remember. Lots of tall hedges and modest topiary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDzG4ZSxqHA

[Marsupialized]

http://www.santropol.com/pages/rmenu.html

Ever since we got back, I have been thinking about Cafe Santropol in Montreal.
So great. So great and weird a sandwich they do make. Coffee is truly outstanding.
Beautiful long haired white and grey cat jumped in my lap and sat there the whole meal.
One of the best lunch spots I have ever encountered in all my travels.

[FuzzBob]

the hostel

What's up with the hostel thing? Every time I hear about visits to Canada, they involve staying in hostels. With all due respect to our friends in el norte, are good, clean, comfortable hotel rooms at such a premium in Canada that it's worth a hostel stay?

[mackro]

As far as the bad neighborhoods thing, all my friends in both Vancouver and Montreal say Winnipeg beats both in that category... "it's a *real* dirty Canadian city".. whatever that means.

[m.koren]

As far as the bad neighborhoods thing, all my friends in both Vancouver and Montreal say Winnipeg beats both in that category... "it's a *real* dirty Canadian city".. whatever that means.

Murder capital of Canada, from what I've heard.

[lemur68]

the hostel

What's up with the hostel thing? Every time I hear about visits to Canada, they involve staying in hostels. With all due respect to our friends in el norte, are good, clean, comfortable hotel rooms at such a premium in Canada that it's worth a hostel stay?

The hostels are clean and comfortable, you get to meet people from all over, and at $25 a night, that frees up money for poutine, legal weed and strippers with whom you're allowed to play Tune In Tokyo without the bouncers using your ass as a volleyball.

[FuzzBob]

the hostel

What's up with the hostel thing? Every time I hear about visits to Canada, they involve staying in hostels. With all due respect to our friends in el norte, are good, clean, comfortable hotel rooms at such a premium in Canada that it's worth a hostel stay?

The hostels are clean and comfortable, you get to meet people from all over, and at $25 a night, that frees up money for poutine, legal weed and strippers with whom you're allowed to play Tune In Tokyo without the bouncers using your ass as a volleyball.

Sold. Hostel, here I come.

[Andrew.]

As far as the bad neighborhoods thing, all my friends in both Vancouver and Montreal say Winnipeg beats both in that category... "it's a *real* dirty Canadian city".. whatever that means.

In the US "a *real* dirty city" tends to be a euphemism for "lots of poor blacks there." In the case of Winnipeg, Manitoba it means "lots of poor aboriginals there." Winnipeg is expected to be the first city in Canada to have a majority aboriginal population in, I can't remember, 20 years or something. Lots of poverty, violence, etc. In Canada, aboriginals are the n*ggers.

As to Montreal vs. Vancouver.

Montreal is way more dynamic and interesting culturally, in terms of music, art, food, history, language, literature and poetry, you name it. Honestly, no comparison. Vancouver is a relative shithole, culturally (though Van does have wicked, affordable, and abundant sushi and Indian food). And Montreal has rent control. It's the only city I know of in N. America where the law seems to empower renters over landlords (the single-moving-day-a-year thing is a little wacked though).

Thing is, Vancouver is in one of my favorite geographic regions of the world, situated in the midst of temperate rainforest, mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. Summers are fucking sublime. Winter is wet but super mild. Nature is irrepressible. There's palm trees and Redwood-sized cedar and Douglas Fir trees that grow big enough to drive cars through, and gorgeous, pristine public beaches on the goddamn ocean.

A few blocks from me in East Van the *cutest* raccoon family shows up in the evenings at my friends' place to gingerly pluck sweet, delicious grapes that hang in heavy bunches from their sun deck. It's Eden.

I can take a city bus for $2.50 and in 25 minutes be at serious mountain trail heads on the north shore. You can summit Grouse Mountain from the backside via Lynn Canyon (a fun hike with some serious bouldering and harsh elevation gain) and be home for dinner, with public transit.

I commute by bicycle year round, in shorts.

Van.
Their music scene blows, bunch of lo-fi hipster bullshit.

Yes.

Yeah, it's a real bummer, almost total shit, but there's some cool stuff in there too once you're tapped in. Went to some magical 5-dollar shows at Hoko's last winter, before the City stomped on them. Hoko's is/was probably the sketchiest sushi joint/punkrock venue in the world, with 3-dollar pints of beer and a sushi "chef" (Hoko), who mixes sound--and I mean literally--at the same time as he makes sushi, like he takes his left hand off of the maki roll in process and reaches over to adjust the faders, mid-roll. It's in the Downtown Eastside in Japantown, and for a while some earnest, fun-loving indie kids put on some marvelous little shows there. (Note: best Vancouver live music blog.)

I dunno, it's got its charms. I see people like Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and the bassist from The New Pornographers while I'm buying phenomenally cheap, fresh local produce on the sidewalk. And you can rap with Chi Pig (SNFU) any night of the week at Pub 340 or The Cobalt where he buses (those awesomely cheap bottles of Pacific Pil) on weekends. Also: Montreal had Voivod in their prime, but Vancouver has BISON.

One more thing on Vancouver: more eligible hot women (and gay dudes) than any other place I've lived. Statistically, the guy-to-gal ratio in Vancouver is weirdly unbalanced (more gals), and then you throw in the highest density of gays in the country, and Vancouver is a good city to be a dude.

Total haven for dykes, too. The annual Dyke March this year had like 4000 people marching or something (the über corporate bank and telecom-sponsored Pride March on the West End draws tens of thousands of course).

My vote: Vancouver. But Montreal is fantastic and in most respects a superior city.

[Marsupialized]

I can't stop thinking about those god damn cream cheese sandwiches.
If it was not a 40 dollar cab ride from the airport to the city, I'd jet out there one morning this week for one real quick.

[stipendlax]

Spending roughly 4 days in Vancouver in November. Never been.

Hopefully it's not as bad as some of you have described it.

[Marsupialized]

Spending roughly 4 days in Vancouver in November. Never been.

Hopefully it's not as bad as some of you have described it.

Vancouver is fantastic, beautiful city. Good people, good food, good times.
I would love to live there and am trying to make it happen through work.

[Trad]

Spending roughly 4 days in Vancouver in November. Never been.

Hopefully it's not as bad as some of you have described it.

Vancouver is fantastic, beautiful city. Good people, good food, good times.
I would love to live there and am trying to make it happen through work.

I agree with Marsupialized. Vancouver left a good impression on me. The street people never asked me for a handout instead they wanted to sell me schwag weed. I like that sort of entrepreneurial spirit in bums.

My wife is a dual citizen as she was born in Vancouver and her mom is from the states. I would move there in a heart beat if housing wasn't so god damned expensive. We talk about it constantly. I guess I just don't know the cool, cheap neighborhoods to look for a place.