By Gary Lim and Eleanor Qu
Woeful season continues for women’s soccer team
SFU women’s soccer team scoring drought pushed to nine games
By Bryan Scott
The Simon Fraser women’s soccer team were desperate to get back into the win column last week. They have not won a game since their second of the season where they defeated Hawaii Pacific. Their first attempt was against the St. Martin’s Saints who came up from . . . to battle the Clan on Terry Fox FIeld.
Clan goaltender Amanda Gilliand kept them in the game in the first 10 minutes making a few clutch saves. The rest of the team responded by firing nine shots and forcing the Saints’ goaltender to make five saves in the half. Unfortunately, the Clan were unable to score a goal, and the game remained scoreless at halftime.
This proved to be costly for the Clan, as they came out flat in the second half. Tessa Barbour managed their only shot of the half in the 50th minute, but it was stopped. Two minutes later, a scramble in front of the Clan net allowed Saints’ midfielder Caley Wiseman to score and give them a 1–0 lead. The Saints took 14 shots in the half but only managed to get three on net. In the 81st minute, they put the nail in the coffin, when Nicole Nedervelt put the ball passed Gilliand, pushing the lead to 2–0. The Clan failed to score a goal in the game, which has been a problem all season.
Next, they headed down to Nampa, Idaho for their first game of a two-game road trip. They met the Northwest Nazarene Crusaders who won their first match of the season 1–0. It was the Crusaders who dominated play in the first half, outshooting the Clan 9–2, forcing Gilliand to make four saves. They did not allow the Clan to get a shot on target. Despite the lopsided shooting, the game remained scoreless at halftime. It was a rough and tough half, with 21 fouls given out between the teams, but no cards were given.
Gilliand was impressive once again to start the second half, but could not stop a 15-yard shot from Crusader forward Sarah Blum in the 62nd minute. The Clan pressed late but did not find the equalizing goal. This is the ninth straight game that the Clan have failed to score a goal. They have the worst record in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (0–11) and sit at 1–13 on the season.
Rob Anders’ Flush the Bathroom Bill protest stinks
Bill C-279 protects the gender non-conforming, not peeping toms
By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham
“What the actual fuck?” is a question I often ask myself when watching any Sun News Network video. My response to Brian Lilley’s interview with Rob Anders, titled “Flush the ‘Bathroom Bill’ ” was no different.
Anders is a conservative MP who recently received notoriety for suggesting that Thomas Mulcair helped speed along Jack Layton to his death and for comparing the war of 1812 to Muslim terrorism. This past week, he decided to speak out against Bill C-279 which seeks to add gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination to the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. Currently, while sexual orientation is protected, gender identity isn’t, meaning one can’t harass someone for being queer, but looking queer is a grey area.
One result of this bill would be that anyone who identifies as a certain gender, regardless of assigned sex, can legally use the washroom appropriate for their expression of gender. Or, as Anders puts it, they wouldn’t have to use the washroom that their “plumbing” indicates, plumbing being the umbrella term for pee-pee and va-jay-jay. He argues that this “puts women and girls at risk,” then cites an anecdotal case of a peeping tom, and the recent death of Wayne Alan Cunningham, one of the two men charged with forcible confinement and sexual assault of a 16-year-old boy.
Anders must have gone fishing in the toilet to find these red herring arguments. Foremost, the point of the bill is to protect a vulnerable minority’s rights to look, dress, and act genuine to how they feel. Nowhere in the bill is the word “bathroom” mentioned or suggested. Secondly, the boy who was allegedly assaulted was sleeping on the streets and allegedly taken, while asleep, in a van to the home where Cunningham and co-accused David James Leblanc assaulted him and kept him captive. Apparently, Cunningham had been dressing as a woman as of late, but nowhere is it stated that he was dressed like a woman during the alleged abduction, which happened on the street and not in a washroom. How this relates to women and girls being at risk if trans people or gender-neutral folk can use whatever bathroom they like, I don’t know, but I assume it has something to do with the “perverts” that Anders refers to later in the video.
Anders and Lilley are conflating two separate issues: minority rights and people using disguises to enter into private areas for nefarious reasons. During their discussion, images of Chaz Bono, Jenna Talackova and other notable trans people flash across the screen, cementing Anders rhetoric as what it is: transphobia.
Transphobia is literally the fear of transgendered people. Lilley and Anders are scared that someone allowed to use a washroom that fits the expression of their gender identity and not their assigned sex will then go on an assault-filled rampage. They don’t have a shred of evidence to suggest this is what might happen, it’s just a knee-jerk, ignorant response based around their discomfort with trans people, framed around the age old “think of the women and children” defence.
The sick irony here is that when it comes to violent attacks, trans women (the only group referenced as a threat by Anders) are more likely to experience violence than any other identifiably queer person. The National Coalition for Anti-Violence Programs 2011 hate violence report found trans women specifically accounted for a disproportionate 40 per cent of hate murders, while only representing 10 per cent of all hate victims and survivors. Non-gender-normative people were 28 per cent more likely to experience violence of some kind, and were 45 per cent less likely to see police classify their incident as a hate crime. These statistics should hold more weight than Anders’s one anecdotal story from an anonymous source about a man who dressed as a woman so that he could watch women urinate from over the stall without sticking out.
When a society refuses to guarantee the rights of a minority, it makes them less important than the majority. Bill C-279 gives people the right to express their gender identity how they see fit. It doesn’t protect the rights of peeping toms dressed as women; you can be dressed as a horse while you peer over a bathroom stall, it won’t change the fact that it’s illegal.
Campus Update: October 22nd, 2012
University board concocts elaborate tale of “Where the koi fish went”
Crisis struck this week when, during the bi-monthly meeting of the faculty deans and associate chairs, SFU president Andrew Petter asked aloud, “Where do the koi fishes go in the winter when the pond gets all frozen and stuff?”
Caught off-guard by the comment and not wanting to upset the former attorney general of British Columbia, the entire board hastily concocted an elaborate tale of koi fish’s migration, with each adding onto the fabrications of the previous board member.
An epic was constructed of the koi fish travelling through a series of underground rivers to the warmer waters of Australia, where they would spend the winter frolicking in the coral reefs with Spongebob.
With Petter finally placated and quietly sipping his juice, the board wiped their collective brows and returned to the task of discussing scholarship policy.
As of press time,the dean of science is on his way to the pet store . . . again.
—Gary Lim
TSSU take strike vote by going around the table and each giving their opinion
The collective union of SFU’s TAs, TMs, SIs and LIs held a strike vote last week by sitting around a massive table and going around the room and giving their individual responses. Each member of the union was expected to say their name, why they were there, give one interesting fact about themselves, and then decide whether or not they were in favour of a strike.
Only a few of the teachers actually had something to say, while most were just there because they thought someone might be taking attendance, or that something really important was going to happen. Each and every one of them had to briefly speak while the rest just zoned out until their turn.
The entire affair was extremely tedious, and ended without anyone knowing what the outcome was, but they are expected to meet again next week to do the exact same thing again.
— Brad McLeod
Inside report reveals 65 percent of SFU’s annual budget now derived from grad swag
Surprising news has come out from the recently released 2013 budget, showing a large defecit in both alumni donations and tuition. To combat this, SFU administration has begun a new campaign promoting the aggressive sale of grad swag, their sole remaining source of revenue.
Grad swag, the cheaply crafted stuffed animals and pen sets bought as gifts by friends and family of graduands, is typically sold during convocation week, and earns several thousand dollars for the university yearly.
Under the new campaign, the sale of grad swag would be interwoven with community life at SFU. For example, admittance to the dean’s list would still be based on your G.P.A, but now it stands for gift peddling average.
When asked about the budgetary discrepancies, VP of finances Pat Hibbits told The Peak, ”Look quite frankly, we don’t know how, or why most of our funding dried up. Now you’re holding up the register line. If you aren’t going to buy a pen set, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
—Alton Kannengieser
Sex work East and West: Part 2
Prostitution has been called the oldest profession, and the debates around whether it should be de-criminalized or prohibited have raged across the world. Sex work, legal or not, carries enormous stigma, and it is often misunderstood or judged by the status quo. It is, however, present across the globe: from developing countries to our very own streets. Sex work also has a broad definition and tends to include street sex workers, erotic dancers, and webcam workers.The Peak explores the differences and similarities of prostitution in the east and in the west in a two-part series on sex work.
Haven’t read part 1 yet? Do it now: http://159.203.128.194/2012/10/sex-work-east-and-west-cambodias-sex-workers/
Last year, Sheri Kiselbach, a former sex trade worker, won a Naked Truth Adult Entertainment Award for her sex worker advocacy. “I got into sex work when I was about 20. At the time, it was definitely a choice of mine . . . I stopped working 10 years ago. I had this deep, foreboding, intuitive feeling that if I didn’t stop, something dreadful and horrific was going to happen to me . . . I felt I had played out all my odds,” she described in her speech. “You see, for many years, I had the most ruthless, cunning, cruel, cold, and manipulative pimp . . . this pimp totally enslaved me, this pimp was absolutely my master. This pimp was heroin.”
We have a certain idea about what a sex worker and their life looks like. We often imagine a woman who waits on the corner for a customer and is kept in a violent relationship with her pimp. This is the image we have been fed by years of media portrayal of sex workers. This by no means represents all, or even most, sex workers. “I’m a former sex worker, and all the circumstances of my doing sex work were very tied up with drug use,” says Kerry Porth the former executive director for PACE (Providing Alternatives, Counselling & Education), and Pivot board member. “My choices were certainly limited at the time that I got into sex work, but I certainly wasn’t exploited by anyone, unless you can prosecute heroin for exploitation.” She goes on to explain that the instances of pimping in Canada are grossly exaggerated. It certainly does happen, but a lot of female sex workers are in intimate relationships with a male partner that will look out for them and spot them. Her own story involved a man she was living with while she was in the sex trade. “He was useful to have around in case anything happened,” she explains. “But he definitely, definitely wasn’t my pimp. It’s just not that kind of relationship.”
What does sex work really encompass? The first connection that people make is that of streetwalkers, when in fact, sex work includes erotic dancers, webcam workers, and many other trades. If the favour exchanged for money is sexual in its nature, then it can fall under the category of sex work. Mary Shearman is currently completing her PhD in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at SFU. Her research focuses on one of Vancouver’s renowned strip clubs, The Penthouse. “Some of the dancers that I interviewed saw a very clear distinction between what they did and exchanging sex for money,” says Shearman. “There’s a stereotype about how strippers might as well be prostitutes essentially, but when it comes right down to it, when somebody’s willing to take off their clothes for money, they’ve got a pretty strict boundary there.” Erotic dancing has a long history in Vancouver, and is closely related to sex work on the streets. The Penthouse club was widely believed for many years to facilitate prostitution and to have links to the Mafia — mainly because of its Italian-Canadian owners. After a police raid in 1975, The Penthouse was closed for three years while the owners, the Filippones, were on trial. Shearman cited SFU criminologist Dr. John Lowman’s idea that this closure of The Penthouse marked the beginning of the trend in Vancouver to displace women and push them into areas that are less safe to work in. This is possibly one of the factors that played into the phenomenon of missing and murdered women in Vancouver. After The Penthouse closed, the women that had been dancing there, in a relatively safe and quasi-legal setting, were now forced to work in the West End. Their work, however, was not welcomed in the neighbourhood, which its inhabitants made perfectly clear by forming a group called CROWE (Concerned Residents of the West End). One of their initiatives was their “Shame the Johns” campaign, which was so successful that they managed to push the women into the Mount Pleasant area. This move dispersed and displaced these women even further, shifting them into the Downtown Eastside. To this day, displacement is ongoing. “What happens when they close all the strip joints is that women end up doing prostitution,” says Porth. “They may not want to, they certainly may not be prepared to do it, or have the knowledge to do it.”
“In terms of the Downtown Eastside, what you’re looking at is survival sex work,” says Shearman. “It’s basic fulfilling of needs, and all you’re thinking about is what your needs are.” Many times, sex workers — both dancers and those working the streets — see this option as being the fastest way to get money. “We live in a world where this option is going to get you what you need faster, as opposed to any social welfare system or any other type of relatively easy access to employment,” adds Shearman. Addiction is rampant in the Downtown Eastside, and many sex workers, including Porth and Kiselbach, cite substance dependence as being the driving force behind their initiation into sex work. Addiction and marginalization facilitate sex work in the Downtown Eastside, forming vicious cycles that are difficult to end. “There’s such a lack of relevant addiction services in this province,” says Porth. “It’s tragic that addicts that want to get out can’t get out.”
Porth recalls waiting 19 days to get a spot in detox. The wait was so long that Porth overdosed before she got her spot. Luckily, she survived, but while she was getting treatment, she began experiencing flashbacks related to her PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Instead of dealing with the childhood issues that were the root of her disorder, the centre threatened to kick her out. “Addiction services don’t always take women’s histories of trauma into consideration,” she says. Furthermore, once recovery begins in the community, the most widely accepted program is the twelve-step model. “The first step is admitting powerlessness. Well, women are already disempowered,” she explains. “It’s tough for women going into twelve-step programs, because men are able to get up and talk about breaking into cars or robbing people to support their habit, but god help you if you get up there and say you used to do sex work to support a habit, because you’re going to have a whole bunch of men interested in you at the end of the meeting.” Both Shearman and Porth discuss the
particular impact that this stigmatization has on Aboriginal women, already a marginalized group. “There are certainly a disproportionate number of Aboriginal women in the Downtown Eastside,” says Porth. “That’s the legacy of colonialism and residential schools.” There is another factor that addiction services often do not take into consideration: though it doesn’t specify a Christian god, the twelve-step model is inherently Christian in its approach — it focuses on sin and redemption — something that is certainly not the right approach for a group that has been the victim of many brutal attempts at assimilation.
One of the biggest barriers in helping and empowering sex workers is the stigma that constantly hangs around that label. Shearman talks of one of her friends, an active worker in the industry, and how she cannot bear to meet her neighbours’ eyes. “When you’re a sex worker, it’s really difficult to make eye contact with your neighbours, because you’re wondering what they’re thinking,” she explains. “You don’t want to see the judgment look. So, reducing stigma is huge.” Porth also mentions that many former sex workers do not have any formal education or employment outside of the industry, and that many have criminal recordsdue to their line of work, which inhibits them from getting jobs to replace their work. “I don’t think that sex work is inherently harmful. I think that what happens is that it’s criminalized, it’s stigmatized, and sex workers are universally shunned and shamed by the mainstream status quo,” says Porth. “When you do that, you invite predators to come down and prey on those women because you relegated those women as being less than human and available to be targeted.” Porth goes on to talk about the numerous cases where sex workers have attempted to report violence to the police, only to have them respond unsympathetically, telling them they got what they deserved because of their choice of profession. The stigma is bigger than just a social discomfort; it makes it almost impossible for sex workers to do their jobs safely. “Sex workers are never invited to the table in policy discussions or discussions about strategies,” says Porth. “We have all kinds of ideas about how to make our work safer, if only somebody would actually listen to us. But we’re constantly viewed as damaged children. You’ll hear the phrase ‘women and children,’ but women are not children. They’re adults. And we need to unpack that.”
No matter what the laws, prostitution and sex work are not going anywhere. “In my perfect world, I would only want to see women doing sex work when they’re not being driven by things like poverty and addiction, and mental health issues,” says Porth. “De-criminalization is certainly not going to be the answer to all the problems associated with sex work, but it’s an incredibly important first step to help reduce the stigma attached to sex work, and to allow sex workers to report violence to the police and to have the full protection of the law.”
In Canada, prostitution itself is legal, but most activities that are necessary to practice sex work are not. First of all, the operation of “common bawdy-houses” was illegal until recently, which means that sex workers could not offer their services anywhere indoors (such as a brothel, or even their own home). An indoor setting provides more safety measures and control than the current street work that many sex workers are forced to resort to, so this limitation had a huge impact on the safety of sex work. Furthermore, sex workers are not allowed to communicate in public places about anything that is related to prostitution, which includes communicating with one another, and discussing things like pricing with potential clients. The result of this is that sex workers are more likely to jump into a car without having had communication with the potential client, which is a dangerous situation indeed. “Most sex workers have developed a really good intuition and intuitive skills; if you’ve got a ‘no feeling,’ you don’t go,” says Shearman. “But again, you’ve got to balance that with your hunger, with when your rent’s due, and all this other stuff. It’s easy to ignore, which is why people end up in violent situations.” Lastly, it is illegal to “live on the avails of prostitution;” this law is meant to protect sex workers from pimps, but more often than not, it ends up hurting the sex workers and their loved ones. Sex workers often have dependents (such as elderly parents or children that are no longer minors) that can get charged with living on the avails of prostitution, simply because they are being supported by the money coming from sex work.
These laws have made it difficult for sex workers to do their job safely, and it is for this reason that a strong movement has risen to de-criminalize prostitution — that is, make all acts related to sex work legal. On March 26, in what has been called the Bedford Decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal ended a year-long deliberation on several points relating to prostitution. The Court struck down the bawdy-house provisions, deeming them unconstitutional, as they infringe upon sex workers’ safety. The decision also addressed that living on the avails of prostitution should be amended to apply only to those who do so “in circumstances of exploitation,” which would make it more specific to cases of pimping. These are viewed as huge successes for the sex work industry; however the decisions were not entirely cause for celebration. The Court has upheld the ban on soliciting for the purpose of selling sex, meaning that sex workers are still not allowed to communicate about their work. The federal government has since appealed this ruling and taken the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2007, Kiselbach and Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV), filed a constitutional challenge to Canada’s prostitution laws, claiming that the basic safety of sex workers is at stake in the face of these laws. In September of this year — five years after the initial challenge — the Supreme Court of Canada finally granted Kiselbach and SWUAV the right to challenge the laws.
These cases are the beginnings of a mainstream fight for de-criminalization of prostitution. These cases are making headlines and bringing sex workers closer to safety, one legal decision at a time. “[De-criminalization] is a first step towards reducing stigma. Sex work in its
quasi-legal state is pushing women on the street into more and more isolated areas,” says Shearman. “If somebody finds out what [the sex worker] does and threatens to tell their landlord, they can lose their housing, and what bears under de-criminalization, a lot of that stuff won’t happen.” But even Shearman, who is a strong advocate for de-criminalization notes that it is not a perfect system. “I’m not advocating for youth to participate in sex work, but there are still youth workers who are going to be criminalized, so what happens to them in that mix?” she notes. “So I think that de-criminalization in itself is definitely not perfect. But I do think that it will help with stigma.” Porth was also quick to bring up that minors engaging in sex work would probably fall through the cracks, even if prostitution were to be de-criminalized. “There are kids that run away from home because they’re gender non-conforming or they come from an abusive home. We don’t have really great services to look after those kids, so they end up selling sex for a roof over their head, or for food,” she explains. “The answer to those kids is to put them in jail, which is not very helpful either.”
The main argument of abolitionists — those who believe that prostitution should be entirely prohibited or abolished completely — is that sex work is inherently exploitative to those that engage in it; according to this view, those that engage in sex work are automatically victims simply due to the nature of the work. One of the biggest local advocates for this approach is Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, whose members strongly believe that sex work in any form is inherently violent and demeaning towards women. “Our feminist plan is to identify prostitution and trafficking as violence against women. Obviously then, those harmed by prostitution and trafficking should not be criminalized. If we understand that they are coping with very limited choices and they are victims of violence they deserve to get support and help in the form of exit services and transitional assistance to escape this growing form of slavery,” reads a 2008 statement on their website, written by collective member Lee Lakeman. “Today, there are those who want to tolerate prostitution or sexual slavery by de-criminalizing the sex industry, not just those prostituted. They think they can tame it or soften its horrors with local health regulations.” Rape Relief had members in The Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution, which was actively resistant to the Bedford case. Porth, however, strongly argues against this approach. “This idea of inherent exploitativeness presupposes that every sex buyer is a man, which they’re not; it presupposes that every sex-seller is a women, which they’re not. It also presupposes that every client of a sex worker is a violent, exploitative pervert, which they’re just not,” says Porth. “In order to believe in harm reduction, you have to give up this utopian view that’s it’s not going to exist, whether it’s drug use, whether it’s sex work.”
Sex work is not specific to any specific time period or place; the circumstances leading to this industry do not discriminate based on the country’s GDP. Many see it as unacceptable, as demeaning or degrading. “Degrading? Is it any more degrading than cleaning toilets?” exclaims Porth. “We just need to get over the moralizing and the fact that it’s about sex, and just treat it like work.”
Word on the Street: October 22nd, 2012
“Bah, back in my day if we wanted to bully someone, you’d giv’em an injun burn, none of this hastagging their nexopi-blog. Worst generation ever.
Stanley Scrant
Ornery octogenerian
“Sure, cyber bullying is efficient, but it’s no substitute for the real thing. Kind of like how the Kindle will never completely replace the book. ”
Trent Klassen
Harassment aficionado
“The problem should solve itself once we figure out what the online version of shooting up a school is.”
Colleen Franks
Sociologist
“Dude, I’m a buffalo and you’re a racist.”
Biff-alo
Not a bull, it seems
“The growing instances of cyber bullying are an issue that we need to tackle, put in a head lock, and not let go of until it cries uncle. ”
Sasha Gurwal
MLA
By Gary Lim
Suspected amateur diver tragically dies attempting ambitious bridge stunt
Man loses life in accidental, unintentional, unforeseen bridge tragedy
By Brad McLeod
Photo by Gmourtiis @ Flickr
VANCOUVER — A young man’s body was fished from the waters underneath the Lions Gate Bridge early yesterday morning in what police assume must be the result of a failed extreme free-dive.
Paul Clarke, a recently divorced 24 year old computer programmer from Burnaby, is suspected to have secretly been a cliff diving enthusiast who late last night attempted a dangerous solo stunt off of one of the city’s highest bridges without taking the proper safety considerations.
Clarke’s family and friend are reportedly in complete shock.
“I had no idea he was even into diving,” his mother admitted to reporters while holding back tears, “he always seemed too depressed to even take up any hobbies . . . I can’t believe he would take such a giant risk without even telling us.”
Described as an introverted and lonely man who hated his job by his mother and father who he lived with, Clarke apparently displayed no previous interest in exteme sports. Clarke’s mother claimed to have no knowledge of any previous involvement in free-diving nor any plans to pull off any spectacular stunts.
[pullquote]”He always seemed too depressed to even take up any hobbies . . . I can’t believe he would take such a giant risk without even telling us.”[/pullquote]
“There were no warning signs at all” Clarke’s father explained, “he never once mentioned that he was interested in diving, now that you mention it, he didn’t really say anything at all, and when he did it was always how awful his life had become and how he was just so tired of it all — how was I to know something like this was going to happen out of the blue?”
When interviewed Clarke’s only friend and former co-worker, Ashram Inder, parroted the sentiments of his parents that Clarke never mentioned his extreme sports aspirations to him either. “Though I did catch Paul practicing his rope-knotting at his desk, once or twice. I guess he was practicing for tying up his safety harness. It’s a real shame, he was a really nice guy, and generous too. The last time I saw him, he gave me his phone, laptop and car saying he wouldn’t need them anymore. ”
In the Greater Vancouver police department’s five-minute-long investigation of the extreme sports accident, they found nothing that suggested the incident wasn’t a cut and dry case of bridge-dive-gone-wrong and found nothing unusual in their search of the man’s house which was empty save for what they suspect is a draft of a monologue involving fictional character who wanted to kill himself which was left on the coffee table.
The incident is just one of the hundreds of similar accidental deaths off the bridge recorded by the GVPD over the past five years. They suspect that the problem must be that people just don’t understand how easy it is to fall to their death.
Although the situation has been hard on all who were close to Clarke, his mother has stated that even though she didn’t know about it, her son must have truly loved diving and that at least she can take comfort in knowing that “he died happy and doing what he loved.”
Petter Watch: October 22nd, 2012
List of alternate acronyms for SFU found in Petter’s desk. Super Friends University, circled in bold.
Welcome to fabulous no-fun city Vancouver
By Esther Tung
Re-Framing Vancouver’s “No-Fun City” title
It’s nearing 10 p.m., and the poorest postal code in Canada is alive with laughter and excited chatter. East side chic has descended upon the corner of Hastings and Columbia, juxtaposed with a shirtless homeless man, trawling the sills of the gallery windows for empties.
I crack open the last of the Palm Bays stashed in my tote bag. I hand it off to a friend — a familiar stranger — someone I’d only complimented earlier that night, re-boozes me with a Dixie cup of homebrewed nutmeg rum, and quickly makes himself at home in our circle. One of the gallery artists hosting the event cheerily reminds us to watch for cops and not get the venue into trouble.
All summer long, such parties were a dime a dozen a night in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside area, so when Huffington Post columnist Mitch Moxley fanned the flames of Vancouver’s reputation in his article “Welcome to Vancouver: No Fun City”, it felt disconnected from the Vancouver that I had come to know.
For all you foreign exchange students and small-town kids just moving into the big-city and experiencing a culture freeze-shock: there is hope. Getting people to smile back at you and call you back for that bro brunch is totally possible in Vancouver.
I, too, have had this experience. Five years ago, I moved back to Vancouver from Singapore, where culture was just the opposite: there is a jaw-dropping lack of common courtesy and disregard for etiquette in public areas, but people tend to warm up immediately to strangers in any kind of social setting. At the time, I was dissatisfied with the friends I had made in high school and the first year of university, so I took to going to music festivals by myself. Some of it was pure luck, but for the most part I like to think I’m a self-made woman in terms of my social circle. If there are so many people complaining about how closed-off locals are, then it should logically follow that there are plenty out there open to being approached and befriended. It will take some dedication carving out a lively social life for yourself here, but it can be done.
This much is true: Vancouver is a city-based upon making and maintaining connections. In order to get that one foot into the door, you’ll have to put yourself out there in ways that are demonized as being socially deviant: “cold-calling” strangers at concerts or Wreck Beach (less weird than it sounds), online dating, or dropping in unannounced at student clubs.
So now that you’ve made some friends, how are you going to have fun in a place with Prohibition-era liquor laws, limited night transit, and a dearth of taxis to take you home?
For starters, go to Whistler. It has all the Granville Strip nightlights, with the added bonus of an Australian college town vibe. The game of “Who will wake up with the biggest regret?” has yet to lose its lustre among the ski bums, if that’s the kind of night you’re looking for.
In his column, Moxley writes: “How could a city often cited as one of the world’s prettiest and most liveable be such a black hole of boring?” But take a look at the list of the world’s most livable cities; on Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey, Vancouver shares its top 10 ranking with the likes of Calgary, Melbourne, and Helsinki. Not exactly party centrals. Berlin ranks 18th, with Paris and New York at 34th and 49th, respectively.
We have a world-renowned nude beach, quality dining options opening up every month, and air that doesn’t clog your pores and doesn’t smell like bleach or sewage (I write this bitterly from Hong Kong). And just you try drinking water straight out of the tap in any other city ever.
Unfortunately for the party-hardies, our natural amenities cater to morning people and an earthier lifestyle. Activities like the Grouse Grind or doing a sunrise run around the seawall are much more popular than partying through the night. So, if you’re searching for the kind of night where the end-goal is to keep your appointment with the toilet bowl, make sure there aren’t mountains around to climb or nudists to host a marathon. After all, where’s the fun in that?
