By Esther Tung
Photos by Mark Burnham

Along the alley just off of Hastings and Abbott, I find the doorbell hidden in one of the murals on the wall. The signboard overhead reads “VHS”, and the doorbell setsoff lights flashing above.  A moment later, somebody pokes their head out of the second-floor window, yells a greeting, and reels down a metal cable, dangling a key just within reach. “Come on upstairs!”

I let myself in and follow the murmuring coming from behind a door upstairs. On the other side, energy runs high and voices talk on top of one other — someone’s done a stellar job of soundproofing the room. About 20 men bustle around a long table in the centre of the room. Some are sorting through plastic containers and packing things into cardboard boxes, others are slouched over laptops or tinkering with machines. Shelves line the walls, full of labeled containers. Everyone seems to be talking at once.

This is Vancouver Hack Space (VHS), a bastion of DIY ethic in the city. In the mainstream, the term “hackers” has been reappropriated to define tech nerds who devote their energy to circumventing security systems. Between the walls of hacker culture, a hacker is a person who learns about a piece of software or hardware by modifying, deconstructing, and rebuilding it. Hackers improve the existing tech using only pre-existing elements within the system, and try to find innovative uses for it.

Hackerspaces have been around for decades, and can be found in cities worldwide. Hacker culture’s genesis was in 1946, with the creation of MIT’s model train club, the Tech Model Railroad Club. However, the founding of Berlin’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) marked the reinvention of the hackerspace. In 1985, the CCC gained notoriety when they compromised a German bank’s system in order to make a statement about the bank’s security glitches: they transferred 134,000 DM — equivalent to approximately $63,000 CAD now — into their own account, only to return the money the next day. As the largest hacker organization globally, it boasts 1,500 members, and also hosts Europe’s largest hacker conference, the Chaos Communication Congress.

It was Joe Bowser who went to this conference and brought the idea of hackerspaces back onto North America shores. The first meeting was held at Emma’s Hackery (now called The Hackery), an electronics repair and ethical recycling outlet. An open call for members brought in 20 people, about half of whom are still active in the space. Other than years of experience, no one member has any hierarchal power over any other, says Luke Closs, one of the founding members of VHS. Much like the CCC and many other hackerspaces, VHS is a decentralized organization, member-owned and –operated, and has no official director. “We are a ‘do-ocracy’ — if someone says we need shelves here, it’s up to that person to get the shelves,” says Closs.

On Tuesdays, hackerspaces the world over open their doors to the public and invite them to drop in. The people at VHS are used to visitors, and everyone is eager to acquaint new faces with ongoing projects. Speaking to a hacker for the first time is like picking up another language. Veteran hacker Dan Royer is a lanky man in a brown shirt and glasses, and he takes me under his wing immediately. He shows me the two main tools that hackers use: the 3D printer and the CNC. Where the 3D printer creates parts of a whole — an additive process — the CNC printer solders shapes into the material, a subtractive process. I have to stop and ask for further explanation almost every other sentence, but he somehow answers them all without losing an inch of patience. He’s in the process of breaking down the basics of the Arduino —  a common computer chip used in hacker kits and simple robots — when a man in his 60s with an eyepatch accosts us. The two lock into a friendly debate over how to best use the chip, and it’s hard to keep up.

“It’s a little busier than usual today. Everyone’s cleaning up the debris after the Maker Faire,” Royer tells me, referring to the Vancouver Maker Faire. “Maker” is the more marketable word for hackers, “a softer term,” says Closs. The Maker Faire, which took place at the PNE Forum on June 23 and 24, inaugurated last year as a large-scale showcase combining traditional crafts and tech-oriented projects that attracted over 3,000 people. While hacker culture has been enjoying some mainstream success on the consumer end, membership has been expanding slowly at VHS.

Decentralized operations do have a reputation for growing at a slower pace, but in Closs’s opinion, it’s more a feature than a bug. While it means less money in the coffers — VHS is entirely funded by members — Closs says that it allows new members to be more fully assimilated into the organization and preserves the original spirit of the space. While it seems somewhat contradictory to the progressive nature of such a collective, Closs’s opinion is prudent rather than insular.

Most of the hackers in the room seem to be 30 and older (with the exception of two SFU students in the SIAT program) and all of them are men. There are few female members, Royer says, and they usually stick to traditionally feminine crafts. But those skills aren’t valued any less here. He points up to a white ball of knitted yarn hanging from the ceiling, vaguely shaped like a lotus flower. That was the winning entry from last month’s egg drop social.

Closs does hope that hackerspaces will branch out into the suburbs, where space is at less of a premium. VHS’s 1,000 square feet serves over 80 members, so it’s getting a little packed in there, and they’re looking into moving into a bigger space to accommodate its growing membership. “We have a laser printer downstairs that doesn’t fit up here,” says Royer.

Despite the need for more room, members of the VHS collective, which operates on a consensus-based model, are against grant applications. “When you accept grants or external funding, you have to sell yourself in order to continue getting that money,” says Closs, who doesn’t see it as a sustainable solution for the organization. Resourcefulness has always been part of the hacker zeitgeist, and the need to be fiscally conservative makes for a fertile breeding ground of creativity that pushes members to work with what they do have.

Granted, not all projects are utilitarian. At the far end of the room, a homemade breathalyzer is mounted to the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom — “accurate up to four beers,” says Steven Smethurst, the man behind the contraption. Hackerspaces are not only for the pursuit of commercializing your craft. A healthy curiosity, transparency, and a good attitude are the sigils of the hackerspace. It is a beloved ‘third place’ by its inhabitants, an escape from work and home, and a space that combines knowledge with imagination. It humanizes the technologies that are often otherwise berated for being alienating and isolating. Perhaps next Tuesday, you’ll find yourself at the steps of Vancouver Hack Space and find that the key to your next door is reeling down from above.