Escape From Vancouver

It’s funny – the further you get from Vancouver, the more of it you see. No matter where I look, there it is! What’s really funny is to hear people say, “Yeah, I hear Vancouver’s nice…I should really check it out someday.” – not realizing that they probably know more about Vancouver than they might suspect.

Consider music. Now, I’m personally not a big fan of Finger Eleven, and God knows I’m happy to have escaped the 24-7 Nickelback shill machine that is C-FOX. However, the local music stations have regular rotations of both, as well as the occasional Hootie and the Blowfish version of 54-40‘s “I Go Blind”. And of course, there’s always regular play of chick-rock fav Sarah McLachlan.

Or how about movies and television? Scooby-Doo 2 is due out in short order, not that it’s anything I didn’t already see in production on West Georgia. Or how about Paycheck? Only a real Vancouverite would recognize the squeal of brakes from a BC Transit bus as it nearly runs over Ben Affleck. And didn’t that movie also star former Prime Minister Trudeau as an arch-villain – or at least, the guy who played him? And, of course, any number of television shows are shot in Vancouver, though they don’t really count. They’re all shot in warehouses in Burnaby. And with Aamer Haleem, former host on VTV’s morning show, hosting VH1’s Bands Reunited, it’s like we never left!

Notwithstanding the television shows, I think most people here in Silicon Valley could wander around Vancouver without so much as stopping to ask for directions.