When Vancouver placed on the world’s worst dressed list, the MSN Travel article claimed that it consulted with GQ. Since then it turns out they didn’t consult with them at all. With that being stated, this is a recent article in GQ that looks at Vancouver from many perspectives. The article also looks at Toronto and Montreal. To read the full article click here. Here is the Vancouver portion in it’s entirety.
Vancouver: The Seattle of Your Dreams
Unfold a map on any street corner in Vancouver and some beaming local is bound to volunteer assistance. Maybe it’s all the clean air, kind bud, and socialized medicine, but the native temperament is so mellow and agreeable that it seems almost avant-garde. (Of course, every decade or so Vancouverites work out their rage by torching cars and looting storefronts after a hockey loss.) Outdoorsy types have long been drawn to the beaches, parkland, old-growth forests, and postcard-ready North Shore mountains. But thanks to the 2010 Olympics and the big-budget movies shooting on every street, “Hollywood North” feels like some futuristic city-hybrid experiment gone freakishly right, blending the best of primal wilderness and baller cosmopolitan comfort.
Green acres meet the (mellow) urban jungle in Vancouver.
The Shangri-La Hotel is the tallest of Vancouver’s soaring skyscrapers, and it’s appointed to satisfy the studio exec in you.
The Loden is more down-to-earth in every sense and hooks you up with loaner bikes to explore nearby Stanley Park.
A thousand acres of gardens, ponds, and secluded forest paths make it the perfect place to enjoy (but not to score) some of British Columbia’s biggest cash crop.
Get your nature fix at Stanley Park.
And thanks to Vancouver’s impressive ethnic diversity, the city is a gold mine of global stoner food. In Canada’s biggest Chinatown, Bao Bei serves steamed buns stuffed with silky short ribs and crisp pickled cucumber.
Fried anchovies with sugar, salt-roasted peanuts, and Thai chiles, at Bao Bei.
At Go Fish, a waterfront lunch shack, the fish-and-chips is made from the morning’s catch and devoured on a patio that overlooks the inlet.
After that (yes, we were still hungry), maybe stroll past the buskers and bongo-bangers to the Public Market for Lee’s Donuts, sugar-dusted and hot from the fryer.
Yes, they grow more than just weed up here (referencing Granville Island Public Market).
The cobbled streets of Gastown are in the middle of a renaissance, and they’re where to spend your nights. L’Abattoir splits the difference between French technique and West Coast freshness in an atrium of whitewashed brick. But you don’t need to go to a proper restaurant to eat well here, because the city’s best watering holes serve real food deep into the night. After you self-medicate on Penicillin cocktails at the Diamond, its Moroccan-spiced cod sub will wake you up before the bike ride home.
Order a cocktail at L’Abattoir, even if there’s no wait for a table.
And inside the subterranean Narrow Lounge there’s garage rock on the speakers, taxidermy on the walls, and pitch-perfect pork rillettes on the menu, proving that Vancouver has the whole sublime-incongruity thing on lock.—Caroline McCloskey
Take It Outside: The Seawall Loop
Vancouver is a paradise for cyclists, but even if you don’t own Lycra shorts, you’re obligated to do the Seawall loop—a five-and-a-half-mile waterfront tour around Stanley Park. You can Lance Armstrong it in thirty minutes, but then you’d be missing the point. Rent a bike and a lock at Spokes (near the park entrance) so you can stop and smell the Douglas fir.
1. Brockton Point Lighthouse A prime spot to kick back on an empty bench and watch the waterway traffic: hydroplanes skidding across the water and freighters chugging toward the Pacific, all against the snowcapped mountains.
2. Siwash Rock Just try not to tweet a picture of this sixty-foot volcanic outcropping in Burrard Inlet, topped off by a lone Douglas fir. It’s taken the basalt stack only 32 million years to look that photogenic.
3. Third Beach With logs in the sand and picnic tables on the grass, Third Beach practically begs you to take a seat and relax. Locals bring grills and coolers of Molson, but no one will mind your bread, cheese, charcuterie, and sparkling wine.—Caroline McCloskey
Image By GlacierTim
Follow Channels and Categories