The recent opening of a George Costanza themed bar in Melbourne, Australia got me to thinking about Vancouver’s relatively pedestrian café and bar scene. Vancouver does have its fair share of flavourful establishments (a few come to mind, including our wildly successful cat café, a late-night grilled-cheese hole in the wall, dining in the dark, and back alley tacos), however…
It’s gold Jerry! Image courtesy George’s Bar/Instagram
Across the Pacific Ocean, our neighbour Japan is crushing all of the competition when it comes to zany cafés and bars. There are so many, in fact, that I am finding it impossible to create a comprehensive list. Here are a few worthy of consideration: an owl café, maid cafés, a toilet café, a bunny café, a back to the future café, a cuddling café, a café between train tracks, a goat café, a ninja café, a reptile café, and a falcon café. I do not necessarily suggest that some (or any) of these might be worth transposing to Vancouver, however it does reveal that we could be a lot more imaginative when it comes to designing our most outlandish dining experiences.
Can the readers of Price Tags imagine any unforeseen opportunities to add whimsical establishments to the Vancouver scene? Personally I would love to install a night club between the two SkyTrain tracks. Perhaps as part of the expansion down Broadway a courageous club owner on Granville could pack up and move in? It would certainly liven up the commute as you scream through on the last train.
To indulge my imagination one more time: during the closing of The Cannery, Port Metro Vancouver investigated the possibility of lifting the restaurant onto a barge and floating it to a new location. Consider an alternate universe where the cannery was left floating derelict (or in use!) along Burrard Inlet for the next thirty years… Does this sound familiar?
The McBarge is being turned into something … that might be cool.
We have a Twin Peaks themed restaurant … kinda on par with George?
Parallel to the Cannery closing is the closing down of what was a fantastic bike route to East Van – the low road by the tracks – I remember using it once in the 90’s when visiting, and it sure beat the hills of Adinac! Both unfortunate byproducts of possible security overreaction.
How did I not know about Gringo? mmmm
We need more of these back alley spots in general! (which both Gordon and I have written about https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/an-argument-for-alleys-or-why-melbourne-beats-us-on-livability/ )