Vancouver's Strangest Places - An In-Depth Guided Tour from Two Expert Guides

hi I'm Jessica the museum guide and today I'm doing something a little bit different I'm out of the museum although we'll visit two on our tour today and we're exploring some of the strangest places in my hometown of Vancouver and we're here with one of my close friends fellow tour guide and he was the emcee at my wedding Aleister butcher hi I'm Aleister and I run Vancouver detours which is a walking tour organization in Vancouver that likes to disrupt some of the touristic narratives of the city and really bring some of the Hidden histories into view today we're going to show you the weirdest things in Vancouver on today's tour Alastair and I will be walking you through some of Vancouver's strangest and most unexpected sites some of them pretty damn dark for what is often called the most livable city in the world as two born and raised vancouverites and experts on the city's Heritage and history we love showing people around the strangest things in our hometown today we're going to visit Three museums a number of iconic buildings and some very famous neon signs as well as little idiosyncrasies that make this rough logging Town turn Millionaire's playground so bizarre if you like videos about weird museums and urban Oddities all over the world remember to like And subscribe the city of Vancouver is located on the unseated territories of the musqueam Squamish and slayo tooth Nations these lands and Waters were never seeded through treaty process or surrendered by military defeat we would like to acknowledge and give thanks to our Coast Salish hosts the Dr Sun yet send classical Chinese Garden is the first authentic Ming Dynasty style scholar Garden built outside of China Vancouver's version opened in 1986 built over an ex-industrial site the garden is a beautiful tribute to the Chinese Canadian Community who played an integral role in the founding of both the city of Vancouver and the country of Canada but recently this Garden was also the site of a bizarre and violent series of events that reached Global headlines and caused quite a stir among the city's residents be they of the furry scaly or skin variety more on that in a moment the gardens are named after Dr sunyetsen the Nationalist leader who overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911 effectively ending two Millennia of Imperial monarchical rule in China and turning the country into a republic After the Revolution Sun Yat-sen would go on to be the first president of the new Republic and is often referred to as the father of modern China his association with the garden in Vancouver is not arbitrary Dr soon visited the city three times for extended periods and funding for his cause and the local community here helped finance the revolution so it's fitting that such an important figure in world history with connections to Vancouver would have such an important cultural site named after him Ali didn't finish special happened to you in this gazebo yes I actually got married in this gazebo back in 2019 I was trying to think of what could be just a beautiful and unique space in the city to say my vows with my wonderful wife and this is what we decided bats dragons and phoenixes are represented in objects throughout the garden and there are real animals in the pond too namely Turtles and fish and these aren't ordinary fish but breathtakingly beautiful and colorful koi and this is where our story takes a strange and violent turn we brought you here today for one truly weird reason and that is the sun Jackson honor the pond of the classical Garden was inhabited by 14 beloved koi some of them up to 50 years old with names like Madonna and Dragon's Gate some were older than the park itself and a whole generation of locals and visitors had grown up visiting these Majestic fish in this tranquil Oasis just a few steps away from the matting crowds of the city the koi had become so accustomed to treats the specially dried shrimp from the nearby markets in Chinatown that they would come to the surface mouths a gape in a greeting gesture to visitors of the park but in November 2019 the eaters became the Eaton when a river otter appeared in the park and devoured five adult koi fish more than a third of the adult koi population in the park in just one day local media exploded all Lookers gathered and eventually the Parks Board closed the garden with hopes of finding capturing and relocating the otter but it proved Elusive and as the park board brought in the ministry of the environment and local Wildlife relocation professionals all remain flummoxed in their efforts to trap this Wily semi-aquatic mammal in fact it would steal the bait out of live traps while evading capture before returning to hunting the precious koi after a week the number of koi had dropped from 14 to 3 with estimates of the Casual casualties being based on the number of heads and bodies being found eventually the authorities had to switch tactics rather than capturing the otter they decided to focus on catching and relocating the last remaining fish now one of the great mysteries of this case lies in where the otter came from the nearest natural body of water lies half a kilometer away and the otter would have have to cross several busy roads before finding the garden which is essentially a walled compound with two gates that are closed at night local interest in the story began to stoke allegiances with the hashtags for team otter and team koi trending on social media and shop selling T-shirts and buttons koi are famously expensive the highest price ever paid was 1.8 million dollars for one fish back in 2017 in Japan and the image of them being devoured by this sneaky voracious creature was often framed as a scrappy Underdog tail but as the Otter's decimation of the garden's adult koi population reached International Fame with jokes profiteering and polls for team otter versus Team koi reaching feverish Heights the significance of the fish to the local community was overlooked the loss of an important cultural symbol in a space that has deep roots in Vancouver's Chinatown Was Made all the more painful by the jokes and joy that so many Outsiders were finding in their death for garden staff and regulars they were part of the cultural heritage of the space just like the architecture and design in the end the three surviving adult koi were eventually rescued and relocated to the Vancouver Aquarium Madonna the oldest and most well-known inhabitant was not among the survivors tempering the sadness of the Lost 344 tiny juveniles were also discovered when the remaining adults were rounded up in late November of 2019 and hopefully at least a few of those young Offspring were Madonna's and her Legacy will live on as for the audacious otter with no food source remaining it vanished as quickly as it had appeared it seemed like an open and closed case a strange event that led to a media frenzy an animal kingdom who done it with laughter heartbreak and eventually some cultural reconciling but in 2021 news stories from Singapore started surfacing of a menacing family of otters killing the city's beloved koi from various Parks religious facilities and private collections it seems otter vs koi is now a globalized phenomenon one that is bound to repeat as the natural habitat of otters is destroyed and replaced by an urban landscape replayed with Parks ponds and even koi providing a reflection of the natural world that it has is replaced here's a little post script it's not just happening in Vancouver and Singapore but an otter has attacked koi here in England as well so now I'm heading over to The Vancouver Police Museum the old morgue is the coldest room in this building which stands at 240 Cordova Street this is the old Coroner's Court this is an art deco building built in 1932 that houses The Vancouver Police Museum's collection of guns Gore and city-specific crime lore it's pretty warm today despite the rain but when I used to work here the old morgue was really really cold perhaps that's why a famous Vancouver coroner Glenn McDonald was known to keep one of the Big Slab drawers reserved exclusively for beer the rest of the morgue has been converted into a display showcase for some of the city's most infamous crimes through the morgue is the autopsy room famous as a film set and for one very special visitor Mr Errol Flynn legendary film actor of Robin Hood and swashbuckling Fame in 1959 a nearly bankrupt Flynn arrived in Vancouver with a 17 year old girl in tow and he was here to sell a yacht to a wealthy local businessman after a few days of parties and rich food he retired to his room on Burnaby Street complaining of a sore back he was discovered dead hours later by the girl and transported to the city morgue for his autopsy over the next few days press and gossip Rags from around the world descended on Vancouver to dissect the case of Flynn's death the news of his humdrum heart attack was spiced up by his practically pubescent companion by the way when approached at the airport as to why he always had such young women with him he replied because they blank so good and the fact that his wife was saved at home in Hollywood oblivious to the teenager's existence this made it too good for the gossip columns but most of the gossip centered on Flynn's most prodigious feature he had been afflicted by huge VD warts that's a quote four of which coroner McDonald's partner removed and set in formaldehyde because he was so impressed by their size upon some consideration of the potential scrutiny their handiwork May face during a second autopsy in Los Angeles the coroners elected to replace Flynn's VD warts with Scotch tape I'm not kidding this is a hundred percent true and apparently no further questions were asked of the duo regarding the subject so I actually used to work here I did a lot of different jobs here in the coroner's court building I had my very first tour guiding job ever guiding the sins of the city tour that this Museum offers chronicling the Dark Side of Vancouver's history and then after that I worked here as a curatorial assistant for a summer and I did children's programming here for years and yes there is a robust children's programming Department you could say this is where my passion for very strange museums began oh I also did autopsies for the Halloween bus tour dressed as a kooky co-runner there are many other famous crime cases displayed here by the cadaver drawers including the castellani milkshake murder the babes in the woods and the cosberg ax murders look you can even see a few hairs still on the ax let me know if you would like videos in the future about Vancouver True Crime topics centered around this museum by the way the museum also details many of Vancouver's Infamous riots and bouts of civil unrest Ali is also an expert on this topic so let me know in the comments if you would like a video about radical Vancouver now let's head back to Chinatown at a glance this block in Chinatown looks pretty unassuming so why are people taking photos and stretching their arms along the edge of an insurance office as you get closer you realize the narrow structure along the street side is a completely separate building from the ones behind in fact it's the narrowest commercial building in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records measuring just four foot 11 inches that's 1.5 meters across at ground level even a couple of shorties like Jessica and I would barely be able to lie across the floor's depth so what is the skinniest commercial building in the world doing in Vancouver's Chinatown the original normal sized lot was purchased by one Chang toy in 1903 Mr Chang was one of the wealthiest businessmen in the area and it was part of his rapidly growing property portfolio in the burgeoning Newport City however in 1912 the city of Vancouver expropriated 24 feet or about 82 percent of the property the city was widening Pender streets presumably because they had to accommodate this new Contraption called an automobile which was wider than a horse and so effectively claiming eminent domain over the space they left Chang toi with a sliver of his original site after refusing a neighbor's offer to buy the remaining land someone bet Mr Chang that he couldn't use the land for anything surely it would be impractical if not impossible to make a commercial use for the ground level portion of this site but Chang toy was a stubborn man and in 1913 he commissioned an architectural design that saw a narrow steel frame building fill up less than five feet from the ground level's entrance to the rear the second floor features overhanging bay windows that extend another foot over the street level and the basement extends beneath the sidewalk and originally housed the public bath for workers who stayed in neighboring Shanghai alley the upstairs was used as a living quarters while the narrow ground floor for offices and shops the bath house and the apartments are gone but Jack Chow's Insurance Still Remains the commercial usage in the narrowest part of the narrowest building in the world now in this part of Canada insurance providers are also issuers of marriage licenses I know what could be more romantic and so when it was time for my marital documentation there was only one place I could possibly go now the distinction of being the narrowest commercial building in the world while still affirmed by the Guinness book of records has recently been challenged by another skinny building in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the dispute centers around the fact that while the Sam key building's width varies from floor to floor and is six feet wide in places Pittsburgh's skinny building is five foot two inches wide on all floors now I don't know about you but for my money I am sticking with the absolute skinniest standard of 4 foot 11 from the entrance to the back wall rather than some kind of overall building average thanks for coming out Pittsburgh but you need to sit back down Vancouver means a lot of different things to different people and that's why it has so many different nicknames Lotus land raincover Hollywood North vansterdam for its legendarily lacks laws on pot even before it was legalized in Canada Rain City terminal City and of course no Vancouver but my favorite nickname is neon City that's right Vancouver was once the world's neon sign Capital even more than Las Vegas when I interviewed him for this article a decade ago Vancouver neon expert Christian Dahlberg replied it's simple neon reminds us of a time when the local shopkeeper knew your name when the same mom-and-pop business had been in your neighborhood for 30 years and watched your kid grow up it reminds us of the good old days before the Big Box retail moved in no Vancouver sign more accurately fits into this Theory then Save On Meats located at 43 West Hastings like most people who grew up in the Lower Mainland for me trips downtown were always punctuated by the sight of the flying pigs Al delaurier opened up the butcher shop and lunch counter in 1957 at a time when Vancouver was one of the world's great neon cities with over 19 000 of the signs that's one for every 200 people local historian John Atkin theorizes that the signs were especially popular because they look so great in the rain as their reflection bounces off of water slicked streets and lends a rainbow of color to the otherwise gray skies and save on meets certainly adds to that rainbow Al knew his business well he chose to work with Wallace neon and it was their art director Frank Dunlap who designed this sign providing a blueprint to a team of blowers and Benders who got it just right and right it is it was a standout on a street that included the Beloved seahorse I'll show you in a moment a swinging little girl and the huge twirling W of Woodwards and this sign has delighted generations of vancouverites but it is really remarkable that it survives see in the 1960s the love affair with neon was over in raincover and businesses began removing their signs in droves countless signs were destroyed in junkyards they were associated with Urban blight and crime and often accused of spoiling our city this was a topic of a museum of Vancouver exhibit that ran for more than a decade called neon Vancouver ugly Vancouver which I actually helped do archival research for back in 2010. sadly that exhibition recently closed however the Museum of Vancouver here in Vanier Park and meant to look like a traditional Coast Salish Cedar hat still houses some spectacular signs such as the iconic smiling Buddha Cabaret we need to talk about this sign back in 1952 Harvey Lowe Albert Kwan and Wong Kwang Kim opened the smilen Buddha dine and dance nightclub and they commissioned who else but Wallace neon for this sign the Supper Club went from working class in the 1950s to downright swinging in psychedelic in the 60s and became part of the touring soul and rock music circuit legendary acts like Tina Turner played here Dennis Hopper hung out when he was in town filming movies and the owner even had to fire Jimi Hendrix whose grandmother was from Vancouver for playing too loud by the mid 70s the smilen Buddha was a hot spot for Punk Something Vancouver was known for bands like DOA sub-humans young Canadians and the modernettes built their fan base here sadly the venue was badly damaged in a fire in 1983 and it limped along for the next decade finally closing in 1992. thankfully local band 5440 rescueda and they even named their 1994 album smiling Buddha Cabaret and they took this 800 pound sign on a world tour afterwards they donated it to the Museum of Vancouver where you can luckily still see it today I once wrote a one-man play about this sign which should come as a surprise to nobody I only ever performed it once for a university classroom and I don't think it's going to make an appearance again now back to the Flying pegs restaurant term Mark Brandt reopened this space in 2011. with a hipsterified menu there's my friend Chris cooking in the kitchen but service is currently paused as the shop closed its door during the pandemic and hasn't reopened however if you're nostalgic for the food you ate here Circa 2005 before Mark Brandt took over you should head instead to the Ovaltine the Ovaltine Cafe is one of the most famous diners in Vancouver in fact the UK's Telegraph newspaper called it one of the top 50 cafes in the world located here on East Hastings right behind the Police Museum where I worked it has been a beacon in the downtown east side since 1942. I've been getting a grilled cheese and fries and a coke here since I was a teenager living on Commercial Drive and the prices are still great if you recognize it maybe you're a fan of the X-Files let's just talk for a minute about sci-fi and horror because Vancouver is often been called Hollywood North owing to its um Moody let's say moody Skies it's the perfect place for filming horror crime sci-fi and genre films and TV TV series like the outer limits Supernatural Riverdale Sabrina Smallville Battlestar Galactica the list goes on and on speaking of the X-Files you should remember that if you're visiting Vancouver it's best not to complain about the rain listen we know it rains it rains a lot my husband during this trip just kept looking out the window and saying still and yeah it can rain for days or even weeks at a Time Vancouver gets around three times the annual rainfall of London but back in 1997 David Duchovny faced a very particular Vancouver right wrath after he complained about our weather on Conan O'Brien he famously said Vancouver is a very nice place if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day it's kind of like a tropical rainforest without the Tropic 6. after this happened people in Vancouver went nuts he was the 1997 equivalent of canceled and David duchovny's picture even appeared on dart boards across the city Infamous strip club the number five orange where Courtney Love once stripped even put out this ad in local newspapers that David Duchovny was banned from their premises I don't think he'd actually been there before but still it was a real surprise in 2017 when David Duchovny agreed to come back to Vancouver to film The X-Files reboot and this time he was smart enough to not complain about our weather a few years ago before the pandemic this part of East Hastings was starting to gentrify which it really isn't anymore and there were worries that the Ovaltine would fall prey to the love it or hate it type of gentrification of Save On Meats there was another famous cafe that I've also written about called the only Seafood that was purchased at that time and there was talk of Posh cocktails although that plan is now on hold the sign removed and the future uncertain for the only by the way if anyone has that sign and wants to give it to me I would gladly take it thankfully Rachel and Grace Chen have stepped in to save the Ovaltine and keep it the way it has always been they've given it the deep cleaning and the love that it needed and they have kept the menu and the prices almost the same Grace is a downtown east side Legend in 1999 she took over the diner at Save On Meats and she legendarily served Anthony Bourdain one of her famous hamburgers which he very much appreciated without her even knowing it was him and so did I mention I love the sign and neon in general you know I do so much so that I showed Grace my Ovaltine tattoo here she was actually really overwhelmed with emotion and she was delighted to see my tattoo she took her own photos with her camera and she says she's going to frame it on the wall so when you go to Vancouver if you decide to go to the Ovaltine you should research the area first and look for me on the wall by the way Ali and I both have a couple different Vancouver tattoos so we're gonna show those off later in the video but first let's head to Blood Alley Blood Alley is a fascinating case of the urban imaginary because it is known in the minds of all vancouverites but it doesn't actually exist on any official map ask any local where this ominously named Lane is located and they'll be quick to tell you Gas Town Colonial Vancouver's founding neighborhood in fact it was the city's first Alleyway home to several businesses and horse stables since the late 1860s today it plays a great part in the lore and urban legends of the city and how could it not with a name like that you will overhear tour guides telling stories of the butcher shops that lined the lane in the days of yore the warm blood of recently slaughtered animals mixing with the cold rain in the gutters of Gastown others speak of frequent hangings carried out by an overzealous town sheriff Frontier Justice run amok but look on any map and you will find no blood Ellie because the name just as those stories are inspired fiction cooked up as part of a reimagining of this area as a commercialized Heritage District in the 1970s history pressed into the service of Economic Development even though the stories and the name were well fake news the true name of this place is trounce alley though few in Vancouver actually use this title A Century after Trout's alley was cleared and graveled over this part of the historic inner city was earmarked for rehabilitation with hopes that restoring the neighborhood's old factories and warehouses and working-class tenements would create a commercially successful Heritage District trance alley was given a makeover with old-timey looking paving stones and Ballers brought in and a derelict mechanics garage was demolished to make way for a historic looking but totally new but trounce alley didn't have the Allure that the city and developers were looking for so they began calling it Blood Alley even naming the new Piazza Blood Alley Square to give the impression that this was a long-standing legitimate title and then they circulated the tales of butcher shops and hangings which a quick look through the city's archives revealed to be completely unfounded inspiration may have come from New York where a real Blood Alley lined with avatars was demolished in the 1940s to make way for the UN building there was also a John Wayne movie called Blood Alley in 1955. art imitating life imitating myth all in a name on a positive note Blood Alley Square did Embrace an inclusive vision for the area in the 1970s with trendy new retail coexisting with social housing at the site this was a refreshing approach as much of gastown's restoration elsewhere came at the expense and removal of its long-standing low-income population in a final strange twist a private developer recently demolished the old rooming houses that had faced into the square and replaced them with a mix of market and non-market housing apartments with a concert venue below so this is currently Blood Alley square and not the Blood Alley I remember yeah pretty massive transformation uh it's currently a social mix project between a private developer a crown Corporation and a local nonprofit one alley trademarked by the private development which seems odd that a private company could trademark the name of a public Street until you remember that was never actually its name at all now since we have been walking around alleys and Jess has already shown off one of her tattoos she convinced me to show you guys a couple of my Vancouver tattoos these aging and slanted wood pylons that we still string up our power lines to and the zigzag fire escapes hold a special place in my heart especially with so much of the old city being lost to Redevelopment and the crows perched on the power lines are such a defining feature of the city especially at dusk when colossal flocks or murders of crows numbering in the tens of thousands make their daily migration from their Coastal foraging grounds to their roosts and land and as they pass overhead the sky turns black with their wings claws and beady eyes Ali's right growing up vancouverites always called them the six o'clock crows and they used to fly right past my mom's house at Commercial and venables in fact I think I may have even written a haiku about them when I was a teenager I actually might have been 30. so while Blood Alley is named for a completely fictional story leg and boot square has a decidedly grisly past the name references an actual leg in a boot so while this Harbor looks quite innocent this is leg in boot square and it takes its name from a time when Vancouver was rough a f see in 1887 when we were still a town made up mainly of loggers and Railway workers a full half of a human leg washed up on the shores of false Creek by the way Falls Creek which is actually an inlet gets its name from hydrographer George Henry Richards when he realized the creek ended and he wrote false on the map here I wish I were kidding but that's actually the origin the leg was still wearing its boot and the constables were flummoxed instead of actually searching for its owner they speared the leg on a pike here outside of a small police station that used to be on the site the idea was that somebody would recognize it and claim it and no one ever did which makes this a mystery but not as much of a mystery as what Ali's about to tell you about next lovely weather but that's not where the story of severed legs and feet ends see in the 135 years since Vancouver has become infamous for its feet yep since 2007 more than 20 human feet have washed up on BC's Shores most of them clad in running shoes there have long been many theories was it the large tsunami in Asia a plane crash perhaps the work of a local serial killer may be Gangland murders which Vancouver is known for I mean feet are one way along with fingerprints and dental records of identifying bodies luckily local scientists have been working on this and here's what we know the currents of the Georgia Strait flow out rather than in so feet are not being washed here from somewhere else these are BC feet the bones attached to these feet have no evidence of tools being used there are no hacksaw marks on the bones so unless criminals have found a new kind of dismembering Technology the body Dumping Ground theory has been foiled so we know they're local and Foul Play is not likely it still doesn't explain why there are only feet showing up well thankfully we have scientists who study things like how pigs decompose in water like Gail Anderson at Simon Fraser University both Jess and I's alma mater according to her it's very normal for corpses on the ocean floor to be nibbled by bottom dwellers until an appendage comes loose and floats away on the current in the case of humans if their feet are encased in a buoyant running shoe it will float to the top and be swept towards the Shore by surface currents remember all of the feet have been found in running shoes according to experts what would be really weird is if feet in high heels or heavy boots started coming ashore while that explains why it is only feet washing ashore it doesn't explain why so many the jury is still out on that one it may be that local Society is now conditioned to constantly be on the lookout for feet and so we find more of them there is also the sad fact that BC has a much higher amount of missing people than most provinces and some of those inevitably end up in the water hopefully that's resolved some of the questions that keep you up at night regarding missing feet and now for one of my favorites the sun tower is a magnificent bow arts building on Pender Street and my favorite thing about it is that it tricked Vancouver rights for more than a century by the way I used to call it the baby bottle when I was little it was built in 1911 and was the tallest building in Canada at the time at 17 stories beating the previous record holder the Dominion building opened just one year earlier and around the corner it was originally commissioned by LD Taylor to house his newspaper the Vancouver world and was built by Architecture Firm John Coughlin and son and was taken over by the Sun newspaper in 1937 hence the name sun tower to this day even though the newspaper has moved on I love looking at these photos from its construction and also from when it had of course neon all over the exterior there's something so Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow about it of course in line with the city's denigration of neon the sun tower was stripped of its signs in 1965 which you can see Happening Here but what was it that tricked local people it was the roof tiles for over a century the green patina atop the sun tower fooled most vancouverites into believing its Dome was oxidized copper but in fact they were much cheaper terracotta tiles painted green to look like the much more prestigious metal at some point in the 1960s the Terracotta was painted mint green to replicate the patina of aged copper over time people just began believing that the roof was real in 2021 the new owners decided to make this pipe dream come true copper pipe get it they spent Millions replacing the old Roop with actual copper tiles and so now it looks just the way it did more than a century ago when the terracotta tiles were new it will of course oxidize over the next 20 years eventually turning the green that we all remember let's have a look at a few more details the exterior is adorned with nine terracotta carotids supporting the cornice all of them sculpted by Charles marrega these bare-breasted Muses nicknamed the nine maidens were incredibly scandalous to vancouverites of the day and there was even talk of creating shawls to hide their nudity there's also some cheeky tales that men would walk the long way home to get to the nearby trolley station just so they could walk past the nine maidens the Vancouver Sun building actually is a really important meaning to me because my grandmother worked here doing the classified ads for a short time when she was in her early 20s now here's a tale of people power in quite an unusual way this is dude chilling Park except it isn't it's Guelph Park the sign which riffs on this sculpture was created as a prank by local artist Victor bristanski in 2012. he mimicked legitimate Vancouver Park Board signs exactly and people began flocking here for selfies the park board removed the sign pretty quickly but a local resident called Dustin Bromley started an online petition to put the sign back and it garnered more than 1800 signatures in 2014 the park board decided to follow the will of the people and put the sign back it draws attention to reclining figure an unassuming piece of public art made of Cedarwood that has been here since 1991. it was created by Denman island-based Michael Dennis and it was in a pretty bad shape a few years ago another online initiative was created and in 2019 Dennis replaced it with a bronze cast that will hopefully stand the test of time now dude chilling has become a bit of a Meme here in Vancouver a nearby Brewery even made a dude chilling Pale Ale in November 2021 Vancouver and the surrounding areas were rocked by Massive flooding and a huge barge beached itself at Sunset Beach Downtown the Vancouver Park Board soon donated a barge chilling Beach sign which caused a lot of Giggles however this really made some people angry and rightfully so local Squamish groups had been asking for a sign to recognize the Squamish language name of this beach and many other places in Vancouver but in the case of Sunset Beach they were told it would take years they were understandably angry when the park board instantly made a joke sign but wouldn't take their request seriously the barge chilling Beach sign was changed to eaelushan the name of the beach in the Squamish language which means good underfoot and this happened twice before the park board removed their sign in late January 2022. hey what are you doing I'm sure all right here's a really weird tale of psychedelic Mayhem we're standing in front of the Holy Rosary Cathedral where in the 1960s you could really reach into the furthest depths of your soul and learn things about yourself that you never thought possible oh no with prayer with LSD that's right Church sanctioned acid trips here in Vancouver back in the late 60s and some would even say today Vancouver had a crazy swinging reputation as the San Francisco of the north look yet another nickname we were the hippie capital of Canada and one of the main hippie destinations in all of the world but before the 1960s Vancouver was home to a man who would change the entire hippie movement the quote Johnny Appleseed of LSD acid Al Hubbard now Al had been a poor Kentucky hillbilly but His Brilliant scientific mind led him to discover a new heating technology despite his laboratory prowess he was always a bad boy and made a fortune rum running up and down the West Coast during prohibition Al was a brilliant speaker a great salesman and by the 1950s a multi-millionaire off of the prophets from a new energy technology that used uranium now something started to seem a bit fishy with Al she see despite the size of his company its mailing address was a former brothel at 500 Alexander Street in the downtown east side he claimed to be a spy for the CIA he bought a gulf Island and he was just a bit well off you see it was around this time that Al discovered acid in 1951 Al took his first hallucinogenic LSD trip and became an instant convert to the drug back then LSD was used to treat everything from depression to alcoholism and Hubbard was a huge fan dropping acid over 2 000 times he loved the drug so much that he bought the North American distribution rights from the Swiss company Santos and then he really set on his life's work of spreading the gospel of acid and that's when things got really weird Hubbard became a Doctor by purchasing a degree in biopsychology from a Tennessee diploma Mill and proceeded to open a clinic the Hollywood Hospital in New Westminster to treat all kinds of ailments with LSD Aldous Huxley Cary Grant and Jack Nicholson were some of the famous patients who came up to Vancouver to visit the Hollywood Clinic eager to chase the White Rabbit the Vancouver Yacht Club was the site of pro-lsd meetings in the 1950s and through Hubbard Canada became a top Center for LSD research acid Guru Timothy Leary visited Vancouver for inspiration from Al and even this building behind me the Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral got in on the action acid Al was so charismatic that he convinced the clergy here to adopt LSD as a way to get closer to God it's true this is a quote from a memo sent out by the Holy Rosary Church to its parishioners in 1957. we humbly ask the heavenly mother Virgin Mary to Aid us to know the true qualities of these psychedelics the full capacities of man's noblest faculties and according to God's laws use them for the benefit of mankind here and in eternity see in these walls that white square on your tongue was not always a communion wafer Al's credibility along with lsd's credibility quickly began to erode from the late 50s onward Al would soon retired from public life it was a pretty potent chemical to be messing with especially over 2 000 Times by the late 60s he had lost his mind and most of his fortune he died at the age of 81 in a trailer park in Arizona an anticlimactic end for the Johnny Appleseed of LSD this is one of those things that doesn't feel weird at all to a vancouverite in fact Ali and I only ever realized that these were quite strange when we became tour guides and people always asked about them the floating gas stations or fuel barges of cool Harbor while they were at least three when I was a kid the Chevron is the last of the floating gas stations that have been a local Landmark for 100 years this one here is relatively new the barge rebuilt and installed just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics but the first gas barge here opened in 1923. competitors soon joined them in this area just off of Stanley Park became known as Gasoline Alley tragically one of the barges exploded in 1974 and three people were killed slowly one by one the gas stations left with Esso chevron's last remaining competition closing down in 2008 but gas stations aren't our only unusual floating businesses see during the 1986 World's Fair which Vancouver eights still call Expo 86 we built a floating McDonald's which was either the world's first or second floating Mucky D's accounts vary this was one of five McDonald's on the Expo site and it was called the Friendship 500 although no one called it that it was and always has been mcbarge I actually remember it from Expo actually you're in for a treat because here is a photo of me at Expo 1980 36 and here's one of Ally it was a big deal for Vancouver kids mcbarge was supposed to find a new home after the six-month-long festival but it failed and most people forgot about it until the early 2000s when it was used as a filming location for blade Trinity sadly mcbarge is now just a rusty and graffitied Hulk moored in Maple Ridge but there's always talk of repurposing it by the way you can also see the Harbor airport it's a beautiful place to sit and watch airplanes landing and taking off it's really loud in person and just up here on top of this building one of two in Vancouver nicknamed the concrete waffle you can see the world's tallest Air Traffic Control Center okay it's the only one on top of a building but it's still a world record every Vancouver tour guide loves the Marine building this skyscraper and I use that term loosely in 2022 terms can be found at 355 Berard Street we enter these polished brass doors covered with snails skate Turtles crab scallops seaweed carp and seahorses and the building is covered with modes of transportation such as trains planes Zeppelins and of course many tall ships in the late 1920s Lieutenant Commander J.W Hobbs an entrepreneur from Toronto decided that Vancouver didn't have enough Landmark buildings after the Panama Canal was completed in 1914 Hobbes knew that this salty Old Logging town could really become a famous city and he thought we needed something to rival the Chrysler Building in New York bless construction began in March 1929 and progress was going very well everyone was really excited for this new addition to Vancouver skyline and it was completed at 1.1 million dollars over budget in March of 1930 yes that was more than six months after the stock market crash it was meant to be a place of Commerce and Industry the building owners decided to sell tickets to the observation deck to try to claw back some of the money they'd spent but alas the 25 cent admission price was simply too expensive for people during the Great Depression even though it was meant to be a place of Commerce and Industry it was ultimately sold to the Guinness family of Ireland for only nine hundred thousand dollars much less than its ultimately 2.3 million price tag of course that's not the only Guinness family connection to Vancouver in order to make their luxurious British properties Housing Development more attractive to vancouverite they actually built us this very famous bridge the Lionsgate which was a toll bridge that cost 25 cents now let's have a little wander around the lobby of the building which is open to the public and admire some of the features course this beautiful stained glass window showing the sunset on the water a contrast to the other end of the lobby which shows us the sunrise there's Ali walking through the lobby there just admiring it the remarkably detailed elevator doors a truly strange detail a tile depicting a tall ship set upside down an old architectural Superstition that no building should be perfect this tile floor replaces the original Scottish linoleum floor in the 1990s and it depicts the different signs of the zodiac another reference to the building's Marine theme no detail is left undone above the door here the clock doesn't have numbers it has Crustaceans we're getting inside one of these inlaid wood elevators each one featuring local British Columbian Hardwoods and taking it up to the second floor the mezzanine level from this vantage point you can see so many details it's always a nice opportunity to notice the plaster work done on site look at the shape of the lobby from this angle you can see that it's meant to look like a ship and of course don't forget to look at the light fixtures each of them their own individual tall ship alright so I guess to continue on our tattoo of Vancouver all right I guess to continue on this tattoo tour tattooer of Vancouver that we're accidentally doing I also have a tattoo of the Marine building so here we've got the stained glass that you can see just directly behind me as well as a ship from the exterior of the building and some of the art deco waves I'm very lucky to have been to the penthouse of the Marine building a few years ago when a friend worked here and here are some photos from that visit oh and did I mention that I was legally married here while my actual wedding was in London six months later my legal nuptials took place here on this balcony gorilla style we didn't ask permission sorry management and of course what else would you expect in Hollywood North the Marine building was the Baxter building in the Fantastic Four and it was the Daily Planet in Smallville amongst many others well that brings us to the end of our tour of just some of the strangest things in Vancouver there's a lot more to see in the future so let me know if you'd like a part two or if you want to see a video about radical Vancouver as always please remember to like And subscribe as it really helps my channel and I'll see you the next time I'm in the museum or in my hometown

Channel: The Museum Guide

Views: 11,589

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Id: PD7SKJz3ZXs

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022