Go for the gravel!

Hey deewds! Did eew hear that Vanc-eew-ver is like, totally number one in Canada in quality of life? Let’s all smoke a bowl on the mountain and celebrate!

Yes, that’s right, in an annual international survey published Monday that ranked 215 cities around the globe, based on 39 criteria measuring such quality-of-life determinants as personal safety and social, economic and environmental conditions, Vancouver ranked the highest in Canada (third overall behind Zurich and Geneva).

I guess “the ability to walk down an alleyway and not trip over a junkie with a syringe sticking out of their arm” was not one of those criteria.

In all fairness to Van City, despite the prevalence of drug related larceny, the living George Romero film that is East Van at night, contrasted with the overwhelming number of people in organic hemp rollerblading yoga bodysuits, Vancouver is a pretty dope place to live, if you’re into beautiful vistas and fresh air kind of stuff.

“The quality of life here is actually really good,” explained Hart Snider, a filmmaker and editor who moved from Montreal to Vancouver several years ago. “It’s just that it’s a certain kind of person’s idea of quality of life. Then again, we just had 21 days of rain in a row, so I’m not exactly sure whose quality of life that caters too—goths, maybe?”

Snider, who is finishing work on the humorous documentary Let’s All Hate Toronto (opening in this year’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto) may be biased, but he also knows the shortcomings of living in Vancouver. “It’s lame but beautiful; we have junkies and mountains, and it’s endlessly easy to make fun of the amount of fleece that can be seen here.”

When it comes to his former city, Snider says the difference is obvious. “In Montreal, it’s cool to get dressed up and go out to see a great DJ then talk about it with your friends. Here, it’s cool to go for a walk on the Seawall and brag about the hike you took on the weekend. As far as youth culture goes, there isn’t as much music going on here as there is in Montreal, but there are easily more pretentious art people. Oh, and skateboarding. Everybody here skateboards. The 30-something guys I work with skate to work every day.

“But the biggest difference with Montreal is the women. In Montreal, you can have someone who’s not traditionally gorgeous but is smoking hot because of the sexy attitude they give off; here you have women in amazing shape but who are just not attractive. That’s why Montreal should win out.”

If third place is bronze, what does that give Montreal’s 22nd place? Will we be awarded a medal of recycled tin cans that can be found along the streets? Or perhaps we can form some sort of neckpiece out of the little bits of gravel the city uses to provide traction on our winter roads but always end up scattered in our entranceways? Perhaps they should make a trophy out of the cryogenically frozen dog bombs that we discover under the melting snow banks every spring?

While it’s pretty interesting that all five Canadian cities ranked higher than any American one, should Montreal be pissed that we ranked below Ottawa—a city whose 2001 slogan “Technically Beautiful” should carry the qualifier “But Actually Pretty Boring?”

Well, we might be pissed, but we won’t be for long. You see, Montreal might have an awesome music scene, amazing, reasonably priced food and the highest concentration of hot people in North America, but we also have the shortest memories in the known universe.

We’ll soon forget about our 22nd-place finish the same way we forget about the six months of frozen hell we live through as soon as the tiniest hint of spring enters the atmosphere. The way some Montrealers forget that just because there’s no snow, doesn’t mean it’s warm enough to wear short shorts and a tank top and show off that pasty translucent sea monkey flesh you’ve been keeping under wraps over the winter. The same way many landed immigrants from the ’60s and ’70s have forgotten the hard times they had trying to assimilate into Québécois culture and have now decided to question our reasonable accommodation of immigrants.

Je me souviens? Not bloody likely.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca