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Don’t believe me? Ask any young European traveller with money in their pocket. If you’re looking for an exciting vacation, they’ll tell you to skip Vancouver and head to Seattle. Or Squamish. Even Kamloops. Hell, anywhere but here.

Fortunately, we’re about to be rescued by the Fun Cavalry, a.k.a. the Vancouver Board of Trade. In February, they formed an “emergency task force’” to help us find our lost city spirit. Headed by the likable Carole Taylor, key members of this Spirit of Vancouver task force include Mayor Philip Owen and the Vancouver Canucks’ GM, Brian Burke.

Great idea, terrible start. First off, I can’t think of many words less fun than ‘emergency’, ‘task’, and ‘force’. Second, what the hell are Brian Burke and Philip “Pip” Owen doing on the fun city pep squad? Talk about the foxes guarding the funhouse. Owen wouldn’t recognize a good time if it grabbed his butt, tickled his armpits, and smushed a cream pie in his fake-tan face.

And Burke? He hasn’t smiled in years. How’s he supposed to make Vancouver more fun…by making trades? Will Burke deal away two boring Point Grey accountants in exchange for a Tijuana Mariachi band and the rickety bus they rode in on?

Moving quickly backwards, the task force launched their Spirit of Vancouver campaign on March 30 under police guard at the Waterfront Hotel. Strangely, they held it at 8 a.m. on a Friday morning, when most really fun people are just hitting the sack. Despite the ungodly hour, over 500 people showed up, the vast majority of them wearing suits, brooches, and beige.

After some pre-show entertainment from a banjo-plucking senior, we were then treated to the Spirit of Vancouver’s panel of fascinating guest speakers. These experts on fun included:

• Suromitra Sanatani, Vice-President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business [and President in Charge of Boring Everybody to Death]
• Dennis Skulsky, some mucky-muck at the National Post who commanded us to say “Good morning” to him, twice.
• Mark Startup, emperor of the Retail Merchants’ Association of BC
• Lynne Kennedy, anal Alderwoman
• Tourism Vancouver czar, Rick Antonson
• BC Film honcho, Michael Francis, who noted that British Columbians are below the national average for their support of the arts
• Michael Goldberg, the bow-tied Dean Emeritus of UBC’s Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, who prompted walkouts with his risqué standup routine on the importance of trade, infrastructure, and going to the library
• Vancouver Aquarium chief John Nightingale, who quoted Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip and who couldn’t public speak his way out of a paper bag

• Average age: 50
• Average skin colour: white
• Number of artists or entertainers on the panel: zero
• Number of audience members dressed as Godzilla in a wrestling cape: one
• Number of times Godzilla was cut short when he tried to speak: one
• Number of attendees who were Brian Burke or Mayor Owen: zero

Clearly, the Vancouver Board of Trade needs a truly fun expert to lead us out of our crisis of civic confidence. Vancouver needs a renegade of fun, a voice of treason, if you will. Someone who will show City Hall and the Board of Trade how to transform No Fun City into an exciting place to live, visit, play, fall in love, and spend all your money before you die.

Frankly, that someone should be me. I’m serious. Ask around, they’ll tell you. I’m a fun guy. A fun factory. I practically ooze fun.

Therefore, as a public service, I, Ken Hegan, offer you my Manifesto of Fun:

50 Ways to Turn Vancouver into the Fun Capital of the Universe

#50) Open the Vancouver Art Gallery’s beautiful North and South entrances. Flaunt the art, don’t hide it away.

#49) On hot summer days, lay water sprinklers on the City Hall’s back lawn for kids and staff to run through.

#48) Expand the Aquabus ferry routes to connect downtown Vancouver with Point Grey and West Vancouver.

#47) Host a downtown outdoor film festival over several summer weeks. In Montreal’s Place des Arts, thousands of people sit or stand to watch free films on a giant screen.

#46) Screen films on the beach in Stanley Park or English Bay. A popular Australian attraction is Sydney’s outdoor cinema along The Domain park shoreline, near their Botanical Gardens and directly across from the Opera House. Thousands of film lovers pay premium rates to sip wine and eat delicious food in outdoor theatre-style seats. As the sun sets, the Opera House gleams and the Sydney skyline sparkles in the warm summer night. The movie screen tilts slowly up from the water, then the audience snuggles in to watch local and international films.

#45) Bumper cars in Robson Square. A great stress release for busy downtown workers.

#44) Charge tourists $50 to climb the “Historic Lion’s Gate Bridge”

#43) Charge tourists $75 to bounce around on top of “Historic BC Place Stadium”

#42) Charge tourists $100 to bungee jump off the Capilano Suspension Bridge (infants bounce for free)

#41) A bathtub relay race from English Bay to West Vancouver to Spanish Banks, then back to English Bay. On the morning of the race, teams of 10 mechanics, designers, painters, and sailors must literally assemble their tubs for the afternoon race. Prizes awarded for Most Colourful Tub, Best Design, Fastest Assembly, Fastest Crossings, and Spunkiest Cheerleaders.

#40) ICBC rebates for car and truck drivers who replace annoying horns, alarms, and reverse gear beepers with novelty horns that play “The Mexican Hat Dance” and “La Cucaracha.”

#39) Memo to City Hall’s Structures department: stop painting everything yellow. It’s the colour of fear. Instead, encourage paint stores to donate mistint paints to Vancouver’s art schools. Then hold a student mural competition to transform bland civic canvases like the Burrard Street Bridge.

#38) Vancouver buildings are hideously dull. Line up the guilty architects, shoot them, then build something interesting with their bones.

#37) The faster we get tourists into their downtown hotels, the faster they’ll be out spending their money. Start with a North-South airport-to-downtown train line. Get it done. Now. And since the needs of the many outweigh the petty whines of the few, ram those bad boys straight through lovely Shaughnessy. C’mon, folks, they’re quieter than Harleys. It’s not like they’re high-speed roller coasters zooming around white-knuckle curves and death-defying loop-de-loops.

#36) Break up the city’s unfair newspaper monopoly. 3 out of 4 daily newspapers are owned by the same company, two of which share the same building. While we’re at it, force the Vancouver Sun, a.k.a. That 5th-Rate Shit Rag, to report on local entertainment in their tediously thin Entertainment section.

#35) Sell tacky Jesus art outside neighbourhood churches. As seen outside Brazilian churches, you tilt these 3-D Christ illustrations back and forth to see that He’s crying, He’s not crying, He’s crying, He’s not crying.

#34) Romantic carousel rides for adults. And turbo merry-go-rounds for the speed-freak nippers.

#33) Think positive. Greater Vancouver will now be called Greatest Vancouver. Tell kids with Down Syndrome that they actually have Up Syndrome.

#32) Rowboat rentals in Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon (see NYC’s Central Park).

#31) Eliminate cars from Granville Island. Replace them with rickshaws and three-wheeler fun-cycles (see Cannon Beach, Oregon). Expand public transit to Granville Island by using the Arbutus train tracks for commuter trains. Bulldoze that Starbucks which, duh, build their shack directly on top of the rails. Starbucks keeps their license, however, by selling coffee and treats to commuters on the trains.

#30) Pay groundskeepers to mow funny sayings into city lawns.

#29) News Flash: it rains here. Install mandatory awnings over business zone sidewalks.

#28) Detonate those silly ‘spare change’ parking meters. Inspired by the world class city of Kamloops, these meters distance us from the poor and fool tourists into thinking they can park on Granville Mall.

#27) Replace the spare change meters with dozens of Speaker’s Corner booths. For just a buck, Vancouverites and tourists can give their two cents on how City Hall can make Vancouver the coolest city anywhere.

#26) Name park benches after living people. When you die, you lose your bench.

#25) During hot summer months, rent sumo costumes at Sunset Beach and stage big belly-bucking sumo bashos.

#24) Nude Olympics on Wreck Beach. Invite the world and they will come.

#23) Add a laugh track to Shaw Cable’s broadcasts of City Council meetings. Every week, these hopelessly uptight bureaucrats meet to determine just how much fun they won’t let you have. Crank up the yuks every time the Mayor interrupts someone whose opinion differs from his by 2%.

#22) Keep basketball in Vancouver…free and fun on the outdoor courts where it belongs. As for the Grizzlies, hey I’m sorry about the job losses but let’s face it, we paid wayyyyyyy too much to see you guys suck. I hated your ugly teal jerseys, and watching you lose all the time was about as much fun as watching old men die. Good riddance, losers.

#21) Now that the Grizzlies Extreme Dance Team is unemployed, reassign them to be the all-new Philip Owen Extreme Dance Team. The dancers will follow Owen around 24/7, leaping and chanting “D-fense!” [clap clap] “D-fense!”

#20) Equip buses with funny-car hydraulic systems so they bounce up and down like East L.A. low riders.

#19) Host the WTO, APEC, FTAA, IMF, and OAS summit meetings…but all during the same week. Arm the cops, protesters, and journalists, then duck, roll, and cover.

#18) Whenever someone does a heroic act, have the Mayor present them with a Key to the City that actually opens every lock in town.

#17) Stage a multicultural pavillion week like Winnipeg’s Folklorama and Toronto’s Caravan. At these major feel-good events you meet loads of people, see cool stuff from other cultures, and sample food and drinks from around the world.

#16) Change Vancouver’s stifling alcohol licensing laws so local restaurants, pubs, and cafés can thrive under increased tourism and community outings. Block off streets to create a fun club zone like Sydney’s Rocks district and New Orleans’ Bourbon Street. By day, these zones can stage public vegetable markets and book fairs.

#15) Let’s allow people to drink in pool halls. Currently, City Hall thinks it’s somehow safer to cram people into a bar with only two tiny pool tables, so they drink for an hour and a half while waiting for a table. By the time they finally get on a table, they’re drunk, aggressive, and they fight over the rules.

#14) Stage summertime Friday night office parties in public meeting places like Robson Square. This gives us live local music, food, wine, and a warm sense of community. Plus it’s a great way to get laid.

#13) Learn from Amsterdam by creating separate, designated downtown bus and bike lanes. Our currently combined bus ‘n’ bike lanes are a lose-lose farce. This just in: bicyclists and bus drivers hate each other’s guts.

#12) Vancouver desperately needs to promote itself better. For instance, we have the worst city slogan in the world, “Gateway to the Pacific.” Which sounds like something you speed through on the way to someplace better. So let’s have a nickname contest to choose a cool civic slogan like Hong Kong (“Pearl of the Orient”), Paris (“The City of Light”), and Andrews, South Carolina (“Home of Chubby Checker”).

#11) Hold a contest to immortalize Vancouver in a catchy theme song like “I Love Paris,” “I Left my Heart in San Francisco,” or “Viva Las Vegas.” Even a dump like Cleveland boasts a super kick-ass anthem (“Cleveland Rocks”).

#10) Throw a retirement bash for Mayor Philip Owen. Fun cities flourish under vibrant, inspiring leaders.

#9) Bobus the Clown, age 55, was recently banned from Stanley Park. His sick crime to society? Bobus the Clown made balloon animals for kids. However, now that he’s available, let’s give Bobus the Mayor's job. Granted, we’d be replacing one clown with another, but Vancouver’s fun quotient will go way, way up.

#8) Bar cars on the Skytrain.

#7) Monkey bars on the bar cars.

#6) Cancel the fireworks for good. But not because of noise, pollution, or tobacco sponsorship. Nah, we should cancel the fireworks because they’re so comprehensively LAME. I’m serious. They’re weak. Somebody tosses a few firecrackers up to shoulder-height where they pop in either a green or red circle. We hear a few stoned oooohs and ahhhhs, then everybody trudges home. No wonder fireworks are free: they suck. I get better special effects when I close my eyes, rub my eyelids, and hum Disney's “It's A Small World After All.”

#5) Replace the fireworks with a city-wide Illuminares lantern festival. Imagine 400,000 people carrying lanterns and fire sticks across our bridges and along our beaches. At the festival’s climax, tugboats tow thousands of floating lanterns across English Bay to cap this sumptuous visual feast.

#4) Fill the Ford Theatre with coloured balls and let the kids run wild.

#3) Cancel the embarrassing Downtown Ambassador program. These geeky red rent-a-cops demonstrate that Vancouver is world class, all right…Third World class. When I ask Downtown Ambassadors simple questions about Vancouver, their answers make them sound like they’re not paid enough to live in the communities they patrol. Which could explain their hapless ignorance of (a) where the fun is, (b) who the Mayor is, and (c) why they’re paid to harass musicians. City streets without music? I feel sorry for the tourists.

#2) Failing that, sew touch-activated speakers into the Downtown Ambassadors’ uniforms. Thus, we turn them into big red Tickle-Me-Elmos. Tourists can poke an Ambassador in the gut to hear Elmo blurt, “Heeheehee, that tickles!”, “I’m your friend!”, or “Elmo is so happy you came to play!”

#1) Nude bingo.

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A Vancouver filmmaker and journalist, Ken Hegan hosts the super-fun Celluloid Social Club. His articles have somehow won or been nominated for three National Magazine Awards and at least four known death threats.

Published: BCBusiness magazine, July 2001