I’ve lived in Metro Vancouver for almost a decade and I barely know the West End. Yes, I realize I’m the assistant editor of a publication called the Westender.
Honestly, it’s mostly due to laziness. After the SkyTrain ride downtown, it’s always seemed like a major pain to get on a bus to head up Davie or down Robson. It’s that extra step that makes the West End feel a little like a village detached from the city, somewhere you have to live to truly appreciate.
On paper – or Google Maps – it’s a neighbourhood worth appreciating. Bordered by the beach, Stanley Park and downtown (along Georgia and Burrard), the West End has to be one of the most scenic urban areas in North America. You’ve also got one of Canada’s most vibrant gay districts on Davie Street and some fabulous casual dining around Denman and Robson.
So, it was finally time to get on that damn bus. The No. 5/6, which does a loop around Davie, Denman, Robson and Yaletown, seemed like a no-brainer tour of the neighbourhood.
I hop on board at the Yaletown end of Davie and head west. There’s already a good indicator of the West End demographic in the lineup: older couples and solo men. Also, the passengers seem noticeably whiter than other routes in the city; an after-effect, perhaps, of the times when the West End was more British and Robson was known as Robsonstrasse.
Storefronts, billboards and crosswalks adopt a more rainbow hue as we head through the gay district of the Davie Village. There’s also a pleasant shock of green as we pass the Davie Village Community Garden, 100 plots occupying a block that developers must be salivating over.
Make no mistake, development is coming to the West End. You can spy the occasional crane and hole in the ground between the 1960s high rises that populate the area. The biggest projects include the Jervis along Davie, and a soaring 56-storey tower at Burrard and Nelson.
Then there’s the imminent loss of the Empire Landmark Hotel on Robson; newsworthy enough for the Guardian to run a story about it. This 32-storey high rise, which has dominated the West End skyline for almost 40 years, is scheduled for demolition to make way for a denser residential/commercial project.
I step off at Davie and Denman to marvel at the proximity of pubs to beach and get the familiar pangs of wishing I was 20 years younger. I’m also here to meet my friend Chris, a longtime West End resident, who’s agreed to ride along and share some insight about the area.
As we bus along Denman, Chris talks about stores closing, new ones opening and closing within months, and chains like A&W moving into the neighbourhood. Development is encroaching, she adds, but at a slower pace and not quite so obviously as in other parts of town.
Approaching the intersection with Robson, we enter a fabulous cluster of Japanese and Korean restaurants.
Chris has a theory for this enclave of Asian cuisine, which has its origins in the four-month-long bus strike of 2001. She believes it led droves of Asian ESL students to seek out accommodation as close to their colleges as possible, with many finding homes in the West End. Cheap and homey restaurants soon followed.
Robson, of course, gets less cheap as you head east along this prime strip of commercial real estate, which never seems to be less than slammed during daytime hours.
Which makes it all the more noticeable how peaceful riding the 5/6 loop is. It’s rush hour and we’re travelling through one of the most congested cities on the continent – and there are seats available. The route is TransLink’s least overcrowded, according to its 2016 Transit Service Performance Review.
The bus drivers I talk to love driving it. It’s generally quiet and friendly, though one does report a late-night brawl. The chatter on board, meanwhile, is almost neighbourly. It’s like I’ve stumbled into a… community.
“It’s a local, small-community bus ride. Local people doing local things,” says West End BIA executive director Stephen Regan when I talk to him later. He says the pleasant vibrancy of the West End contrasts strongly with the neighbouring downtown core.
“You can find people on the streets any day of the week and any time of day,” Regan says. “There are lots of businesses catering to lots of different people on lots of different schedules. … People live here, they’re going to work or they’re going to their doctor’s appointment or they’re meeting their friends, often on the bus.”
Regan cautiously welcomes the new developments in the area, which are following the guidelines of the City of Vancouver’s West End Community Plan. Broadly speaking, this will see most development along the Georgia-Alberni and Burrard-Thurlow corridors, while the characters of the neighbourhoods south of Davie and west of Denman will be preserved.
Regan says the planned influx of up to 6,000 residents will give the West End a needed boost; the area’s population actually fell by 13 people in the 2011 census, and Regan says businesses have been struggling a little with a stagnant local customer base.
“[The plan] will preserve the lion’s share of that old building stock,” he says. “Hopefully there will be enough preserved so you’ll have a good mix of who lives in the neighbourhood. You want seniors and young people and rich professionals and young starving students, you want the whole mix.”
It’s that community feel that keeps people in the West End well into their retirement. That, and a refusal to let go of certain dreams. Chris says that mindset is evident in the elderly batik-loving would-be hippies; and in the straw hat-wearing cyclists trundling along Nelson, imagining they’re in the south of France, when they’re actually inducing murderous rage among the motorists in their wake (whom she refers to as “bike tippers”).
I say let the West Enders dream while they can – because, while rents here remain relatively cheap, they aren’t going to get any cheaper.
• Bus Lines is a twice-monthly series featuring stories from Vancouver’s most interesting bus routes.
Transit Talk: No. 5/6
Terminus stations: Davie and Denman, Cambie and Dunsmuir
Length of route: 6 km
Estimated route time: 38 minutes
Average speed (2016): 9.4 km/h
Revenue hours with overcrowding (2016): 0%
