89blkcivic and Gwailo should have a face/off to see who is the oldest member on RS :D

I spent many Saturday mornings in Chinatown riding shotgun in my dad's car during grocery runs. Back then, Chinatown was the only place to get your Asian groceries and produce. Even in the late 1980s, Main and Hastings was not the war zone that it is today. My dad would put in a couple of dimes (which would get us a good 45 minutes) into the meter and we would walk up and down Hastings - perhaps taking a peek at what Army and Navy had for sale. We would have lunch at Goldstone, or at a BBQ house on Main St. between Pender and Keefer (on the west side of the street; I can't recall the name.) I remember that all along Hastings, there were banks, but now, only the RBC remains on the corner of Main and Hastings.

Other things I remember:
- I remember when Yaletown was really a rail cargo processing area instead of the full-blown neighbourhood that it is today.
- I remember when Pink Pearl was the place for dim sum on the weekends.
- I remember listening to Frosty on NW98. I also remember listening to Woodwards' "$1.49-day" jingles.

wow its really cool to actually learn some of the cool things that were in vancouver. im too young to remember some of the stuff. but its awesome to have somebody tell all of us about what it was like 30 years or 40 years ago. its way better than learning from school in a text book.

but i do remember how cool the PNE used to be. I went yesterday and the only good thing was the superdogs. The demolitian derby used to be awesome at the PNE now its quad racing? and some stupid thing called over the edge?. and i remember when the PNE used to be affordable now its 40$ for an all day ride pass for the same rides that were there last year.

speaking of expo anybody remember the MCbarge its still sitting in the water near were the chevron refinery is in burnaby

I think you are talking about Gum Gook Yuen. It is now some fancy vietnamese restaurant.

the province used to do vehicle safety inspections, sort of like what the UK does with getting and MOT done. at some point in the 1970's they stopped doing it. if you can find a car from back in that era that still has it's original glass, you'll see a round window sticker with a gov't logo with date boxes scratched off showing that inspection was done for that year. it was a mandatory and you had to take your car in every year. my parents used to live in vancouver and i remember there was a gov't inspection facility on alberni or w.georgia near stanley park. my dad would drive into an inspection bay and the car would be locked down on a platform that would lift the car up at a 45% angle for inspection underneath. they would leave me belted in the seat inside the car while this was happening and i remember playing rocketship waiting for the car to launch :lol

i also remember being taken to empire stadium to watch a bc lions game. all the kids here only know it as some grassy pit but i remember it as this: http://football.ballparks.com/CFL/BC/oldaerial.jpg

As sad as this sounds.. My memorable historical memories are all the good ol arcades in Vancouver.

Start off with the infamous...
Lesters on Kingsway, (still there right?)
Pie in the Sky on Kingsway (great shady arcade centre)
Satches in Burnaby Hastings (across from Dolphin theatres)
Starcade near Kooteney Loop.. (Still remember the old lady that always worked there)
Laser Illusions in Brentwood.. (All the Nintendo and Segas games you can play.)

One of my all time favorite was near my High School. "Action Snooker" Skip school to play arcades at Action Snooker.. great little arcade pool hall. This is where I learned to gamble on their betting machines... lol

PNE, circa 1992:

http://www.globalairphotos.com/image...ch1992_194.jpg

anyone remember before there was the cassiar tunnel? hwy 1 used to cross hastings st. so u had to wait for the traffic light at the intersection like forever if you wanted to go to north van and back...

I moved to North Van from the Philippines in 1989 and North Van has changed quite a bit. I remember going to Woolco at Capilano Mall before it was replaced by WalMart. There used to be an arcade on 19th and Lonsdale that I would go to everyday, I think it was called Circuit Circus. Run N' Gun FTW!!

I used to never see homeless people in North Van, but that's changed in the past 5 years or so. There are so many high rise condos being built too. Can't believed so much has changed in the past 20 years.

imo, i think gastown has gone downhill. its the most historic part of vancouver, but now its nothing but tshirt shops and clubs/bars.

www.vancouverisawesome.com


check it out, awesome site for vancouver stuff

Panoramic photos showing the changes in the Vancouver skyline
http://vancouver.ca/COMMSVCS/fade/fade.htm

Totally agree.
After I went to UBC and met people from a huge spectrum of backgrounds, I became shocked at how people with nothing soar while some people with everything work shit jobs.
I've known people raised by only their mothers from rented basements in Surrey who went on to become professionals while others who live in Van West do shit jobs. Really bizarre.

when did Hasting piled up with crack heads and hookers and how ?
Let me know, thanks

To add to this thread, one of my best friend's dads was the first Chinese kid to go to St. George's school back in the 50's; his roommates at the dorm back then were the Roger's kids (Roger's Sugar) and the Brown kids (Brown Brother's Ford).
His father came here from China as a dentist but wasn't allowed to practice and so worked as a stable boy at the PNE racetrack.
Their family eventually ran a large food wholesale business that still supplies many restaurants and businesses in Vancouver today.
He always tells us about how in those days, the West Side was exclusively old money white people, and when their family bought a home at Dunbar (which they still own today), Caucasians would yell at him "Chink what are ya doing here?"

He also tells repeatedly of how their family business and another Chinese grocer family (very well known today), pushed out other grocery businesses. He always told us at dinners how the farmers from the Valley and Okanogan would arrive early in the morning in Chinatown around 5AM, and that while the other western run grocers would show up around 7AM, the Chinese would get there at 4AM to ensure they could buy up the freshest produce available. Over 10 years, his family had a monopoly on the fresh produce delivery business servicing Shaughnessy and Dunbar.

Being another UBC alumni, he also jokes about how there were only 5 chinese people at UBC when he was there, and he could list them all as children from the other large grocery family or his own cousins!

^ cool, asian pride... white people are jealous
i see where it came from

yesterday counts as history right...well my history is nothing compared to you guys..

i remembered 10 yrs ago..the gas were at $0.32 ...and white boys love to hang in my house to eat chinese food .....white girls hated us tho lol

^ don't ruin this thread.

i remember back in the late 70's/early 80's my mom would walk with me on weekends from chinatown down hastings st. to army and navy, woodward's, and then to harbor centre/sears (before it became sfu) and she would buy me a turtle pastry from the bakery downstairs (hey i was really young back then and it was a really big deal for me! :lol ). there was a marks and spencer somewhere in that neighborhood too. it was really safe back then and all the shops on hastings were open. things went downhill after sears and woodward's left. today, i don't even want to drive through there (saw this bum jump on the hood of a car waiting for him to cross as he was jaywalking once) :(

oh hey we're in the same boat! but we didn't have a car then just "bc transit" with those weird orange/brown colors they used to have... but transit those days was much nicer than it is now. buses were clean and no one would try to rob or kill you like today.

I attended pre-school at Britannia and I used to take the old electric trolleys every day. I took the #16 to Commercial and Hastings, then transferred onto the #20 which took me to the school. I rode with the same driver on the 20 each day and when I boarded, he used to call me "scodoo," or something like that. Ahhh, memories.

yea wtf happened? we never went to the mall. because mall = money.

Nowadays u got kids with their iphones and shiet. I remember downloading mp3s at 56K and when getting Cable modem was like HOLY FUCK!!!!. . . .

Awesome thread. Although I grew up in Courtenay which basically looked the same from 1975 to 2002 it brings back a lot of good memories of coming to the mainland to visit my dad or on trips with my mom.

When I moved here in 2004 I was stunned to see that they had taken that giant hockey stick off of the side of the stadium downtown. Then I realized that they had simply moved it to Duncan.

it's scary to imagine what things will look like 30 years from now. . . .

I remember there is one street beside Gastown where the asphalt has disappeared in some places and you can see the brick underneath. Its nice.

No its not about anyone being jealous, its about hard work and struggling to make it against huge barriers. Race is not the issue as I'm sure there must be groups of European caucasians that may be racially discriminated against by other groups.