About
Welcome to Scamcouver.
If you’re looking for something mindlessly warm, fuzzy and sugar-coated about Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, try “Vancouver is awesome.”
The only cocktail available here is unsweetened blend of cynicism, snark, and shit disturbing. How do I do it? Volume.
For under the civic boosterism, the “world class” branding, the golden glow West Coast condo yoga lifestyle is a bedrock reality of grey skies and wet feet, corruption and crime, greed and desperation. It claims youth, but in reality it’s about as old as it gets -and twice as tired. There’s a big gap between the image and the reality and it’s bridged by the scam, the grifter’s distracting flourish that leaves you short, monetarily and spiritually.
Except ….
The Scamcouverites:
For better or worse editor & contributor Zbigniew Cylbulski, aka “Zbigniew Cylbulski”, was born, raised and lives in Vancouver.
Contributor and sidekick DJKlueless claims to be a clueless emigre; his fighting style cannot be beat.
Are you a Scamcouverphobe? Contact Zbigniew: zbigniew.cylbulski@gmail.com.
Your blog illuminates the word “pithy”. It makes me feel unworthy. Good!
Short: sweet.
The Polish James Dean.
You caught me.
Why ‘Lotusland?’
Hi Amelia:
“Lotusland,” the Land of the Lotus-eaters, refers to Homer’s Odyssey, wherein Odysseus encounters inhabitants addled by a locally grown narcotic. Former Vancouver Sun writer Alan “Dr. Foth” Fotheringham applied Lotusland to British Columbia, and it came quickly to be associated with Vancouver, in particular.
Yeah, but why did you choose that nickname?
I chose the “Lotusland” metaphor because I believe too many of us are chewing on a “narcotic” -the sunny, blissed-out Vancouver-branded lifestyle- that blunts our perception of our many negative realities: corruption, inequity, the ongoing loss of social and economic diversity, the catering to the global elite, and a dramatic decline in liveability. Out here on the periphery, we’re stoned … but not immaculately.