www.nofuncity.org from melissa on Vimeo.

When I first moved to Vancouver some eight years ago, I thought this city was going to be the Montreal of the West Coast. Boy, was I wrong.

As beautiful and unique as Vancouver is, I was surprised/disappointed with how sleepy it is. Getting a beer on a weeknight was impossible and the cheap/local/underground live venues seemed to close shop not long after you'd finally discover them.

During the 2002 municipal election campaign, Vancouver's boringness actually became an election issue with eventual mayor Larry "Da Vinci" Campbell promising to change the city's archaic and almost puritan liquor and entertainment laws (like how there is a "no dancing" bylaw for some clubs).

Unfortunately, Campbell's victory didn't deliver the promised fun. Instead, we saw the creation of the Granville Entertainment District — a clusterfuck of bars and clubs in downtown Vancouver that, on weekend nights, is scarier to troll through than the Downtown Eastside.

In my view, the District was a creation of gentrification — new downtown condo owners didn't like the noise from clubs on their streets and the city bowed to their pressure by consolidating them onto one strip. Let this obvious lesson be learned, playing into the demands of gentrification will never lead to a good time.

While last call did get pushed from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. (and eventually back to 2 a.m. because the surge of drunken suburban partiers was creating too much havoc), the city's moves have only seemed to benefit the big boys in the city's entertainment industry and have done little for the small, alternative players who are actually trying to help the local scene flourish.

To try and show how shitty this all is, Melissa James and Kate Kroll have made a documentary following the ups and (many) downs of local promoters who are trying to breath some life into the city's stale scene. The trailer above gives you an idea about what this is all about and the full-length movie is set to be released later this fall.