With the Olympics less than five years away, we have been hearing a lot about this vibe lately, and people are beginning to ask, What does it look like? What is a Vancouverite anyway?

As someone born and raised here, you might think I would have something to say about it. And I do. I think the “real” Vancouverite is not someone from here but someone who comes here with an opinion already formed; someone who, over time, amends that opinion, struggles with it, is never totally comfortable with it. Because it is this amended opinion, this contradictory one, that constitutes, to my mind, the “real” Vancouver – and the person who expresses it is the person we should be listening to.

Like the busker.

After her second song, she asks me where I’m from. For fun, I tell her Toronto. She nods knowingly. You’ll get used to it, she says, then tells me she’s from Thunder Bay but came West to “get away from it all.” She asks me what I’d like to hear, and I suggest something between Thunder Bay and Vancouver. Crash Test Dummies, she says, to which I reply, How about Joni Mitchell?

Her “Carey” is riveting. For a second, I think I’m in Spain. People stop, smile, nod along.

A few months later, I see her on Commercial. I say hi, ask her how it’s going. She says she hasn’t had much time to play because she keeps having to move, plus she’s broke. I offer to buy her a coffee, but she declines, giving me a cup’s worth of chit-chat instead.

She tells me how hard it is to make a living here, how expensive things are. I ask where she was living when I saw her on Robson, and she tells me the West End, three of them in a two-bedroom walk-up. But one left, then the other, and suddenly she was stuck.

So she moved to Strathcona, but because she hates film people, she didn’t stay, moving further east, to the PNE. Now she’s looking for something off Main, which she likes for its “freshness.”

I ask her if she busks there, and she scoffs. You’ve obviously never done it before; busking only works where there’s money. And the only place there’s money is Robson.

I listen.

All those tourists, the cruise ships... Man, if I could afford to get down there every day, I would. You can make a lot of money on that street. And the funny thing is, you don’t even have to be that good. 

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