Vancouver: Smoking crack, yes. UFC, no??!?
What does the City of Vancouver have in its pipe these days? Let us now consider our entertainment options here…
What does the City of Vancouver have in its pipe these days?
Let us now consider our entertainment options here in Vancouver, also known as fun city.
Up first, of course, we offer you the arena game, formally known as hockey, or perhaps football, and readily available should you have sufficient funds to pony up and be richly rewarded with all manner of fisticuffs, body bashing and, if you’re lucky, a concussion or two, perhaps a broken nose and maybe even a player removal by stretcher.
If you prefer your jollies to be delivered in a somewhat more refined manner, you could instead seek the comfort of many a fine establishment where you can order a pint and have a lovely young lass demonstrate her gynecological attributes right before your eyes, perhaps even offering a naked dance in your lap, or the heady opportunity to tuck a tenner between her lovely lady lumps.
Well, you can always hand over your paycheque down at the track, where all those pretty ponies trotting about are good for an adrenalin rush or two on your way to the poorhouse.
Speaking of gambling, and who in Vancouver isn’t these days, you won’t go wanting for a brand new den of devilry in which to ponder the weighty decision of craps vs. poker vs. the slots, what with those plans for the big mega casino smack dab in the middle of town.
And then there are the shooting galleries, and because we’re so hip and ahead of the civic curve, we offer two, count ’em two, kinds for your viewing pleasure. The first is iffy, but if you stick it out, and frequent just the right downtown night club you might luck out and catch a one-on-one gangster show, where real bullets fly and bedazzled bad boys take one in the chest for the boys back at the clubhouse.
Or, if danger isn’t your middle name, you could take in the other shooting gallery, the one on the corner of Main and Hastings, where junkies and crackheads and assorted ne’erdo-wells will be happy to sell you a wee hit of the latest illegal narcotic, if that’s your poison, or you could just pull up a chair and watch them fill their own veins under the watchful gaze of the boys in blue.
Or perhaps you prefer a monster truck show, the aggressive driver’s wet dream, or maybe your thing is WrestleMania, where steroid-pumped neanderthals leap off ropes and land 300 pounds of stupid on to the necks of their opponents and, if someone gets hurts, well, how fun is that.
Okay, by now you know where this is going, because the headline gave it away and because the situation is so absurd one can only make fun of it.
So, just to be clear: You can break limbs, deliver concussions, gamble, strip, shoot crack, wrestle, spew hatred and crush cars, all legally and all within the boundaries of the City of Vancouver, but by god, unless you’re a hockey player, or Bret Hart or Trevor Berbick in Everlast boxing trunks, you’d better not be wanting to fight. In an arena. With rules.
You better not be or trying to smoke something called UFC or MMA, or anything approximating ultimate fighting or mixed martial arts, past the toffee heads over at city hall.
Because even if one of the nation’s fastest growing sports is welcome with open arms elsewhere, like Montreal, its economic spinoff benefits long established, its legal and securities issues long resolved, the City of Vancouver will have none of it.
This week, bureaucrats managed to stall a planned June 12 UFC 115 event at GM Place long enough to force the promoter to threaten to shift the event to Cincinnati.
And why? Well, once you sift through all the mealy-mouthed civic nonsense, there is really only one possible explanation: UFC is too unseemly.
Vancouver’s the joke on this one.