COOL CAPITAL
Victoria shedding its reputation of being a city of lawn bowling and colourful gardens,
VICTORIA, B.C.— A guy has a skateboard beneath his feet and a piercing under his nose. Another rides by with a guitar strapped to his back. There’s a peloton or two, a little tyke with a Spider-Man helmet takes a spill and a smiling Japanese Rasta walks by.
It’s quite some time before you see one old lady as you ride a bike on the Galloping Goose, a 60-kilometre trail from Victoria to Sooke.
It’s rush hour for rowers and as you stop on the Trestle Bridge to watch them on the water below, a couple of young women — one with blue hair, another with wacky tights — walk past and you have to wonder what happened to the city full of “newlywed, nearly dead and garden beds.”
Somewhere along the way, Victoria got cool. Students from across Canada have flocked to the University of Victoria to escape the snow, but people in their 20s and 30s are moving here now, drawn by a booming tech sector. And the flock of retirees is getting younger: 50s are the new 30s.
Sure, you can still pick up a stack of Irish linens or get your age spots removed, but you can also pop into Smoking Lily for a periodic table silkscreened on a dress and find plenty of grooming shops for the ubiquitous gnome beards.
Grandmas line up for afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress, but at the hotel’s Bengal Lounge, someone’s grandkids are enjoying smart cocktails. (At least until April 30, when it closes. There’s no word on what will replace it.) The signature drink features tea-infused vodka, lemon juice, simple syrup and egg white and is served, naturally, with a mini scone.
“I love this room,” says Bruce Livingstone as we settle into one of the Bengal’s low leather couches, taking in the rich wood panelling and colonial ceiling fans.
Livingstone, the guy who founded iStock and sold it to Getty for $50 million (U.S.), moved from L.A. to Victoria a few years ago and started a new stock photography company, Stocksy.
“People say, ‘How can you live there? It’s so boring,’ ” he says. “But I tell them, ‘If you’re bored, then it’s your fault.’ ”
Livingstone and thousands of others are coming to the city for the quality of life and the great outdoors, which can involve throwing on wetsuits to go for a swim, surfing or fishing. It’s is good for business, too.
“It’s great,” says the entrepreneur. “There’s a great network of tech people and we’re all connected.”
On Friday night, beautiful people fill every table at Little Jumbo, enjoying dinner with fresh local ingredients — fresh chanterelle mushrooms are served with a little parmesan, garlic and wine on grilled bread.
Tables of tattooed young ’uns sit next to middle-aged couples and ev- ery demo seems to be drinking a fancy cocktail.
The drink list changes every six weeks. If you’re bamboozled by which booze to try, you can always go with the blurb that most tickles your fancy, such as gin-based Tea and Toast: “My good man it took Dutch courage, a stiff upper lip and a nice cup of tea to build an empire. Hang on to your monocle and have at it.”
At Hotel Zed, locals line up weekend mornings for breakfast tacos or the mile-high fried egg sandwich at the Ruby. Victoria is not “nearly dead” anymore.
“It’s getting cooler here all the time,” Livingstone says, but that doesn’t mean the city’s forgotten its manners: “Strangers get mad at you if you don’t say good morning.” Jennifer Allford was a guest of Destination BC and its partners, which didn’t review or approve this story.