Vancouver Magazine
Best Thing I Ate All Week: (Gluten-Free!) Fried Chicken from Maxine’s Cafe and Bar
A One-Day Congee Pop-Up Is Coming to Chinatown
Anh and Chi Teams Up With Fresh Prep, Making Our Foodie Dreams Come True
A Radical Idea: Celebrate Robbie Burns With These 3 Made-in-BC Single Malts
Wine Collab of the Week: A Red Wine for Overthinkers Who Love Curry
Dry January Mocktail Recipe: Archer’s Rhubarb Sour
Protected: LaSalle College Vancouver: For Those Who Dream of Design
5 Things to Do in Vancouver This Week (January 30- February 5)
Last Chance! Join Us at VanMag’s 2023 Power 50 Party
Protected: Explore the Rockies by Rail with Rocky Mountaineer
The Ultimate Winter Staycation Guide 2023: 6 Great Places to Explore in B.C.
B.C. Winter Staycation Guide 2023: 48 Hours in Tofino
Protected: The Future of Beauty: How One Medical Aesthetics Clinic is Changing the Game
5 Super-Affordable Wedding Venues in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley
PSA: Please Do Not Buy These 3 Things for Valentine’s Day
A bar that doesn't screen Canucks games? Yes, they do exist
If there was a ten commandments for owning and operating a bar, it’s all but certain that “thou shalt play sports on TV whenever possible” would be somewhere near the top of the list. But the Storm Crow has been a proud heretic on that front ever since it opened in 2012, and manager Sean Cranbury says that’s not about to change. “We don’t play sports—not once. I’m hiring a new bar manager, and I was going through some of the fundamentals with him the other day, and he was like, ‘But, if the Canucks are in the playoffs, then….’ Well, then the Canucks are in the playoffs, and people can go to the Shark Club and enjoy their time. We become a safe haven for all the people who just desperately do not want to deal with that nonsense.”The Storm Crow’s act of heresy is informed by the culture the bar’s owners deliberately set out to create, Cranbury says, but it also happens to be good business sense too. “Often when I say we don’t show sports, people are like, ‘Well, that’s a crazy anomaly. How can you possibly be busy?’ Because everybody else is showing sports. Every other goddamn place!” That said, he doesn’t think it’s an approach that would work for everyone. “It’s so obvious that nobody sees it, I think—the angle that you can do it without sports. But you have to do it well.”Part of doing it well means not making any exceptions, even when you’re the manager and the baseball team you’ve supported since you were a kid is making its first visit to the playoffs in 20 years. “I was at the Storm Crow hearing about the game on my computer, and I just slammed it down at one point, went across the street and watched the eighth and ninth innings of the game—because that’s what I had to do.”