I love: The natural beauty of building a city where the mountains and river meet the pacific ocean, the Seawall (a 20+ km long continuous pedestrian and cycling waterfront walkway the encircles downtown Vancouver, False Creek, and runs along English Bay, connecting at least six beaches and too many parks to count, including Stanley Park, a 1000 acre forest literally next door to the downtown core), the staggering ethnic and cultural diversity (one of three cities on earth without an ethnic majority, the most Asian city in North America), the tourists, the wonderful food and restaurants, the SkyTrain and electric trolley buses, the local mountains and their ski hills, accessible by transit and only a half-hour from downtown, the good schools, the construction, the lack of a downtown freeway, cruise ship season, the general lack of freeways period, the history of progressive politics, the newness of the city, the 10,000 years of First Nations' (Canada's aboriginal people) history in this place, being the terminus for the transcontinental railway, YVR -Vancouver's international airport, being half an hour from the US border and a part of the Pacific Northwest (though Vancouver geographically is Canada's Southwest), the sunny warm summers, the mild year-round climate, the brief suggestion of winter that is gone before you've found your toque and boots, the skyscrapers of downtown, the general density of the City of Vancouver and its wonderful streetcar suburbs (now sadly lacking streetcars), the rain, the tolerance of the city to other cultures, lifestyles, and sexual orientations, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, etc. The list just goes on an on.
I dislike (I don't really hate anything): The language barriers that keep so much from being shared, the idiots from the suburbs who come downtown to the clubs and cause havoc, heart-wrenching poverty and addiction in the Downtown East Side that everybody wants to address but usually end up making worse, the slow acculturation time for new immigrants to the subtle mores of local customs (like not budging in line, spitting, burping, or repeatedly clearing one's throat), the fundamental difference in landuse patterns between the 19th century street layout of the City of Vancouver that promotes transit, walking, cycling, etc., and the 20th century automobile suburbs that make up the rest, the idiocy of our Provincial and Federal politicians when it comes to virtually every urban issue (all of the political parties get enough support from the rural areas for them to tend to ignore the cities or offer some pittance and then expect ever-lasting gratitude in return), the unfordable cost of urban housing that drives people to the outer suburbs and the lack of new rental housing (the rental vacancy rate in Vancouver is 0.1%, that could be a rounding error in any other calculation), the mild depression that can crop up in winter when it is gray and overcast for a month straight. The list is pretty long, but most of it is so massively outweighed by the positives that you just accept it and move on.
Overall, I absolutely love Vancouver and yet I can still see areas for improvement. To me that is the mark of a pretty great city.
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) quickly tell me to stop being so negative and then offer me the "one-way ticket out of town". 
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