Best place to pretend to be classy

Friday nights at Hastings Racecourse

Put a brown note down on Charmer in the third and head upstairs for a cocktail. All summer long, Friday nights at Hastings Racecourse were a swinging party. Featuring DJs, cheap drinks, and, of course, a little action, Hastings brought the romantic debauchery of the Kentucky Derby to Vancouver. Ascots not mandatory but recommended.

Best way to channel Jane Austen

If Pride and Prejudice and Zombies didn’t bring you closer to Jane, you might want to consider taking a more active approach to your emulation of the great author and her works. Heartland Dance Vancouver (604-574-7530) offers Jane Austen and Regency English country dance lessons in Vancouver and Fort Langley that will have you parading hand in hand with your own Mr. Darcy in no time. And if you’re feeling a wee bit peckish from the exertion, there’s tea and scones to be had at special events. For more full-fledged Austenites, the Vancouver chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America has weekly Saturday morning meetings (10:15 a.m. at St. Philip’s Anglican Church, Fireside Room, 3737 West 27th Avenue) in which you’re free to gush about your love for the great writer as much as you want. Members may draw the line at calling you Jane, though.

Best places to get your board-game geek on

Drexoll Games
2860 West 4th Avenue
604-733-6511

107b–2748 Lougheed Highway, Port Coquitlam
604-461-6511

The Connection
8136 Cambie Street
604-261-4588

2945 Renfrew Street
604-327-4585

Craving for a Game

2520–10153 King George Highway, Surrey
604-580-2856

It’s time to come out of the closet. You enjoy role-playing, take perverse pleasure in inflicting damage on others, and have a thing for rubber—figurines, that is. You’re a board-game nerd, and you’re not afraid to tell the world. If strategy is your middle name and victory your measure of success, you’ll find your brethren at specialty game shops nearby. Yes, they have standards like Monopoly, but there’s also a wide selection of highly inventive European bestsellers, such as Agricola. Drexoll Games and the Connection offer knowledgeable staff and regular game nights for those who need a fix, but for the ultimate experience, visit Craving for a Game, where owner Buck Lum is a geeky font of information about the games in his store.

Best place to keep hoping that The Last Starfighter is based on reality

CHQ Entertainment
4700 Kingsway, Burnaby
604-439-1331

With apologies to Arcade Fire, arcade culture is dead. For a brief time between Pac-Man and Gravitar (1980 to 1982), electronics freaks, wayward youths, and sci-fi geeks could not rid themselves of enough quarters to satisfy their need for glorious hand-eye stimulation. The rise of home systems with competent graphics has all but killed the arcade-going phenomenon. A few arcades manage to hang on, though, the largest being CHQ Entertainment in Metropolis at Metrotown, which has the best new games and plenty of them. Live out your electro-nerd fantasies here, in anticipation of the December release of Tron: Legacy.

Most successful local mobile game studio

With more than a dozen iPhone games under its belt, IUGO Mobile Entertainment sure knows how to crank out App Store hits. This year saw the Vancouver-based developer release iPad-enhanced versions of some of its titles. With free and paid editions of each game available, it’s easy to get hooked. If you enjoy blasting buildings and zombies to bits, Implode! XL on the iPad and Zombie Attack! on the iPhone are your best bets. They’re particularly good for killing time during flights, while your significant other shops, or when sitting on the can.

Best crime-fighting scheme

WildPlay Element Parks
13165 236th Street, Maple Ridge
1-888-590-7274

As an alternative to bar brawls and B and Es, suburban youths can enjoy a new entertainment option: the outdoor WildPlay in Maple Ridge, one of several WildPlay Element Parks in B.C. This one features zip lines, Tarzan ropes, and teetering bridges suspended between fir trees as high as 60 feet above the ground. The park, which replaced an old campground, opened a couple of months ago. We’ll have to check back in a year to see if crime rates have dropped.