Ken Sim (with Dan Boeckner)
This week we're joined by Wolf Parade and The Bottlemen's own Dan Boeckner! After a quick "amayorse bouche" in rural British Columbia with some disgusting whipped cream, we head to the big show, Vancouver to talk about Lululemon's Renfield, Ken Sim. There's a whole lot to hate.
Check out Dan's Patreon here!
Comments (60)
And so ends Sim City. After the by-election 18 months ago put the fear in him, Sim tried very hard to change his image, but no one bought it. He was roundly beaten in the mayoral race and his party barely managed one council spot* out of the 27 positions (1 mayor, 10 council, 9 school board, 7 park board) up for grabs. The icing on top, his nemesis on council, Sean Orr, i.e. the person he falsely claimed dealt drugs on Christmas and that Sim constantly attempted to vilify, was #1 in the council race. *FPTP in an at large system greatly distorts support. ABC would have have retained 2-3 councilors under a proportional system (we also would've avoided Sim altogether if we had ranked ballots for mayor).
It's the municipal election coming up and every time somebody mentions our dear leader, on Reddit I share a link to this podcast. So thank you ladies for having an impact on this election.
Latest on the Ken Sim front: Integrity investigation dinged him for 3 code of conduct violations related to press conference and social media posts from last year (https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/integrity-commissioner-investigation-report-may-11-2026.pdf ). No penalties of course, because the council has to approve any sanctions and his party, ABC, has a majority. At the same time he's had to clarify that he doesn't use AI for work after his own statement that he uses AI all the time ( https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/ai-not-being-used-to-make-city-decisions-vancouver-mayor-clarifies-after-remarks-raise-eyebrows/ ). Why am I not surprised that captain "let's invest city money into crypto" loves AI chatbots.
Our dear leader at work... https://vancouver.citynews.ca/video/2026/05/05/vancouver-mayor-voices-opposition-to-new-location-for-downtown-overdose-prevention-site/
Hearing about Nanaimo on a non-Regulation podcast was an incredibly strange experience
All I knew about Nanaimo before this episode was that they had a delicious dessert named after them.
I'm so sure of the non-partisan association's commitment that I'm confident they were even anti-partisan when the war broke out
The battle between the town and province over being able to kill homeless people should have involved artillery and air support on the side of the province
i am so looking forward to the roundup where you guys talk about what happened today
Big Hobo aka Global Hobo
This episode is so bizarre for me personally, also being from the Cowichan Lake area
November: “You know what this is? You know what this combination of hippieness/social weirdness and sort of like deep boomer conservatism is? You know where else I recognize this…” My partner, laying next to me in bed in her house in Austin, Texas: “Ha, sounds like Austin.” November: “…this is Austin, Texas.”
wasn't a fan of the things that Seattle Zodiac had to say about the dynamics of lesbian polycules
I made a friend from Paris in Vancouver and her impression of the rampant cascade of street crime in Vancouver was "wow! It's so nice to live in a place where I can walk at night alone without fear!"
As a native, I can say that "conservatism with hippie characteristics" is is a dominant political tendency in Oakland, Berkeley, and all of Marin County
One thing about Vancouver municipal politics is how absurd the electoral system is. In the 30s the city council dissolved the ward system as part of the NPA trying to shut out CCF and Communist councillors. So since the 30s all 10 city councillors (and all 3 park board and 6 school board trustees) are all elected in plurality at-large elections. So there's 50 names on the ballet from 12 different parties and whichever 10 individual candidates get the most votes as individual candidates get the seats. This leads people to get elected with 0.6% of the vote and also party candidates running against each other for the same seat.
I used to live in a hostel in DTES and it's objectively quite *safe* except that you're constantly exposed to one of worst shame of blight that we are all responsible for as a society every day and that's a bit of a mental danger unto itself
Glad to be back
i once considered applying to a masters' program in Victoria, and while my life circumstances have now made that impossible, im glad that this podcast is here to tell me that taking that path would have been equally shitty. makes me feel a teensy bit better about being stuck in squarebanks ak for the forseeable future.
LANDMARK FORUM MENTIONED 🎉
this is a frankly really disappointing showing from the pod. you needed to get on a guest who actually lives in vancouver; this is a place normal, working-class people live in and love to live in, despite the adversity, and it has a thriving punk scene, a large immigrant community. a proud history of radical activism. this was my favourite podcast but you've lost the subscription of one hometown hero.
I'm sure Dan could give a lot of good stories about times performing live in Vancouver and having fun with the local music scene but the perspective he was brought on for was what goes into the psychology of A Guy Like This in BC so I mean maybe they could've added a disclaimer like they do in medication ads that goes really fast like "there are many good people in Vancouver and BC as a whole and not all of them are wealthy anti-homeless boomers" but is that not just... a given?
podcast becomes far too local, giving me a moderate heart attack seeing the notif
Riley, if you hadn't called out your error I would've just assumed it was a Mayor Quimby impression, which of course would always be always relevant on a podcast about mayors.
I think you guys bullied them into taking the cheesecake² picture down
I went to look and laughed. "Welp, I guess someone associated with The Cellar listened to the podcast"
I’m not saying the cheese plate looked good but I don’t think it was THAT bad nova
How could you bring up Chip Wilson and the Lululemon brand name in the context of this episode without mentioning that his previous company was named HOMELESS SKATEBOARD?
*Is named. homelessskate.com You'll notice that many of the boards literally have the word HOMELESS on the bottom in giant letters.
Oh yea the leaky condos were often linked to California-style construction.. in rainy Vancouver, and we do now build up to five storey wood frame structures
Also here to say that Kamloops' mayor could take up multiple episodes. The type of guy to listen to the show and try and fight all of you.
Oh my god. I want this episode so bad.
As a former frontline worker in the DTES and former inhabitant of several leaky condos in East Van, and lifelong hater of Chip Wilson, this episode is checking a lot of boxes ✅
I'll never forget the first time Ken Sim addressed the Vancouver Board of Trade (cue the obligatory "Vancouver is once again open for business") by including a photo of a bee in his presentation and saying that he wanted the city to have "swagger" (blatant Eric Adams plagiarism) and "a buzz" about it
Also, on the topic of hippies/yippies becoming Silicon Valley techbros, I recommend the film Beyond The Black Rainbow
Don’t even get me started about Stewart Brand. My dad, who was a student radical at Berkeley in the late 60s/early 70s always called him a sellout. I like his book “how buildings learn” but yeah what a yuppie sellout!
And yes I have copies of the original whole earth catalogue that were my dad’s.
So if Seattle is the next episode, does that mean that the guest is gonna be Caleb from Kill The Computer?
"it's a podcast about mayors" WRONG it's about being a transexual and mattie proved this by owning a synthesizer
The only thing I knew about Nanaimo before this episode was that it's the place where the Nanaimo bar originated. I was not expecting it to be a microcosm of Vancouver and it's problems. The recipe for the Nanaimo bar is on the city's website, located here: https://www.nanaimo.ca/about-nanaimo/nanaimo-bars.
To put Victoria in perspective: for many decades the tourism tagline was "A Little Bit of Olde England." Which is every bit as bad as you think it is.
The only thing in Victoria worth seeing is the miniature museum
Lol. Registered Nurse living in Vancouver here. This city is the fucking worst.
The Penticton bit was great, only missing local cryptid Ogopogo that lives in the lake
Modern oafs.
The formal Lululemon uniform is like Red Sea Rig, but extremely stretchy.
Also, if you wanted to continue the streak of Asian-American/Asian-Canadian excellence: Paul Tanaka, who was somehow Mayor of Gardenia and Undersheriff of LA County at the same time. It takes a truly special level of impropriety to get sentenced to prison when you're an American cop. Also, he was a member of a Neo-Nazi deputy gang despite being, as his name implies, Japanese.
" well you were a part of the tripartite pact so that's close enough "
Modern Oafs is my favorite 2010s indie band
Rough. I was pretty much brought up as a Landmark baby—it's worse than you think in some ways, not so bad in others, overall pretty bad. Thirty years later and I'm an embattled socialist councillor in one of the most immiserated parts of the city. The Korg Minilogue to Sim's unmodified Poly-800, if you will.
What a vile, treacherous little creep.
I would say "what is it with trans women and synths" but I respect my elders (Wendy Carlos)
Great episode. Fuck this guy holy shit he's evil.
Hello Mayors! Since we're hanging out in BC and it didn't make the municipal roundup, let me give you all a little treat with the mayor of Kamloops: Reid Hamer-Jackson. The Tyee did a great round-up of the whole affair: https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/10/08/Mayor-Chaos-Kamloops-Politics-Infamous - a weirdo redneck car dealer - won on 31% of the vote cuz the rest was split, OOPS - absolute maniac, has literally no idea how to do any mayoral work - has been EXILED to the basement of city hall (i am not joking*) because he's had so many complaints and nobody can stand working with him - basically has spend entirety of his term fixing potholes and filing defamation lawsuits against everyone in the entire city It's just a story filled with gems like this: >" He was also found to have broken privacy rules when he forwarded photographs — including one depicting homeless people involved in a sex act — while preparing a slide show presentation for a speech at a gala event." Happy reading! Thanks for covering our living, breathing skidmark of a mayor Ken Sim, I enjoyed the episode! * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kamloops-mayor-office-basement-1.7343656
On the thing of Canada’s colonialism being closer to the surface I think a major part recently is that there has been at least some attempt to reckon with the past (while never changing the underlying systems that continue the violence) and this incredibly minor move has broken the brains of Canadian racists in a very big way and they feel the need to be even more open with their white supremacy out of fear of this mostly aesthetic change
The chomo parade Mayor of london kentucky is trying to get a city council member booted for being a extreme racist / spouse beater ( if this is brought up just say " bear " rather then my name )
the anxiety bit in the beginning hit too close to home
repping out some pull-ups in a converted conference room to get in the right headspace for this one
VANCOUVER REPRESENT FUCK YES!!!
Also fuck yeah synths