Douglas Coupland is that shocking rarity: a Canadian who is a household name in the United States. The man who coined the phrase ‘Generation X’ is the author of many acclaimed works of non-fiction and novels tackling everything from IT culture (Microserfs) to the emotional yearnings of STAPLES employees (The Gum Thief.) He’s also a visual artist and designer with wildly eclectic interests; in 2009 alone he created a clock tower for a shopping center and also exhibited a series of Warholian defacings of Marilyn Monroe. He still lives in Vancouver, and we can’t imagine anyone better equipped to explain the city as hordes of outsiders descend for the 2010 Olympics. (His unconventional guide to Vancouver, City of Glass, is a must-read for visitors.) Coupland’s latest novel, Generation A, is out now.

You've said before that Vancouver is not 'future-fucked.' Can you explain a bit more about what you mean by this? The future is still changeable in Vancouver. It's not locked into its ultimate mode. How does Vancouver's relative youth make it a more exciting place? The excitement you discuss has less to with youth than it does geography and climate.

Vancouver gets a reputation as an incredibly active, sport-orientated city. It is. When I visited, it seemed like most people planned on spending the summer jogging up mountains while carrying kayaks. It can be a bit much. Does it get annoying being surrounded by all these extremely healthy people? No. It means I don't have to be surrounded by docile morbidly obese people.

How does Douglas Coupland enjoy the great Canadian outdoors? A little goes a long way with me. My house is in a forest already, so the outdoors is every day. I don't think I could live downtown again.

While some might balk at the seedier side of Vancouver--the places where the city's drug addiction problems are a bit more apparent... ...a bit more apparent? It's a disaster. ...I thoroughly enjoyed those neighborhoods the last time I visited. (And I never felt like I was about to be mauled or kidnapped, either.) I'm glad you didn't worry about mauling or kidnapping. But alleys full of people injecting themselves and hundreds if not thousands of deinsitutionalized people barely hanging onto life, let alone sanity, can be overwhelming for many outsiders. It's the biggest problem the city faces.

Where would you recommend an intrepid cultural tourist journey to experience first-hand the gritty underbelly of Vancouver? It feels weird to me to consider actively seeking this reality. These are real people in real pain. They're here because the weather is milder in Vancouver, so it's where people on this trajectory go to when they flee Eastern Canada. And it's a port city, so the drugs are abundant. Instead I'd recommend that people be aware of this before they head out to wherever they're going, because you'll encounter it in most parts of urban Vancouver. Lecture over.

The accepted abbreviation for Vancouver seems to be ‘Van.’ Nope, it isn't. Only people from Ontario or Quebec call it that. It's about as cool as calling San Francisco 'Frisco.' I thought that "Couver" was a much more appropriate shorthand...as in "I love hanging out in 'Couver, because you can see the mountains from downtown." In your personal opinion, as a man who works with words for a living, is there any hope for 'Couver, or should it accept defeat? It's only three syllables to say, 'Vancouver.' If I'm lazy and only want to use two, I'll say, 'the coast.' But we're still an unnicknamed city. I did a book called City of Glass but I have no intention of that ever going beyond being the title of a book.

Where would you suggest our readers might like to go in the city? Vancouver has no freeways -- a result of being young and having a city planning department overrun by hippies at the same time other cities were building freeways. So the city is a quilt of 30 or so neighborhoods, each surprisingly distinct. My hunch is that your readers would like ● Main Street from 2nd Avenue right up to 33rd. ● Commercial Drive from Venables south to East 9th ● Gastown (obligatory tourist district) is veined with cross streets that have great things. Hastings by Gastown is dangerous a la Market Street in SF. Beware. Seriously. ● Chinatown. ● Wreck Beach—great nude beach. ● Kits is the beer commercial neighborhood. Lots of bodies and beer and dogs and Frisbees.

Photography by Jeff Lee Petry.