Archie visits Expo 86, and I start a newsletter

Over the years, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to create a little universe of rankings and brackets and niche jokes and little observations about things in British Columbia that people seem to really enjoy.

It’s been really fun! But that part of my life has mostly lived on Twitter. And a few things have become clear:

1. After a decade, I’ve sort of done everything I can from a professional and personal standpoint in using Twitter for journalistic purposes, creating weird brackets and rankings that find a mass audience, or just doing one-liners about how it rains in Vancouver a lot. I could keep doing it, but it seems to be a case of diminishing returns.

2. Similarly, I don’t really see Twitter expanding in popularity anytime soon when it comes to a place where local people come together to talk about local issues in a non rage-filled way. In fact, judging by the number of people who tell me “I used to love reading you there but I left,” the opposite is happening.

3. For a lot of reasons, I don’t think my full-time job at CBC will ever become “guy who ranks everything in the province,” nor would I want it to be. But if #1 and #2 hold true, some sort of pivot is needed.

So! I’m creating a newsletter. If you like the stuff I do, you should subscribe.

1. What’s up with the title?

British Columbians love British Columbia.

I think a big reason for my very niche C-level local public figure success is I give people spaces to appreciate and vent and snark about things that we all talk about, but don’t get discussed in a detailed way in a) traditional news stories or b) by new media #content #creators who have to target their observations to a larger audience than people in B.C. if they’re going to have a successful business model.

More McBarges is a promise that we’ll keep talking about the interesting things in our provincial culture, with the understanding that you already know what a McBarge is, and why it’s awesome.

2. Will there be brackets and rankings?

The general goal is to take the brackets and rankings and other sort of mass participation stuff I did on Twitter and move it here, provided enough people decide to come along on the adventure. There will also be long digressions about old B.C. tourism videos, deep dives into niche Vancouver things, mailbag questions, little asides about things in my personal life and professional work, and a bunch of other things that are hard to do in 280 characters, but I’m hopeful to do more of in this space.

It’ll come out…uh…when it comes out? Maybe once or twice a week normally, and then more often when a bracket is happening?

3. So wait, no more tweets?

I mean I’m still trapped in the filth pond for now. And I’ll continue to use it to plug my professional work. But it’s a place of diminishing returns, and I’m going to treat it as such.

4. You should do more TikTok/YouTube instead if you want to gain a large audience

I did a bunch of videos on TikTok, a few of them did okay, I might get inspired to do more there in the future, but:

1. I like writing more than creating videos.

2. I don’t have any great desire to have my stuff enjoyed by people outside this province, and I like my current job so there’s no point in trying to monetize what I do in my spare time.

If the number of people who #engage with my stuff in this newsletter is like 5% of what it was on Twitter, I don’t think this will work.

But if it’s 30 or 40 per cent?

Baby, we’ve got a stew going.

Anyhow, let’s talk about the most McBargiest of times — Expo 86, and specifically the time Archie came to Vancouver.

Oh look it’s the next part of this

Two truisms about Vancouver are a) we love remembering Expo, b) we can’t shut up about the times we get noticed by large cultural institutions, so needless to say people still enjoy this little artifact.

But nobody (I have not fact checked this) has ever looked at the actual comic strip inside and tried to critique its accuracy and local references, because that would be overly pedantic and be boring to 98% of people and okay you know where this is going.

The comic gets points for quickly establishing the premise of why they’re in Vancouver, showing the main Expo lands right away, and not appearing too advertorial.

They lose points for stilted observations about the terms Yuppie and Yes Man.

Yukon is not a province, Archie, and you should feel bad about that.

also how much to you want to bet the federal government demanded that the comic put in a reminder that we’re bilingual

So far the “Archie and the gang visits Vancouver” comic has more to do with Yukon that Vancouver.

Also, you may be wondering if the comic is just going to be them heading from pavilion to pavilion while Jughead is hungry, and the answer is “absolutely.”

Oh hey we’re actually getting to the transportation theme of the Expo, that’s cool.

Also in frame four I assume there was some sort of ongoing subplot with Reggie and Veronica, but I can’t stress enough how little I care.

Wait are they now on the Corkscrew? Was a condition of the advertorial comic that they shove in every pavilion possible? Is…is this going anywhere?

We’ve arrived at B.C. Pavilion and Plaza of Nations, which is definitely still a cool place today and not an abandoned casino and decaying public square that hasn’t been used for a decade.

anyways the exciting cliffhanger is where jughead is eating

YEAH IT’S SKYTRAIN TIME

THE BEST PART OF EXPO

THE BIGGEST LEGACY

wait why are we going to this weird floating tea cup

However! It’s time for my favourite part of the strip, where they discover the BCTV news studio, a very real thing the most popular TV station in the province set up for Expo, indicative of its influence at the time (though it still has plenty today, under its current branding/ownership as Global BC).

The strip includes the famous Dogwood logo, though someone needs to gently tell Reggie and Veronica that they’re not getting a job in the big city until they move to Medicine Hat or Terrace for a few months and PAY THEIR DUES, DARN IT.

okay can we look at frame 2? because we’re clearly at science world, but the water is looking out to both the north shore?!? I DEMAND GEOGRAPHICAL ACCURACY FROM ARCHIE COMICS

anyway they found jughead, hooray

Archie and the gang play. We get a plug for Canada Place, because the writers forgot to include that earlier on and panicked. And then we get some really uninspired wordplay!

In summary and conclusion, there is no McBarge, and therefore gets a score of 0/100.

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