Well, firstly, thanks for all the kind words about my fine city! I'm definitely in agreement with nomos above, it's all about getting out and going to the beach/forest/mountains/ocean etc. I think the abundance of greenery (both the nature and the weed kind) and the never-too-hot never-too-cold weather really mean it's pretty hard not be relaxed and chilled out living here....
As for this, I have to disagree, unfortunately. At least in Wagon Repair's case, they don't really have too much of a local presence, I think it's been about two years since mathew jonson played here last (maybe i missed a show but...). There are a handful of decent clubnights though, but I've never really felt there was a "strong" electronic music scene here, at least compared to toronto and montreal, which are the inevitable comparison points for vancouver. S'alright though.
Also, one more thing about the multicultural/multiracial aspect of vancouver. So yes, it's a hugely mixed population (under half of vancouverites speak english as their first language), but there isn't that much actual social interaction between a lot of the different cultural groups. My high school growing up was about half and half white english speaking and half chinese, and aside from a handful of second generation chinese-canadians, there was very little interaction between the two halves. There was even the white people smoke pit and the chinese smoke pit in two different places just off school grounds.
And this has continued to be the case, especially living in the west side of vancouver, by the university. There are areas that are largely white, largely chinese or largely east indian, and you notice quite quickly when you move from one area to the other. There are also local chinese or punjabi newspapers and tv channels. So some of the outward "wow look how multicultural we are!" stuff really starts to fall apart when you look at the cultural makeup of all the different social groups. Which is not to say people in vancouver are totally racist or that there's lots of discrimination; it's just that the different cultures here tend to stay pretty separate and isolated from each other, for a multitude of different reasons. Maybe this is not anything specific to vancouver, and I do imagine it will change slowly as there start being more second and third generation children of recent immigrants. But that's certainly the state of things today...