Why Vancouver is always a stand-in for San Francisco in movies and TV shows (2021)

Vancouver always feels like Cities Skyline or SimCity to me, in a good way. That point where you’ve maxed everything out and there’s all sorts going on. You turn a corner and you see a seaplane landing, people cycling, rowing, running, doing yoga in the park, boats going past, etc, etc. Then another corner and you see the mountains, ski resorts with the lights twinkling. In one direction there’s skyscrapers but in another, quaint colourful houses. I love it here.

One of my favorite YouTube channels, Every Frame a Painting, has a video on this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU

My mother worked in a factory that sewed drapes for film sets before she retired. My brother-in-law used to be an operations manager for a warehouse that rented equipment to film sets.

There is just a very long tail of services and a robust supply chain that is required for most industries to be successful.

Psych (the TV show) was set in Santa Barbara but filmed in Vancouver. They then did an episode where the plot was that characters all took a trip to British Columbia, which I recall being amusingly meta.

Or in the case of Superbad, a film based on Seth Rogen's experiences as a Vancouver teenager in the late 90s, Vancouver is a stand-in for Los Angeles, which is a stand-in for Vancouver.

You can also tell if something was shot in Canada by all the Canadian actors all over the place. I recognize so many people from X-Files, and so many other shows.

the non politically correct answer - Vancouver allows you to sell the dream of a wonderful city, clean streets etc.

It was very fun to attend UBC then immediately start recognizing bits of the campus in many TV shows - Man in High Castle, Stargate, Battlestar, and many others.

They have long since fixed it but there used to be an absolutely awful/hilarious set of street view captures for UBC that were taken by accident during filming for Man in the High Castle…the entire main mall had Nazi flags up. https://ubyssey.ca/humour/ubc-nazi-territory-street-view/

And Toronto is New York City.

Tax breaks for filming and it's not SF specific or even cities. Other planets too, like Stargate SG-1 being filmed around Squamish 1 hour away.

Also Battlestar Galactica -multiple shots of homes in Vancouver- I remember watching the series and wondering what city was being used for Baltar's house and surroundings because it was so beautiful, futuristic and clean..then I went vistied Vancouver.. its truly a gorgeous city and area

http://www.battlestarlocations.com/locations-guide/the-minis...

I thought it was funny that almost every alien planet on Stargate SG-1 looked like British Columbia.

Nah, you can tell because they don’t have annoying people paint street numbers on the curbs.

That said it’d be difficult to film the film Bullitt in Vancouver unless they cut out a lot of the street scenes, the marina, San Bruno mountain, the old freeways…

...and Seattle