A Vancouver Beach Pop Up

“I’m tired of the same old stuff, we need to be weird again.” This is the message I wrote Wednesday night on my instagram. On Friday I posted a tiktok before I went to lunch. “Hey Vancouver, I’m doing a pop up beach party, here’s the number, text if you wanna come.” Zero expectations. I ate a bomb sandwich at Say Hey cafe (highly recommend) then went home to pick a few songs off my new album to play that night. I sort of forgot about the tiktok, I checked it at 4pm and it had exploded. Over 2000 shares. Okay. Holy shit. I couldn’t believe it. Let’s fucking go.

My friend Kyle was a life saver, getting all the speakers together. We fully punk-rocked the whole thing, just rented a bunch of random audio equipment, no real plan, let’s just show up and do it. I can’t stress how spontaneous this was. Kyle called me 5mins before I left for the beach shouting “we need more power bars!” I grabbed every one I could find. More outlets = more speakers!! Growing up playing in punk bands, I love this DIY feeling. The excitement of uncertainty. 

photo by Kyle Lee / Third Beach Vancouver

At 7:30 a few people started trickling in. By 8:30 it was a few hundred. Once the sunset peaked I started to lose count, it had become a sea of people, and it was incredible. Everyone was in such a positive mood, the vibe was immaculate, the weather was perfect, it was all unreal. Once night hit, we reached peak energy levels and a proper beach rave was in full force. The cops showed up around 10pm, as expected, and were nice enough to say “10 more mins.” A few more bangers, and a bit of Britney’s Toxic to close out the damn thing. The cops said thank you for respecting the time and one actually said “really great set 😂.” I thanked the crowd and asked them to clean up their trash, which everyone was great at doing. The whole night was a blur and it ended as fast as it started. 

Thank you Vancouver. Thank you for showing up. It's hard to put into words how much I loved this. Let’s do it again sometime.

-felix