Crime cannot exist without laws, just as disease cannot exist without medicine. Explore the history of crime and punishment in Vancouver with today's Groupon: for $15, you get two tickets to the Sins of the City walking tour from the Vancouver Police Museum (a $30 value). Your tickets also get you free admission to the museum on the day of the tour. Tours are currently scheduled to run at 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
Explore the city's early culture of mayhem and misbehaviour as you weave a path into Vancouver's bootleg-bloated underbelly. Your guide will transport you to the sites of a grisly and grimy proto-city that was once stuffed to the brim with brothels, opium dens, and gambling lairs, as loggers and sailors ran amuck on the stomping grounds of early Vancouverite bar owner Gassy Jack. Tour-takers will see the city's first jailhouse, learn about the drug trade in the city's early years, and wander through Blood Alley before returning to the Police Museum. The Sins of the City walking tour leaves from the museum, is held rain or shine, and requires 24 hours advanced reservation.
The Vancouver Police Museum is housed in the former site of Vancouver’s city analyst’s laboratory, the coroner’s courtroom, and a morgue and is an interactive exploration of the city’s criminal past. Its exhibits draw from a collection of approximately 20,000 artefacts, photographs, and published materials to offer the history of the Vancouver Police Department. Piece together the criminal wrongdoings of your past lives, or discover the real reason your grandmother wasn’t allowed in Vancouver after 1972, with a Sins of the City walking tour and a visit to the Vancouver Police Museum, named one of the top-five interesting things to do in the city by the blog Inside Vancouver.
Reviews
The Vancouver Police Museum comes with a Frommer's recommendation, a 3.5-star average from four TripAdvisors, and four stars from five Yelpers. Everyone agrees it's a lot of fun, but maybe not for the weak-hearted or queasy-stomached.
- The confiscated illegal-weapons display is hair-raising; you can also see the old morgue, a simulated autopsy room (with pieces of damaged body parts in specimen bottles), and a forensics lab. – Frommer's
- If you and the ones you love have a taste for murder and mayhem, this is the place to go. – Louise G., Yelp
- In front of [a display] that tells how a mentally disturbed teenager wasted his family one Christmas Eve in the 60s is the long-handled axe from the crime scene - with blond hairs clinging to the blade. – Christine R., Yelp
Groupon Says
Steal Magnolias
Everyone wants to be a big-time-heist thief, but many of us just aren't ready. If the idea of catapulting yourself into the Louvre's Fancy Art Wing and avoiding Les Squelettes de Sécurité makes you uncomfortable, here are some small-time thefts to get you started:
- When you are almost done with your fast-food hamburger, put a hair or small insect on it and demand a free replacement. While they are distracted and rushing to get you your Iron Man Super Burger, steal the charity coin jar and run like the dickens.
- Photoshop an elaborate letter telling your neighbour that he's won a free house in Hawaii because he loves the home-style taste of Swiss Chalet so much. When he leaves, change all the locks, street signs, and paint the house to look like a forest. He won't be able to come back, and you'll have achieved doublehouse.
- Tell Grandma it's your birthday (even if it's not) and then steal her car while she's in the bathroom.
- Use your poetry to steal the postman's heart.
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