Hawkers Delight. Signaporean/Malaysian hawkwer-style food. Prepare yourself for large portions and capsaicin drunkenness (the best kind of drunkeness).
Mount Pleasant. Basically all of it is good. I agree with everything Justin McElroy says about the parks in that neighbourhood (see below).
The rain is a bad part about Vancouver, but the good part about it is that it feels cleansing. After a good rain, the city feels clean. No, I feel clean. Cleansed of my sins, almost.
SkyTrain. It's what it says on the tin: a train in the sky. If you know of a cheaper, nay, better way to tour much of the Greater Vancouver Area in the span of an hour or two, I'd like to hear it.
The SeaBus. At $3, you can't beat that price for a harbour cruise.
Lucky's Doughnuts/49 Parallel on Main and 13th. If God made a better coffee shop, He kept that for Himself.
The mountains. What better way to orient yourself than to remember "the mountains are north"?
The Eastside Culture Crawl. Easily Vancouver's best event. You get to enter the studio spaces of Vancouver artists and can buy art from them right then and there. Often, their studio space is their homes. ARTISTS ARE LETTING YOU INTO THEIR HOMES! I might be a bit biased because I was their website manager for a few years, but I worked at a discount because of how so amazingly fucking good the event is.
Vancouver Public Library's Central Branch. It might be Vancouver's best public space. Except...
Jonathan Rogers Park. “Dude Chilling Park” got all the press and the memes, but this park has the best view of the city, and the slope is magical to lay on. I lived close to Mount Pleasant Park, so I spent more time there, but Jonathan Rogers Park had more going for it.
The Templeton. They serve diner food, breakfast, lunch and dinner, beer and ice cream. What more do you need?
The Port Moody sulpher pile. It's daring you not to look at it.
Private beer & wine stores. Jaw-dropping selection of beer from around the world, in fridges, some of which you can walk into. (OK, that's a B.C. thing, but I compare that to Ontario, where, while it has a rich craft beer market, you can only really go to the LCBO and maybe hope to get something cold that's from nearby. Does The Beer Store have a good selection? I don't know, because they always seem so far away from where I happen to be.) Also, microbreweries as far as the eye can see.
See also:
Inspired by JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford