area code 604

604 was one of the original nine area codes allocated to Canadian territories in 1947, specifically intended to apply to the westernmost province of British Columbia, whose biggest city was Vancouver. Fifty years later, the region was also granted area code 250 (and then 778 in 2007, 236 in 2013, and 672 in 2019), but for BBS purposes, that hobby was just about wrapped by 1997 and there were never significant BBSes running out of the later area codes. Similarly, in 2008 mandatory 10-digit dialing came into effect, to specify in which area code the number you were dialing was located, but during the BBS heyday of the '80s and '90s, seven digits were all that were required to get you to your destination. While the area code originally applied to the entire province, in the present day all 604 numbers are located in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, in the southwestern corner of the province. Back when all phone numbers were landlines, the prefix -- the first three digits in the number format ###-#### -- would yield information about in which neighbourhood the line was physically located.

In terms pertinent to our underground computer culture (the term also coined by Madchild of Swollen Members in a local hip-hop context), "604" referred to our local virtual region of cyberspace, prior to the widespread availability of affordable home Internet access -- anywhere that could be dialed into over a modem from anywhere in the province without crossing expensive zone boundaries. (While there were a handful of exceptions, in practical terms, what it meant is that virtually any caller to any BBS in the same area code could hypothetically catch a BC Transit bus to the location where that BBS was hosted, but why would anyone do such a strange thing? Easily nine out of ten BBSes in area code 604 could be found in the area generally constrained by Vancouver in the west, North Vancouver in the north, White Rock in the south and Langley in the east.) It included an enormous quantity of [Public Domain] BBSes, tracked by the MindLink!, CardZ, and Roxanne Spear's Discovery BBS Lists, some of which were multi-node chatboards (eg. Shoreline, STS-13, the minors-only EdNet run by the VSB) or MUDs (ICE Online's The Majic Realm, Wizard BBS), many of which were appendages of local businesses (the Vancouver Public Library maintained a dial-in Dynix system you could use to place holds or search their catalogue), hardware manufacturers (Advanced Gravis BBS) or specialty computer hobbyist user groups (Van Kaypro Users Group, 1040 MIDI and Music)... and many of which simply existed because their owners had a spare computer and phone line and thought it'd be neat to invite strangers into their living room to play Blackjack, download Cindy Crawford swimsuit GIFs, and talk to each other through the same FidoNet echomail message bases. PD BBSes tended to run on softwares such as WildCat!, Remote Access and PCBoard.

The earliest Internet access in the area was first exclusively for UBC staff and students, via the TRIUMF research institute, and subsequently offered to non-academics through Wimsey. (Later providers included Blaze, Internet Direct, Mortimer, Infomatch and Uniserve before the big telcos and cable companies hoovered up all the business.) Affordable Internet access was oddly late to arrive to this market, and consequently area code 604 hosted over time possibly (as metred by bbslist.textfiles.com) the most BBSes of any area code anywhere (definitely the most per capita), and its regional BBS scene stayed active long after local access to FTP sites and UseNet newsgroups and the Yahoo! search engine turned other area codes' BBS communities into ghost towns.

Also present in 604's local manifestation of cyberspace were of course the underground bulletin boards (running Forum hacks such as Telegard and especially Renegade) that you wouldn't find on the PD BBS lists, where warez, porn (primarily erotic stories), and "anarchy" or h/p/a tfiles were traded among users who were able to not only find the phone number to begin with but also provide the NUP (New User Password). And among them, you would find flashier BBSes decorated with a higher grade of ANSI art, as this underground realm also consisted of the BBSes advertised by elite artists whose advertisements (not just ANSI screens, but also "intros" and loaders, often juiced with tracker music) were collected and distributed in artpacks. Shining examples of local group-agnostic underground artscene BBSes would include Alpha Centauri and Atlantis; the Mustang Ranch was the local ne plus ultra for 0-3 day warez (Arkham Asylum held down the oldwarez and erotic fiction beats) and Stonehenge was the local anarchy/free speech hub.

Mistigris (as with its direct predecessors iMPERiAL, NWA, PAiN and POiSON) was established in area code 604 and for most of the Mist Classic period of the late '90s primarily relied upon the local citizenry of its geographical area to populate its artpacks, though for the first few years we did also maintain an important output in Quebec City's area code 418. Consequently, in our online dealings and artwork, artists could feel free to make reference to local landmarks, politics and current events and their local colleagues and audiences could be expected to understand what the heck they were talking about. Mist is still run and coordinated out of area code 604, but our ties to the 604 these days are primarily traditional -- after our 2014 reunion of local alumni, submissions originate from anywhere we can reach online, and we have featured artwork from artists on nearly every continent... but we will never forget the centrality of area code 604 to our early days, so we continue flying its flag to keep it real.