Flaky Commercial Drive Hippie?

Somewhere in the movie, the male lead character makes a reference to flaky Commercial Drive hippies or hippie vibe or something, ironically. I've known people like the characters in this movie and they did centre on Commercial Drive aka the Republic of East Vancouver, which of course in the past 10 years has graduated to also being trendy land. Don't know if the self righteous paranoid organizing protesting radicals are still there. Probably are.

I also know some cool people who find treasures in garbage piles and sell them as antiques, and people who do stuff like that don't usually have contempt for it like these characters did. Seems they have to participate serve consumers/markets to survive, and they were bitter about that.