Killarney Table Tennis Club

If you are looking for the very best table tennis program Vancouver community centres have to offer, then you have found the right place. Celebrating its 30th year of operating within Killarney Community Centre, the Killarney Table Tennis Club welcomes all ping pong players from beginners to advanced. Killarney’s TT Club is unique among clubs in Vancouver by offering one-on-one coaching sessions with a nationally-certified table tennis coach for beginners to intermediate players.

Quayside Park Tables (New Westminster)

The Quayside Park Tables are easy to miss. They’re hidden away in a small green playground next to the Fraser River. Surrounded by trees and set one a concrete slab adjacent to the children’s playground, you could ride by without noticing the beautiful steel tables. The tables are the same as those at Empire Fields and make wonderful sounds when the table top is percussed by hand on when the ball strikes the net.

Moody Park Tables (New Westminster)

It’s great to see examples outside of Vancouver of table tennis tables safely located within the leafy green confines of parks. This latest discovery is located in Moody Park in New Westminster, and this past September when the Ping Pong In Vancouver crew checked out the two tables nestled under the canopy of big trees, we found a small community of players who meet to play nearly every day.

Lonsdale Table

Someone recently contacted PingPongInVancouver.com to tell us about a public outdoor table tennis table in North Vancouver near First and Lonsdale. We don’t normally include tables in municipalities other than Vancouver unless the installation is an example of what was done right (i.e. Edmonds Tables in Burnaby) or what was done wrong. An initial glance of this installation (via Google street view) showed what appeared to be an example of where NOT to put in a public ping pong table. We hopped on our bikes on a fine summer afternoon to see for ourselves what a dangerously placed table looks like…

K8 Strings for Ping Pong Gear!

Since the launch of Ping Pong In Vancouver, we’ve searched for a local table tennis gear store we could promote and send readers to who want to buy brand name entry-level ping pong gear at a good price. We contacted all the big players nationally as well as a few local stores, all of whom ignored our offer for free advertising. Too good to be true, we suppose. But we found a tiny gem of a shop at Renfrew Street and First Avenue, and to make things even more auspicious, the shop’s about one mile from the best outdoor ping pong tables in town, Empire Fields.

Edmonds Park Tables (Burnaby)

While this table tennis table installation is in Burnaby, it’s worth mentioning because, 1) it is a table tennis installation in a park; and 2) it’s a table tennis installation added next to existing tennis courts in a recent park redevelopment. The Edmonds Park Tables are the closest local example of a municipality adding table tennis infrastructure to an existing park. We ask: we can’t this be done in Vancouver?

The Players Directory

Ping Pong In Vancouver has finally created a players directory, one of the three main goals we set out to accomplish when we launched the website. We list places to play table tennis and we advocate for ping pong infrastructure in Vancouver parks (although all of our efforts so far to connect with Vancouver Parks planners has been completely ignored). Now we connect ping pong players with partners!

VTTC – Vancouver Table Tennis Club

The Vancouver Table Tennis Club (VTTC) bills itself as “one of the best table tennis clubs in the Greater Vancouver area”. This is true with respect to the quality of play. There are some very good players here. The VTTC has 8 tables, a wood floor, adequate lighting, the club owners are really nice, but because this club is so busy, playing sessions are limited to 20 minutes. Wait times are often lengthy. A good but very crowded club.

Kits Beach Table

The Vancouver Rotary Club recently unveiled a ping pong table at Kits Beach. Situated behind the buildings along the main promenade of the beach, surrounded by trees and grass, the ping pong table itself is great. It’s got a beautifully finished aggregate concrete top yielding a superb bounce, a fine art-quality metal net, a sturdy, immovable concrete base…but there’s real danger underfoot, literally.

Orchard Commons Tables, UBC

The Orchard Commons Tables are excellent aggregate stone tables with a surface more like 400 grit sandpaper than polished marble. Does it affect the ball? You be the judge when you visit. The ping pong tables are centred in a playing area that is… well, a pit, basically. This pit consists of a playing surface of undulating gravel that has a deepish hole at each end of both tables, a testament to the grinding duels that must have occurred here…