I Used to Work Here

[mbarrick]

What you are seeing here is the old Capitol 6 cinema from the Seymour Street side. The building across the alley with the gaping holes is the Granville Street entrance and the excavation in the foreground is where the six cinemas were. The Capitol Six was built in 1975 as part of the ultimately failed attempt to turn Granville Street into a walking mall. Prior to closing it off to all but trolleys, buses, and taxis Granville Street used to be the main drag and boasted the highest density of neon signs in the world, surpassing even Las Vegas at the time. Some well-intentioned but misguided urban planner decided that by removing the cars from the equation people would promenade rather than cruise.

The approach standard to indoor shopping malls was taken, anchor store at one end and food court at the other and that's where it failed. On the 600 block of Granville was the Bay, Eatons was on the 700 block, the 800 block had the brand new Capitol Six, the Granville 7 Cineplex/Odeon with a McDonalds at the end of the block at Nelson and the food court kitty-corner from the McDonalds across Nelson.

At the time of the Granville Mall's creation Davie Street was the red light district (the Ultra Love sex shop and the bank of pay-phones in front of the Shoppers Drug mart are remnant of this time) and Yaletown was an industrial skid full of sawmills, warehouses, and welfare hotels. Granville Street between Nelson and the Granville Bridge had deteriorated into a string of seed sex-shops, 25¢ movie booths, and by-the-hour hotels. A further attempt to anchor the south end of the Granville Mall in the form of the Chateau Granville luxury hotel on the 1000 block of Granville at the corner of Granville and Helmeken, also built in 1975. It was hoped wealthy tourists walking from the hotel to the Granville Mall would attract "respectable" business to the 900 block of Granville.

In reality, during the day, Eatons became the south anchor since it was much more pleasant and palatable for the average person to turn off on Robson Street, walk past the gleaming new provincial courthouse and the old courthouse now converted to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the ultra-modern Vancouver Public Library go to a restaurant on "Robson Strasse" the former heart of the German immigrant community and home to many fine restaurants. It was only in the evening would people walk the the 800 and 900 blocks of Granville to go to the cinemas - the new Capitol Six, the Odeon/Granville 7 Cinemas, the Plaza, the Paradise, the Caprice, and the Vogue - or to attend performances at the Orpheum and Commodore.

Only the very well established niche businesses, like Leo's Cameras, Granville Optical, Tandy Leather, and Granville Books or places that served the cinema-goers, like Taf's Café thrived. But with the 800 block of Granville being the main stop for the trolleys a different daytime crowd emerged - suburban punks and death-rockers. During the day the 800 block of Granville was populated by the alternative crowd and businesses like Fox and Fluevog, the Underground, and Golden Age Collectibles catered to them. Taf's was the place to hang out (along with the back stairs of the art gallery around the corner).

In the late 70's and early 80's I used to go the cinemas with my dad when he needed to come into the city for business. We'd often go to a matinée before heading back to the ferry. In the late 80's I'd regularly come over from the island to go clubbing at Graceland, Luv-a-fair, the Eclipse, and the Twilight Zone. I was one of those death-rockers (called "Gothics" at this point, the term had not yet shortened to just "goth") on the 800 block and the art gallery stairs. In 1990 I moved to Vancouver permanently to attend SFU. I became a regular at Taf's. In the early 90's my girlfriend at the time worked as a jewelry vendor on the 800-block of Granville and I occasionally did as well (I was frequently sought out by people who could not get their puzzle rings reassembled). A little later I got a part-time job at the Capitol Six as a doorman and usher since the hours worked well with my class schedule. It was a terrible, low paying job, but better than nothing.

The job had it's moments though. I let my friends "sneak" in for free on Wednesdays when I would be the only person checking tickets. "Nightmare Before Christmas" came out while I worked there, which is where I got the 6' x 4' Jack and Sally posters that hang in my hallway. There was the utterly surreal moment of finding a live turtle on the stairs leading to the alley overpass from the Granville entrance. It was before Yaletown was built up with towers and it was stunning to watch fogs fill False Creek and spill into the city from the windows on the top floor. I'll also never forget the annoying brat wiping out in the sludge lake in Cinema 1.

Like any multiplex theatre our primary function as doormen were to keep people (usually boys between the ages of 12 and 15) from buying one ticket and then skipping from one cinema to another to see two or three movies. One day there was a couple of particularly obnoxious 12-year olds that were trying to skip from a 7:00 show to the 9:00 show in Cinema 1. Cinema 1 one was the big screen on the first floor that seated about 1,000 people. On a Saturday with a popular movie with shows at 1:00, 3:00, 5:00 and 7:00, three to four thousand people have already been through the cinema by the 9:00 show. A lot of those people spill pop. The floor is sloped and all the spilled pop would collect in a foetid puddle in the space between the first row and the screen. While another doorman and I had the exits back to lobby blocked a third doorman was chasing this kid down the isle to boot him out. The kid tore down the isle, slipped in front of the first row and skidded into the pop-lake. He was covered from head to toe in rancid pop. It wasn't hard to get him to leave after that.

Now the Capitol Six is gone. It was replaced by the Paramount (now "Scotia Bank Cinemas") at Smithe and Burrard. Fluevog (now sans Fox) and Taf's remain, but the "alterno-mall" portion of the Granville Mall is gone with it. The Underground didn't survive the four-month bus-strike of 2001. Other business were driven away (Leo's) or driven out of business (Cheap Thrills, Granville Books) by raised rents resulting from the Canada Line LRT station going in at Granville and Robson and 2010 Olympics profiteering. The Vogue is now a performing theatre, while the other single-screen cinemas have all been turned into cavernous night-clubs in another city hall (mis)guided initiative to return Granville Street to its glory days of 40-50 years ago.

Comments

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

ah good ol' taf's...i remember hanging there way back in the mid '80s when out here on vacation...wow i moved back here the same year you moved here...remember sam the record man on granville too??? a friend of mine worked there...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Sam's always on Seymour, on the block with A&A, Odessy Imports, and the Railway Club? There was some electronics store (I forget the name of it) in the building where Aldo's is now. The buildings are almost exactly the same.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

no it was music world...my bad...it was on the top floor of the building aldo is in now...

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

actually i think it was the one beside it right beside the theatre, which as been torn down now...i know at one point it was an english school...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Music World, yes! That was the name of the place. That's were I got the walkman - they had stereos and whatnot downstairs and the records upstairs. The building on the other side was a hair salon when I worked for the Capitol 6, I remember sitting across the street waiting for the bus home watching rats from the cinema going under the door to the hair salon. There were a lot of rats in the Capitol 6... all that popcorn...

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

yeh that's right they had the electronic stuff in the bottom...my friend worked in the music section on the top floor...i remember my first walkman...i thought it was the greatest...ha ha...then my discman...ah rats and popcorn...wonder where they all went when it was torn down??? maybe india gate, the lennox and burger king...ha ha...

[valerian.livejournal.com]

Both Odessey Imports and A&A were originally on Granville. Can;t remember if Sam's was ever on Granville though - I think they turned up on Seymour right around the time that A&A relocated. I think Odessey was the last to move.

And I'm pretty sure it was a Kelly's Stereo on Granville that you're thinking of, it was definitlley not Music World. Music World was underground inside Pac Centre (I remember that clearly because I had a coffee break with Kevin Ogilvie/Ogre down there when he used to work there, and we both smirked at the small gaggle of new wave girls that were sitting at the bench about 20 feet away, totally giving me the evil eye).

[valerian.livejournal.com]

Oops, pardon the flurry of typos, guys...

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

kelly's stereo...wow forgot about that place...but it was most definitely music world...it was '91 and my roommate worked there...after they closed that store they moved to the mall...unfortunately i can't ask him as i no longer am in contact with him...but i'm 95% sure...

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

Can;t remember if Sam's was ever on Granville though - I think they turned up on Seymour right around the time that A&A relocated. I think Odessey was the last to move.

That sounds about right. Wasn't the Sam's location on Seymour previosuly another record company chain? I seem to recall in the early 1990s there were a bunch of record company take-over and mergers. I have a gut feeling that whatever was there before, Sam's bought them out and then moved into that location - because I recall Sam's being more of a mall-based chain before that sore on Seymour.

There was also that old indie and used record store located a block down the hill on Seymour just north of Pender, on the east side of the steet (and A&A was also located on the corner of Seymour and Pender in the big gaudy building which was taken over by a Korean language school or something like that). It was bulldozed down in the last years of the 1980s and they moved up the block to next door to Oddessy Imports. Track Records I think they were called...

[turtle-time.livejournal.com]

I think the one time I ran into you in Vancouver was at Taf's wasn't it? Probably six or seven years after you graduated.

A history of Granville St. wouldn't be complete without mention of Harbour Dance Centre, which is upstairs in the 900 block. I still miss the place - there is nowhere like it in Sacramento for good adult ballet classes with live accompaniment. And it has these great floor-to-ceiling windows that look down over the street.

[sciencequeen.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I've never heard the history of Vancouver spoken so well. :)

I've never heard of this Taf's place, on Granville? Which side of the street? It's *still* there? Is it that place wedged between the creepy dollar pizza and Charlie's?

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yup, it is still there. It's on the same side of the street as Fluevog, Charlie's and the creepy pizza place. It's between Fluevog and the pizza place.

[kitsune-13.livejournal.com]

We still go to Taf's on occasion (cheap beer and the best cheeseburger in the city I think)..and man, do I miss Dids Pizza after LAF.

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

the did's on davie was the best one though...

[skinjob007.livejournal.com]

Man, that's a great deal of info. I definitely remember the hair salon: it was called Zero F & it moved to Hamilton street a few years back. I remember many an instance where I'd be outside on the street holding up a lamppost watching the crowd go by while waiting for Shona's appointment to finish up before we caught a matinee or went out for dinner.

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the A&A located on Grabville where that vacant lot across from Eatons was for quite a few years (not sure if it's still vacant, don't get downtown much now). Oddessy Imports was located around where Granville Books was - or did the old Underground take over their location when Oddessy moved down to Seymour?

Pacific Centre was one-half of the planned major downtown redevelopment in the early 1970s, along with Project 200 along the Gastown waterfront which became stillborn on account of the opposed downtown highway proposal through Strathcona. The Georgia Viaduct is the only reminant of that proposal taking root, which kinda of explains why it really goes nowhere (it was suppose to have gone along Union and Venables (which would have become a limited access, raised freeway linked up with Highway 1).

[tnkgrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks - great bit of history! I used to hang out on that block a lot in the mid-to-late 90's...

What's the Canada line LRT?

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

The Canada Line is a light rail rapid transit line from Waterfront Station to Richmond Centre, with a spur line to the airport. Right now Granville is a big trench from Cordova to Nelson.

Granville is dug up to lay the track cut-and-cover style. A tunnel is being bored from Nelson, under Yaletown and False Creek (there will be a station at the Roundhouse). On the other side of False Creek, Cambie is another big trench with more cut-and-cover construction to run the track underground from False Creek to 62nd. At that point it runs along the surface. There is a new bridge under construction across the North Arm of the Fraser not far from the Oak Street Bridge. On the Richmond side of the bridge there is a rail-yard for the LRT trains. Elevated track is being built down the middle of No. 3 Rd. and parallel to Airport Way.

In short it is a stupidly expensive project being built to avoid the embarassment of having the Olympics and being the only decent-sized city in North America that *doesn't* have rapid transit to the airport. The irony being that we *had* rapid transit to the airport in 1920 with the Interurban line (in fact the Interurban line ran all the way to Steveston and the original airport was built beside it, so really we had transit to the airport *before* there was an airport). The Interurban was abandoned in 1958 in favour of freeways and cars, but most of the Interurban tracks and right away are still there (the tracks along Arbutus and between Shell Rd. and No. 4 Rd. in Richmond). It's notable that both the Expo Line of the Skytrain and the Millenium Line also follow old Interurban lines almost exactly.

Come 2010 we'll have just about half the rail capacity for transit that we had in 1910. Almost. We'll still be missing the line from New Westminister to Marpole and the line from Surrey to Chilliwack.

[tnkgrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info!

I knew there has been discussions all these year to build rail transit from downtown Vancouver to the airport, but I always expected it to go along the Arbutus corridor, not Cambie...

I'm amazed they're building a tunnel and a bridge and going all out - wow. Then again they went all out building that Skytrain bridge to Surrey.