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Sean Orr: On Vancouver Culture And The Dwindlings Thereof…

Portrait

1004972726_df5cbc0b3d_bphoto: seanorr

Add the death of independent Sophia Books to the list of casualties in the war on culture that is being unconsciously perpetrated by the bridge-and-tunnel Hoi Polloi (those who need a Starbucks in their bookstore for it to make sense).

We love to think of ourselves as a cultural city, but beyond a very well-informed minority that is tireless in it’s promotion, there is no backbone to support local arts. With its population base, Toronto has all the makings of a city capable of supporting a thriving scene, but you just have to look at how our Provincial Government has decimated funding to see how art is just not a priority here on the west coast. It has long been known that even our most celebrated artists – people like Jeff Wall, Roy Arden, and Stan Douglas come to mind – have had to gain recognition elsewhere before being accepted here at home.

We can barely preserve our own heritage, because our struggle to constantly re-invent our image means more and more new development. Just look around. BC Binning’s Dal Grauer substation sits in disrepair, Richards on Richards is gone, and so is Molly’s Cafe near the shiny new Athlete’s Village. The list is long (one way to stop it from getting any longer would be to tie in our obsession with construction directly to the arts in the form of a cultural dividend).

Although I’m hardly an arbiter of taste, it just always feels like Vancouverites would rather rollerblade around the seawall with their Lululemon pants and vitamin water than go see a local musician. Add to that sad sense the almost puritan interpretations of our antiquated liquor laws by successive city councils, and it’s no wonder we are labeled with a nickname like No Fun City. As the upcoming documentary of the same name makes clear, the solution isn’t allowing the Granville Entertainment Group to stay open until 4am.

Also mentioned in the film is the sobering fact that we have to create our own fun and our own cultural identity. To me, a place like Sophia’s made that effort. They filled a niche, and were basically punished for not selling Oprah’s Book of the Month.

So, may it rage in peace…

Sophia Books
Duthies
Pantages
Tooth and Dagger
The Republic
The Nerve
Terminal City
Blinding Light
Black Swan Records (now a condo of the same name)
Seamrippers
Peanut Gallery
Misanthropy
Access
Butchershop
Underwear Farm
The Sugar Refinery (now a restaurant called The Refinery)
The Sweatshop
The Cobalt (now operated by slumlords)
Starfish Room
Ms. T’s
New York Theatre
The Town Pump (now Fabric)
The Cave
The Columbia
Richards (now apartments of the same name)
Smiling Buddha
Emergency Room

et al.

There are 15 comments

  2. people need to support more of the unique experiences in the city for them to prosper and remain in vancouver. obviously the list is long of stuff we have lost but i am sure one could put together a list of interesting stuff that has opened and filled the void. it is a shame we have lost some of the above places sean mentions.

    vancouverites tend to vote for more unique experiences when it comes to restaurants but less so for retail and much less so for the arts. its a shame. government funding is one avenue to making stuff happen but so is private funding and i’d like to see people come out and be a patron of the arts. there is a lot of good work being done out there. pick one or two artists that resonates with you and support them by purchasing art form them on a regular basis. you cant support everyone but you can support someone. who is your someone? for me its robert chaplin and charles forsberg.

    i’m in NYC now and the same forces of mass market consumerism are at play here too and in many other cities. one of the ironies of NYC is that one component of BYC is that it pushes mass culture to the rest of north america and the world through its many large companies that exist here yet the people that work at those same companies push back against the encroachment in their own neighborhoods of mass market culture. neighborhoods get up in arms over a chained business opening up.

    unique experiences are good experiences!

    thats my 2 cents.
    🙂

  3. ‘the sobering fact (is) that we have to create our own fun and our own cultural identity. ‘

    Well, duh.

  4. Music venues and galleries come and go. The closing of Sophia Books is really a loss for Vancouver. I can’t think of any other bookstores downtown that carry a variety of non-English language books, in addition to their excellent range of magazines.

    Remember how Empire Records had that ‘Save Empire Records’ party to repay the money Lucas lost?

    They should do that, that was a good movie.

  5. Could it not be said that Vancouver culture IS running the sea wall, doing the grouse grind and hiking the chief rather than sitting in dingy dive bars getting drunk. I think the active lifestyle of Vancouverites helps to define this city amongst others in Canada with our low obesity rates and high athleticism.
    And while some small businesses fail, as is the case of Sophia Books, other small businesses thrive in Vancouver. Just look at the proliferation of Farmers Market Vendors. Throw those prices in any other cities in Canada and you can bet your bollocks to a barn dance that they would not survive. Perhaps what we as Vancouver citizens save on our Chapters purchased books, we then spend on artisinal heritage varieties of nantes carrots and cavolo nero kale.

  7. Romanticism aside, isn’t this the true face of Vancouver? Isn’t Vancouver actually little more than a condo-bubble-cum-yuppie-yipster-paradise?

    ” it just always feels like Vancouverites would rather rollerblade around the seawall with their Lululemon pants and vitamin water than go see a local musician.”

    Like Nigel said, this is the true Vancouver culture – it’s what’s unique and local to Vancouver, I think what you want, as with many others, is more easily found in Montreal or Toronto, or countless other American and Europeans cities.

    But the real Vancouver is that point where the sunset hits the ocean, rebounding off the myriad blue-green towers and reflecting off one’s wine glass as its filled with a just-cracked bottle of Oculus, perfectly paired with seared Ahi tuna and a 50 year mortgage and silence and yoga and the worst night clubs imaginable to man.

  9. nicely put sean, but i think in the case of sophia’s it is a much bigger issue then just vancouver’s cultural apathy. there are a lot of other forces at work here. the whole publishing industry is on the verge of collapse. perhaps marc is a smart guy and so are the duthies and they realize that now is the time to bail. it is was once cool to buy all those import magazines but trust me now with the internet. why would you? everything is available to you within your monthly internet suscription. i mean i-d magazine cost almost 15 dollars and my internet is 10. how does that price model work. i could go into much further detail here plus talk about the proliferation of the kindle, and i-book, etc… but i will not bore you all. the fact is this is not unique to vancouver and book stores are closing everywhere. the times are a changin’. it is not that people are reading less but it is the format. on the other hand we can all agree that the nightlife in this city is a whole other issue.

  14. I just think your view is a little narrow here. I understand what you are saying but it’s the same in any city you goto. The majority of people would rather rollerblade with the dog sipping a low fat starbucks latte. One of the big sizes. The arts organizations get exactly what the people put into them, and while the community in Vancouver is vocal it’s just not large enough to support the organizations that are there.

    I also feel you dwell a little too much on the past, think about how many new organizations have come about since some of the ones you’ve mentioned here have disappeared. Granted a great number of them have gone just like the others, but some have taken off and are thriving.

    It’s simply not the job of the general population to keep these places going. Their lives are theres to make of them. All we can do as a community is keep the fires burning and try to draw as many new people as we can to them.

    I hate to say it, but it all comes down to business, and it’s naive to think otherwise. It’s the world we live in, it’s the world we were born into, and it’s the world that we have to adapt ourselves to. Our little community of artists is the minority. The clubs, the bars, the venues, galleries that we frequent, while we think they are better, they are on the fringes of mainstream cluture, and we have to accept them as that.

    I agree that our government has turned it’s back on the arts in this province, but it’s happened at a national level too, but why shouldn’t it, the arts community is often the first to turn it’s back on someone when they “make it”, and we’ll call them on it, sell outs and what not. What we should be doing is embracing them. Embracing the fact they got to market and made it big, that their designing the new shoe for nike, the new sweater for the gap. It’s the success of them that our own future rides on, I say lets ride those coat tails.

  15. totally agree with sean, although I think that as musicians and artists we can attest that when the mainstream culture is hostile to our productions, the underground begins to thrive… house concerts, festivals, illegal venues– vancouver has all these things going on well outside what the masses/government/industry deem profitable or worthwhile. we have a place here, it’s just not in the spotlight like in some cities, and I like it that way. the majority can have Granville Street and the Donnelly group, I’d rather be singing in abandoned warehouses and private supper clubs where people actually want to hear my music, instead of just get drunk and heckle rudely.

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