30 THURSDAY October 27, 2016 • New Westminster RECORD
THE 80s IN NEW WEST
THE RECORD HITS 35
Confessions of a Royal City party girl Back when earrings were big and bangs were bigger, NewWestminster was a hopping place – a little too hopping for a group of ministers in the late 1980s who complained it was fast becoming a boozesoaked, drug-riddled capital of crime.
By CORNELIA NAYLOR Those holding the Chi Chis in the city’s many nightclubs, though, saw things a little differently.The Record sat down with one recovering ’80s NewWaver, born and bred in the Royal City, to get a first-hand account. Names have been withheld to protect the innocent.
a little strip competition for money.They had a fabulous DJ.The reason I went to Chicago’s so much is that they had a DJ who really picked up on some of the really new music. It’s very old now, but the Safety Dance. He played the Safety Dance by Men Without Hats. I would request it from radio station and they had no clue who Men Without Hats were. A lot of NewWave stuff, Missing Persons, the Stranglers. He did recognize that that wasn’t going to fly all night every night, so he had to mix it up a bit. There was Michael Jackson; Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order was a big song. He
There was also a nightclub, Mardi Gras, in the Royal Towers Hotel and a pub, Rosie O’Grady’s, with a room at the back called Rosie’s Den where guys would go and watch strippers.There were a lot of strip clubs in NewWest back then. There was also a place out in Sapperton, EJ Jackson’s. I think they had a shooter bar, where you had to sit down and take your shot leaning back. A lot of older folks used to go down to the Terminal; it was a beer parlour.There were also theWindsor and theWindjammer on Columbia Street.
When did your life as a Royal City partier begin? I didn’t start partying right away, but a lot of people who grew up in NewWest in the ’80s probably went into local bars before they were allowed to.They would sneak in. Where did people your age go? The College Place Hotel is probably the first place that they drank. It was on Carnarvon Street. It’s where the Lookout Society has their shelter now. It had been a hotel and it had been a drinking establishment for many, many, many years. On one side, you had Mugs and Jugs, which during the day was a strip bar and at night was a pub. On the other side of the building, with a separate entrance, was Chicago Tonight, which was a nightclub. It was the place to be.You would go to Mugs and Jugs to drink, and at the end of the night, you’d go to Chicago’s if you wanted to dance or if they wanted to meet someone. Was Chicago’s your favourite place to party? So many people from NewWest would go there on a Friday night.You didn’t have to go to a house party because so many people that you went to school with or that you knew from older grades or younger grades, they were all there. In about the late ’80s, maybe early ’90s, Kits Pub opened up on Front Street, and it sort of became the place that everybody went to. My age group moved off to Kits and probably some of the younger people kind of kept going to Chicago Tonight. What were Chicago Tonight and Mugs and Jugs like? Mugs and Jugs was a pub place with a stage for the strippers in the middle of it. In the evening, people would sit on the stage. There was a second bar that was open on one side to Chicago Tonight and on the other to Mugs and Jugs. If you were in Mugs and you wanted to go dancing, and you were kind of worried that Chicago’s might be getting a lineup, you could look across… You had to go outside to go, but you could see through the bar. Chicago’s you would never forget.When we first started going there in the early ’80s, it had booths and there were telephones in the booths that you could use to call someone (I never did this) across the room and chat with someone sitting somewhere else. It was quite a tacky place.There was a giant wax figurine Elvis and a ‘get lucky ball.’ There was a disco ball and strobe lights and a “hot buns night,” where people would do
What about make-up? Nothing too wild and crazy there. A lot of eyeliner. What were people drinking in those days? You hear about all the craft beer nowadays. Back then it was Coors Lite or Bud. People would drink Zombies, Paralyzers. Long Island Iced Teas were a big seller at Kits Pub. I used to have Chi Chis when I was underage or just of age and didn’t really drink a ton.That would be my drink. I’d have a Chi Chi at Chicago’s and I’d be good to go. I could dance the night away. But Mugs also had draught cider, and, to this day, I’ve never known of another place that has ever had draught cider, so that was a thing. It was a buck for a glass of cider. A buck! What about drugs? It was a big cocaine decade, and I think that in a lot of ways I was actually quite naïve to the prevalence of it. Especially by the late ’80s or the early ’90s at Kits Pub, yeah, you knew it was easily accessible if that’s what you wanted. People smoked pot. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like it’s more prevalent now.Weed was more of a thing that people did at parties. For my group of friends, alcohol was the drug of choice. When I started going downtown toVancouver for clubbing I started to hear more about other drugs.
If you were looking for a good time in New West in the 1980s, you may have found yourself at the College Place Hotel, home of both Mugs and Jugs and Chicago Tonight. RECORD /Thinkstock
played Bon Jovi and the hair bands too. It was NewWest, so you had some people who were pretty alternative looking, and you had some very traditional looking people. I had a friend once who had the big schwoop in her hair, and people would cockadoodle-doo at her when she walked in.They weren’t quite ready for it, but the music brought that kind of element to the place. Did other bars and clubs have different reputations? Absolutely, Casablanca’s was over on Church Street. It was sort of the funk place. There were a lot of people who came up from the States to go there. A lot of navy guys fromWhidbey Island came up to go there. It was a hugely popular place.
What was the most decrepit bar? That was theWindsor on the corner of Begbie and Columbian. It was a heritage building and it had separate entrances for men, ladies and escorts. Were there any gay bars? There were no gay bars that I know of in NewWest, but there was a bathhouse down on Front Street … In the ’80s, because you had bands like the Eurythmics and the Culture Club, who had these either gay or androgynous singers, there were a lot of gay people who were starting to go to Chicago Tonight, for example. Were they openly gay? I had crushes on a couple of them, not knowing.
“Kits Pub opened up on Front Street, and it sort of became the place that everybody went to.”
How did you get ready on a typical Friday night? I usually just consulted with my girlfriends and found out what everybody was wearing and where we were going.
People from around the Lower Mainland went there for that type of music and it was a hopping place. There was Good Rockin Tonight and California Dreamin. I think one came before the other.They were behind what is now the Old Spaghetti Factory before SkyTrain.That was the rocker place. I only went there once or twice. For me as a little new waver, it seemed like a rougher crowd. That was the rowdiest.That would have been the place that bikers would have gone.
What did you wear? It would have been probably a long stretchy pencil skirt, a longish blouse that would have had a giant belt that would have been hanging low, lots of jewelry, lots of bracelets, rows of pearls. Madonna fed into the whole big jewelry thing, big gaudy earrings, and then a lot of people had some really big hair going on. I didn’t go too outrageous with the hair. I did have some big bangs, though, and had to spend some time gelling and blow-drying.
Did people come from outside of New West to party here? Yes, because back then NewWest had a lot of places to party, a lot of nightclubs and they were diverse. So, yeah, you had people coming from other places because I don’t think that those communities had the establishments that we did. What was New West’s reputation at the time? It wasn’t a great reputation. It was really looked down upon. It was definitely not a hip place; it was a working man’s kind of town. Columbia Street at the time was pretty dead, so I think that kind of image is what a lot of people had of NewWest. It wasn’t a place where people were going to come fromVancouver too much to party. It looked down and out even though there was a lot going on in terms of places to go. What changed? Do you think New West is the same place it was then? I don’t party too much anymore, but I think that nowadays there’s more pubs and lounge-type places.There’s none of the big nightclubs that we had back then, aside from the one on Church Street. And that was something that happened because of lots of complaints about noise, and I think there were allegations of bikers taking over places. Is New West a better place today? I don’t know what the younger people’s party habits are like.There’s lots of pubs and lounges, but back in the ’80s, the College Place Hotel was a real focal point. It was like the Cheers of NewWest. If you went in there on a weekend evening, you were pretty much guaranteed to find someone you knew. I don’t know if there’s any place like that now.