Another One Bites the Dust: Darkness Sets on the Lamplighter

It’s becoming an all too familiar narrative for Vancouverites. Last year, the Mesa Luna, one of Vancouver’s only all-ages venues, closed up shop over night. The immediacy of the shutdown left bands and promoters scrambling to find new homes for shows that were already booked, and almost a year later, underage fans can still feel the hole that the band-friendly restaurant left in the local scene.

In 2007, music fans have already lost the Piccadilly Pub, the Marine Club, and the Buffalo Club. And while the bands play on at Richard’s on Richards for the time being, the venue – which has recently reemerged as a premiere live room after years of catering to the Granville Street set – will soon find itself amongst the other Vancouver venues that have closed their doors in recent years.

This past week, that disturbingly lengthy list got one name longer with the closure of the Lamplighter.

The venue, which sits in the main floor of the Dominion Hotel at 220 Abbott Street, is set to go through yet another one of the countless changes that it’s experienced over its nearly 100-year lifespan. “They’re in the antique restoration business, so they’re going to restore the building and it’s going to look really nice,” says Lamplighter booking agent David Rogers, of the building’s new owners. The statement hints at what the future may hold for both the hotel and the venue. And while the half of the Dominion Hotel that caters to low income residents has yet to be cleared of its tenants, barring some sort of official intervention it seems unlikely that a freshly restored heritage building will keep running as a SRO hotel. “If you just spent $8 million on a hotel, what would you do?” Rogers asks rhetorically.

The Dominion’s semi-permanent tenants still have a place to call home for the time being, but the same can’t be said for the slate of acts that was set to play the Lamplighter in the next month. “There was word [about the closure] going around about three weeks ago, but it wasn’t confirmed until August 2nd or 3rd, so that’s when I started canceling everything,” says Rogers of the situation.

To add insult to injury, just a few days before the venue’s originally scheduled August 15th closure, the date was pushed forward by a day, leaving another four bands scrambling to reschedule. The possibility of the room returning as a place to see live local and touring acts remains open, but Rogers is doubtful about the prospect of bands once again being “live at the Lamp.” “There is still no word as to what’s going on… I find it hard to believe that someone would spend a lot of money renovating the Lamplighter and reopen it as a live music venue,” he notes before adding, “it doesn’t make sense business-wise, they’ll probably go more for a restaurant/lounge.” This speaks to the larger problem facing Vancouver’s independent music scene.

With no end to the real estate boom in sight, it’s simply becoming less and less rational from an economic perspective to run a live music venue, rather than a high end lounge, or rather than selling property to developers.

Even when a bar owner shows a commitment to live music, they must strike a tenuous balance between booking acts that will fill the bar, and acts that are critically lauded or artistically interesting. “If I got those radio rock guys that sell really well in there on the weekends, it gave me the freedom to do what I wanted on the weekdays,” says Rogers of the struggle that he faced when booking the Lamplighter.

The Picadilly Pub and the Brickyard (which most recently closed under the name “Limerick Junction”) are both names that come up as places that could – if reopened – pick up the slack left by the Lamplighter’s demise, but with the rapid growth in the city, there’s reason to be wary about any smaller venue’s chances of survival.

“The Balmoral will be around for awhile. It’s kind of sketchy still. It’s sort of on that cusp. But sooner or later, it’ll become a ‘happening’ room, and when it gets gentrified around there to the point where [the owners] can sell, that’s what’s going to happen,” says Rogers.

Only time will tell if even the block of Main and Hastings will be touched by the forces of gentrification. In the mean time, Vancouver music fans have one less place to go, because it’s lights out at the Lamp.