CABARETS ARE A GO-GO, IF YOU’RE IN THE MIX
Nightlife took a long time to shake off Prohibition
Cabarets were so popular in Vancouver in 1966 The Vancouver Sun had a special listing for them in its entertainment section, brimming with ads for nightspots like the Torch Cabaret, the King of Clubs, the New Delhi Cabaret, Oil Can Harry’s, the Shanghai Junk, the Smilin’ Buddha, Frank’s Cabaret, the Afterglow and the Pink Pussycat.
The catch was, most of them didn’t have liquor licences. So they operated as “bottle clubs,” letting customers come in with their own booze and selling them mix.
“You sold 7Up and ice,” said longtime club owner John Teti. “(But) the dry squad would raid you. A lot of places would have a table with a drawer, and you put your bottle in the drawer (when the cops came in).”
Most cabarets were unlicensed because of B.C.’s strict liquor regulations. Prohibition was repealed in B.C. in 1921, but you still couldn’t buy a drink in a bar, because beer parlours didn’t reopen until 1925. Even when beer parlours reopened, they weren’t allowed to sell hard liquor. So bottle clubs filled the void, alongside bootleg joints.
A Feb. 12, 1949, story in the Sun detailed how the dry squad had raided five nightclubs, restaurants and dance halls, including the “swank” Panorama Roof atop the Hotel Vancouver.
“Detectives seized 33 bottles of liquor, three bottles of beer and one flask from alleged bootleggers and Saturday night revellers,” the Sun reported.
People were finally allowed to drink hard liquor in public when cocktail lounges were legalized in 1954, but only a handful of licences were handed out. So everybody kept operating as usual.
By 1966 even the government had to admit the liquor laws were outdated. So on March 18, 1966, Social Credit attorney general Robert Bonner announced changes to bring booze into the open.
Bonner told The Sun’s Frank Rutter the licensing move “will enable authorities to halt what he called ‘clandestine competitors’ to bona fide cabarets.”
That said, you had to have a master’s degree in gobbledygook to decipher the province’s new definition of a cabaret: “part of an establishment provided with special accommodation, facilities and equipment as prescribed by the regulations where, in consideration of payment therefore, food and such special services as may be prescribed by the regulations are regularly furnished to the public and liquor is served.”
Bonner told Rutter that seven Vancouver cabarets that had applied for a liquor licence but been denied under the old rules would be reviewed by a city committee, “but some of the 14 clubs now operating which have never sought an LCB licence and probably don’t want one, could be closed down.”
The cabarets had become a fixture of Vancouver’s nightlife. Many featured live music: the Villains were playing at Oil Can Harry’s, Dolorez Velez was at the Shanghai Junk, and B.J. Cook, Howie Vickers and Mike Campbell were at the Torch. Others were cashing in on the go-go girl fad or offering burlesque. Lottie Miss Body, “the girl with the Nervous Anatomy,” was appearing at the New Delhi, while “the Bronze Goddess of Fire,” La Wanda, was at the Smilin’ Buddha.
The province pledged to work with the city of Vancouver on the new regulations. But a problem cropped up when the provincial Liquor Control Board chairman, Col. Donald McGugan, refused to play ball, issuing only three of the new cabaret licences.
On Jan. 7, 1967, Vancouver Mayor Tom Campbell blasted the 79-yearold McGugan for being “a dictator.”
“He runs his own empire and the government has to stand up to him,” said Campbell.
Teti said “it was a gradual, snailpaced transition from the dark ages.” When he opened up Puccini’s on Main Street in 1967, he didn’t have a liquor licence, but eventually he had to comply with the new rules.
“In late ‘68 or 1969 we were so successful the cops phoned me up and said ‘Look, you’ve got to get a liquor licence,’ ” he recounts.
“So I negotiated with them. I said ‘You know what? I’ll get a liquor licence, but if you try to force Vie’s Steak House (a Strathcona institution) to get a liquor licence, you’re putting them out of business.
“And if you force the On-On Tea Garden to get a liquor licence, you’ll put them out of business. So I will apply for a liquor licence if you leave those two alone — and they did.”