National Network for Equitable Library Service

In his latest book, bestselling author, musician, and cultural historian Aaron Chapman looks back at the most famous music entertainment venues in Vancouver, a city that's transforming so fast it has somehow lost some of its favourite nightspots along the way. These are the places locals are still talking about years after they closed, burned down, or were bulldozed in the face of new trends, rising rents, gentrification, and other vagaries. This raucous book tours Vancouver's legendary hot spots, from the Cave to Isy's, Oil Can Harry's to the Marco Polo, the Luv-A-Fair, the Town Pump, the Smilin' Buddha, and Gary Taylor's Rock Room, from the city's earliest saloons to the Chinatown cabarets, gay bars, East End dives, goth hideaways, discotheques, and taverns. Archival posters and photos, many published for the first time, chronicle how the city's nightlife changed with times, and how some of these nightspots ushered in changes to Vancouver. Are the great days of Vancouver's nightlife behind us? Or does it endure in new side streets and new spaces and new forms that have resisted the changes in other parts of the city? Now's the time to look back at the nightspots that shaped Vancouver, and how its residents shaped those venues. Replete with full-colour photographs and posters from back in the day, Vancouver after Dark is a no-holds-barred history that amply demonstrates how this was never "No Fun" City - at least once the sun went down.