Aaron Chapman’s latest book Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife is a delightful romp through the ghosts of nightclubs past. Aaron’s behind-the-scenes stories are told in such a way, it’s like sitting down and having a beer with him. There are too many clubs to list here—everything from Chinatown’s Marco Polo to Oil Can Harry’s, The Smilin’ Buddha, to the Cave. For the purposes of this blog, I asked Aaron to focus on Richards on Richards, a club that I remember hearing a lot about when I first arrived in Vancouver.
Stan Fiddis was a doorman at the club in the early 1980s. he’d grown up in the tough Clark Park area of East Vancouver. “I used to have a thing called the 30-second read. I could see how people would carry themselves as they walked up, and by the time they got to the front door you could tell if they were going to be a problem customer, or cause trouble. You get a Master’s Degree in Psychology from working as a doorman at a nightclub especially one like Richards on Richards.” Fiddis says he can’t count the number of patrons at the club that he had to put into a sleeper hold. He tossed out his fair share of customers—everyone from professional athletes to Johnny Depp. From Vancouver After Dark
What was the Downtown South like when Richards on Richards opened in 1981?
Richards and Seymour Streets still had a bit of a light industrial feel to them. There were a lot of little car parts stores, car repair garages and that sort of thing. Laudens Auto parts was right around the corner from the Bulldog Cafe, which was a bar/restaurant with billiard tables, and there were a few residential homes left over from the old days. There was Miss Cleo’s massage parlour—it didn’t look as sordid as it sounds–and a store that manufactured and sold trophys called Kelbert’s Trophies. This is something you’d never see today, at least in downtown Vancouver—a store that manufactured and sold trophies! But what’s most interesting is that section of town also had other clubs like Luv-A-Fair, Club Soda (later the Starfish Room) and eventually Graceland, and the Penthouse was over on Seymour. Outside of the Penthouse, they’re all gone now.
How was Richards on Richards different from other Vancouver clubs?
In the 1980s, there were a lot of big lineups to get in there. For a lot of people, it was THE club to go to and be seen at and Vancouver hadn’t really seen a club like that before. There was a dress code, so people had to dress up, or at least not wear jeans, sneakers or ball caps. It was a pickup bar, with great live cover bands that got people on the dance floor—and that’s what people loved about it. The famous “Shooter Bar” became a topic of pop culture conversation. There was a sort of exclusivity to the place, as the club typically attracted people with money. There were rumours that there was so much cocaine going through the place, they had to call in the roto-rooter man every two weeks to unplug the toilets of straws being thrown down the plumbing.
How did Richards on Richards fit in with Vancouver’s image of itself in the ’80s and ‘90s?
What’s often forgotten is that if you weren’t a part of that crowd, it was the club you loved to hate. Richards on Richards was always accused of being a “yuppie” club. So, while there would be a huge lineup of people outside, it was not uncommon for some of my friends (who were punk rock people) to drive by and yell obscenities at people waiting to get in.
How did the club evolve in the 1990s?
The big change for Richards on Richards came in the 1990s. It became so different that arguably the bar should have changed its name. The original crowd had begun to move on, and when the Commodore Ballroom closed for three years in the late 1990s, Richards on Richards became this great live music room that would be booked by local promoters bringing in shows. It had a great stage, and high ceilings, and with that circular balcony it was easy to see the band from any vantage point in the room. I played there myself as a musician, but by the mid-2000s, the room had taken a beating from a couple of decades of hard partying and you could see when the lights came on at the end of the night that the club had been banged up, dented, and enough holes in it that it looked like nobody was fixing anything up. Its washrooms were notorious. Its days were numbered.
What happened to Stan Fiddis the doorman?
He later went on to run the Wild Coyote and the Big Bam Boo nightclubs. But after years in the nightclub business, he now works as an advisor and consultant in the legal Cannabis trade, advising retail establishments and that sort of thing. His sister is married to Tommy Chong. The interesting thing is that he knew and ran with a lot of the Clark Park people I detail in The Last Gang in Town.
Vancouver After Dark : The Wild History of a City’s NIghtlife
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