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Hogan’s Alley

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Pacific Coliseum—September 7, 1968

by Eve Lazarus on September 1, 2018
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Long before Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968, he had a Vancouver connection.

Jimi Hendrix posterJimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968. Four years after the Beatles and 11 years after Elvis Presley played Empire Stadium and changed music forever. The difference was that Jimi had a Vancouver connection—his grandmother Nora Hendrix, a one-time vaudeville dancer who moved to Vancouver in 1911 with her husband Ross Hendrix, a former Chicago cop and raised three children. Al, the youngest moved to Seattle at 22, met 16-year-old Lucille, and Jimi was born in 1942.

Story from At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes

Nora Hendrix lived at 827 East Georgia between 1938 and 1952. Photo: CVA 786-4736 1978

According to Jimi Hendrix, the Man, the Magic, the Truth, a biography published in 2004, Jimi lived in 14 different places, including short stints in Vancouver. “I’d always look forward to seeing Gramma Nora, my dad’s mother in Vancouver, usually in the summer. I’d pack some stuff in a brown sack, and then she’d buy me new pants and shirts and underwear. I kept getting taller and growing out of all my clothes, and my shoes were always a falling-apart disgrace. Gramma would tell me little Indian stories that had been told to her when she was my age. I couldn’t wait to hear a new story. She had Cherokee blood. So did Gramma Jeter. I was proud of that, it was in me too.”

Dawson Annex, Burrard and Barclay Streets, demolished 1969. Courtesy VSB

According to the Vancouver School Board Archives and Heritage, in 1949, Jimi attended grade 1 at the West End’s Dawson Annex while living at Nora’s house on East Georgia. “It was a long distance to the school so he probably took the bus or streetcar since the fare was only five cents,” notes the VSB.

Shortly after Hendrix left the army in 1962, he hitchhiked 2,000 miles to Vancouver and stayed several weeks with Nora. He picked up some cash sitting in with a group at a local club on Davie Street, now a gay nightclub called Celebrities.*

Now Celebrities Nightclub, 1022 Davie Street was called Dantes Inferno in the ’60s. Courtesy Places that Matter.

Six years later, when Jimi Hendrix Experience played the Pacific Coliseum, one reviewer described the band as “bigger than Elvis.” Hendrix, dressed all in white, played hits such as “Fire,” “Hey Joe,” and “Voodoo Child.” At one point he acknowledged his grandmother, who sat in the audience, and launched into “Foxy Lady.”

In 2002, Vincent Fodera renovated the building at Union and Main Street and found dishes and a stove that he believes came from Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, part of Hogan’s Alley where Nora once worked as a cook. Seven years later Fodera opened a shrine for the dead rock star. Locals told him that Jimi used the space for rehearsals and sex.

Jimi Hendrix Shrine Main and Union Streets. James Gogan photo, 2013

When Jimi played the Pacific Coliseum in 1968 he was 25. Just over two years later, the man widely recognized as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 20th century was dead.

  • 1022 Davie Street was designed by architect Thomas Hooper for the Lester Dancing Academy in 1911. Hooper also designed the Victoria Public Library, and Munro’s Books Building in Victoria. And in 1912, the same year he designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, Vancouver’s Winch Building and submitted plans for UBC, he designed Christina Haas’s, Cook Street brothel
Related:

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: Vancouver Circa1948

by Eve Lazarus on October 3, 2015
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Last Saturday I time-travelled to Hogan’s Alley and landed smack in 1948. Geographically, I wasn’t really that far away. I was standing inside a large box in Vancouver’s Woodward’s building using my body as a joy-stick to move through the streets of an area that’s been buried under the Georgia Viaduct since 1972.

3-D render of Hogan's Alley ca.1948. Courtesy NFB
3-D render of Hogan’s Alley ca.1948. Courtesy NFB

The National Film Board teamed up with Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, and last year released an app that turned the second Hotel Vancouver and Hogan’s Alley into two digital worlds. This month they upped the ante with a complete virtual reality experience.

There is no headgear, no buttons to push, no levers to move. I stood inside the box and waited while the computer captured my skeleton and eye movements. Within seconds the blank walls became Hogan’s Alley, and by moving slightly in one direction, I could travel down the street, check out the architecture, listen in on conversations, climb up stairs, even walk around inside a brothel.

3D render of Hogan's Alley, ca.1948 app. Courtesy NFB
3D render of Hogan’s Alley, ca.1948 app. Courtesy NFB

Loc Dao, the NFB’s executive producer, says there are four projectors in the room that use a technology called projection mapping and give you that sense that you’re walking in real time through a digitally recreated space.

The images are based on a handful of archival photographs and newspaper pictures that exist, supplemented with interviews and oral histories. A team of artists, animators and modelers then used digital carpentry to construct each piece of the scene to give the sense that you’re inside a  three-dimensional, gritty, post-war Vancouver.

Girls in Hogan's Alley, 1937. The Province.
Girls in Hogan’s Alley, 1937. The Province.

When it comes to making history exciting and accessible this technology is leading edge, and a glimpse into what’s possible—eventually adding touch, smell, sound effects, even the ability to reach in and grab something.

The choice of year and location is interesting. Hogan’s Alley was once a hangout for Vancouver’s black community, while the second Hotel Vancouver was an extraordinarily beautiful building that was taken over as a squat by homeless WW2 vets, and then demolished in 1949.

3D render of Hotel Vancouver, Circa 1948 app. Courtesy NFB
3D render of Hotel Vancouver, Circa 1948 app. Courtesy NFB

“What was going on in these locations was actually symbolic in what was going on all over North America,” says Loc. “We were very interested in a project that dealt with social issues and the theme of history repeating itself.”

As far as the actual installation, it’s off-the-shelf, consumer grade hardware—an Apple Mac mini; a Mac pro server and iPad Air. The magic is all in the software.

Second Hotel Vancouver ca.1930s. Sat at the corner of Georgia and Granville Streets. Courtesy CVA 770-98
Second Hotel Vancouver ca.1930s. Sat at the corner of Georgia and Granville Streets. Courtesy CVA 770-98

And that’s the other exciting part. Potentially you could plug in any environment—the Pantages or the Empress Theatre for example, and it could be a way of preserving the memories of these long demolished buildings.

You could even archive experiences. Be at Victory Square when Mayor Gerry McGeer reads the riot act or sit in a courtroom with Police Chief Walter Mulligan and watch the Royal Commission into police corruption unfold.

The total cost for the development of the app and the installation including all the research and the artwork came to $700,000 and change.

The interactive installation is at Woodward’s atrium until October 16 and then moves to SFU’s Surrey campus.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Recognizing Black History: The Canada Post Stamps

by Eve Lazarus on February 1, 2014
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Nora Hendrix and Fielding William Spotts

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

In February 2014, Canada Post came out with two stamps in recognition of Black History Month. One shows Hogan’s Alley, the unofficial name for an area near Union and Main Streets and home to much of Vancouver’s early black community. The other is of Nora Hendrix and Fielding William Spotts.

The photo of Spotts was taken in 1935, and it shows the 75-year-old  standing outside his home at 217 ½ Prior Street in Hogan’s Alley, which would be bulldozed out of existence our decades later to make way for the Georgia Viaduct.

On the stamp, Spotts stands next to a young Nora Hendrix, who lived to be 100, spent much of her life in Strathcona and become famous for her grandson, rocker Jimi Hendrix. According to the city directory of  1930, Spotts ran a shoe shine business at 724 Main Street.

Rosemary Brown was Canada’s first Black female member of a provincial legislature and the first woman to run for leadership of a federal political party. She received a stamp in 2009

This was the sixth year that Canada Post produced a stamp for Black History Month—Rosemary Brown was first up in 2009, and it was the first time the stamp focussed on a place instead of a person.

I was curious how Canada Post chose these images, so I called media relations. Turns out it’s quite a process. A committee of 12 selects the subject matter. Our one representative from Vancouver in 2014 was artist Ken Lum. He joined a panel of designers, philatelists (stamp collectors), curators, and curiously, Toronto economist David Foot who wrote Boom Bust & Echo.

Joe Fortes
Joe Fortes, legendary Vancouver lifeguard, received a stamp in his honour in 2013

I also wondered who buys stamps these days. Turns out while not many of us mail letters, there’s still a large worldwide demand for stamps. Canada Post churns out about 50 different stamps every year.

You can suggest your own stamp. It takes about two years from inception to find its way to an envelope.

Eleanor Collins, Canada’ first lady of jazz, 2022

Stamps for 2022 include Queen Elizabeth, Calla lilies, Vancouver’s Elsie McGill for the Canadian’s in flight series, and music legend Eleanor Collins who is 102 and lives in Surrey, BC.

© Eve Lazarus, 2022

Hogan’s Alley and the Jimi Hendrix Connection

by Eve Lazarus on February 10, 2013
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It may be long gone, but at least Hogan’s Alley is finally getting the recognition that it deserves. As part of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Places that Matter program, a plaque will be placed near the Hogan’s Alley Cafe at Gore and Union Streets at 2:00 Sunday February 24.

Once a black hang-out for after-hours clubs, gambling and bootlegging
Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver 1958
Hogan’s Alley Project:

The plaque and ceremony is part of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, part Black History Month, and part B.C. Heritage Week.

When the Georgia Viaduct plowed through Vancouver in 1972, it knocked out Hogan’s Alley and with it a lot of black history. At one time Hogan’s Alley was a hang-out and home for Vancouver’s black community and filled with after-hours clubs, gambling and bootlegging joints. Just eight feet wide and a few blocks long, the Alley was really just a collection of horse stables, small cottages and shacks—a place where the west side crowd came to take a walk on the wild side.

Nora Hendrix lived in this Strathcona house from 1938 to 1952
827 East Georgia Street

I’ve written about Nora Hendrix and her Vancouver connection in At Home with History.

From 1938 to 1952, the grandmother of rock legend Jimi Hendrix, lived a few blocks from Hogan’s Alley. Nora, a feisty old lady who turned 100 in Vancouver, was born in Tennessee. She was a dancer in a vaudeville troupe, married Ross Hendrix and settled in Vancouver in 1911, raising three children. Al, the youngest moved to Seattle at 22, met 16-year-old Lucille, and their son Jimi was born in 1942.

Jimi was a frequent visitor to his grandmother’s house. After he left the army in 1962 he hitchhiked 2,000 miles to Vancouver and stayed several weeks. He picked up some cash sitting in with a groups at local clubs. Six years later when the Jimi Hendrix Experience played the Pacific Coliseum, Nora was in the audience.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

 

Vancouver Noir

by Eve Lazarus on July 11, 2012
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Definition of “Noir” from the Free Dictionary: “Of or relating to a genre of crime literature featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings. Suggestive of danger or violence. Of or relating to the film noir genre.”

When I wrote At Home with History, the 1930s Strathcona seemed a natural place to start. I talked to people who had lived through that era, had parents who bootlegged to survive, knew the girls from the local brothels, and many of the cops who enforced BC’s crazy liquor laws. That chapter soon morphed into a second and a third on rum runners and liquor barons who lived on the west side of town, and who by their vast wealth remained relatively untouched by a largely corrupt police force.

Anvil Press, 2012I took Will Woods Forbidden Vancouver tour last month, and I recently finished Vancouver Noir, a book that covers a 30 year period through the lens of a camera.

Authors John Belshaw and Diane Purvey believe that Noir-era values are found in the gritty black and white police and newspaper photographs of the day. Shot by the Speed Graphic camera—a invention of the late ‘20s—the photos feature hard-nosed detectives, murder scenes, bullet-ridden cars, riots and rain slicked streets lit by neon signs.

“What appeals to us about the period 1930-1960 is that there isn’t a lot in the way of progress, in fact, there’s an overall collapse,” says Belshaw. “It’s an era of failure.”

It was a city that produced Walter Mulligan, the top cop on the take, serial Mayor L.D. Taylor, Joe Celona–Vancouver’s own Al Capone, and fruitless wars on vice, racism and poverty.

From Vancouver Noir“What we tried to do with Vancouver Noir is show Vancouverites a city with big brass balls. A place where gambling joints were everywhere, cops were on the take, and you could get a decent steak dinner and hear some great music anywhere from Hogan’s Alley through the Mandarin Gardens to The Cave,” he says. “This was a city without global ambitions—it was a hard-boiled port town where even the Chief of Police wrote like he was Dashiell Hammett.”

Belshaw and Purvey argue that it was a period of one moral panic following another. Values were in flux and the growing middle class tried to squash what they saw as deviant behavior.

“We wanted to show that the battle against deviance was a serious business.  It took out whole neighbourhoods, justified murders, deported its enemies—this was no imagined confrontation—it’s bare-knuckled stuff,” says Belshaw.

It’s a long way from the glossy tourism photos of English Bay and Grouse Mountain, and it’s a side of Vancouver that will likely surprise most Vancouverites. But it’s as much a part of our make-up as the stories of Gassy Jack and the CPR, and one that I’m betting we’ll be hearing more about from a whole new wave of writers.

For more information see the authors’ blog and Anvil Press.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

In the year of the dragon: the changing face of Chinatown

by Eve Lazarus on February 6, 2012
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For more stories about Chinatown see: At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes

Last October the Feds designated Vancouver’s Chinatown a National Historical Site. In November, the National Geographic named the Dr. Sun yat-sen Gardens one of the top 10 city gardens in the world. It’s long overdue recognition for one of the largest and oldest Chinatowns in North America.

I took a walk around Chinatown last week. On the surface, not a lot has changed in the last 20 years or so. There are the dim sum restaurants, herbal shops, tacky ornament shops and the in-your-face production of food—duck and pig carcasses, live bullfrogs in buckets on the sidewalk, tanks full of exotic fish and an array of fruit and vegetables still a long way from mainstream.

Built by Yip Sang in 1889
The Wing Sang Company Building, 51 East Pender Street

Yet for all the traditional elements, Chinatown is an area in transition. Condos are going up, bars, coffee shops and trendy clothes stores are nudging up against traditional grocery stores, and new business is moving in.

Art exhibit by Martin Creed
The Wing Sang Building in 2011

Bob Rennie was one of the first to see the potential when he bought the Wing Sang Building for a million bucks in 2004. He spent another $10 million turning the back of the building, where Yip Sang’s three wives once raised their 23 children, into a private art space to house his massive collection. Past exhibits by Mona Hatoum and Richard Jackson are edgy and interesting, but my favourite was Martin Creed’s where you walked through an office filled with pink balloons, dodged runners on the main floor and sipped champagne while looking at broccoli. Creed is also behind the controversial “everything is going to be alright” neon sign on the building’s rooftop garden which is clearly visible from the Sun yat-sen Gardens, and a good chunk of Vancouver. Rennie regularly holds free public tours of the building and art gallery, but next year he turns into a satellite gallery for the Royal BC Museum with an exhibit of the young Emily Carr.

Built in 1889 it's the oldest building in Chinatown
The roof top of the Wing Sang Building

Boutique agencies like St. Bernadine Mission Communications are finding costs are cheaper in Chinatown. David Walker and Andrew Samuel bought a newish space at East Georgia and Main, a block away from the oddly garish Jimi Hendrix shrine. In keeping with the heritage—it was once a Chinese Laundry—the partners installed the Kee’s Laundry Gallery with photography and art displays from other agency creatives in the city.

It’s transforming yes, but there’s a strong sense of community. Residents of Strathcona and Chinatown were asked to vote on the kind of business they wanted to see open at 243 Union Street—what was once Hogan’s Alley—the black part of town before city planners replaced it with the Georgia Viaduct in the 1960s. Locals decided they wanted a local grocery store on Union and named it Harvest. They even got to choose the graphic designer who’d brand it—Naomi Macdougall from a list of six.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

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