Downtown & West End - Vancouver - page 119

VENUE CLUB
OFFLINE MAP GOOGLE MAP
( www.venuelive.ca ; 881 Granville St; 9pm-3am Thu-Sat; 8) Redesigned from its previous
incarnation as the Plaza Club, Venue has opened up with a much larger dance floor
since the removal of the obtrusive central bar. The music is of the mainstream variety -
party-hard WTF Fridays is best - and the crowd includes plenty of nonlocals in from
Surrey and New Westminster for their weekly big night out.
It is also a live-music venue some evenings - check the website to see what's coming
up.
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
ARCADE ATTRACTION
Strolling along the neon-winking Granville Strip, avoiding the cheap pizza joints
and staggering drunks, it's easy to walk past one spot that hasn't changed much
since the 1970s. Movieland Arcade OFFLINE MAP GOOGLE MAP (906 Granville St;
10am-1am; 10) is lined with dozens of mostly retro pinball machines and video
games (anyone for Miss Pacman?). Here you can relive the days of blowing your
paper-route money pumping the flippers on that Addams Family machine. Best
of all, the games are just 25c a pop.
West End
SYLVIA'S LOUNGE BAR
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( www.sylviahotel.com ; 1154 Gilford St; 7am-11pm Sun-Thu, to midnight Fri & Sat; 5) Part of
the permanently popular Sylvia Hotel, this was Vancouver's first cocktail bar when it
opened in the mid-1950s. Now a comfy, wood-lined neighborhood bar favored by in-
the-know locals (they're the ones hogging the window seats as the sun sets over Eng-
lish Bay), it's a great spot for an end-of-day wind down. Go for a 1954 vodka and
Chambord cocktail.
The views and drinks are superior to the food here. And here's some scurrilous his-
tory for you: this is one of the bars Errol Flynn is reputed to have frequented during his
booze-fueled final days, before dying in the city in 1959.