Legendary punk rock club gets its due
Posted December 3, 2013 8:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A seminal local punk rock venue is finally getting its due, more than three decades after its original heyday and 20 years after it closed its doors.
The Vancouver Heritage Foundation is adding the site of the “Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret” to its list of Places That Matter.
“For a couple of years there, ’79 to ’80, it was a brief golden period for Vancouver punk [and the Smilin’ Buddha] was known as THE punk club,” notes local punk rock historian Scott Beadle.
He says you could think of it as Vancouver’s version of New York’s iconic CBGB, but instead of the Ramones, Blondie, and the Dead Boys, the Buddha was home to “DOA, and the Subhumans, the Young Canadians (Art Bergmann’s band), the Modernettes, [and the] Dishrags.”
By the ’90s the punk scene had fizzled out and the Hastings Street nightspot was no more.
These days, most people associate the club with the 1994 54/40 album named after it, much to the chagrin of punk purists.
“Not all of the older crowd are really behind 54/40’s branding of themselves with the Smilin’ Buddha,” Beadle admits. “But they did save the sign and they did then turn it over to the Museum [of Vancouver], so now everyone can visit the sign and see it.”
The 71st Places That Matter plaque will mark the spot where the Buddha once stood.
Beadle and others will gather at the site tomorrow afternoon to share stories and mark the occasion.
