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Article Excerpt
Currently in Vancouver, BC, a process of rapid development within the urban centre as well as the containment and regulation of entertainment space is occurring. Drawing from interviews, observation and analysis of print media, this paper discusses how one local house party that took place in September 2004 is linked to gentrifying processes and the regulation and demonization of youth pleasure practices.
Il y a lieu actuellement a Vancouver, C.-B., un processus de developpement rapide au sein du centre urbain en meme temps que l'endiguement et la regulation des espaces de divertissement. Puisant dans des entretiens, l'observation et l'anaryse de la presse ecrite, cet article discute de la facon dont une > locale qui a eu lieu en septembre 2004 est liee a la fois aux processus d'embourgeoisement et la reglementation et la diabolisation des pratiques du plaisir des jeunes.
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In Vancouver BC, on September 25, 2004, the city's riot squad was called out for a house party turned "punk riot." Two years later, a condo development, "DoMainliving," advertised as "Vancouver's hippest condo ever," haunts the very same location. This case is representative of how some youth cultures are marginalized within mainstream media and in turn, how this can (inadvertently?) work to justify gentrification practices which rely on and erase urban subcultures. Drawing from interviews, observation and analysis of Vancouver's two major daily newspapers, The Province and The Vancouver Sun, (1) I trace media coverage (2) of one local party and examine the claims made about participants. I discuss how one local party is linked to larger issues related to the regulation and demonization of youth pleasure practices (punk sub-cultures in particular, and their claims on urban space), as well as how such claims interconnect with gentrifying processes.
This paper is based on preliminary findings from an ethnographic study of alternative (punk and indie) youth's urban nightlife practices within the city of Vancouver, BC. Data for the larger project, (3) upon which this article was founded, was collected over a one year period (Dec. 2005- Dec. 2006) through both participant observation and 25 in-depth qualitative interviews with participants, both female and male between the ages of 19 and 33. The majority of those interviewed were female, described themselves as white and lived in East Vancouver at the time of the study. More than half of the interviewees identified themselves as working class. Interviewees were recruited based on their level of participation within the indie and punk scenes, determined primarily by their regular attendance at alternative indie venues. Participant observation was conducted in 21 sites associated with Vancouver's independent dance scene (though dancing did not always take place); these sites were centred primarily in Vancouver's Eastside and often the Downtown Eastside (DTES) more specifically. Of the 21 sites covered: nine were bars (mainly located in the DTES but some were in the Mount Pleasant district); five were other spaces converted for dance events, such as artist spaces, businesses, community centres or warehouses; and seven were free, informal spaces such as house parties or public spaces. It is the latter, the free spaces, around which this article centres. In analyzing the data I draw from feminist thought and also grounded theory, a methodological approach that allows for constant comparison and the ongoing emergence of categories and themes from the data (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).
Since the 1990s, the entertainment district, which centres around downtown Granville Street, has been in the process of being rezoned as Vancouver's "official" and "primary" entertainment district (City of Vancouver, 2007a), where the nightlife economy of youth-dominated bars, clubs, music venues, tourist entertainments and restaurants is encouraged to thrive. Vancouver's entertainment district is a space constructed by the city and also by entrepreneurial interests. (Collins and Blomley (2003) discuss this in relation to panhandling in downtown Canadian city spaces.) Through an incorporation of state regulation with private, business affiliated policing, for example, the area has been characterized as a corporate space dominated by private enterprise. For instance, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) which represents property owners and business owners in Vancouver's downtown area has created its own crime prevention taskforce, the Downtown Ambassadors (Lupick, Nov. 7, 2007). The city of Vancouver has also eagerly been supporting projects to "clean up" the city before the upcoming 2010 Winter Whistler Olympics. (4) Projects include the rezoning of the downtown core and entertainment district area (see the "Granville Street Redesign Homepage" (City of Vancouver, 2006b) and 'Project Civil City' (2007b), which targets crime, panhandling and homelessness. Strikingly, the dominant behaviour which permeates the entertainment district is personified by an aggressively asserted heterosexuality, where street fights, anti-gay sentiment and an aggressive pick-up scene are commonplace (Boyd, 2006, interviews). This correlates with a number of studies in which interviewees characterize mainstream nightlife entertainment, in opposition to alternative leisure spaces, as dominated by a predatory form of masculinity (e.g., Chatterton and Hollands, 2003; Pini, 2001).
Vancouver's indie and punk youth (young adults) reject both the space and ethos of Vancouver's entertainment district, and tend to make their own counterculture pleasure spaces outside of these areas. But many venues, including the Butcher Shop, Misanthropy, the Cobalt, and Blim, which support their "loosely spun underground web of cross-cutting identities" (Ferrell, 2001, p. 241) have recently shut down and/or relocated over the last few years. Various accumulative factors effect such small-scale establishments, such as: city zoning, which discourages nightlife venues located outside of the appointed entertainment district; lack of finances (many are small-scale businesses which do not cater to the mainstream consumer public); little financial support (to encourage one centralized and contained entertainment district, the city provides financial incentives only for those entertainment venues that relocate to the entertainment district) (5); and increasingly high rental prices due to increases in dwelling costs and the social upgrading of local areas. Partially due to a lack of diverse entertainment venues, Eastside public spaces, as well as house parties, parks and community centres have become popular sites for alternative youth. House parties have always been popular with the youth in this study; nevertheless, interviewees have suggested that this shift is also a contemporary response to the commercialization of space as well as a rejection of big business dance venues.
In 2004, Vancouver Magazine ran an article titled "Army of Fun," which discusses the benefits of Vancouver's "East Van" house party scene and how it differs from Vancouver's more mainstream club scene. The author, Chris Tenove, notes that in opposition to mainstream clubs, everyone at a house party is linked though a social network (2004, pp. 16-17). The article also mentions that many people learn about parties through websites, such as the website created by a group of people called the Party Army that is devoted to announcing and documenting indie parties. The Party Army note that house parties allow for a mixing of diverse people in a way that is not experienced in other entertainment spaces. It is within this house party context that the indie scene at times mixes with Vancouver's punk community, proving the fluidity of these subcultures. Consequently, the regulation and demonization, in terms of police surveillance and media attention, of both punk and indie youth pleasure practices, though sometimes taking different forms, resonates within and between both communities. Police interference with one community, for example, can have a direct impact on the other, and is resented by both. This paper examines the regulation and controversies that arose around one such party and its members in order to argue that youth pleasure practices can be linked to larger issues, such as punk subcultures and their claims on urban space, and that such claims interconnect with gentrifying processes.
In order to contextualize this punk party, which collided with indie youth practices, I begin with a brief description of development practices that structure Vancouver and the Mount Pleasant/Main Street neighbourhood of East Vancouver. This is necessary to contextualize my later observation that gentrification often works through the commodification and mythologizing of counterculture values, while counterculture groups, such as indie and punk youth, as early "marginal gentrifiers," become simultaneously celebrated, vilified and displaced by subsequent gentrifiers in the service of middleclass reproduction. Indeed, Neil Smith (1996) argues that, predominately in the US but also elsewhere, the meaning of gentrification is constructed through appropriation of the language of frontier myth (i.e., "the taking of the Wild West") (1996, p. 13). David Ley (1996, 2003), also alluding to the allure of "untamed" spaces for developers, notes that the early stages of gentrification are linked to countercultures. I follow, then, with a description of the "untamed" night of the "punk party" and the subsequent police and media response, wherein subcultural youth are easily vilified and any political intent there might have been within their protest is nullified. The article concludes with reflections on the aftermath of this youth-identified countercultural space.
Developing Vancouver: East Van's Mount Pleasant/ Main Street
While there is currently a process of rapid gentrification occurring within the city...
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