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Fixing The Cobalt

The Cobalt, Vancouver, Canada

Day Five: Light system where showers were once installed for strippers has been cleaned up.

By Special Correspondent Emily Kendy

Date Posted: 12/01/06

Reader Rating:

The Cobalt bar and hotel is one of Vancouver's most infamous - A Downtown Eastside landmark of dilapidated brick and a flashing neon "Girls, Girls, Girls" sign that has, over the years, fizzled out to the less seductive, flickering offer of "Girl." For the better part of the last decade, the Cobalt bar became a haven for Vancouver's punk scene, spearheaded by blonde mohawked Wendy Thirteen, whose devotion to punk and metal music has withstood many inspectors, critical city council members and pessimists who'd love to see the Cobalt bar and adjoining hotel torn down and replaced with fancy condos. Just over a year ago the inspectors finally had their way and shut the bar down, but Wendy simply moved her tables and chairs and graffittied paraphernalia to the equally run-down Astoria hotel, which quickly became known as "The Asbalt." When the Astoria hotel was exposed by police who'd been investigating the hotel for some time (unrelated to Wendy and the Cobalt), she gathered together a volunteer army to help her move back to the Cobalt and renovate it, in the hopes of passing inspections. We had two weeks until re-opening night. The characters may seem strange and indecipherable, much like the 16+ days we spent thereabouts.

Day One: The Move

The Astoria is packed into moving vans and taken back to the Cobalt. The opium addicts who run the hotel won't let us move the bar tables and stools inside due to their own paranoid, delusional politics, no doubt. So we park it all in the Carriage Way and buy off-sales from the Ivanhoe, setting up shop until further instructions. Once we get the go-ahead at roughly 11 p.m., we move back in to find a junkyard full of needles, mattresses and two years worth of dust, dirt, dried blood and a broken pool cue with a knife duct-taped to the end. It's Hell's Waiting Room. We have our work cut out for us.

Day Two: Bathroom Duty

Oh, the joy of bleach! With the help of a girl named Tara, we tackle the girl's room first. Surprisingly it's not as bad as I imagined it to be, save for the bloody toilet that Tara tackles with sound effects so she can pretend she's cleaning the toilet in her own place. From there, we move to the boys can. Because Tara dealt with the blood, I get the boy's stall. With trepidation, I cautiously open the stall to discover a heap of floating poo and a scattering of flies. Hell, it could have been worse.

Day Three: Beer And Pizza

Try to clean the tables, only to find dirt dries into new streaky patterns. Four coats of water rinses and spray-bleach later, streaks simply begin producing kaleidoscope patterns. Needles and mattresses have been cleaned out, construction of stage is underway.