The Bamboo: (Watering Holes of East Van Series)

I moved into East Vancouver almost this time last year. I can't believe it will be so soon that I've finally stayed in one apartment for longer than a year! This is a record I haven't broken in 7 years!

I was excited to move into "the city" (from North Burnaby) when my new "first job out of grad school" position mandated I get closer to work so I didn't spend 3 hours on transit each day. As a child of a Metro Vancouver suburb, New Westminster, I'd always seen Vancouver as this high-fashion, fast-paced den of crime and chaos. Oh, and of course, gorgeous mountain views.

In the roughly 9 years since I moved out of my parents' home, I've lived in 11 separate places, none of them in Vancouver. I never had a reason to. I was comfortable in Surrey, Maillardville (Coquitlam), and North Burnaby because I had built-in communities of friends and church family there. There was no real transition for me as I went from roommates with one friend to the tenant of another (though some might suggest that the fact that I never stayed in any of these places more than a year might mean that things were less smooth than I portray).

I guess I was just ready for a change. I admired my friend (a href="http://www.runismymantra.blogspot.com">S&P's home, so close to Starbucks and a green grocer - even better, close to Donalds, the favourite market of the East Van Intellectual. I had already begun my transition from vehicle to public transit, and my mindset from mass market to local food. The solution was Vancouver, but no apartments were to be had in the much-sought-after Commercial Drive area, where the homes are largely old with many stairs, and the apartments are dives or very expensive. I searched for more than a month, finally finding a place by accident in a predominantly Asian and Italian neighbourhood of Renfrew/Collingwood. At the time, I was disappointed to not be closer to the "action," but I truly love my place and my neighbourhood now.

One of my gripes about the area when I first moved in was that there were no decent gathering places for anyone under 65. The Renfrew Community Centre boasted a pool, microscopic weight room, and tai chi classes, with a library upstairs and a senior's centre across the street. More Tai Chi takes place just 8 blocks away at Renfrew Park, where I can see the seniors gathering every morning on the baseball diamond to go through their motions together.

The closest thing to a "gathering place" - which in my mind means a place for all ages, where you can go with a group of friends for some fun, or food, or a drink; hell, I'd have settled for an internet cafe - was the Bamboo Cafe, located on the corner of Vanness and Joyce Street, across from the Joyce Street Skytrain Station. At the time, it was a huge dive, the sort of place you just didn't feel comfortable bringing out your wallet. The food was bad, there was no internet and it was constantly dirty. IT was what you'd expect from an all-ages hangout across from a station with a huge drug problem.

Disappointing, because there was huge potential here. Clearly there were folks who needed a place to go (believe it or not the nearest starbucks locations are a minimum 15 minute drive: Kingsway and Tyne (near Boundary), or at Gilmore Skytrain Station. Not that I think every neighbourhood needs a major chain coffee franchise - it doesn't - but bars, coffee shops, restaurants, etc. play a big role in transitioning communities like the Joyce Village. Culturally speaking, I suppose the neighbourhood had what it needed - a wildly popular restaurant called Noble HotPot, and an equally popular bubble tea place - both of which have been full every time I've walked by, but as small, predominantly asian restaurants, I felt both out of place and out of space. I love the Philipino grocer/market not far away, but if I wanted coffee, a place to sit with friends, or just work on my computer, there was nowhere to go.

Well - today I am pleasantly surprised at how the Bamboo has changed. I had written it off as unsalvagable - overrun with a seedy underbelly direct from the skytrain station - but it has clearly been redeemed into a large, busy, popular spot with a very multicultural crowd. I'm sitting here on a Wednesday night, and there are no fewer than three large groups of friends having drinks together - one looks like they might be co-workers from the Bank across the street; another is a group of buddies from Colombia who look comfortable enough here to suggest that the Bamboo is their hangout; around the bar is a crowd of college students who could be Vietnamese. It's a rare locale in Vancouver, that is not a coffee shop, restaurant, deli or bar, but rather a meld of all four. Sure, it probably doesn't do any one of those things well, but taken together it's a great, and very welcoming, spot.

Every time I've been here, the panel monitors on the wall have featured sports not commonly followed in North America - here you'll see 'Futbol' and Cricket, perhaps a Mexican soap opera at the right time of day. Nobody's actually watching it anyways. One criticism is that they've opened up their ceilings to give them a fun exposed rafters feeling, but lost the insulation against the shrill shrieks of slightly drunk women.

The food's not perfect, but it reminds me of countless similar places I encountered while traveling in Liverpool, Kosovo and Melbourne - equal parts coffee shop, internet cafe, and sports bar, and equally welcoming to all three. It's just what this neighbourhood needed.

Starbucks eventually filled the hole and opened up a new location in the Grandview neighbourhood (not far away from here), but its location is so bland, what with being part of a new big-box home improvement and grocery store complex, there's no real sense of community. Nestled in a newly-formed "grotto of Greed" or "Big Box Alley" along Grandview Highway between Nanaimo and Hwy 1, nobody will walk to this Starbucks with friends or meet there for a pseudo-date. It's purely a spot where big-box employees by their morning caffeine, and commuters who can't wait any longer stop for their fix.

The big challenge the Bamboo will face now is upkeep of their property. Any location with such proximity to Skytrain and such a widely varying clientele and late hours will struggle to maintain their property with such high volume use, I just hope that the folks behind the Bamboo will keep on top of it so that it's not just a place to go to forget you've missed your bus, but actually is a place people seek out for a comfortable watering hole.

So what do we take from this?
- The local "watering hole" is an essential part of any neighbourhood - and a bad one can ruin it
- essential ingredients: food, drink (not necessarily alcoholic), a welcoming vibe
- elements that reflect the cultural diversity of the neighbourhood (ie the neighbourhood's favourite sport on TV)
- Easy access that encourages you to stay awhile: proximity to transit, centrality to encourage it as a spot for meeting up
- wireless internet is always a plus - especially when your location gives off that "internet cafe" vibe (or is across from a Skytrain Station!)
- can I say I love the addition of alcohol after 6pm... it gives it a good 'watering hole' vibe without the chaos and community disturbance of a full bar or cabaret. I'm not sure how they are licenced, but I saw children in here on Saturday afternoon, so they must have some sort of half-way liquor licence.
- being open until midnight just makes sense given its proximity to the Skytrain Station, especially Joyce where every milk-run bus that comes every 30 minutes stops at this station. With so long to wait in between, it's nice to have a comfortable place to take shelter and get warm while you wait for the next one.