Warmth & Urbanity At La Bodega
Friday, February 07, 2014
 |
| Hector Medina - La Bodega |
Today Friday was the eve of Rosemary and my
46th wedding anniversary. We decided to celebrate it by going to an
afternoon viewing of Nebraska at the Cineplex Odeon International Village and from
there to meet up with our 7 PM reservation at La Bodega, located at that edge of downtown where
Howe Street ends to connect with the Granville Street Bridge.
Sometime in September this Vancouver institution (it opened in 1971 by owners,
the coincidentally surnamed José and
Francisco [Paco] Rivas) will be moving as the property has been sold.
Since I did not come to
Vancouver until 1975 I cannot claim to have been an early patron of La Bodega, but
I made up for it as soon as I started taking photographs for Vancouver Magazine
(then on the corner of Davie and Richards, it had moved from Hornby and Nelson)
in 1977. The editor of the magazine, Mac Parry, his art director Rick Staehling
and many others from his staff as well as the freelancers, particularly travel writer Gary Marchant, had a few places of choice
to discuss important editorial decisions. These places were varied. They
included the Cecil Hotel (pronounced Se-cil by Mac), the Austin Hotel
and for cheaper beer there was the St. Helen’s
(with strippers of a lower category from the former two) and for just cheap
beer (noted for being very cold) there was the Blackstone on Granville and
Davie. The Blackstone was also one of the first joints to feature O’Keefe’s,
which we all called High Test because it had 5.8% alcohol. High Test made you
urinate more quickly and usher in the pleasures of alcohol quickly, too.
It was about then in the late 70s that Parry and Staehling joined forces to write about a day-long pub crawl where they attempted to go to every pub in town in alphabetical order.
It was about then in the late 70s that Parry and Staehling joined forces to write about a day-long pub crawl where they attempted to go to every pub in town in alphabetical order.
But for really serious
editorial considerations that might involve new writers (who might not be
impressed by exotic dancers) or when food was in the agenda there was La
Bodega.
The place had some
regulars that included Maclean’s photographer Paul Little and Georgia Straight
rock and roll writer Nick Collier who might have been accompanied by fellow
Straight writer Bob Geldof.
Of late my friend
Hector Medina who works behind the bar at La Bodega has told me that another
regular is artist Jeff Wall. There is an ancillary connection here. When my
daughters were 17 and 21 they used to work at Pepita’s. There they met Medina, from Guatemala, who taught them to move
their shoulders up and down, which is the real trick for dancing salsa. When my
oldest daughter Ale, who now is a teacher and lives in Lillooet, went to UBC
one of her teachers was Wall in a class that involved hands-on material and different
artistic processes. Medina
and my daughters have kept in touch since. There is a warmth in the man that
makes that so.
But La Bodega, for me
has one memory that haunts me until today. It may have been a pre-Christmas
gathering around 1981 when Mac invited the staff and a few free-lance regulars
for dinner. He also invited the prostitutes that used to stand at the corners
outside the magazine. We all sat at an immensely long table (on a riser) in the
back room of La Bodega. I had a friend in front of me and one on my right. The
friend on my right was playing footsies with one of the corner invitees. I kept
looking at my friend across the table who whispered, “This is none of your
business so leave him alone.” At the end of the meal the friend on my right,
his now amorous companion, Mac and a few others jumped into Mac’s VW Van. We
headed to some other drinking joint further downtown. My friend and amorous
companion got off at Dunsmuir and Seymour. I will never know how that evening
with the amorous drag queen ended.
La Bodega was famous
for something else. Before 1986 and Expo 86 our city had terrible liquor laws
that stipulated you had to eat on Sundays if you wanted to drink. And bars
closed early.
In One Ear columnist
and Vancouver Magazine writer Les Wiseman and I frequented the Smiling Buddha a punk joint near
the then already seedy Hastings and Main. As soon as beer was cut off we and many of the
members of those punk bands would run over to the Tony Ricci’s Marble Arch on
Richards to buy High Test. We would have to gingerly pass through a throng of
Native Canadians (it was their haunt at that time) to buy beer. The Marble Arch
had a very late closing time for selling booze.
If you wanted to drink
on Sunday you could only do so in restaurants and you had to spend lots of
money, but not at La Bodega. You could order their signature Patatas Bravas
(lots of garlic) and then drink all day. I am sure the authorities knew of this
but felt that Vancouver
needed one place for solace and a tad of European urbanity
As I sat with Rosemary (eating Patatas Bravas, naturally)
in the best table at La Bodega I never did recognize anybody. I felt like Bruce
Dern in Nebraska
going to his hometown bars and not finding anybody he knew or knew of him. La
Bodega was full of ghosts from my past.
That was only a passing discomfort. Looking at Medina’s smile I can
attest that there's lots of warm European urbanity (which had it limits as I must note here that the Vancouver Magazine editor was asked to leave more than once) in the place. José Rivas’s
son, Paul has coined a phrase, prominent in its menu, “live well, eat Spanish.”
¡Brávo!
