 |
| Oil painting - Will Rafuse |
 |
| Tony Ricci |
Will Rafuse Artist - Instagram
Tony Ricci & the Malcolm Lowry Room
The No5 Orange stripper pub that I entered sometime in 1979 would define and help my career as a photographer in Vancouver. By then I was working as a freelancer with Vancouver Magazine. I did not know at the time that my taking photographs of local punk bands and of exotic dancers (as ecdysiasts were called then) would ease my entry into portrait photography. The dancers at the No5 were patient when this bumbling photographer took their photographs. Most of them became my friends and I keep track of them even now.
Tony Ricci, the owner of the The Five and I, have been friends for years. I like to deal with a man who only handles transactions with cash, who has an easy laugh and has always treated me fairly. He and Jack Cooney at the Drake Hotel gave me access to taking photographs in the dressing rooms. This was a privilege that Malcolm Parry (editor of Vancouver Magazine at the time) called the privileged position.
There was something uncanny about the people that worked at The Five’s bar. I remember going into the bar after some years of not going and asking the man behind the bar if I could see Tony. He answered, “Yes Alex, take that door and go upstairs.”
When I would sit at a table the waiters would come up to me and say, f I felt like I was Humphrey Bogart in a film noir.
Today I called up Tony, who immediately said, “Alex I love you.” I called him because I want to arrange to give him an image sent to me by friend Will Rafuse who lives in New Brunswick and specializes in oil paintings of neon signs, house fronts, bar fronts, etc. He sent me a scan of his painting (owned now by someone in the US) of the No5 Orange. I will find a way of paying Rafuse.
There is one neat connection between The Five and punk bands. One of my favourite dancers, now gone, was Miss Mew who danced to the music of Lou Reed. One day as I left The Five on my way to a D.O.A concert at the Carnegie Centre she was walking in the same direction. She was going to the same concert and we became friends then and there.
Another connection I had with The Five was with my shooting photographs of variety specials for the CBC. James Hibbard had a troupe of jazz dancers at the CBC. He was also a DJ at The Five. He would teach some of the pub dancers how to dance and even convinced a few to wear ballet shoes.
My Rosemary never ever browbeat me for going to The Five. She knew I behaved, that the place was clean and that I never drank alcohol.
God bless you Tony.
