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More late-night music and dance venues are closing in Vancouver

Two places have announced they plan to shut their doors

What happened: Dolly Disco, an alternative electronic dance music promoter, has announced they’ll be incorporating as a non-profit arts society. 

Background: Since losing their venue in April 2023 due to “an untenable response [to noise complaints] from the City of Vancouver,” Dolly has been running their events at various spaces around East Van. 

  • Now, they’re looking to establish a new space with a variety of programming and be “much more than just a place to rave,” they said. 

Venues shutting down: Two other small dance and music venues, Paradise and Letterbox, have recently announced they need to shut down. 

Letterbox – a reference to the Canada Post office they shared space with near Main and Pender – unexpectedly announced they’d be closing their venue after a show on January 25th, due to issues with the building owner. 

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, Paradise announced in mid-January that they’ll be shutting down operations at their current Chinatown space, after “behind-the-scenes back and forth with the City of Vancouver [made it] abundantly clear that there is no viable future at our current location,” they said, adding they plan to regroup and reimagine their operation.

  • It’s a double-whammy for Vancouver’s alt late-night music and dance scene in a city already known for its lack of nightlife. 

Not all bad news: Not quite in the same late-night category, but it seems that the WISE Hall and Lounge has avoided the “immediate financial stress” that was imperilling their bar and event space in Grandview-Woodland. 

  • The hall venue and community living room (as some loving refer to the lounge) is getting closer to financial stability with a new board in place. 

What it means: While this is a tough moment, the inflection point of the closures this month seems to speak to a larger trend of churn amongst this sort of cultural venue, with any sort of long-term stability being in short supply. 

“With the challenges of operating in “no fun city,” we know this won’t be easy – but we also know it’s more necessary than ever,” Dolly wrote in their update.