Urban Mixer Blog

On Saturday, August 22nd, the Stone Temple Nightclub on Granville Street held one last party before the venue was to be closed and handed over to new owners.

What was one of Vancouver’s most enjoyable and least pretentious places to party is now undergoing a transformation – only to be seen when the new owners unveil the location. Maybe they’ll knock the building down, maybe they’ll re-model and re-launch – heck, maybe they’ll just keep the business as usual. Safe to say, you won’t be doing shots with the likes of Sea to Sky management’s Jaimie Rogers or Ben Gregory there anytime soon.

As for the theme of the closing party? Speakeasy, with mobster guys (the make belief kind) wearing fedoras, Sweet Pea Swing Band playing outside and the pin up girls adorned in feather boas.

Perhaps those who planned the event had something to say about the draconian Vancouver’s liquor-laws, most of which haven’t changed since the days of prohibition. But then again, maybe we’re reading too deeply. Either way, the party was epic.

DJ Residents TMS Crew, DJ Sense 1, Maze Live and A-Statis lit up the dancefloor while all who attended lined up shots and bid the bar crew farewell. More challenging yet and with a plethora of choices, although the guys and dolls were dressed to impress, it was up to the staff to pick only one guy and one girl as the best-dressed mobster and pin-up girl.

Stone Temple, we thank you for all the good times.

It seems like only a few years ago that local entrepreneurs Derek Pink and David Kershaw asked their parents to mortgage their homes so they could embark on opening the Stone Temple, the duo’s first project notably located on the rough streets of Granville.

Anyone who knew them then thought they were nuts and that their respective families were going to go broke. Fast forward thirteen years and you can see the pair has amassed quite an empire. Au Bar, Ocean Club (North Vancouver), Mountain Club and Garfinkels (Whistler) to name a few and remarkably, Granville Street has become the nightlife hotspot for Vancouver.

On Saturday, August 22nd, it was announced tha tthe Stone Temple was sold and that the Granville Street landmark was to undergo yet another transformation. For those that didn’t know, Stone Temple, one of the oldest buildings in that part of town was a church in the ’30s.  According to the Straight’s Sarah Rowland, in the ’80′s it was a strip club called Circus Circus and in the early 90′s, it was a Western-themed gay bar called Bottom Line that sold rubber chickens to their patrons for $5.

Now? Who knows, but the word on the street is that the new owners are not from a local or well-known ownership group (ie from the suburbs) and will be bringing fresh blood into what seems to be a heavily monopolized club scene in Vancouver. More on that soon. For now, we wait.