Downtown Vancouver's urban renewal: bars, wineries, shops, eats Trendy shops, bars, restaurants bring life back to Vancouver's historic center

The cobblestone Water Street through the heart of Gastown. The cobblestone Water Street through the heart of Gastown. Photo: Special To The Chronicle Photo: Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Downtown Vancouver's urban renewal: bars, wineries, shops, eats 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

"It's on Railway Street," my niece says, tossing me keys to her new loft last November. "You know, in Railtown."

Where?

I lived in Vancouver for the first 33 years of my life and never heard of a Railtown, never knew there was a short street down by the port lined with classic warehouses until I turned the key at No. 339, formerly the Imperial Rice Milling Co.

For a week, I lived in a mellow downtown neighborhood with the muted sounds of railcars shunting on tracks out back and musicians jamming in a distant recording studio. I bumped into clusters of folks meandering through the building visiting artists in their studios during the four-day Eastside Culture Crawl and poked through interior design and fashion shops in revamped warehouses.

At night, I tucked into stellar platefuls of Italian cuisine across the street at tiny Ask for Luigi, where a line snaked down the road.

Who knew? Clearly, it was finally time to reassess the status of Vancouver's raw Downtown Eastside, a.k.a. DTES, for decades primarily the domain of Dumpster divers, druggies and the down-and-out, with the distinction of being one of Canada's poorest postal codes.

Bumping up against the east side of downtown, it encompasses the city's oldest neighborhoods including historic Chinatown, now-defunct Japantown and Gastown - Vancouver's 1867 birthplace when the town consisted of a sawmill, tavern and a cluster of tents. Railtown, adjoining Gastown, was born as the warehouse district for the newly arrived transcontinental railway.

This was Vancouver's hub at the turn of the 20th century until suburban malls sucked the life out of the area and downtown moved west to its present location in the 1960s. The DTES fell on hard times with a funky character at best: Looking for a Goth steampunk corset, the notorious No. 5 Orange strip club, or a smoky toke and marijuana seeds to go at Marc Emery's Cannabis Culture Headquarters? Then make your way through the gauntlet of panhandlers and buskers, 'cause this is your hood.

Perhaps it is precisely because it was a rough neighborhood with a strong core of community activism that combatted repeated efforts to push out the poor ahead of Expo 86 and the 2010 Olympics that the DTES now boasts a rich legacy of 19th and early 20th century architecture, rare in a glass-tower metropolis where developers direct wrecking balls at anything with age and character.

Gastown

For years, when I returned home, I'd wander through Gastown, amazed that countless attempts to pump life into the area could fail despite its leafy, cobblestoned streets lined in preserved heritage buildings alongside prime downtown real estate, seemingly a poster child for gentrification.

Instead, a hodgepodge of mostly mediocre eateries, souvenir shops and - strangely - high-end aboriginal art galleries puttered along among the boarded shop fronts and cheap hotels while tourist buses paused to offer a short stroll and a photo in front of the rare steam-powered clock. Locals avoided Gastown at all costs.

Then, in 2006, I felt a first stirring of life - and of the hair on the back of my neck - as I made my way down dimly lit, ghoulishly named, trash-lined Blood Alley to a surprisingly bustling Salt Tasting Room, which offered flights of wine and Sherry with tasting plates of exotic cheeses and charcuteries in a decidedly hip environment.

Gastown has been on the rise ever since. These days, with its 58 hopping bars and restaurants, it reminds me of its 1970s heyday when a Bohemian nighttime vibe brought hippies and draft dodgers to mingle over live music in coffee houses and watering holes.

Now, Chill Winston bar and trendy restaurants like L'Abbatoir and the Sardine Can spill tables onto the sidewalks on warm summer evenings. Amid the aroma of good cooking, lively chatter and buskers' tunes mingle with the clatter of bicycles and scooters stuttering over the cobblestoned main square beneath the landmark flatiron Hotel Europe.

Gastown is a go-to place for one-of-a-kind decor and furniture shops and local designer clothing boutiques taking advantage of the brick walled/heavy plank floor/warehouse look. Even flamboyant John Fluevog, creative shoe designer to stars from Whoopi Goldberg to Woody Harrelson and whose first store was a local landmark here from 1970 to 1982, made a Gastown homecoming in 2008.

Warehouse space makes this area - as well as adjoining Railtown - popular for IT and high-tech firms: This year, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic moves its future Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars clan into a 30,000-square-foot Gastown studio.

Railtown

An unofficially named extension east of Gastown, tiny Railtown has a low-key vibe with its artists' studios, loft lodgings and office space for a growing cluster of mini-manufacturing brands such as the Herschel Supply Co.'s popular bags.

It's also where a group of forward-looking young folks started the Vancouver Urban Winery, one of my first stops on an Off the Eaten Track culinary walking tour of Railtown. Culture shock kicks in when I step off a nondescript industrial street into the modern sky-lit interior of a historic warehouse turned winery, microbrewery and small-bite restaurant with rows of oak barrels as a backdrop. I agonize at a wine bar over the selection of 38 British Columbia reds and whites on tap. A distillery is in the making.

Bonnie Todd then leads our small group to nosh our way through spots I would never have found, sampling almond croissants at a French bakery and sinking my teeth into melt-in-your-mouth Bulgogi chicken at the sandwich counter of the old world, nose-to-tail Big Lou's Butcher, which also offers a variety of butchery classes to the public.

Given its demographics, it's no surprise social enterprise is a big theme in these parts, though you'd often never know it. There's the new aboriginal art-themed SkwachÀys Lodge, a gallery and luxury boutique hotel complete with a 40-foot totem pole on the roof, and room rates that benefit the nonprofit BC Native Housing Corp. In Gastown, I sip an in-house roasted latte and linger over handmade Madagascan chocolate truffles at chic East Van Roasters who train and employ marginalized women from the Rainier Hotel residence upstairs.

Chinatown

Canada's biggest Chinatown is the least gentrified of the DTES neighborhoods, still limping back to its glory days when it flashed with ornate neon illuminating busy Hong Kong-esque streets. But in the 1980s, newly arrived Chinese began to beeline to suburban Richmond instead, the city's new suburban Asian enclave, leaving Chinatown to decline.

It's quiet still - most serene is the classical Chinese oasis of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen garden, the first 15th century Ming Dynasty garden built outside China. There's plenty of old-time Chinatown character in Foo's Ho Ho Restaurant and the tea-herbal-medicine-produce-and-fish shops occupying rows of colorful, early 20th century Asian shops on Pender, Hastings and Gore streets, but there are also vacant stores. This makes it all the more fun when you do come across gems like the tiny German sausage-and-beer joint Bestie and the brick-walled and heavily taxidermied American eatery of Mamie Taylor's. In the historic Wing Sang building, site of local philanthropist Bob Rennie's real estate business and art gallery, you can view the art collector's world-class contemporary exhibitions with an advance reservation.

What's increasingly bringing young folks to this enclave are places like Flatspot Longboards and Duchesse, a retro consignment store. The Shop is a quirky hybrid dishing out coffee, clothing and all things vintage motorcycle - all small enterprises run by young, new residents happy to be paying a tenth of downtown's square-footage rent.

It may not be your Cantonese granddaddy's style, but it's livening up the Chinatown scene, and that's making even longtime locals grin.

On my last night, I prowl Chinatown for neon like we did as kids, our parents cruising the streets of the old downtown to "see the lights" since Vancouver was known internationally for its extravagant signs until a 1974 anti-neon bylaw "cleaned up" the town.

There's a movement afoot to bring neon back so my niece and I check out the new classic at Bao Bei, then duck into the Chinese brasserie with Asian-themed tapas for dinner. Afterward, we sip creative cocktails down the street at the busy Keefer Bar, taking in its Thursday night burlesque show. It's fun to watch a unique new Chinatown sprout amid the traditional.

While Gastown, Railtown and Chinatown have evolved - each at their own pace with unique characters - they are still neighborhoods on the edge of edgy, safe but unpolished.

And that's a good thing: I've always believed that squeaky-clean urban Vancouver would be a more interesting and stimulating place if it showed off its rarely seen funky face. And indeed, it seems Vancouver is finally getting its grit.