Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 02:30:00

Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and The Doors played upstairs; Tommy Chong ran the after-hours club in this basement. Village Studios, at 1024 Davie Street in Vancouver's Davie Village, occupies the lower level of one of the city's longest-running entertainment buildings. The 1908 building was designed by Thomas Hooper, one of British Columbia's most important early architects, and began as Lester Court - the Lester Dancing Academy run by husband-and-wife dance teachers Frederick and Maud Lester - before a 1940s turn as the genteel Embassy Ballroom. The 1960s made the address legendary: the venue became rock club Dante's Inferno and then the Retinal Circus, the psychedelic hall whose light shows framed Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground and Janis Joplin, while Chong's Elegant Parlour operated below. The upstairs is now Celebrities Nightclub, a Vancouver institution in its own right; the downstairs was reimagined in 2016 as Celebrities Underground before relaunching in 2021 as Village Studios, an independent multidisciplinary space operated by This Is Blueprint. The identity is deliberately plural - event space, recording studio and creative work environment - hosting electronic music shows and club nights alongside listening parties, podcast tapings, film shoots, sound baths, fashion shows and fetish nights, with about 100 seats in its seated configuration. The booking calendar leans into Vancouver's underground: international house and techno names make their city debuts here, and the room's pillars-and-low-ceiling intimacy gives DJ sets the sweat-on-the-walls quality big clubs cannot fake. A century of dance in one basement - from waltz lessons to warehouse techno - makes the address a working museum of Vancouver nightlife, still adding exhibits.