LGBTQ+

Vancouver's oldest ballroom has been remaking itself for over a century, and its current form is the city's most storied nightclub. Celebrities at 1022 Davie Street occupies a building designed by Thomas Hooper - one of British Columbia's most important early architects - permitted in 1911 as a dancing academy and apartment house and finally opened in September 1914 as Lester Court, home of Frederick and Maud Lester's dance academy. As the Embassy Ballroom from 1933 it anchored the city's genteel dance-club circuit six nights a week, operating for decades as a "bottle club" where patrons smuggled their own liquor and bought mix from the hall. The 1960s rewired the room: as Dante's Inferno and then the Retinal Circus it became Vancouver's psychedelic headquarters, staging The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Velvet Underground and Led Zeppelin, while Tommy Chong - later of Cheech and Chong - ran the Elegant Parlour rhythm-and-blues after-hours club in the basement. Imperial Oil bought the property in 1969 intending to flatten it for a gas station; the demolition never came, and after 1970s stints as a strip club, the Crazy Horse and the Rock Palace under the Kerasiotis family - the Greek-Canadian clan behind Olympia Pizza and the pioneering Luvafair - the room became Celebrities in 1987. As the anchor of Davie Village, Celebrities grew into Vancouver's largest and most famous LGBTQ+ club, its Rehab Friday rave nights defining the 1990s, its door welcoming gay, lesbian, trans and straight crowds alike. A partnership with Alvaro Prol's Blueprint Events brought a million-dollar 2013 renovation and wired the venue into the group running Fortune Sound Club and Colony. Today the multi-level room programs international DJs, drag spectaculars, circuit parties and live acts under a state-of-the-art light rig - the same floor that hosted the Fireman's Ball in 1923, still packed at 2 AM a hundred years on.

Type: NightClub

Address: 1022 Davie Street, Vancouver, Canada, V6E 1M3

Website: https://celebritiesnightclub.com

Minimum Age: 19

Opening Date: 01/09/1914