NEWS: Multi-use arts space closed by City

Independent art and music venues in Vancouver are the Siberian tigers of the city’s entertainment scene: they flourish in the wild for some time, but soon succumb to a ruthless Darwinism in which only a few survive. The Sweatshop is the latest causality in a quickly diminishing stock of indie music spaces in the city, and the reasons for its February 15 closure continue to elude owner Malice Liveit, who owned, operated, and promoted events at the venue for almost three years.

“It is a major shame that a city with such an amazing art and music community [has] so many spaces being closed or shut down,” Liveit says. “In the last year alone, we had over 150 shows without one violent or disruptive incident, and we get shut down while so many other venues with a history of violence continue on.”

The Sweatshop, located at East Hastings and Victoria, functioned as an indoor skateboard park, a retail skate shop, an art gallery, and a music venue. Indie-rock pioneer Calvin Johnson (founder of bands such as Beat Happening and Dub Narcotic Sound System) was scheduled to perform there at the end of May, but those and other events have been derailed as a result of this month’s closing.

“Over the past year, City staff would walk through [the venue] and give us a list of improvements or items to be done. We would get those done,” says Liveit. “This time around, it was more a list of complaints and very few reasons as to why or what were the issues. They just wanted to shut it down, no matter what we did to work with them.”

Liveit is working to arrange a meeting with Chief License Inspector Barb Windsor in order to gain clarity on the situation. WE’s calls to Windsor were not returned by press time.

Vancouver Park Board commissioner Sarah Blyth can see potential difficulties in getting proper zoning for a mixed-use facility like the Sweatshop. Blyth is a founding member of the Vancouver Skateboard Coalition, and operated an indoor skate park in the early 1990s that was eventually shut down by the City. “It’s hard to get a place zoned properly for recreational use,” she says. “You can’t just go into a warehouse and turn it into a skate park, because it’s not zoned for that properly.”

Blyth has seen a relaxation on citywide skateboarding bans through the years, but she says more work is needed to provide sufficient skateboarding venues. “We have actually expanded our skateboard parks from, like, one to six in the past 10 years, so that’s quite bit. But we still need an indoor facility for young people,” she says. “There [is] a lack of it, even more so now that the Sweatshop is not around.”

“The Sweatshop was a true mash-up,” says Liveit. “It was a space that provided a platform for... everything from art openings in the art gallery to noise shows and skate competitions. We were part of the community.”