You mean going one way as opposed to 2 way like it is today.

Also, I remember going to Mings back in the mid 90's as it was a drinking/Kareoke caberate (sp?) establishment.

Lots of you younger guys may just be drinking beer at karoake places these days, but Ming's Karaoke in chinatown was where i started drinking back in high school. The night manager at #9 restaurant these days (the tall guy) was the old manager there before it went under.

hahahhaa.. Cabaret

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...a/hoho_old.jpg

http://www.whb.co.uk/socialissues/chicrowded.jpg

Sweet!!! Exactly like my Corolla on the bottom left.

I'm guessing late 70's?

Yesterday, at the PNE, I went to the container art exhibit. One of the containers had photos of neon signs from around our fair city. It was weird to hear comments by older people my age. A lot of them were saying stuff like, "This isn't from Vancouver........" I could ID most of the signs. Oh well, I guess a lot of people back then never went downtown or Chinatown. Either that or they're just plain stupid. I know people who go through life without checking out their surroundings - got the blinders on. People like that are the first to get shot in war, 'cause they can't see the snipers in the trees or hiding around the corner.

Gotta love city lights, especially in the rain.

Chinatown is dying down. It's not what it used to be like. Before T & T and local neighbourhood produce markets, Chinatown was Booming every weekend. It was always bustling with people. I remember when i was young, It was nearly impossible to walk around but now it's pretty quiet. Sad to see such an awesome place die down.

When I get off work around 6ish, and cut through chinatown, most of the stores are closed or just finishing up closing. By 7, only a few restaurants remain open. Other than the night market on the weekends in the summer, there is no night life left in the chinatown area.

I remember driving through the chinatown area at 6 am in the morning back in 1998, and all you see is a few old ladies doing their morning walks, and a few crack heads looking to find a fix.

To be honest, I am quite surprised to see a waves coffee still open at night in that area.

A few reasons why chinatown has become what it is today include Richmond and other pockets of chinese style produce like Victoria and 41st. ave.
And the crack heads in the area.

I was going to say Chinatown will never die, because it is historical, blah, blah, blah. But, Japantown is practically gone. In fact, I heard some saddening news the other day. I drove by Oppenheimer Park on my way to downtown. It was all fenced off. I asked my wife what the heck was going on. She told me Oppenheimer Park was under construction. That's why this year's Powell Street Festival was at McLean's Park. That wasn't the sad part. The Cherry Blossoms that were planted back in 1977 were Legacy Sakura. Here's the story.........

http://www.petitiononline.com/powell77/petition.html

http://www.greenclub.bc.ca/Chinese/G...est/memory.htm

No more cherry blossom festival???

great thread
i'm super young compared to many of the old farts in here
i've lived in vancouver for the majority of my life and it's really nice to know how vancouver was like 30-40 years back.

Hopefully I can do the same about East-Van 30 years down the road..hope it wont be a shit hole by then

There was a tree that was planted last year. Sad to see them go.

well for us it was because of the price of parking going up and up, the crackheads who harass you for change, and all the good shops started to move out or close down. now it's mostly cheap chinese kitchenware or low-grade herbal medicine shops :(

I'm sure some people stopped going because of the cost of parking, but then again a lot of people use to bus it to chinatown. Overall, it's the fact that you do not need to go to chinatown to get the same things. The people who bus it to chinatown can just walk down the street and go to their nearby store and buy most of what they need. Even Save on and Superstore carries chinese veggies and other asian items like Hon's noodles.

For the people who drive, they can drive to Richmond and have dim sum before they go grovery shopping. And like you said, parking is free.

Because of the declining business, some shops couldn't keep up and closed, but some stores like Loks and Carley's and Sunrise are very busy. Other stores like Chinatown supermarket has enough business to stay open.

Heck, before you had to go to Chinatown to buy chinese buns, now T&T, Pine House, and other chinese bakeries make getting chinese buns easy.

The real reason behind the downfall of Chinatown is the introduction of casinos (sorry, not Skytrain). Before casinos, Chinese people got their gambling fix behind the fake storefronts of Chinatown. <------ inside joke for those who lived in Chinatown.

before we owned a car we used to bus to chinatown from coquitlam to do shopping. there was no T&T back then, or anything sort of chinese community in richmond. they only had time to make the trip once a week and the tons of groceries my mom would buy... i still remember being the runt kid/pack mule sitting on the bus lugging all those bags back home... so yeah thank god for the car! :thumbsup:

Haha. Me too. Don't know how my older brother got out of going as I was always the one that had to go on saturdays. I remember back then, $100 would buy a week's worth veggies for a family of 4.

Some randoms:

- Kingsway and 7th used to be a Chrysler dealership
- there was a GM dealership across from the old Coastal Ford location on Main
- second level of 1st ave marketplace was the China Can supermarket until T&T opened on the lower level. Future Shop used to be where Happy King is, then they moved next door to the dollar store location when Happy Date was opened
- Cassiar McDonalds had a great playplace at their previous location beside the Mark's Warehouse
- a Chevron was once on Rupert and 29th

can anyone remember if there used to be a VW dealership where morrey nissan just moved out of at the corner of lougheed/willingdon? i vaguely recall this, but all i can dredge up was that there used to be a texaco station there :confused:

The Chryslar dealership was where the new condo is now, on the south side of 7th ave.

Before the Futureshop moved into the second location, it use to be a Fields store.

Cassiar McDonalds was a shit hole. People use to use the washrooms to shoot up and there was a few times where they OD'd and passed out. They replaced the lights with black lights to try to make it light enough to see where you are pissing but too dark to shoot up.

On Boundry and Granview hwy, on the south east corner where the Vinny's hand car wash is, that use to be an exotic car rental place back in the 80's.

there used to be a drive-in movie theatre at the corner of gilmore/lougheed, which is now the gilmore skytrain station... if you look through the overgrowth, you can still see remnants of the old site :o

I don't remember the Texaco, but there use to be a gas station on the corner where the old Morrey Nissan use to be and across the street in the other empty lot was a cheveron.

As far as I could remember, that location was always a Morrey Nissan dealership. Hmmm....

Pics or it never happened.

I really can't imagine that. If I went there, what should I be looking for?
I'm quite curious now.

It was there. When they closed up, I thought that was the last drivein theatre anywhere in the Lower Mainland. Of course, the one in Surrey was still there for the longest of time. It's no longer around, but another one took its place in Aldergrove.

I'll call up my old buddies and see if they could remember the name of the old drive in theatre. I remember going there a few times.

Edit: Cascade drive in........ opened up in 1946 (August) Closed in 1980. It is now the Cascade Village condominium site.

A few more
- Grandview Walmart was a Costco, and before that it was called Price Club
- there was a Saturn/Saab/Isuzu dealership across from Morrey Nissan where the new condos are
- before the international expansion of the airport, the parking in front was just one big ground-level lot instead of the multi-level lot now
- wasn't Bowmac ToysRus location a dealership before? I think it was Subaru, can't remember
- some already said BJ BMW on Boundary was some sort of a bakery facility, it was also a Ford dealership before BJ took over after being emptied for quite some time