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Love For Sale — Page 6
GEOGRAPHY OF THE TRADE
1873: Pioneer Madam
During the gold rush, Vancouver’s hotspots were
a bar (Gassy Jack’s) and a brothel. Birdie Stewart,
our maiden Madam, set up shop on Water Street, near
today’s Thai Palace. Besides providing succour
to prospectors, she provided soup for the poor and shelter
for the homeless. The number of vintage bachelor suites
still available in the West End is testament to the
crowds of single (and lonely) miners, loggers and wastrels
who once crowded the fledgling city.
1928: The Square Mile
The area around Main Street was once “a den of
vice”—a holding pen for unsavory elements
that allowed middle-class areas like Point Grey and
Kitsilano to develop in moneyed seclusion. In 1928,
after 11 years as mayor, L.D. Taylor was swept out of
office when his successor William Malkin launched a
war against the “vice ring” he said was
corrupting the city. Working-class foreigners settled
in the unsavoury neighborhoods, and “otherness”
was conflated with the drug and sex trades.
1975: Not in My Backyard
Police raided the Penthouse (and other nightclubs that
harboured sex workers) in 1975, shutting the strip bar
on Christmas Eve. This forced sex work onto the streets,
making it more dangerous for residents, johns, prostitutes
and businesses alike. When sex workers began strolling
in the West End, Gordon Price helped create Concerned
Residents of the West End, which marshalled the workers
into the Downtown Eastside.
1989: A Face, A Voice
Evelyn Lau’s unsettling portrait of a young girl
in Vancouver’s sex trade, Runaway: Diary of
a Street Kid, spent 30 weeks on the bestseller
list. Lau felt the brunt of the tightened bawdyhouse
laws (1985), which further criminalized women who worked
the street. After the Internet explosion—and the
relative safety of online arrangements—the street
became increasingly relegated to children and addicts,
concentrated in the poorest parts of town. Lau’s
story, a cry from the dark, gave voice to a crisis.
Today: Missing Women
The victimization Lau depicted was brought into stark
relief when Robert Pickton was charged with the murders
of 26 women. Sixty-eight women from the Downtown Eastside
have been identified as missing; more than half are
First Nations. Last December, three decades after police
raided the Penthouse and forced the sex trade onto the
streets, 18 massage parlours in Vancouver suburbs were
raided and 78 women, many of them victims of human trafficking
and forced prostitution, were arrested. With three years
left to sanitize the city before the world comes knocking
in 2010, what new ghetto might we devise?
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
Sex
and the City: The results of our Angus Reid
sex poll, with an introduction by Matt O'Grady
One
Night Stand:
My night as a burlesque dancer, by Emily Wight.
My
Life in Porn: A former porn store clerk returns
six years later to see how the Internet has affected
business—and to confront her own past. By Brooke
Thorsteinson
Girl
Talk: Things that buzz in the night. By Rebecca
Philps
Toy
Story: An insider's guide to the city's most
notable sex shops. By Christine Carrière
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