Flirt - Mondays at Celebrities

It's accepted as gospel that gay clubs played a crucial role in the development of both disco and rave culture, their owners daring to book DJs whom few straight establishments would have been willing to gamble on. American venues like the Paradise Garage (New York) and the Warehouse (Chicago) are the literal birthplaces of dance-music styles, their names better known than any of the selectors who invented those genres under their roofs.

While it hardly ranks in those rarefied circles, Vancouver's own Celebrities nightclub is generally regarded as one of the best gay-friendly nightspots in Canada. When I first started going to the old barn in the '90s, its DJs were playing a lot of deep house--not a cutting-edge form, for sure, but one you'd rarely hear anywhere else in town. Entering Celebrities in those days was kind of like diving underwater in the dark; with its ill-lit corners and grimy bathrooms, the place always baffled me, even when the Granville Street hordes descended upon it.

Newly refurbished after a three-year closure, the Davie Street location has maintained its structural integrity, but its surfaces have been polished to the point of sterility. In its present incarnation, Celebs could fit comfortably on Granville Street; no matter the music or the crowd, the place is still a bit too clean to foster any kind of vibrant counterculture. Judging by the venue's weekly listings--which runs from Flirt's Monday night circuit-house event to DJ Leanne's residency on
Fridays--its proprietors seem to be banking on the return of nostalgic clubbers who want to relive the 1990s. There's no telling how long this conservative strategy will hold out, but for now, the mere return of Celebrities hints at better times to come.