Blood Alley: Drinking in Gastown

I had the pleasure of meeting with Anthony Nicolo from Farmstead Wines last week, at Salt Tasting Room. Not only did we share some good food and some fantastic wines, we had a long, effortless conversation about one of our favourite topics – wine.

But it’s the not the wine that got me thinking today… more, it was Blood Alley in Vancouver, where Salt is. There’s a history to Blood Alley that many don’t know, speculate about and spread erroneous thoughts about as well. It’s home to a lovely little cluster of drinking hot spots, including Salt, The Irish Heather (currently in 2.0 form, which is actually kind of unfortunate…it’s a lovely room, but the old jail and gallows it was housed in was much better) Shabeen, (also in it’s 2.0 form), The Blarney Stone and a few other pubs, all within a stone’s throw of Blood Alley.

I asked our waiter about the history around Blood Alley, and found out that there are a few different theories about the ominous name. I’d always thought that there had been a series of grisly Jack-The-Ripper-Style slayings in the area during the early days of Vancouver, and that the name was an historical call back to that. Turns out, my Stephen-King-fed imagination was a little off the mark.

The two schools of thought are that Gastown was essentially the center of Vancouver in the early 1900’s, and of course, the site of many of the city’s pubs. When the men came back from work on the Friday after being paid, their first stop on the way home were the pubs. Ruffians (yes, he actually used the word ‘ruffians’) gathered in this alley to jump, pummel and otherwise mug the working men coming in for a drink, knowing they had fistfulls of cash in their pockets.

The other school of thought is that this was the area of Vancouver’s first Civic Buildings (which would make some sense, given the fact that the original Irish Heather was housed in an old jail, and is on Gaoler’s Mews), and also, inexplicably, a butcher shop. At the end of the day, the butchers would dump their buckets of blood into the alley, letting it run through the cobblestones.  The public hangings were said to be here as well, which seems interesting and all, but the thing is, that a hanging doesn’t generally produce a lot of blood. As my dear friend Mr. Lady says, bygones.

So, despite the uncertain history of this site, there’s a ton of lovely places to drink around here. And, the Blood Alley street sign is one of the most often stolen street signs in Canada. Next time you visit Vancouver, this is definitely a spot to hit.

(Image source: CC Roland Tanglao and Sturmvogel on Flickr.)