[opdirorg]

Well Campbell.. maybe I can chalk up my sentiment to the fact that I moved back here a little over a year ago and am still "plugging in" to the Vancouver community after a prolonged absence.... In the 92-95 years that I was here, the Glass Slipper(where I used to volunteer both for Museart and Coastal) was a super happening place and I seem to recall there were a lot more places to perform in Vancouver than there are now.. The Cellar has (thankfully) picked up the torch but I often wonder how it manages to stay afloat.. People have to support the club or it won't stick around in this expensive city...

Aside from the "environment" issue that Cory points out, competition for the entertainment dollar get more fierce in a deteriorating(rising interest rates, inflation etc) economic environment.
Your reference to Victoria is interesting because as the seat of the Provincial Government and a good chunk of the civil service, the City is relatively(?)economically better off(??) than most of the other cities in the Province(??) I'm not an economist but when folks have to cut back on their discretionary spending, the entertainment budget is often the first to be axed when competing with other items of the household budget..eg: kids, mortgage, hydro, groceries etc..

The other thing that galls me is that the Province of BC is the national embarrassment when one looks at per capita funding for the arts, BC is the worst of all the Provinces.. Quebec ranks at the top of this list so lets just say that the Arts funding lobby needs to bark a lot louder to bring BC up to the national average for arts funding..

Otherwise, i don't think there are any easy answers or explanations for the current situation other than the one thing we can count on is that it will change in one way or another.. I look at the arts as a public service..much like education, health and social programs/welfare.. you can't run public services on a for profit model but that is at odds with the way the BC government(and Ottawa) thinks... these so called public services are being privatized out to "for profit" companies.. that's why we're in this mess with our schools, hospitals, the arts, etc..

So ultimately, until people in the community start looking at the arts (music in this case) as a public service that improves the quality of life in our community, we are going to be stuck in this "for profit" mentality that is going ruin all sorts of the public service benefits that the previous generation of Canadians fought for that this generation risks losing if we don't make a loud fuss... the federal election might be a good place to make our sentiments felt(??) but I don't like mixing music and politics!