CREDIT: Gerry Kahrmann, The Province Elizabeth McLaws has lived in the Davie Village area of Vancouver’s West End for almost 20 years and still enjoys being a part of the lively scene.

I don’t know when they first started calling it Davie Village but that moniker very aptly describes the place I call home. It truly is a village.

I have lived in the West End for almost 20 years, in five different apartments. If you drew a line connecting all my abodes you would get a circle with Davie Street dissecting the centre. Somehow I cannot seem to get any farther than four blocks away from Davie. To me this is truly the heart of the city. My day isn’t complete without a walk along Davie Street, stopping in the shops I’ve been in hundreds of times before, shops I will continue to patronize as long as they are around.

Davie has always been one of Vancouver‘s more colourful areas. Twenty years ago there was an after-hours pizza joint across from Super Valu on Davie. We all used to go there after Richard’s on Richards (this was when women dressed to impress and men actually wore suits to nightclubs). My great aunt lived in an old building on the corner for almost 20 years. She had a ground-floor suite and used to watch the women of the evening work the corner from her window. This was before all the dead-ends and one-way streets were put in.

I was lucky enough to live in the building across the street, right above the 24-hour Super Valu. The building I lived in had an unmarked side door, right on Davie. Whenever we walked out people would look to see where we’d come from and I always thought it was so cool because it seemed so anonymous. You could suddenly appear or disappear, so we used to call it the Rock Star door.

Over the years you begin to recognize people: the family who own the deli; the lady at the bakery who, no matter what you say to her, says “Anything else?“; the

Chinese man and wife at the shoe repair; the beauty advisors at the 24-hour Shoppers Drug Mart. I got the very best skin care advise I ever had at 10 p.m. one night in that Shoppers.

Over the years the restaurants have changed but they are still lining up at Stepho’s for Greek food and the Fresgo Inn is still going strong after more than 20 years. I even love the sights and sounds of the nightclubs, such as Celebrities and Numbers. It has always been my habit to have my friends drop me off at Burrard and Davie so I can walk the rest of the way home at night. 2 a.m. there’s no place safer for a woman taking a walk than Davie Street. And the things you see! (Hallowe’en night is my favourite).

At one time there were four buck-a-slice pizza places that were open after the clubs. Now there are four Dollar stores. Times change, but I’ll always love Davie.

© The Vancouver Province 2004