I guess this isn't a surprise since the presentation of the bambi award to Britney Spears in 2008, the collaboration with H&M also in 2008 and the release of Lagerfeld confidential in 2007. Karl Lagerfeld has designed a bottle for the one and only Coca-Cola. We could ask if he needs the press, or if there was some kind of hidden deal behind this temperary merge but I feel like the digging would be pointless. Karl Lagerfeld knows how to get a bit of press and how better to do it than design for one of the most widely known brands globally? The add features beautiful, Canadain Coco Rocha and on the bottle is Karls' incredibly distinctive profile silhouette of himself. I find this oddly brilliant and obvious at the same time.
On Saturday night I hit up the new club on Seymour for its second weekend open and my friend’s birthday. I had heard that it had four floors, different DJs, that there would be staff working there who had switched from the Odyssey, and that it was going to be a mixed club between gay and straight. I was skeptical but excited for the prospects. The idea of a mixed gay/straight bar is always a tricky one because in general the vibes between the two are so different and always end up like Celebrities, becoming mostly straight bars. I was concerned that this bar was so far off from the beaten homo path that the gays wouldn’t come. With no other easy options around to club hop, it seemed unlikely that we’d put all our eggs in one basket by coming to Five Sixty.
Honestly the first impression was a terrible one. The signage outside Five Sixty is not attractive. The wall with strips of colored light shining from within is quite cool but the sign itself looks cheap and the colors make it hard to look at. Using the address of the bar is unoriginal as this has been done by 1181 on Davie. Could no other name be thought up? My friend and I had some sketchy guy bothering us in line trying to get us into the club through some other door he had jammed open. Although I can’t attribute this experience to the club itself, it spoke to the area of town we were in.
It was cold out and there was a long line to get in that wasn’t moving quickly. If Simone hadn’t have gotten me and my friend in a little faster and waved our cover, I would have left. It was great to see that a bar that is gay affiliated unofficially still honored loyalty within a community. Saying that, once we got in we had to wait in another long line up inside the doors. This was a huge deterrence and I know that a lot of people turned and left because of this. I get that a bit of a line up outside makes a place look busy and is good for business, but the second line wasn’t visible from outside and was completely unnecessary.
Stepping in was bitter sweet. Immediately there is a large dance floor and long accessible bar which both would be full if it weren’t for the ridiculous hour long line ups. Knowing that we were held in line for an hour to get into a large venue that was not very busy was frustrating. My friend and I went downstairs to check our coats. I have never seen a set up like the basement of Five Sixty anywhere. It’s a huge rectangular room with a dividing wall separating dining tables and chairs on one side and a long corridor of enclosed unisex bathroom stalls and communal sinks on the other. This basement are has its own bar (where Lola from the Odyssey had apparently claimed her perch early) and its own DJ (Mumbles). DJ Mumbles was fantastic and should have been spinning upstairs as there was no dance floor downstairs and the DJ upstairs was uninteresting. Coat check is at the far side and it was fun to cross the DJ, guys ordering at the bar, people dancing, and fixing their hair at the mirrors. A better ventilation system could be used to take away the wafts of unpleasant smells though.
Since Lola had cut us a deal on our drinks because she knew us I didn’t realize until my second drink that they were $9.75 each. I know that a huge space like that must cost a fortune to rent but honestly, I can buy an entire mickey of vodka for a dollar or two more. We took our little wet goldmines upstairs to the third floor which was a pleasant lounge gallery. The black leather sofas, the art on the walls, the balcony overlooking the dance floor below, and the exclusive wait service made this a comfortable, unique and fun environment to be in. Unfortunately the fourth floor looked as though it were still under construction as it was blocked off by a large traffic pylon. This bar is massive and beautifully renovated from the A&B Sound it used to be.
I love the atmosphere here and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was filled with all kinds of gay men. I was also happy to see new faces out. Five Sixty has real potential to be a smaller Heaven from London UK, or a bigger Sky from Montreal but my only concern is that I’m not sure that Vancouver is ready for a bar like this. As much as I really love the idea of Five Sixty, I fear that it’ll lose the fun new buzz and dynamic it had this long Easter weekend. I’m not sure that Vancouver’s gays will take to such an expensive venue with crazy line ups and so much empty space in a shady neighborhood. I hope I’m wrong and that Five Sixty’s originality, glamour, and diversity is enough to keep it alive so I can spend my birthday here. It’s just too bad that the first impression wasn’t a great one for Vancouver.
