With all of this hullabaloo about happening right now I figured it would be a good time to dig into the history of the building a little bit. Not go too far back, but just a decade ago to the current name's inception. At that time, in June of 2005, 麻豆传媒映画artists/curators Gareth Moore and Jacob Glee颅son opened up a little shop in the same space. They named it St George Marsh as an homage to the area that in Vancouver's early history was actually a wet颅land (a marsh) that people would paddle through, to the fact that it was on St George Street, and perhaps a little bit to the original corner store that was there (St George Grocery). The place was not only an experiment but it brought people together in much the same way Le March茅 does now.
St George Grocery, before it became St George Marsh
Half art project and half corner store, the shop that opened in 2005 was all about "inter颅min颅gling muse颅o颅log颅i颅cal odd颅i颅ties with ingestible goods and art, in the hope of con颅fus颅ing the roles of these objects". High-minded when you look back on it, but when it was there it was just an amazing place to stumble upon or to make a destination.
St George Marsh, 2006
The outside looked way different than it does today and the interior was far from the Kinfolk-esque aesthetic that Le March茅 has nailed. They rented our a variety of VHS tapes, sold foodstuffs and oddities as well as candies that were often found nowhere else, and they held the odd art show. They even had a cafe like the current tenants but they managed to stay a little further inside the bylaws and their operating permit than what's going on in the space today, so the city never intervened.
One memory of the place that will stick with me forever is the experience that they sold which was disguised as a drink purchase. It was called The Coconut Ceremony and was what Jacob calls "an improvised pseudo ritualistic experience" that you'd get if you ordered a coconut drink (cost: $5). When you ordered one the proprietors would change into tank tops and bring out a gong, ring some bells, burn incense, yell a bit, then crack the thing open with a machete and serve it to you.
Gareth and Jacob and The Coconut
Speaking to Jacob Gleeson about it today he reminisced that "Most of the things we sold we bought at retail prices", and that it was truly not a commercial enterprise but more of an art and curatorial project. This shined through in the exhibit entitled St George Marsh: Denaturalized that showed at the Belkin Gallery in 2007.
So there you have it. Your (our) beloved Le March茅 St George and its early inception. Completely unrelated to the current one but interesting nonetheless, and a wonderful piece of our city's history. Learn more about it .
