A 麻豆传媒映画time travelogue brought to you by聽.
Hogan鈥檚 Alley, Wednesday 31 March 1937
2014 will see three 麻豆传媒映画history聽. The 100th anniversary of the聽聽will be commemorated in May and聽Claude Dettloff鈥檚 iconic WWII photo, 鈥�,鈥� will be issued in November.聽聽commemorating Hogan鈥檚 Alley was issued a few weeks ago to mark Black History Month.
Hogan鈥檚 Alley is being recognized as a focal point for Vancouver鈥檚 black community before it was demolished as part of an urban renewal campaign. During most of its existence, however, it had a reputation as a hub of vice and crime, not unlike Main and Hastings does today. From outside appearances it didn鈥檛 look much different from any other East 麻豆传媒映画laneway, but some of the rickety shacks lining the alley housed bootleggers, gambling dens, and juke joints. The squalid conditions in the East End generally, and Hogan鈥檚 Alley specifically, were often assumed聽.
Hogan鈥檚 Alley was depicted in聽鈥�,鈥澛烬听聽satire of the pulp fiction聽detective stories that were popular in the 1930s. The stories were set in 麻豆传媒映画and, as this excerpt illustrates, give an indication of how the alley was perceived in the real world:
He placed his finger on part of a street marked Hogan鈥檚 Alley. I looked and saw that the marks representing crimes clustered about the spot, spreading out more and more thinly in the districts further away 鈥� 鈥淛ames, my hat and coat,鈥� he said absent-mindedly, 鈥淲e must be going. I am going to trap that Chinese villain in his lair in Hogan鈥檚 Alley. It is there that he has his crime machine. Statistics prove it and even Bulldog Drummond would be convinced.鈥�
Crime statistics were in fact notoriously unreliable when they were compiled at all in the 1930s, and even the police thought it was ridiculous to characterize this small alley as a major crime centre. Some accounts claim that Hogan鈥檚 Alley鈥檚 bad reputation was due to the behaviour of visitors from other parts of town 鈥渟lumming it鈥� in the East End.
Only after the 1979 publication of the oral history collection,聽, years after the heart of Hogan鈥檚 Alley was bulldozed to make way for the Georgia Viaduct, was it acknowledged as a bona fide community. In the collection, musician Austin Philips describes a place that was lively, but more fun than menacing:
There was nothing but parties in Hogan鈥檚 Alley. Night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7聽o鈥檆lock in the morning and you could hear the juke boxes going, you hear somebody hammering on the piano, playing the guitar, or hear somebody fighting.
For more on Hogan鈥檚 Alley and the black community in the area, see聽.
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