Wendy 13 may be down with the recent closure of the infamous punk venue that was the Cobalt… but we’re sure she’s not out.
Excerpt from Chris Walter’s Dayglo Abortions Biography:
The crowd outside the Cobalt Hotel is large enough to see from several blocks away. Up close, the throngs of inebriated patrons are both colourful and rowdy. Smoking cigarettes and conversing loudly, they seem oddly naked without bottles of beer or mixed drinks in hand, and one can be certain that those beverages wait just inside the door. If stringent Vancouver liquor laws didn’t prohibit drinking in public, they would surely be doing just that. As it is, several patrons nip from smuggled pint bottles, furtively returning those jugs to inner pockets or waistbands. Booze and cigarettes go so well together that is seems almost criminal to force smokers to leave their drinks behind when they go outside for a cigarette. Wars have been fought for less.
An intoxicated young man with jawbones tattooed on either side of his lower face flicks a butterfly knife with expert skill. The deadly weapon is a blur in his hands as he performs a variety of tricks for his drunken companions on the sidewalk. Amazingly, the crusty punk seems to have all his fingers, but a thin red slash across the chest of his wifebeater testifies that the knife has slipped at least once. Behind him, leaning against the hotel, an even drunker fellow named Simon Snotface regales a teenage punkette with outrageous tales of derring-do. The girl puffs on a cigarette and seems bored. She has heard this story before––perhaps many times. A bottle smashes on the sidewalk, followed by loud cursing and wild laughter. Just another Saturday night on Main Street, complete with screaming ambulances, clouds of pot smoke, plenty of booze, and maybe a fistfight or two. And it isn’t over yet.
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