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Smilin' Buddha Cabaret

109 East Hastings. He levitates. Takes your breath away. Gives you humility. Take a walk on the street of secrets and shattering sorrows. Skids. Where the lost and loverless go. Sizzle your sensitivities. Walk the gangways of barbaric grandeur. Talk the echoic words. Meet the guys full of alibis. Find your leather face there. This is the world of the setting sun. See the jagged stones take flight like etched angelwings dipped in schemes and moonbeams. Your number is written on the wall. One day the wall falls down. For now, you may enter the blind arcade. Pass through lunacy and flashtalk; quips, bare buttocks, strippers strut. Jangle your nerves. Unravel. Step out'against the inky night you will surrender to the splendour and authentic presence of the hovering Smilin' Buddha. This is East Hastings Street. Once and forever. With an eternal twinkle in his eyes, laughing-leaf belly and living water in his neon veins'Smilin' Buddha makes his divine debut in 1953. A bring-your-own bottle dine and dance club with stand-up comic MC's, strip-tease act and a barker at the door with a natural glow. In the late '70s the raw punk movement burst into the Buddha venting wild musical and social energy. Punk heaven spills its barbaric grandeur. A legendary dive.