KAMLOOPS — The Blue Grotto is closing up shop.
After closing down in March due to the pandemic, the nightclub had only recently opened back up.
“We had to reopen, so we did the renovations, we reopened — we were open for two days, 10 hours total — and we got the mandatory shutdown again.”
David Johnston, who is better known as Pup by the regulars, spent thousands of dollars on installing plexiglass partitions and purchasing hand sanitizer and cleaning products.
On Friday, he opened the nightclub for the first time in months.
“Everybody was so compliant and so happy to be compliant with us,” Pup said. “The Friday and Saturday night went smooth as smooth could be. Everybody was just fantastic and people expected the conditions. It was working, it was going to work. It was going to be alright.”
The order to close nightclubs and banquet halls comes after the Labour Day long weekend, when the province recorded 429 new cases of COVID-19 over a four-day period.
For bars, restaurants and pubs there will be a decrease in hours for serving alcohol.
“Liquor sales in all bars, pubs and restaurants must cease at 10:00 p.m.,” explained Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on Tuesday (Sept. 8), “and these venues must close at 11:00 p.m., unless they’re providing full meal service in which case the meal service can continue but not serve alcohol.”
For Pup, his frustration is with those choosing not to abide by the guidelines.
“I know that there’s a lot of kids that just don’t take this seriously or think that just because they’re younger that it doesn’t affect them,” Pup said. “Of course, we all know that it does. We’re suffering in the Interior for what’s going on in the Lower Mainland in a much larger market. Kamloops is 90,000 people, the Lower Mainland is three million, and maybe the nightclubs there aren’t towing the line.”
Pup says he’s going to have to source out some income to avoid defaulting on his lease. He says he hasn’t been able to access the Canadian Emergency Commercial Rental Assistance pledged by the government.
“The landlords don’t want it, they don’t have to take it and they’re not going to. I don’t know, maybe if I was a landlord I would feel the same way. But, there’s no access for the renters to get that money,” Pup said.
His request of the community isn’t financial, it’s that they take the pandemic measures seriously.
“I know that we’ve done a lot, but we really have to do more, and a simple thing like wearing a mask, it’s really not hard to do.”
