We are taken to a small half level above a retail shop in Chinatown. The owner tells us it was once an old gambling den.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmJWwH10MVo


We can not see much though.

During the 1930s, when it got too hot in Vancouver, gamblers would drive to New Westminster's Chinatown to play their luck.

The city's Chinatown had some of the best gambling in the Lower Mainland, local historian and author Jim Wolf says.

"They would all get out (of the car) and go into secret back alleys and into these little cubbyholes to the gambling dens, where the big money tables were, and just have these unbelievable gambling groups," Wolf says.

The local gambling room operators knew which police were on the take and which weren't, and they'd have spies on the end of the alley looking for police, says Wolf. They had names for the cops - like hook nose.

"So if they saw 'old hook nose' coming around, they'd shut things down," Wolf says.

http://www.vancouversun.com/Gambling+roo......ory.html

Thanks.

From picking up a Chinese pal from some of these Chinese gambling dens to drive him to poker games, I seen some of these Chinese gambling dens first hand. They were rough places but they played for high stakes. One could see there piles of sealed £5 grand packets. There were only Chinese guys at the ones I seen though. That guy above, he seems to be describing more cosmopolitan gambling dens than the ones I seen.