 East of Woodward's, the street forms the heart of Vancouver's historic original downtown, once known as the Great White Way because of its neon displays, and which is today the troubled Downtown Eastside and a notorious open-air drug market.Through the East End, after a stretch of warehouse-type commercial and wholesale businesses, the street forms one of the commercial cores for Vancouver's Italian community in a mixed-ethnicity retail area in the area of Nanaimo Street, just east of which the Pacific National Exhibition and Playland are on the city of Vancouver's eastern fringe.After leaving Vancouver, Hastings forms the core of a Burnaby retail neighbourhood known as the Heights and then traverses Capitol Hill to the Lochdale and Westridge areas.