Article originally published December 4, 2012 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

With the help of two rare DJ mixes, we revisit the early-‘80s Yonge Street club that provided Toronto’s gay community with a safe haven and showcased cutting-edge dance-music sounds, before the spectre of AIDS brought the party to a close.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Stages, 530 Yonge

Years in operation: 1977-1984

History: The northwest corner of Yonge and Breadalbane was once occupied by the Hotel Breadalbane. In 1945, the Bolter family purchased the hotel and would transform the downstairs of 530 Yonge into The Parkside Tavern. The Bolters also owned The St. Charles Tavern, at 488 Yonge. By the mid-1960s, both taverns were known to be gay bars.

At that point in history, gay nightlife in Toronto was still very much underground. It was common for the heterosexual owners of gay bars to be contemptuous of their clientele. This seems to have been the situation at The Parkside, a dingy beer hall largely frequented by a daytime crowd. The Parkside’s owners allowed police to regularly spy on patrons in the washrooms, waiting to nab men engaged in any sort of sexual acts. Arrests were made, and the practice continued throughout the 1970s, even as gay activists organized leafleting campaigns and called for boycotts of the bar.

These conflicts were characteristic of the time. During the mid-to-late-1970s, Yonge Street was the main artery of Toronto gay social life (it would shift to Church in the mid-1980s). Those looking to dance could hit a number of spots near Yonge and Wellesley, like The Manatee, The Quest, Katrina’s, Club David’s, The Maygay (later Charly’s), and Cornelius, which sat above biker bar The Gasworks. By 1977, there were even two gay-owned bars in the area: The Barn, opened by Janko Naglic at 418 Church, and small cruise bar Dudes, opened by Roger Wilkes, a founder of the York University Homophile Association, and his partner David Payne in an alley just behind The Parkside.

While there were lots of options to dance and cruise, Yonge and its surrounding streets were not necessarily safe for queer people. Not only did the police frequently harass gay hangouts (most notoriously during the 1981 bathhouse raids), gay men and lesbians were all-too-often physically attacked.

“Those were the days when, on Halloween, people would throw eggs and ink at drag queens,” says Arnie Kliger, the man who would open Stages. “It also wasn’t particularly safe for gays to walk around the side streets.”

Kliger had both safety and glamour in mind when he worked with partner Stephen Cohen to open after-hours gay disco Stages. Its location, above The Parkside, had housed numerous clubs since the late-’60s, among them The August Club, Mama Cooper’s, The Milkbar, Quasimodo, and Bimbo’s.

Influenced largely by New York gay and after-hours clubs like The Saint, Studio 54, and 12 West, Kliger and Cohen chose to open an unlicensed dance club where music, dancing, and men would be the focus. There was nothing like it in Toronto at the time.

Stages’ doors opened at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 1977. People lined up to begin the new year in this new disco that would raise the bar for late-night dancing in Toronto.

“Many of the straight-owned clubs were rundown, the owners didn’t care, and just wanted to make a buck,” recalls DJ/producer Barry Harris. “Charly’s upstairs at the St. Charles Tavern was a good example of that. The gay crowd accepted it for years as gay clubs were still somewhat taboo, but eventually stopped supporting them.

“Stages was opened by an owner who appreciated good sound, good quality everything, and took care of his customers.”

Courtesy of Andrée Emond.

Why it was important: “We wanted to offer a different late-night experience, and take the whole party to a higher, better level,” says Kliger of his venture with Cohen (who would depart a few years after the Stages’ opening to pursue his main interests in design and architecture).

Kliger was committed to creating an experience as good as—or better than—those he had at the New York and San Francisco clubs he frequented. When patrons made it through the line that ran up the stairs to Stages, they turned left, paid a small cover (generally $5-$8) and walked in to a sizable but intimate rectangular room with a large wooden dancefloor in the middle. At the far end was a long bar that sold juice, water, and oodles of Perrier. The bar was adorned with bouquets of flowers and trays of fresh fruit, while bartenders would also pull out boxes of percussive instruments—tambourines, bongos, maracas—for customers to play. On the east and west walls, overlooking the dancefloor, were two built-in bleachers that ascended almost to the ceiling. They were deep and upholstered, with huge custom cushions adding to the comfort.

“Arnie Kliger was the best bar manager Toronto ever had,” DJ/producer Paul Grace tells me. “Arnie wanted a space where he would be comfortable and happy partying—one that was safe, where there were no problems. He set up the club so people could relax.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Kliger created membership cards for Stages, and hired former policeman Bob Bush, nicknamed Gloves, to keep potential troublemakers out.

“Gloves was an ex-London bobby, and he was our sole security man,” Kliger says. “He could take care of 10 guys trying to come up that stairway. In the entire time Stages was open, there was never a problem inside—no fights, nothing. I think that speaks volumes.

“We wanted people to have a safe place when they came in with their friends, all twisted and bent,” Kliger adds. “They knew that once they got off of Yonge Street and through those doors, they were secure to do whatever they wanted—party, take their shirt off, play a drum, whatever. Nobody came there for an hour; they stayed till morning. Most of our clientele carried sunglasses.”

Stages ran Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with doors generally opening at 11 p.m. and music heard until 6 a.m. or later. The 600-capacity club attracted large, loyal crowds, primarily of gay men, but also lesbians and straight folks attracted to the music and vibe.

“Stages was the only club I had ever heard of at the time that was mixed, gay and straight,” recalls Harris, an occasional customer who would later fill in as a guest DJ there. “I believe this was unusual, but was also something that made Stages very ‘chic.’”

“Fridays were definitely more straight, or mixed, but Stages was a place that was very ‘tolerant’ on any night, sort of setting up for a sensibility the Twilight Zone carried through,” recalls musician, producer and photographer Don Pyle, a Stages regular for years after his sister introduced him to the club in 1979.

“More than tolerant, Stages had a slightly decadent feel because it was night people and pretty sexual on the dancefloor, with all orientations having fun.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Club people flocked to Stages for many reasons, with its stellar sound and lighting high on the list.

“The lights came from New York’s Times Square Lighting,” says Kliger. “I couldn’t afford [renowned sound designer] Richard Long, but I copied his music systems.”

“Stages was one of those magical clubs you just had to experience,” states Paul Grace. “It’s still my favourite club, and that includes [clubs in] New York. It was relatively small, but had a killer soundsystem and great lights. There were these lovely big scoop speakers for bass that you could actually crawl into. I knew guys who would, and then they’d trip on the bass all night.”

“On the dancefloor, it was like a nice, warm fuzzy blanket because you were cocooned in the lights and the music,” recalls Richard “Bambi” McNicoll, a Stages lighting tech from 1982.

“The speakers completely surrounded you. Stages was intimate and had sound that could have been in a club three times its size. The lighting was also far ahead of its time. Where most club lighting systems were pretty static and the fixtures stayed where they were, what made Stages so unique was that you could change the light show every week—and that’s what I did.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

McNicoll, who came to Stages after working lights at Charly’s, was shown the ropes by lighting woman Andrée Emond. A veteran of venues including Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven, Emond worked at Stages from 1980 to 1983, brought in by one of her best friends, legendary Toronto DJ Greg Howlett. Emond and McNicoll would squeeze themselves into Stages’ tiny booth, working to create energy and mood directly beside DJs including Howlett, Wally MacDonald and, later, Paul Grace.

Emond recalls taping up her fingers to work the many toggle switches on Stages’ vertical lighting board, built into the wall. The DJ booth was directly on the edge of Stages’ dancefloor, with nothing but wire fencing separating crew from crowd. Five mirror balls were clustered in the dancefloor’s centre.

“The square dancefloor had a fairly low ceiling—pin spots, spinners and strobe lights were set above and on a suspended industrial grid that covered it,” says Emond. “But it was the Christmas lights and the Kelly controller that blew me away. There were at least 1,500 hundred lights that could be changed to provide rows of basic colours.

“The crowd would scream with excitement when those blasts of bright light came perfectly timed with the music. I learned not to be afraid of the dark, and to let music flow through my hands at Stages. Greg and Wally’s music, mixes, and effects provided all of my cues.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Stages, as all the people I interviewed tell me, was largely defined by its music. The crowds were deep into new sounds, and they were educated by some of the greatest dance-music pioneers this city has ever produced.

“The two DJs who played Stages for years were Greg Howlett and Wally MacDonald, both very good, with very different styles,” says Grace, who danced at Stages during the years when he himself was DJing at venues including Cornelius, the CN Tower’s Sparkles discotheque, and Yorkville’s Bellair Café.

“Wally played lots of weird shit—he liked to wake the crowd up all the time—whereas Greg was the master of the continuous mix. He’d start at 11 o’clock, slowly build the tempo up, and by 4 a.m. he’d be around 140bpm, then start to bring it down. By 5 a.m., he was down below 120 bpm, getting sleazy. It was very trippy and wonderful.”

MacDonald—who DJed during Stages’ earliest years, as did his brother Larry on occasion—was also adored for his impeccable mixing, late-night sleaze sets and devotion to underground disco.

“Wally loved to twist songs around and inside out,” says Barry Harris. “He also used a reel-to-reel tape machine to fuck with people’s heads by using the delay playback, bringing the echo in and out. In 1979, DJ mixers were just mixers; there was no delay, reverb, echo or effects at the time. It was very difficult to even find a mixer to buy, so Wally was doing a lot of really innovative and creative DJing.”

MacDonald was also a pioneering remix artist. He reworked songs like Antonio Rodriguez’s “La Bamba” and Harlow’s “Take Off” into epic extended versions. MacDonald’s masterful remix of Amanda Lear’s “Follow Me” sounds fresh to this day.

“Wally influenced me greatly during my entire DJ and remix career,” says Harris, who started DJing in 1983 at Dudes (whose address, coincidentally, is now home to pro-audio shop Saved By Technology).

“I remember one Sunday, Wally played “At Midnight” by T- Connection,” Harris continues. ”He was playing a reel-to-reel tape version that he had re-edited himself. He extended the big percussion intro and played bits and pieces of ‘I Will Survive’ intro overtop. Now, something like that sounds like no big deal, but at the time, no DJ used to remix anything like this—they simply played the records.

“Another time he played “Heroes” by Big Ben Tribe, then somehow mixed into the original David Bowie version. Brilliant! By the end, the whole crowd started applauding. I had never seen an audience applaud a DJ.”

MacDonald would bounce between clubs as a resident DJ, also playing venues like Sugars, 18 East, The Albany, and Wonder Bar.

Greg Howlett would soon become Stages’ main music man. This former resident DJ at Le Tube was known to play joyful, uplifting dance music, with a lean towards dancefloor classics and disco edits, like “Souvenirs” by Voyage and Yvonne Elliman’s “Love Pains.”

“Greg was our house DJ for at least five years,” enthuses Kliger. “Greg was the star. He had such a following, and an amazing ability to read the crowd and do it right. I trusted him 9,000 per cent.”

“I loved listening to Greg, and I try to emulate him to this day,” offers Grace. “He would play for hours, and you’d never know when one record was going into another. He was so smooth, and really worked at that. He constantly had a new set of stuff he’d play each night.”

DJ Greg Howlett. Photo courtesy of Andrée Emond.

Andrée Emond shares a favourite example of Howlett’s confidence behind the decks.

“I will never forget one evening with Greg. The crowd was particularly bored, so he turned off the turntable and stared at them. They stood there, shocked. Once the drone came to a complete stop, he played their favourite song of the day. Everyone went crazy and the rest of the night was amazing.”

Both Howlett and MacDonald were trendsetters, but took different paths as dance music began to splinter.

“The big ‘disco crash’ occurred around 1979,” Harris explains. “Dance music was fragmenting, and everyone was very confused as to where club music was going. It was the beginning of a new decade, new attitude. New wave was now cool, and disco was not. So the ‘cool’ Stages people followed the trend; my perception is they followed Wally, who really embraced the new sound as a fearless risk-taker. Greg did not follow the new sound, and would not—no way. He was going to stick to what he felt was ‘gay music.’ Greg stuck to his guns, and took a lot of shit and attitude from a lot of people.”

“Wally MacDonald was the only gay club DJ in town playing new dance music that had come out of post-punk or early electronic scenes,” confirms Pyle, author of Toronto punk–history book Trouble in the Camera Club.

“Some songs I distinctly remember being very excited to hear in a gay club were ‘Nowhere Girl’ by B-Movie, ‘I Travel’ by Simple Minds and ‘Numbers’ by Kraftwerk. ‘Numbers’ was always a very late-night track, with the breakdown at the end being used to shift the mood.”

“Stages was an amazing dance club because of the DJs, and when it came to mixing, no one was better than Wally,” enthuses Lena K, former bartender at restaurants like Le Pigale, Cornelius above Gasworks, and a regular at Stages for most of its existence, especially on the eclectic Sunday nights. “I still feel the electricity run through me when I think about Wally’s mixes.”

As the disco-vs.-new-wave battles played out on Stages’ dancefloor during the early ’80s, MacDonald was let go from the club, and then notably rehired in January of 1983.

DJ Wally MacDonald. Photo courtesy of Lorne Goldblum.

Stages had a devoted following. Like all the best nightclubs, it fostered both a feeling and a community.

“I knew what I wanted to see, and have people feel: happy, happy, happy,” says Kliger. “And they were. We had the tambourines, the fan dancers, the whole works going. I made the place and gave people somewhere to express themselves, but the crowd created it for themselves.

“I’m sure some of the drugs contributed to this”—poppers and MDA were the main substances of the day—”but there was a feeling of membership, camaraderie, friendship, love. We fed a feeling, and it worked.”

Pyle also fondly recalls the club’s festive vibe. “It was a very celebratory space. Everyone really got down. I recall men in skirts, cheerleader outfits, fan dancers. There was so much excitement and anticipation.”

Kliger tells the tale of an evening when uniforms were especially prominent: “There was a fetish party one night on Church Street, with everything: guys dressed up in police uniforms, there were bras and garter belts, transsexuals, you name it. We had very heavy theatre-type dry ice at Stages—we didn’t use the cheap smoke—and it creates a very heavy steam. We would pump that place so full of dry-ice smoke that you couldn’t see yourself, with gigantic fans that would suck the air out onto Yonge.

“This night was in January and, when I turned the fans on, some people on the street thought the building was on fire. Toronto Fire responded quickly, came running up the stairs, and I happened to be at the front door. I looked down the stairs and said to Bob, the bouncer, ‘Don’t charge them. They’ve got great outfits.’ I got pushed up against the wall with an axe by a fireman telling me to get out of the way, and then I realized my mistake. Greg, being as sharp as he was, put on the song ‘Fire in my Heart.’”

Lighting man McNicoll also recalls a strategic use of the dry ice machine.

“It wasn’t used all that much, because proper dry ice costs a lot. Back during the days of ‘It’s Raining Men,’ somebody decided to splurge. The dry ice came out over the dancefloor through dryer hoses and billowed down. As soon as it did, everybody opened umbrellas and started dancing around with them. Stages was one of those mad places where every weekend, something happened.”

Photo by Terry Robson, courtesy of Arnie Kliger.

Who else played/worked there: Paul Grace came onboard at Stages after a young Chris Sheppard had brought more new wave to Fridays and a stretch of Sundays.

“Fridays were fairly mixed, a bit trendy, and eventually became more alternative in music and everything else,” explains Kliger. “That’s where Chris came in, later. He ran the Friday switchover to alternative music and club kids in crazy outfits—’Rock Lobster’ and all that kind of stuff. I just didn’t understand it because I’m hardcore gay, but I learned.”

Kliger did understand the allure of late-night socializing, and was equally at home mingling with the owners of clubs including Le Tube and Twilight Zone, as well as TIFF (then still known as the Festival of Festivals) party planners. Stages, in fact, hosted some of the film fest’s earliest parties, with appearances from celebs like Tom Cruise, Peter O’Toole, Richard Chamberlain, and Kathleen Turner.

Tina Turner also paid the club a visit, as did longtime gay favourite Eartha Kitt.

“Eartha Kitt happened to be playing at the Royal York’s Imperial Room—it was at the time that ‘Where Is My Man?’ was big—and I did everything I could to get her up to Stages,” shares Kliger. “We sent flowers, notes, a bottle of scotch, and begged her to come up. We sent a limousine to the Royal York and, sure enough, she bit. Greg had the back-up tracks going and we had a microphone ready, even though she wasn’t engaged to perform. She loved it so much she grabbed the mic and did the song.”

Stages’ staff tended to be just as attractive as the celebs they served.

“The staff and family at Stages were incredible, along with being some of the beautiful men you ever saw,” says Emond, citing people like bartender/manager Andy Armstrong and cashier John Bannerman.

“It was a casting call,” agrees Kliger. “We wanted to have the best-looking people with their shirts off. The bartenders were more than bartenders; they were friendly, they were happy, and, in the middle of the night, if it got hot—and it would get really hot in there—we’d send them out on the dancefloor with trays of watermelon and cantaloupe, oranges, ice, popsicles and water. Clubs didn’t do that.”

Stages bartender Brent Storey, who would later be an integral staffer at gay bar Boots,  was also one of Toronto’s most avid of fan dancers.

“There were a lot of fan dancers at Stages,” says Grace. “When it was busy, they would dance around the edges and, as the night got later, and people started to leave, these guys would start taking over the dancefloor, until finally, the whole floor was full of fan players.”

The fan dancers were a key part of Stages’ core family, and certainly helped to establish the club as decidedly gay at a time when more sexually ambiguous alternative clubs, like Voodoo and Nuts & Bolts, appeared on the scene.

“There was no shortage of places to dance, but nothing could touch Stages—Stages was like finding Mecca,” says Lena K, who now works in the legal field, specializing in intellectual property law. “Although I had gone to other dance clubs, there was no other place where I felt as safe and blissfully free to just be me. I made real friends there, most of whom have been lost to AIDS, but a handful remain and are still friends over 30 years later. That club brought us together every weekend, and that’s some kind of special thing.”

Greg Howlett’s calling card. Courtesy of Andrée Emond.

What happened to it: By 1982, there was talk of GRID, a.k.a. gay-related immune deficiency, later to be known as AIDS. Many in the gay community began to die in this time of great uncertainty.

“The AIDS crisis was just beginning, and people were really afraid,” shares McNicoll, who would later work the lights at clubs including Boots and Chaps. “We were losing a lot of artists and friends, and nobody really knew what was going on, so there was a lot of fear. I think that really had a detrimental effect on club life as a whole. There was a tremendous loss.”

Both Greg Howlett (who would go on to heat dancefloors at clubs including Komrads and Chaps) and Wally MacDonald passed away from HIV-related complications in the 1990s.

“I made and lost many friends at Stages,” says Emond, who later worked the lights at both The Copa and The Diamond, and is now a web developer and teacher. “I still miss the wonderful people I met, and was honoured to play with during that special time. The memories are bittersweet.”

But Stages also closed because Kliger felt it was time.

“It started running out of steam,” he offers. “I felt that what could be done there had already been done, and I was out of themes and ideas. I wanted to take the Stages family out on a high note, so I made the decision that it was best to put a period at the end of a sentence.”

Stages held a final New Year’s Eve party on December 31, 1983 and closed in early 1984. Within weeks, Kliger was hired by the Chrysalis group to transform the former Jarvis Tavern into gay club Bar 101. (Years later, the same space would become Tazmanian Ballroom, home of the infamous Rock & Roll Fag Bar.) Kliger later managed venues including The Copa, Bemelman’s, and the Bellair Café before moving into the hotel business.

Barry Harris would follow Kliger to DJ at both Bar 101 and The Copa, before becoming a resident at Charles Khabouth’s Stilife. He later had a huge production and remix career as half of both Kon Kan and Thunderpuss. More recently, Harris has returned to his rock roots and is working on an as-yet unnamed project.

Paul Grace also became an in-demand producer/remixer, particularly as a member of Boomtang Boys. He then turned his talents to scoring for film and television, was a music consultant for the TV show Queer As Folk, and maintains a home studio.

Before all of this, Grace partnered with Brent Storey and David Strand to re-open the Stages space as Avalon in 1984. About a year later, the upstairs of 530 Yonge briefly reopened as Changes. Both it and The Parkside Tavern below closed in March of 1986 to make way for a Burger King. The building is now a Sobeys Express. [Addendum: the Sobey’s has since closed, with the location listed for retail opportunities.]

Thank you to interviewees Andrée Emond, Arnie Kliger, Barry Harris, Don Pyle, Lena K, Paul Grace, and Richard McNicoll, and to Carlos Mondesir, Eric Robertson, and James Vandervoort. Special mention to Lorne Goldblum for the DJ mixes and to the late Rick Bébout for his Promiscuous Affections documentation of gay Toronto social life.

The post Then & Now: Stages appeared first on Then and Now: Toronto Nightlife History.

Article originally published June 21, 2012 by The Grid online (TheGridTO.com).

In this edition of her nightlife-history series, Denise Benson takes us back to the after-hours nightclub that helped mobilize Toronto’s gay-rights movement in the 1980s.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Komrads, 1 Isabella St.

Years in operation: 1985-1991

History: In 1980s’ Toronto, street corners and dance clubs still served as essential meeting spots for gays and other marginalized communities. The stretch of Isabella closest to Yonge called out to many, especially after dark.

On the outer edges of the Church and Wellesley-centred gay village, the corner was close to popular homo haunts including Yonge Street’s St. Charles Tavern, Trax, and the Parkside Tavern, with gay dance club Stages above it. Nearby bathhouses were plentiful, Queen’s Park was still a major pick-up spot, and easy bar-hopping meant that gay men had lots of options even in those pre-Grindr days.

“The Yonge and Isabella area was really amazingly gay,” recalls event producer Maxwell Blandford, once a key figure in adventuresome Toronto clubs and now based in Miami. “Many bars, along with stores like Northbound Leather, were within a couple of blocks and infused thousands of gay people into that corridor.

“There were loads of transsexuals, rent boys and other sex workers, cross-dressers, goth kids, punk-rockers, and glam-rockers hanging out around House of Lords. There was loads of cruising all over that area. You could find anything anywhere and at any time.”

The upper level at 1 Isabella was a known hub. In the 1970s, it had housed discos including Mrs. Nights and Cheetah Club. Come the early ’80s, it was the original home of influential alternative spot Domino Klub. That club gave way to notoriously tough gay-and-straight dance club Oz, which boasted entrance hallways designed to look like yellow brick roads.

Alain Plamondon, who would become one of Toronto’s most beloved gay DJs, was a busboy at Oz. He tells the story of 1 Isabella’s transition into Komrads, a club he helped build and would go on to work at as busboy, server, bartender, lighting man, and, eventually, DJ.

Alain Plamondon (right) with friend. Photo courtesy of Plamondon.

“Basil Mangano was the owner of the space at 1 Isabella,” Plamondon begins in an email. “He hired John Burt to be a manager near the end of Oz’s existence. John was well-known in the community, and extremely active in gay politics. He convinced Basil to close down Oz to build a club that would bring class to the gay community.

“Komrads, with its shiny, stainless-steel dancefloor, hi-tech sound and lighting—including pink and purple neon lights—was a hit, and the talk of Toronto’s gay community when it opened in August of 1985.”

Komrads shiny dancefloor. Photo courtesy of Shawn Riker.

Why it was important: Open seven nights a week, with a café serving food from the afternoon onwards, Komrads was a safe and well-maintained club that cared about its gay clientele. The club boasted not only state-of-the-art sound, but also the largest dancefloor of any Toronto gay club at the time.

“John Burt was good at attracting crowds,” says George Fichna, one of Komrads’ longest-serving weekend doormen; he had also worked for landmark local gay bars Club Manatee and St. Charles’ Maygay room.

“John kept the place looking nice, with new carpets, paint, marble countertops on the bars, overhead TVs in the dining room, and so on.”

John Burt (left) with Komrads doorman David. Photo courtesy of Shawn Riker.

Partly as a result, Komrads often entertained crowds of 500 to 1,000 people, many of them spilling in from other bars after the 1 a.m. last call.

“For a while, Komrads was the only permanent after-hours club around,” Fichna explains. “In the early days, the bar closed at 1 a.m. and then served coffee, water, or soft drinks. Later, they served under the table.”

Whatever time the crowds arrived, Komrads was a key gathering spot for a community that had grown increasingly organized and politicized. The 1981 Toronto gay bathhouse raids marked a turning point in the community’s fight back against police harassment and other forms of discrimination.

Gregory Plytas (left) and friend in the stairwell. Photo courtesy of Plytas.

A gay and lesbian liberation movement swelled as queers across this country fought against censorship, worked to win key human rights (we were awarded provincial protection in 1986 when “sexual orientation” was added to the Ontario Human Rights Code as a prohibited ground for discrimination, with the federal equivalent granted only in 1996), and mobilized against the onslaught of HIV/AIDS as it took the lives of far too many friends, lovers, and talented people.

“We were fighting for our rights in the ’80s, and Komrads was the place to go to celebrate our political ‘wins,’ with John Burt at the helm,” Plamondon says. “We chose to celebrate life, and had a ‘We’re not going to take crap from anyone’ attitude. We celebrated and we had a political voice at Komrads.”

Komrads matches. Photo courtesy of Andrew Boyd.

At the time, gay and lesbian bars were an intrinsic part of our liberation movement. The dancefloor served as rallying point as much as it did a place to party. For a number of years, Komrads set the pace with its size and unequivocally gay programming.

In the 1980s, the music in gay bars was notably different than most straight dance spots. Whether playing disco, hi-NRG, new wave, underground house, or more commercial house, gay DJs leaned towards remixes, re-edits, and 12-inch extended versions of songs.

Good DJs break new ground, and Komrads’ star resident, Greg Howlett, was one of this city’s best. (Visit the Then & Now Mixcloud page to hear a number of live mixes by Howlett recorded at other venues.)

“Three or four months after Komrads opened, John hired Greg Howlett,” recalls Plamondon. “With Greg at the turntables, Komrads’ success was sealed. Greg played the best that dance music had to offer. He was brilliant.”

Dundas, Ontario native Howlett had played in clubs both straight and gay, including Le Tube, Mrs. Knights and Stages, and came to Komrads as an already-established trendsetter.

“Greg was a risk-taker, and often the first DJ to play songs,” recalls Vince Degiorgio, a good friend of Howlett’s who had DJed alongside him and is now involved in music publishing.

“Because of Greg, there’d be this stampede to stores like Starsound, J’s, and Disco Sound to get what he was playing. Numerous DJs would sit with notebooks, writing down what he played in order to copy what he was doing.

“Greg’s mixing was positively sublime and built a rush. He was a legitimate rock star long before DJs were allowed to be. And he was unique—not in a two-hour residency gig, but in a four-nights-a-week, never-let-you-go, I’m-gonna-peak-your-brains-out style.”

Howlett packed Komrads’ dancefloor during its first few years, but then left the club to work next door at equally popular gay bar Chaps (9 Isabella St., now a Rabba). Howlett played at Chaps until late into his fight against HIV/AIDS. He passed away in 1992, and is reported to have left Komrads in response to internal management struggles.

Gerry Nault (left) and Greg Howlett. Photo courtesy of Shawn Riker.

Plamondon tells me that John Burt resigned as manager after three years at Komrads.

“John, it was his baby, but politics came into play, and Basil and him parted ways in business. John left in the middle of Komrads’ success, and his leaving changed everything.” (Burt chose not to respond to questions about Komrads while Mangano could not be reached for comment.)

Following Howlett, a number of DJs stepped up to Komrads’ turntables at a time when competition was stiff—not only with Chaps next door, but also Club Colby’s at 5 St. Joseph St. and Boots & Buds at 592 Sherbourne.

Lighting man and Starsound Records’ employee Gerry Nault became the key Komrads resident until he too became too sick to DJ. After him, DJs including Carlos C, Kevin Laforme, and Allan Young played for years, but Komrads was equally popular for its live performances.

“Komrads was a dance club, yes, but it was always meant to showcase dance artists and female impersonators as well,” explains Plamondon.

Bronski Beat ticket courtesy of Andrew Boyd.

“Divine was featured twice, and was a huge cult hit both times. Many more would perform, like Sylvester, Thelma Houston, Loleatta Holloway, Bronski Beat, and Jennifer Holliday, from the original cast of Dreamgirls.

“Our most successful concert event was by Village People. Unlike the other acts, Village People were promoted on MuchMusic, and much to everyone’s surprise, 80 per cent of the crowd was straight. We gave local talent the spotlight as well; I have great memories of watching Eria Fachin perform her huge hit anthem “Savin’ Myself.””

Randy Cole as Tina Turner. Photo courtesy of Shawn Riker.

Komrads also featured some of this city’s greatest female impersonators, including Craig Russell, star of the film Outrageous!, and members of legendary drag troupe The Great Imposters such as Randy Cole, who frequently performed as Tina Turner.

Years later, professional female impersonator Stephanie Stephens, now known for her troupe The Imposters and for her own take on Tina Turner, would perform Thursday and Saturday late nights at Komrads. The show, named Hot Spot, also featured performers including Dale Barnett (The Great Imposters), Jackae Baker, and Komrads’ doorman Tony Brown, who appeared on stage as Toni.

Poster courtesy of Stephanie Stephens.

“I will always remember Toni Brown,” says Stephens. “She was the head doorman and wore short spandex pants, and a weightlifting belt around her tiny waist. Toni was eight feet tall, with a James Brown perm. We were friends, and she used to make me laugh, asking people for ID or asking a drunken queen to leave the club, calling them ‘Mary.’

“We had the only late-night show and after-hours crowd, and the place was packed,” Stephens tells me. “It was the spot for drag shows and good DJs. Komrads was lively and welcoming, with little attitude. There was a real sense of community; people seemed to care about what was happening around them.”

Stephanie Stephens (left) with Komrads doorman Omar. Photo courtesy of Stephens.

With its gender inclusive door policy—Komrads was one of the only gay men’s clubs of the time that welcomed women, both gay and straight—late nights, and capacity crowds, the club attracted audiences who mixed more comfortably some evenings than others.

Doorman Fichna recounts a favourite memory.

“I remember a night when a group of girls came in with some straight young men, and we had to remind them that they were in a predominately gay place so if they got a pinch or a grope, they should let it pass. If they started a fight, they’d get thrown out.

“Two of the guys went to the washroom, and then behind them a transsexual. I had a feeling so I stood in the can and watched. The two young men were apart with a urinal in between them, and the [trans woman] stood in front of it, hiked up her dress, and proceeded to urinate. The two boys finished up quick, and got the hell out of there. When she came out I asked, ‘You just couldn’t just use the toilet stall like a lady, could you?’ She replied, ‘It was more fun that way.’ I agreed.”

Packed dancefloors. Photos courtesy of Shawn Riker.

Who else played/worked there: Bars often rise or fall based on the word-of-mouth created by their staff. Komrads employed dozens of popular young men, with bar staff including Todd Gibbons, Tom Paradis, Bradford Paolini, and Roger Reynolds mentioned frequently, along with doorman Omar and a beloved manager named Beatrice.

Popular gay producer/DJ Shawn Riker was a key Komrads employee—maintaining the sound, doing lights, acting as a manager and more—long before he would co-found current gay hotspot FLY Nightclub.

Some of today’s best-known local gay DJs—including Plamondon, Mark Falco, and Cory Activate—DJed at Komrads during its final years.

DJ Scott Cairns became Komrads’ Saturday late-night resident at the close of the 1980s, and recalls playing a mix of underground and crossover house along with more commercial sounds.

“When I first started there, Komrads was basically just another gay dance club, except it stayed open late,” says Cairns. “Because of this, it cleaned up.”

Jackae Baker (right) with Allan Tam on Halloween, 1990. Photo courtesy of Tam.

By 1990, however, this was no longer the case. Komrads had lost much of its crowd. Gay men had flocked to after-hours dance clubs like Twilight Zone, and went on to frequent weekly events hosted at mixed clubs like The Diamond, Boom Boom Room, and Tazmanian Ballroom.

Komrads’ owner Basil Mangano approached innovative promoter Maxwell Blandford, who’d been the force behind Tazmanian Ballroom’s successful Rock & Roll Fag Bar weekly, in 1990.

“Basil asked me to take Komrads over and try to revive the venue,” says Blandford.

He agreed on the condition that Mangano would renovate and allow Blandford to reinvent the space. Blandford created a club-within-a-club as he developed a front-room pub dubbed The Amazon Queen.

“We bought the inside of a 1940s gentleman’s club that I found in the Beaches, and installed it,” he says. “We opened with a Madonna Truth or Dare premiere party benefiting the Toronto PWA Foundation, and hosted a voguing ball with Willi Ninja.”

The Amazon Queen also featured Vancouver singer Naomi McLeod (who’d sung with Sarah McLachlan and Skinny Puppy) performing under the persona of Dolly Kelekatrone, and a selection of tunes that ranged “from Nina Simone to Jimi Hendrix.”

Blandford also hired DJs including Cairns, Falco, and Mark Oliver to play “socially relevant house music” in the club’s main dance club area.

“By the time of Amazon Queen, all bets were off,” Cairns recalls. “There was a new attitude and all that high-energy cha-cha music was pretty much abandoned.

“We all bonded over Warp Records, and the label’s output of records like LFO, Tricky Disco, and Sweet Exorcist’s ‘Testone,’” adds Cairns, who would later make his name at clubs including Chaps, The Phoenix and JOY.

“This UK bleep techno, along with deeper house sounds, were finally breaking into the more mainstream clubs. Amazon Queen and Max brought in a cooler crowd, although that period was more sparse than in the club’s heyday.”

Parties with titles like Fruit Machine and Electric Ass may have brought in trendier gays and celebrities including Boy George, Deee-Lite, George Michael, Depeche Mode, and Adeva, but Blandford couldn’t revive a done deal.

“Our biggest attraction was probably that we served liquor after-hours like a booze can, and never seemed to have any issues,” Blandford admits. “I was told that the reason we were able to remain open was because there was a serial killer targeting gay people on the loose, and the police believed that he was hanging out in Komrads so, by allowing us to stay open, they were able to get better leads. There were always loads of cops in Komrads after hours, and we were never shut down or given a ticket so the story made sense.”

People often gathered on the street outside of Komrads. Photo courtesy of Shawn Riker.

What happened to it: According to Plamondon, Komrads closed in the spring of 1991.

“Komrads closed when Basil sold to the people from Colby’s,” adds Blandford; “Basil gave no notice whatsoever. We just showed up one day and the doors were locked.”

By summer, 1 Isabella St. had re-opened as Bar 1.

“I was fired and later rehired,” recalls doorman Fichna. “When I came back, it was Bar 1, and Basil had his fingers in it again.”

Some of Komrads’ later DJs, including Falco, Cory Activate, and Plamondon—now at The Barn and DJ of the 13-year-strong Retro Drama Sundays at Zipperz/Cellblock—also played at Bar 1. It closed in 1995.

1 Isabella would later host clubs with names like Generations, Radius, and Spincatz, but will long be remembered as Komrads.

“I think Komrads employed a lot of flamboyant gay people who would have had a tough time being themselves working in other venues,” summarizes Blandford. “The volume of clientele that Komrads and the other clubs produced allowed gays to have a serious physical presence, and empowered gay people to rally against homophobia and create community spirit though those dark times.

“Komrads was the anchor of that corner and, as it died, sadly much of the gay presence at that corner ended.”

Today, the site is home of Yonge Street Fitness. [Addendum: Yonge Street Fitness closed doors in December 2013. The space remains vacant.]

Thank you to all who participated, with a special nod to the very helpful Alain Plamondon. Thanks also to Shawn Riker, John Wulff, Gregory Plytas, Allan Tam, Andrew Boyd and the members of Facebook group Komrads Nightclub Survivors.

Late gay activist Rick Bébout provided invaluable history through his important online memoirs, Promiscuous Affections: A Life in the Bar, 1969-2000.

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