The original Then & Now: Twilight Zone article was published October 5, 2011 and was second in the web series originally developed for The GridTO.com. As the Then & Now series expanded in reach, so too did the length of each story and number of participants who contributed to each. This expanded history of the Zone was written in March 2015, and was exclusively available in the Then & Now book until this time.

Trailblazing 1980s nightclub Twilight Zone brought diverse crowds and sounds to Toronto’s Entertainment District long before such a designation even existed. Those who were there lovingly explore its lasting legacy.

By: DENISE BENSON

Club: Twilight Zone, 185 Richmond Street W.

Years in operation: 1980 – 1989

History: Long before the Entertainment District was awash in condos, clubs, and restaurants—back when the area was still largely non-residential and known as the garment district—four brothers opened a venue that ultimately influenced the neighbourhood’s development.

Tony, Albert, David, and Michael Assoon forever altered Toronto’s dance club nightscape with their Twilight Zone, but that venue’s reach was rooted in earlier efforts. The Assoon family moved from New York to Toronto in the 1970s. During their high school years in Scarborough, the music-savvy siblings produced events in school spaces.

“That was back in the day, when Soul Train was on, and we wanted to have something that was more in our culture,” describes Tony Assoon. “We decided to have the first soul party ever in Toronto. It was funk music, a little bit of disco, and so forth. That’s how we started.”

Assoon says they produced a few successful parties, and the idea spread to other high schools before the brothers all graduated. Tony moved back to New York during the height of the disco days.

“I was a club hound,” he laughs during our lengthy conversation. “I went to all kinds of places, like the Commodore Hotel, Night Owl, The Great Gatsby, Paradise Garage, The Loft, and Milky Way.

“One of the clubs that I hung out at a lot, that really influenced me, was called Melons. It was on the top floor of a loft and was a roller skating rink in the daytime. A legendary DJ called Tee Scott played there. Later, Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles also played.”

Assoon brought his knowledge and love of New York clubs, style, and music with him when his parents requested that he return to Toronto. He mentions checking our ’70s disco hotspots like Heavens, Checkers, and Mrs. Nights, but landing a job at the Yonge and Bloor Le Chateau clothing store, conveniently located next to a modeling agency, connected him with a different crowd.

“We all loved fashion,” says Tony. “At that time, the whole new wave look was in so we’d dress freaky.”

The Assoons began to do parties at places like The Ports, on Yonge near Summerhill, and in a building on Sherbourne.

“They were great promoters,” says friend Charmaine Gooden of the brothers. She first met them at The Ports, then spent lots of time listening to music with the Assoons and other friends, and attended their early events.

“They started renting rec rooms in apartment buildings to have parties. These were well attended by a diverse, mixed-up crowd—older, younger, money, and fashion. Part of the fun was dressing up. [People came] from Forest Hill, Regent Park, the suburbs, and Scar- borough, so it was varied.”

Through the apartment parties, the Assoons built a solid following and set out to find larger, more secluded spaces.

“We first experimented at 666 King West in September of 1979,” recalls Albert Assoon. “We had to move from there quickly because dust started pouring out of the ceiling from the vibration of the bass. We went on the prowl and eventually wound up at 185 Richmond West. We sought these locations because they were in areas where we wouldn’t get noise complaints or disturb residents.”

“It was desolate,” says Tony of the Richmond and Simcoe area where the Assoons, along with close friends Bromely Vassell and Luis Collaco, launched the Twilight Zone in January of 1980. “It was just industry and factory buildings. Everyone thought we were kind of crazy for moving there, and into a warehouse, but I was used to seeing things like that in New York, so it didn’t seem to be a big deal.”

Soon, crowds would come from far and wide to attend this magical late-night place where the mix of people was as eclectic as the music they were treated to.

David Assoon at the Zone entry. Photo by Theodora Kali.

Why it was important: Twilight Zone was an unlicensed after-hours club where the Assoons could let their imaginations run free. The 8,000-square-foot space held more than 1,000 people. It was a rectangular room with a huge wooden dance floor, juice bar, unisex washrooms, and a side lounge for chilling. Tall dark pillars lined the main space.

“You went up three flights of narrow, rickety wooden stairs to the ticket booth and then into a massive room, which was all black,” describes Gooden. “Everything was black. Period. I remember painting a woman morphing into a stiletto on the wall in the lounge area; the whole space was a kind of canvas for creatives. Those guys would let you try out your ideas.”

Twilight Zone was a hub for creative people and colliding influences. Where most other dance clubs tended to be known for a particular sound, the Zone embraced the electrifying collage that was the 1980s. Local and international DJs played disco, funk, punk, electro, hip-hop, new wave, house, and more over the years. There was very little division between sounds that emerged from distinctly different undergrounds.

“You could be playing house and drop in a new wave song; people were right into it,” reminds Tony Assoon. “It almost all started during the same era.”

Twilight Zone regulars dancing. Still from Back to the Zone, courtesy of Colm Hogan.

At Twilight Zone, it could all be heard through a stunning soundsystem. From the club’s start, sound was important. A system rented from Sunshine Sound kicked things off nicely, but it was in the Zone’s second year that a state-of-the-art soundsystem designed by New York’s Richard Long was installed.

“I was used to hearing a certain kind of sound in New York,” explains Tony Assoon of the impetus. “The thing that couldn’t be reproduced was a certain kind of bass. I took my brothers to Paradise Garage, and my brother Michael partied with me a lot at Melons. I told them, ‘Remember that soundsystem? I know the guy and want to put the same system in here.’ They told me to get a price; I think it was about $100,000 U.S. It was a lot of money. At first my brothers said, ‘No, it’s too much,’ but I insisted. We had to close the club for two weeks, and it took a lot of work. We had to spray and insulate the club, and then they got all the speakers and put everything in.

“When we re-opened, it was slow. All the guys looked at me, like, ‘You and your big ideas.’ I said, ‘Give it some time.’ The first group of people came in, heard the system, and didn’t know what to think. The next week, the crowd doubled because everyone started buzzing about the sound. After that, it was all history. People couldn’t believe what they were hearing.”

“When they put in the Richard Long system, the Zone changed forever,” states DJ Dave Campbell, a Zone regular from the time he was a teen. “The bass could regulate your heartbeat, and because the floor was wood, you couldn’t help but dance.

“You could hear the sound from University and Richmond,” Campbell adds. “People would ask, ‘Where is Twilight located?’ I would tell them, ‘Head west of University on Richmond, look for the amber flashing light, and listen.’”

“The sound was like a dream,” agrees Gooden. “Once you’ve listened to music on those amazing speakers, no one can fool you.”

Sound designer Richard Long (left) with associate Roger Goodman. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

At its core, Twilight Zone was about the music played through that bumping system by its adventurous resident DJs. Weekend nights were divergent yet complementary.

Don Cochrane held down Fridays for most of the Zone’s existence. He first attended the club just weeks after it had opened. Cochrane and a large group of friends “outnumbered the people there” but enjoyed the funky grooves of DJ Albert Assoon. Cochrane and Assoon talked tunes.

“We agreed to meet mid-week for him to hear my UK dance sounds,” says Scottish-born Cochrane. “He and his brothers listened. I got an immediate offer to play the following Friday.”

UK Dance Floor ran Fridays from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. or later, with Cochrane blending new wave and other dancefloor-friendly sounds then-bubbling in the UK with funk, Chicago house, Italo house, German industrial, world beat, and “wild cards.”

Cochrane’s playlist of anthems included the likes of Endgames “First Last for Everything,” Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill,” Bobby Konders “House Rhythms,” Blondie “Rapture,” Bohannan “Let’s Start the Dance,” Jimmy Bo Horne “Spank,” Rocker’s Revenge “Walking on Sunshine,” A Guy Called Gerald “Voodoo Ray,” Liquid Liquid “Cavern,” and “anything James Brown, George Clinton, or Funkadelic.”

He also, of course, featured a hefty dose of UK acts like The Smiths, New Order, Depeche Mode, Talk Talk, Human League, and Bronski Beat, but broke ground when he played them.

“They were ‘retail’ hits, but we had them first—by months, sometimes even a year—as I had them imported,” Cochrane emphasizes. “I did the same for the German industrial dance bands such as Nitzer Ebb. CFNY would come to the booth and monitor my playlist. I got a great kick out of breaking new records—and even sounds.”

“Fridays were the big alternative dance night,” confirms Albert Assoon. “UK Dance Floor featured the new wave you would hear on CFNY, however you heard it first at Twilight Zone. Don was pretty ahead of the music trends abroad and delivered on the dance floor. He would also come party on Saturdays and pick songs he’d then incorporate, giving Fridays more edge than anywhere!

“On Saturdays, the combination of myself and brother Tony was also pretty awesome,” Albert states. “Tony, who had returned to NYC as a teen, came back and would school us all on underground disco. He knew his music and screaming divas very well, and mesmerized the dancefloor with a cappellas on top of stuff. I observed Tony and Don, and came up with my own style, playing mostly funk, freestyle, a bit of new wave, and more.”

Tony mentions a few of his Saturday Zone classics, including D-Train “You’re the One For Me,” First Choice featuring Rochelle Fleming “Let No Man Put Asunder,” and Fonda Rae “Touch Me,” but also makes clear that reggae, early hip-hop, and all sorts of sounds were in the mix.

“We loved playing it all,” Tony emphasizes. “Human League, Thompson Twins, and all the other English groups you could think of were a given. You weren’t a DJ unless you played all of those.”

“I loved it when Albert or Tony would rush up to the booth on Fridays and say, ‘What the fuck is that?’” says Cochrane of the musical interplay. “I would do the same on Saturdays. It was such a mutually beneficial environment that manifested a unique global sound on both nights.

“The Assoons were bold, true to their vision, honest, and pioneers,” he praises. “They were a tight family, and a family who embraced me. Also, [Tony and Albert were] two brilliant DJs.”

Thanks to the Assoons’ vision, the Zone is fondly remembered as Toronto’s first home of garage and house, especially as the music’s bricklayers became imported guests.

David Morales (L) and Tony Assoon in the Zone DJ booth. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

David Morales (L) and Dave Del Du Valle a.k.a. David Delvalle. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

“Twilight Zone started off the tradition of bringing international DJs on Saturdays, beginning with DJ Kenny Carpenter, David Morales, Frankie Knuckles, Dave ‘Madness’ Du Valle—all from NYC—and Jay Armstrong from Ministry in the UK,” says Albert. “All the DJs offered a different sound and melted the crowd.”

These connections were largely fostered as Tony Assoon bounced back to New York often to buy music, go to clubs, and hear DJs.

“I was always the type of guy that if I heard a DJ and they sounded good, I’d say, ‘Hey, how would you like to play?’ In those days, DJs were hungry. They would jump to come to Canada.”

Kenny Carpenter was one of the first booked, followed by DJ/producer Johnny Dynell of NYC clubs like Danceteria, The Roxy, and Save the Robots. Dynell suggested the Assoons book a then-up-and-comer named David Morales, which led to repeat visits by the Def Mix master. Morales and Du Valle were frequent guests, sometimes even spinning together, as was Frankie Knuckles. Detroit’s Derrick May and Alton Miller often made the drive to party at the Zone, and both played on occasion.

“Derrick May played a couple of times, but he was a little too advanced,” recalls Tony. “Derrick was playing and making techno long before people knew what techno was.”

Without a doubt, the music heard at Twilight Zone influenced a generation of Toronto house DJs and producers, not to mention a whole host of warehouse party promoters. People like Aki Abe, Dino & Terry, Mitch Winthrop, Yogi Patel, and Nick Holder were regulars.

“Nick lived by the DJ booth,” says Tony of Holder, one of Toronto’s global house ambassadors. “The Zone was a big influence on him because he saw David Morales, Frankie Knuckles, and so on. I think he played a couple of times. Dave Campbell also got put on every now and then.”

Campbell may have DJed at the Zone in the club’s later years, but it took some doing for him and a group of high school friends to pass through its doors. Saturday nights were so busy that staff was selective.

“We were turned away the first few times we attempted to get into the club,” Campbell shares. “We didn’t quite meet the standards of Saturday’s cool, fashion-conscious clientele, so we decided to go on a Friday, as they weren’t as strict at the door. At the time, I was into new wave music and loved CFNY. Some of the music played on Fridays would cross over to Saturdays, like Yazoo, Fad Gadget, Yello, and other tracks, along with the pre-house anthems. We got to know some of the staff, like Bromely at the door, and were finally able to get in on a Saturday.”

Flash-forward a few years, and Campbell had moved downtown, begun to DJ, and was invited to fill in for Tony on occasion.

“The first Saturday night I played, I was very nervous, but it turned out to be one of the most amazing nights of my DJing career. It was surreal playing on that system. It had three turntables, a pitchable cassette player, and a reel-to-reel. When Frankie Knuckles played, he used the reel player to blend in his own special mixes of stuff he produced, like his mix of Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody.’ David Morales used it to play his mix of Whitney Houston’s ‘Love Will Save The Day.’ Dave Du Valle seamlessly worked all three decks at once. He was amazing.

“But what made the Zone so amazing to me, besides the music, was the eclectic mix of people, with white, black, gay, and straight all partying in one space,” says Campbell. “It was like nothing I had experienced before, including the unisex bathroom.”

Twilight Zone was the place to be, with large, diverse, and creative crowds dancing ’til dawn week after week.

Gooden, who attended regularly for most of the club’s nine-year history (“Always from after 2 a.m. ’til close”), encapsulates the experience. “It was the kind of place that was so overwhelming, a kind of free style, with people dancing all over the place. It gave waspy, stuffy, uptight Torontonians a release valve where people could just be bohemian and extravagant.

“The Zone was a mix of black, white, Asian, old, young, hipster, fashion-trendy, new wavers, break dancers, young punks, skinheads, and Scarborough secretaries in their outfits. You had the Scarborough blacks, Charles and Church Street gays, Queen West alternatives, and people from Whitby to Etobicoke. Those years at the Twilight Zone were like a cauldron with all the people who got mashed together.”

“It was a weird era when everyone got along,” comments Tony. “All the people who listened to house music started showing up on the new wave nights, so you’d see somebody in a suit dancing next to somebody with a Mohawk or somebody who was a skinhead. Half of those kids didn’t even know why they were wearing Nazi flags in the back. They’d be dancing with everybody; if they were that prejudiced, they wouldn’t have been there, dancing beside somebody black or somebody Jewish or gay. Everything was more for fashion than it was for a reason.”

“It was unique and without aggro,” agrees Cochrane; “They came for the music.” This was also true on Pariah Wednesdays, which ran in the early through mid-’80s.

“Wednesdays were more underground,” describes Tony; “Pariah catered to the more punk kind of crowd.”

Pariah had its roots in the downtown arts and music scene. Toronto club veteran Lynn McNeil had launched the night with DJ Siobhan O’Flynn at Club Kongos (later Club Focus) on Hagerman Street. The two met when O’Flynn DJed in The Rivoli’s back room for L Squared, an influential event promoted by The Katherine with DJs Richard Vermeulen and Pam Barnes. (“To my knowledge, Pam was the first woman DJ in Toronto, and I was the second,” says O’Flynn.)

After about a year at Kongos, Pariah moved to Wednesdays at Twilight Zone, with O’Flynn joined by DJ Stephen Scott.

“Coming out of Hagerman, the music at Pariah was a mix of punk, disco, old funk, and the start of the early ’80s Brit scene,” she describes. “We played The Fall, Wire, early Stone Roses, and American punk and post punk, like Television.

“Pariah would have been the first place I played Sisters of Mercy ‘Gimme Shelter.’ I still re- member that song on that soundsystem was damn impressive. It was just so immersive to experience vinyl records played on such a stupendous soundsystem. You just felt it. Being able to listen to PIL, Joy Division, and the big orchestral Sisters of Mercy sound in a room with perfectly EQ’d sound was incredible.”

Hundreds came out between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. each Wednesday. “You had to be pretty committed,” comments O’Flynn; “You weren’t holding down a job that you had to be at at nine in the morning. Pariah started with a very strong foot in the emerging counter-culture punk scene. There was also a whole group of underage alternative school kids. The club scene or bar scene was just starting to take off, so we’d get that after-hours crowd, and Goths.

“Broadly, it was hungry alternative music fans, which is why people were so open to really diverse genres of music. I know that a lot of people came to the club specifically to be introduced to new music. Both Stephen and I were avid consumers of tracking what was new, reading NME [New Musical Express], and buying imports.”

In addition, O’Flynn redecorated Twilight Zone’s interior every few months (“I’d source out non-flammable materials that you could have in environments where people were behaving chaotically”), and booked in local indie bands of the time, like Change of Heart and Groovy Religion.

“There really weren’t that many places you could go out and hear the music we featured,” recalls O’Flynn. “For the Assoons to let us have our night in their club was always kind of amazing.”

Twilight Zone interior. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

Who else played/worked there: “I love that for a lot of high school kids, the Zone was their first memory of a club,” says Tony. “We’d open up early for them, and then close. They’d want to stay, but we had to say, ‘No, you’re not 16.’ We were all-ages, but you had to be 16 to stay after hours.”

One night that stands out for its early-evening crowds was when the Assoons brought New York’s Dynamic Breakdancers in for a show.

“That was around the time that Herbie Hancock came out with ‘Rockit’,” Tony recollects. “We packed that club from six in the evening until 1 a.m.. They did maybe four shows. People just kept coming; they wanted to see what this breakdancing was all about.”

Further proving the brothers had their fingers on the pulse of multiple musical movements, the Zone also featured performances by artists as diverse as D-Train, Divine, Sharon Redd, Joycelyn Brown, Jermaine Stewart, Prince Charles, Anne Clark, The Spoons, and The System.

“One year, we had an anniversary party without any acts booked,” adds Tony. “I happened to see Eartha Kitt crossing the street and called out, ‘Eartha Kitt?’ She said, ‘That’s me.’ I said, ‘I would love for you to come and sing. We have no act tonight. Tell me what you want, and we’ll work something out.’ Her response was, ‘I want two things: a cold bottle of champagne and a champagne glass.’ She came on stage, sang ‘Where Is My Man,’ and had so much class. Amazing.”

Fashion Show at Twilight Zone. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

Albert recalls a visit by a certain New York hip-hop trio. “We had the Beastie Boys in. They went on a rampage and graffitied the club. We had just sanded the area and it wasn’t painted, so we decided to leave it as part of the decor.”

O’Flynn also remembers that eve, and laughs as she shares an anecdote. “It was probably 1982 and the Beastie Boys were at the club. They wanted to spin, and I said no. I kicked them out of the DJ booth. To this day, I can’t believe I did that.” (Post Pariah, she went on to play plenty of speaks and clubs, including Domino, Dance Cave, RPM, Nuts & Bolts, the Bovine, Phoenix, and Left Bank. O’Flynn is now a professor and consultant who teaches digital media at the University of Toronto.)

A variety of other DJs spent time in Twilight Zone’s DJ booth over the years.

“The Zone’s music was unique,” summarizes DJ and radio producer Scot Turner, who went by Skot during his eight years as a programmer and host at pioneering alternative radio station CFNY 102.1FM. He went to the Zone often enough to appreciate its musical mix, and to support it with on-air mentions.

“Their reputation was for house music, but also for their openness to alternative, which they were not afraid to embrace and showcase. Anyone with a love of dance music and vibe was welcome.”

Turner, in fact, DJed a Thursday night called Swoon for a short stretch. “The music format was intentionally non-bass and beat, with lots of jangly guitar. It was art rock and pop—The Smiths, Cure, REM, Violent Femmes, Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole, and the like.“

Skot / Scot Turner at Twilight Zone. Photo courtesy of him.

Turner also DJed at venues like Club Z, Club Focus, Empire Dancebar, RPM, and Joker over the years, and would go on to help launch Energy 108 (“The first true all-dance music station in North America”). He appreciated Twilight Zone for many reasons.

“It was bare bones, but the soundsystem was first rate. It was what proper club sound should be: very loud, without hurting your ears, and with bass that you feel in your chest. It was not licensed, so the music came first. Without the distractions of alcohol and ‘picking up,’ it attracted a more purist music crowd. (Turner is now Brand Director for two Kitchener radio stations and contributes to The Spirit Of Radio web page at Edge.ca.)

There were also attempts made to have a dedicated gay Sunday, with DJs such as Barry Harris, Paul Grace, and Stages’ resident Greg Howlett. Tony admits it never took off, and the reason he provides is a reminder of the division that existed even in more tolerant and mixed spaces.

“When AIDS happened, that made a huge difference in who would go where. People started thinking in stereotypes, and stuff like, ‘If I touch somebody gay, I’m going to get AIDS.’ People could be very discriminatory. Meanwhile, I was still going to gay bars, trying to book DJs. I went to a gay club—The Roxy—to book Frankie Knuckles. I had so many friends who were gay that I didn’t pay that kind of stuff attention. I really wanted that crowd to be part of my crowd. Nobody enjoys music more than a gay crowd; those were the guys who brought satisfaction to my turntables.”

While the Sundays never came together, there’s no question that communities did on other nights at the Zone. Throughout the club’s history, artists, performers, and the fashion-forward were a part of its core crowd. Actors and hockey players were also in the mix.

“Patrick Cox, the designer, came there a lot,” says Tony. “So did Wayne Gretzky, Mario Van Peebles, and Grandmaster Flash.”

“At The Twilight Zone, you had Kenneth Cole, Suzanne Boyd, Michael Griffiths, the Soho designers, Dean and Dan of Dsquared, and other local artists who were regulars,” adds Albert. “Many greats met up and fully expressed themselves with their look and attitudes!”

The highly fashionable Charmaine Gooden also mentions many fellow regulars. “Donna Boyd was a presence; when she danced, it was like there was a spotlight on her. She held her body, singing, acting, and living out the song. She was just so glamorous and had a smouldering personality. We gave some of our favourite regulars nicknames: There was Richard ‘National Ballet,’ Suzie Horton was ‘Jacket and Panty Hose,’ Tony and Basil Young were like the Nicholas Brothers. Ronald Holmes, who worked the bar, was from New York and a one-man dance squad. People gathered around him to learn his particular style.

“Some people never went to church, but they were at the Zone every Sunday morning,” elucidates Gooden. “For some, it was a spiritual experience. The music on Saturday was also very based in gospel.”

Fashion Show at Twilight Zone. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

Zone regulars at a costume party. Photo courtesy of Albert Assoon.

The aforementioned Tony Young, later known as MuchMusic host Master T, was frequently found on the dance floor, as was Michele Geister, who co-founded and produced MuchMusic’s RapCity program. Photographer Michael Chambers was another regular, as was Tom Davis, who later booked the Cameron House and now owns The Stockyards restaurant. Others mentioned by interviewees include Lyndon Hector; Norbert Ricafort; Ford Medina; Marla Rotenberg; makeup artist Danny Morrow; clothing designer Ian Hylton; Raymond Perkins, who ran The Dub Club at the time and went on to work as Director of Culture at Roots; and Aaron Serruya, who produced his first party at Twilight Zone and is now co-owner of both Yogen Früz and Red Nightclub. Darryl Fine, now co-owner of the Bovine, was a regular who sometimes tended bar.

There were a lot of dedicated staffers. Some include original Zone investors Luis Collaco and Bromley Vassell, who went on to do lights and door, respectively. Gerald Ash and Lino Santos were core bussers for years, while Chris Arthur worked the door and more. Dave Campbell also mentions host Ted Aman, and Lisa McCleary, who worked in the Night Gallery, below Twilight Zone.

“We took over space on the ground floor and opened a café called Night Gallery in 1984,” explains Albert. “We offered a free buffet with the $10 admission, and it was generous. I swear some people came just to eat.”

The Assoons’ father was the main Night Gallery chef. Sometimes there was music in that space as well.

“Twilight Zone was my first official club gig,” says Derek Perkins, who took over Fridays after Don Cochrane left to pursue his career at Ogilvy One in 1987 (Cochrane shares that he went on to launch the Air Miles program and now works in the airline industry).

Perkins “started playing alt and classic rock downstairs in the Night Gallery. At that time, there was no alt format on any nights upstairs. Within two to three weeks, the room reached capacity and the Assoons gave me Friday night in the Zone.”

Other DJs who played occasional Fridays included Larry St. Aubin (aka Larry Saint), Ivan Palmer, Michael X, Avery Tanner, and James Stewart, but Perkins was the main resident. Fridays became known as The Darkside. Perkins also came to play on Wednesdays.

“Prior to working there, I was a huge fan of Pariah and of DJ Siobhan,” he credits. “She was a huge influence on the style I later adopted, mixing classic rock and funk with alternative.”

He namedrops personal anthems by the likes of Patti Smith, Aerosmith, Love and Rockets, Felt, and The Demics, but he also “included artists such as Boney M, Blondie, Man Parrish, Grandmaster Flash, George Kranz, and other beat-centric stuff so some of the dance crowd would stay. They mixed in pretty well with the freakier late-nighters.”

Perkins also shares a vivid, sensorial memory.

“There was a smell like no other place I’ve ever encountered. The best I can figure is that it was a mix of French Formula hairspray, cologne, perfume, hashish, coco puffs, coconut fog fluid, stale booze, and bathroom odour. It was an oddly intoxicating smell.”

He was the last alt DJ to play at the Zone and was there until the club’s demise.

“The crowds would go up and down as more competition came to the area, but there were almost always enough people to make it viable,” says Perkins, who went on to play clubs including Nuts & Bolts, Freak Show, Empire, The Copa, Whiskey Saigon, Klub Max, and Zoo Bar. (He then ran creative departments for multiple radio stations, and now markets luxury real estate.)

What happened to it: “Near the end of the Zone’s run, the crowd had become younger,” says Dave Campbell. “It seemed that the sanctuary had changed. There was no more Celestial Choir ‘Stand On The Word’ or Lonnie Liston Smith ‘Expansions’ played as the Sunday morning sunlight came through the window. We had lost our church.” (Campbell went on to play a range of clubs, including The Copa, The Diamond, and Roxy Blu. He now runs his own DJing service, is the Friday resident at The Citizen on King West, and plays parties including What It Is! and Twilight Zone reunions.)

The Zone’s crowds may have shifted in its final years, but they still filled the club. The venue closed in early 1989 because the Assoons’ lease had expired and the building’s owner sold the property. It became a parking lot.

“We would have bought the building,” says Albert; “However, despite our successes, the banks would never finance us with anything—except the one time my father put up his house for us to buy Twilight Zone’s soundsystem. We had to sign a waiver where our unborn children would have to pay if we defaulted. That loan was paid on time and in full, but they would not agree with our vision.”

Twilight Zone came to a close soon after a February party that featured David Morales. People still speak of the club—and the communities it brought together—with deep appreciation.

“The Zone was like a club in the real sense; everybody felt they were part of the club,” says Gooden. “When you saw an ex-Zoner elsewhere, you had a connection. To this day, Zoners are still a sub culture.” (She is now a magazine editor and Professor in the School of Fashion at both Ryerson University and Seneca College.)

The Assoons—also the visionaries who, in 1984, thought to open Fresh Restaurant and Nightclub at 132 Queens Quay E., which was ousted a year later to make way for RPM (The Guvernment later held the address)—went on to open Gotham City Bar and Grill at 81 Bloor St. E. in 1990. Rent was too high for them to make a long term go of it.

Albert and Michael Assoon went on to be deeply involved in late ’90s house haven The Living Room, while Tony moved back to NYC, where he continues to enjoy clubs and music, and works for New York Life. Albert, Michael, and David Assoon now own versatile event space Remix Lounge at 1305 Dundas West.

After more than 20 years of existence as a parking lot, the ground where Twilight Zone once stood has been swallowed into the 199 Richmond West address of the Studio on Richmond condo build. Filmmaker Colm Hogan is at work on Back 2 The Zone, a detailed documentary about the club and its widespread influence.

Thank you to participants: Albert Assoon, Charmaine E. Gooden, Dave Campbell, Derek Perkins, Don Cochrane, Scot Turner, Siobhan O’Flynn, and Tony Assoon, as well as to Colm Hogan, Darryl Fine, and Theodora Kali.

The post Then & Now: TWILIGHT ZONE (extended mix) appeared first on Then and Now: Toronto Nightlife History.

Article originally published September 17, 2013 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

One of the largest and longest-lasting gay dance clubs in Toronto, this Sherbourne Street super-club went through a number of evolutions as it spurred the local mainstreaming of gay culture during the ’80s and ’90s.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Boots/Boots Warehouse, 592 Sherbourne St.

Years in operation: 1981-2000

History: The story of Boots, one of Toronto’s best-known and longest-lasting gay dance clubs, begins in 1980 at the Waldorf Astoria apartment building. The basement of what was once a hotel at 80 Charles St. E. was rented to a group of men; their first incarnation of Boots proved popular enough that there were noise complaints. The lease was not renewed.

The original Boots on Charles Street. Photo by Joan Anderson,
courtesy of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

By late summer of 1981, Boots re-opened in another lower-level location, this time at 592 Sherbourne St., site of the historic Selby Hotel. Once a grand mansion, the building was constructed in the late-1800s, and was home for more than 20 years to members of the wealthy Gooderham family. In 1910, a large addition built on the rear of the mansion opened as Branksome Hall, a private school for girls.

The Selby. Photo via Upper Jarvis Neighbourhood Association.

The mansion became a hotel in 1915. Ernest Hemingway and his wife took up temporary residence there during the 1920s while the writer worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. The address is also said to have housed a brothel, and a popular licensed establishment in the 1950s named the Skyway Lounge. By the 1970s, it was in decline—however, Boots’ best-known co-owners, Rick Stenhouse and Jerry Levy, were not deterred by the Selby’s rundown state.

“Rick and Jerry were part of a group of businessmen that had individual interests in a number of enterprises,” explains Brent Storey, a Boots regular-turned-staffer who soaked up a great deal of the Selby’s history from stories told to him by two long-serving bartenders and the building’s handyman of four decades.

“Jerry was best known for the Club Toronto [bathhouse], while Rick also owned Crispins and Buddys [later the Bijou] at Gerrard and Church [as well as the Bourbon Street jazz club and dinner theatre at 180 Queen St. W.]. Boots was really Rick’s place.”

Ads for establishments owned by Rick Stenhouse, circa early-1980s. Image courtesy of Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

The Selby’s rear sub-level was large, and divided into multiple areas, some of which had already operated as taverns and other social spots. This allowed the owners to open a lounge space, dubbed Bud’s, alongside Boots.

“Bud’s was in what had been a men’s draft hall, named after one of the original bartenders,” says Storey. “Boots had the ‘Ladies Lounge,’ which is where a huge bar was installed, with booths along the windows. The remainder of the addition’s basement was a warren of rooms that were used as coat check, pool rooms, and small washrooms.”

Bob Harrison Drue, known simply as “Bob Harrison” during his DJ days, recalls that Boots, like many gay bars of the time, was initially a “stand-and-stare cruise bar for men.” (Women were not welcome until years later.) A jukebox provided the music, both on Charles Street and initially at the Selby location, where Drue would soon assume the role of Boots’ resident DJ.

“Boots had limited seating,” recalls Drue. “I loved the crushed red-velvet semi-circle booths in front of the long bar and windows that looked out onto Selby Street. There were stand-up tables, and beer barrel tables throughout. It was a relatively dark cruise bar. There was a wall behind the long bar and, on the other side of it, they installed a dancefloor near the back—it was put in as an after-thought, and it was small.

“Bud’s had pub-like seating, and was usually not as busy as the Boots side,” says Drue. “Later, a DJ booth was added, and TVs with videos run by Peter Frost.”

Capacity at Boots and Buds in the early years is thought to be in the range of a few hundred people. This would increase greatly over the years as both sides were renovated, expanded, and developed for a variety of uses and identities.

Boots and Bud’s ad courtesy of Bob Harrison Drue.

Why it was important: Boots opened at a time when gay bars were reasonably plentiful, largely based on or near Yonge Street, but there was not yet a centralized Gay Village. That would come in the mid-to-late-1980s, as businesses like Second Cup—with its infamous steps—and Woody’s became anchoring social spots near Church and Wellesley.

Boots and Bud’s also opened a mere half-year after the February 1981 police raids on four gay bathhouses that resulted in over 300 arrests. Large related protests helped spark a strong gay-and-lesbian rights movement in this city and beyond.

Boots—along with bars like Katrina’s, Cornelius, The Barn and, soon after, Chaps—would serve as important gathering places and signifiers of change.

“Toronto was vibrant compared to now,” says Storey of the years that followed the bathhouse raids. “Those were the days when we actually had a ‘community,’ and the bars were our means to connect. For years before, bars that were going under would ‘go gay’ for the final months, but gay bars were becoming more respectable, cleaner, and nicer. We were winning the battle for our rights. We were proud.”

Boots reflected this growth with its own development.

Bob Harrison Drue, circa 1982. Photo courtesy of him.

Drue, who’d begun DJing in Vancouver while a UBC student during the mid-1970s, helped usher in change at Boots. From late 1981 to September 1983, he played there Monday through Saturday.

“The DJ booth was very primitive,” he recalls. “The turntables weren’t meant for DJ use, the mixer was a poor quality Citronic, there was one amp, and the speakers were in beer barrels on a small dancefloor. There was no disco lighting except for a mirror ball.

“Unfortunately, unlike Montreal and Vancouver, gay bars in Toronto—other than Stages—didn’t spend money on sound and lights. It took a lot of convincing to have Boots add disco lighting and better equipment. I had to buy my own 1200s [turntables], and eventually bought my own mixer. The needles skipped when people got down on the dancefloor, and this wasn’t corrected until Boots was renovated years later. The initial lights installed at Boots were done by a friend—RIP Robert Love—and consisted of air-ductwork tubes outfitted with coloured lights, a mirror ball and two strobe lights. Convincing Boots to pay a lighting person was a victory, as it was unheard of in gay bars in Toronto before that, except at Stages and Charly’s [disco atop the St. Charles Tavern].”

These were humble beginnings for a bar that would become a gay Toronto institution.

Drue—soon joined in the booth by lighting man Richard McNicoll, later of Stages—was adventurous in his musical tastes. He played a mix of disco, R&B, new wave, and Salsoul recordings.

“Unlike after-hours, drug-oriented dance clubs where folks will dance to anything, I never found it particularly easy to play for a drinking crowd—unless you were a DJ who played one established hit after another, which I definitely didn’t,” emphasizes Drue. “I constantly played new music, and was never ashamed if a new song cleared the dancefloor. After all, folks were still drinking, and I knew they would start again on the next one.

He mentions favourites from the era, including Voyage’s “Follow The Brightest Star” and “Let’s Get Started,” and The Flying Lizards’ “Money.” One song’s release especially stands out.

“Peter Frost was in NYC, and came back with two promo copies of The Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’ in 1982. I played the damn thing for 45 minutes straight; we couldn’t get enough of it!”

Boots’ Top 100 Chart for 1982. Courtesy of Bob Harrison Drue.

Boots’ location—slightly off the beaten path at Sherbourne, just south of Bloor—did not limit its popularity.

“That had little affect,” says Drue. “Walking home was a bit scary—some of us walked with canes or baseball bats just in case. It was a scary time, but Boots was social and an escape.

“It quickly became the bar to be at—we were busy all the time, with line-ups. Its success had a profound effect on the few other gay bars, and changed the landscape of gay Toronto in those days. Charly’s suffered as a result, as did others.”

Initially known as a leather bar, Boots soon grew to attract a range of men of varying ages.

“There were certainly jocks, and uniforms were quite popular; Boots hosted some of the hottest men around—sexy, sweaty men dancing shirtless,” describes Casey McNeill, who began going there in the early 1980s, while still underage. Boots was his first gay bar, and would later become his place of employment.

“Boots had a sense of community as everybody used to go there at some point, and it was really a regular hangout for many, but it definitely was a butch crowd,” says McNeill. “It was easy to meet new people there—for whatever reason!”

Posters courtesy of Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

Boots boasted no shortage of heat.

“When the bar had the right mix of folks who wanted to party at any and all costs, which was frequent, it was a lot of fun—until they got too wild and started jumping on the dancefloor, making the needles skip,” Drue recounts. “The A/C couldn’t keep up with the packed houses, so it did get quite steamy at times, and, even though I hated it, when the whistles started blowing, the level of energy always increased. There were a lot of fun, hot, and sweaty nights that I recall fondly.”

Frequently packed, with line-ups outside, Boots went through its first major expansion in 1982. That July, management announced increased capacity, four dancefloors, and a new “dining lounge.”

But the club’s many mirrors didn’t reflect a capacity crowd for long; in October 1983, Chaps launched on Isabella just east of Yonge. Former Boots’ general manager Ward Hagar opened it with Alek Korn (later a co-owner of Woody’s) and along with them went key Boots’ staff, including McNicoll and other lighting men, head bartender Michael Moran, and Drue.

“I took my lighting people, records, and my turntables when I left,” says the DJ, who went on to work at indie Canadian dance label SPG Music, where he put together several compilations. (Drue now works in television, licensing original productions for Canada.)

“Once Chaps opened, Boots was a ghost town… until many years later.”

DJ Alberto Zara helped turn things around when he became resident at Boots late in 1986, and remained until 1994. Well known in the community for his years spent spinning at clubs including Dudes, The Barn, and Solteros, Zara began with an experience remarkably similar to Drue’s.

“When I took over at Boots, they had one mirrorball and one pinspot on the dancefloor, and still a false ceiling with tiles. I had to bring my own turntables in. There was nothing there.”

He describes dealings with Rick Stenhouse and his then-new “silent partners who weren’t involved in the club or in the gay community.” (Stenhouse, who is believed to have moved to Vancouver, could not be located for comment.)

“To many people, Rick was a very, very difficult person,” Zara says. “He was very much a businessman; he had a vision for the hotel and the whole club. I worked for him for eight years, and we had our ups and downs, but I could work very well with him. A lot of the stuff I wanted to do to help transform Boots, he supported.

Boots’ DJ Alberto Zara (left) with owner Rick Stenhouse. Photo courtesy of Zara.

“I’m very handy, and I wanted to make that place beautiful,” adds Zara, who lived across the street from the bar at the time. “I rewired the whole place, and had them put televisions everywhere.”

Zara also brought in friend Shawn Riker, who he’d met at Solteros.

“Shawn is a big part of making Boots happen the way it did. He’s a genius when it comes to sound and lighting. We changed the room, getting rid of the false ceiling, peeling off the plaster from the walls, built an amazing DJ booth—with fridge and telephone—and many more things that made Boots the place to be.”

Riker, along with DJs Rafael Meli and Barry Harris, also filled in for Zara on occasion, but the resident DJ played at Boots four-to-five nights each week for eight years, spinning disco, radio hits, remixes, and more underground sounds purchased at Starsound Records.

“In those days, there was one main DJ for each club, and that was part of a club’s identity,” Zara recalls.

“I played a lot of disco—Sylvester, Divine, ‘Pink Cadillac,’ the classics—and people used to go nuts. Slowly, I moved to play some house, as it was the new sound. I snuck it in, and then came the techno and Euro stuff.

“I think those were the best eight years of my entire life, and I’m 61 now. People would scream so loudly at the beginning of a mix; it’s something that I feel to this day. When I would pull a record out of its sleeve, it would instantly get soaked—the energy, the heat, the condensation would hit the record immediately. I loved it, and I had an amazing following, as did Boots. My DJing always was a mix of what the people wanted and what I liked to play.”

Zara also mentions performances by the likes of Eria “Savin’ Myself” Fachin, and special events ranging from thematic parties to the popular “Friends Helping Friends” fundraisers, which supported children living with HIV and AIDs through Sick Kids Hospital.

He also emphasizes that Boots’ substantial patio, occupying the south side of the building, gave the club an edge over competitors like Chaps, The Barn, Colby’s and Komrads.

“We had a huge patio, Boots’ main room with another room adjacent, plus Bud’s and the patio upstairs. At times, there were up to 2,700 people coming through in a night. Boots made a lot of money,” Zara says.

“We had a primarily older, more established crowd. There were a lot of beautiful, beautiful people—men in tank tops, so many muscles. Chaps took the trendy, younger crowd. In those days, each crowd had their own place.”

Casey McNeill behind the bar at Boots. Photo courtesy of him.

McNeill, who began as a busboy at Boots in 1989, and would go on to become a head bartender and co-manager over the next 11 years, agrees that the late-1980s through very early 1990s was another peak period for the club.

“Everybody was going there, the tunes were hot, and there was a real sense of freedom—especially since we were really making headway with gay rights then.”

Zara left Boots in 1994, after the crowds again departed en masse. (He continued to DJ, and now shares mixes on his popular YouTube channel.) He tells me that a $2 cover charge added in 1993 was a definite turn-off for revellers accustomed to free partying.

This small cover—along with many interviewee mentions of noise complaints from Hotel Selby customers—helps illustrate the relationship between Boots and the hotel business at large.

“I’m not sure when Rick Stenhouse became sole owner, but his dream was a boutique gay hotel,” says Storey. “However, the hotel was in poor condition, and he recognized the bar was his cash cow. He invested in renovating Boots’ many small rooms into larger spaces, and installed two large washrooms and the unusually large patio, which increased the capacity.”

Boots’ late-1980s renovations also included removing a wall that separated the main long bar from its closest dancefloor, and adding a café, called the Purple Cactus. It never took off.

In the early 1990s, Stenhouse reportedly spent more than $500,000 to repair the Selby. The mansion’s damaged rooftop was replaced with slate, a grandiose front desk was built, and wrought-iron fencing in front of the building was reconstructed to match the original.

“Rick had made substantial improvements to the hotel but, in order to finance the major renovations, he had taken second and third mortgages on it, totalling $5 million,” shares Storey.

“Unfortunately, the real-estate crash of the late-’80s had reduced the property value to around $3 million. An astute businessman, Rick focused on the bars to generate maximum profit.”

Boots staff, including Casey McNeill (in denim shirt) and Brent Storey (in white tank top). Photo courtesy of Storey.

Storey—one of Toronto’s best known fan dancers, who had practiced in the mirrors of Boots and danced there for years—became a big part of the club’s next chapter when he started working there “by accident, on Pride Day 1993.”

“My lover had passed away three weeks’ prior so, not knowing what to do with myself, I went back to Boots because it always felt comfortable,” Storey recounts.

Friend Barry Harris—with whom Storey had worked at clubs including The Copa, 101 Jarvis, and Chaps—was DJing that night and invited Storey to play with Boots’ new lights.

“I jumped at the chance, and blissfully stayed till the last song. I ended up there every Saturday, and many Fridays, for months—my reward being beer.”

Soon officially hired as Boots’ lighting man, Storey also did event décor, assisted in promotions and, significantly, helped develop and build the club’s next iteration.

The new-and-improved Boots Warehouse dancefloor. Photo courtesy of Brent Storey.

The reincarnation: By 1994, things weren’t looking good for Boots.

“When I first was asked to go back to Boots, it was like a giant bowling alley—it was dead,” recalls Greg Matchett, the club’s general manager from 1985-1988.

Upon his return in ’94, Matchett started by hiring new resident DJ Alain Plamondon, fresh from his stint at the popular Bar 1.

“When I walked in, attendance at Boots was down,” agrees Plamondon. “Greg hired me to cater to an older crowd, but there wasn’t an older crowd to spin for. I went in my own direction, and played for the existent, younger, crowd. Within months, the crowd grew.”

This trend continued as Matchett and Storey spearheaded Boots and Bud’s most radical transformation yet: into Boots Warehouse, Toronto’s largest gay dance club of the time, and the Kurbash, an unabashed sleaze bar, complete with a maze, gargoyle glory holes, and a shower.

Kurbash was developed first. Out went Bud’s drag shows and karaoke, in came metal and rougher edges.

“The drag queens left, and the leather-and-denim crowd came back,” says Storey. “The word-of-mouth buzz was enough to fill the place, and Boots also experienced an increase in numbers as men would use ‘Going to Boots’ as an excuse to head to the Kurbash’s infamous maze. Once the Kurbash was established, and the money increased, Rick decided to take the next step, and finally remove the cumbersome main bar in Boots. I designed the new space and built most of it, plus revamped the logo and the name.”

The removal of the massive, long bar in favour of small satellite bars doubled the main room’s dancefloor space. Boots Warehouse was industrial and modern.

“The room had a purple floor, metallic silver walls, and a corrugated steel ceiling,” Storey says. “Lighting was hung from a TV-tower truss, and a system of receptacles allowed me to rework the show. We upgraded the sound to a kick-ass digital system. In spite of the 10-foot ceiling, I was able to fire off pyrotechnics over the crowd!”

“The layout was also spectacular,” McNeill reminisces. “It had something that is ultimately important in gay bars—flow. People like to be able to walk around a lot and hang out in different areas. Boots provided this very well.”

“Within a year, we became the place to go again with a younger crowd,” recalls Plamondon. “The Kurbash brought in an older crowd. Together, they attracted everyone.”

Says Matchett, “I went after the post-AIDS crowd: men around 35, like myself, who were so guilt-ridden because we were healthy—the lucky ones—and most of our friends had died.

“We catered to a demographic that needed to release the AIDS cloud hanging over them. To me, they were and are the generation of gay men that has defined our strengths and gave dignity to our community.”

Theme nights were developed, disco was again celebrated, and artists, including house vocalist Byron Stingily, were booked to perform.

“I remember The Weather Girls being a great deal of fun, energetic, and working the crowd,” says McNeill.

“The Weather Girls were a hoot,” agrees Matchett. “When I booked Thelma Houston in for a night, she had not performed in a while, and was very nervous. After a lot of vodka, she got onstage and blew the crowd away. She was and is a diva.”

Sealing the deal was Plamondon’s ability to mix energetic, crowd-pleasing sets of “everything popular in commercial dance, house, Euro, and tribal,” as he puts it.

“Boots wasn’t afraid to be a gay bar and we played ‘gay dance music,’” summarizes Storey. “Alain was always enthused, critical of himself, and eager to perform well, which he did. He was always concerned about people having a good time.”

By 1995, Boots Warehouse frequently attracted crowds of 2,000 people, which helped fund a stunning renovation of the club’s huge patio.

“Now with 12 bars open on weekends, sales reached $2.5 million that year,” enthuses Storey. “We were packed every weekend!”

Poster for Circuit Wednesdays, courtesy of Scott Cairns.

Who else worked/played there: Matchett says that Boots’ core staff included approximately 25 people at any given time, with some bartenders and staff dating back to the pre-Boots’ days, as jobs were unionized through the Hotel Selby.

Many interviewees make mention of long=time head bartender Brent Savoy, while Alberto Zara also points to barkeeps including Scott Middleton, Rick Pereira, Jimmy Carmichael, John Boutilier, and Virginia. (“The only woman who worked at Boots at the time; she was very popular.”) Drag queen Amanda Roberts was adored, both for her on-stage performances and skills as a shooter girl.

Managers were key, with original GM Ward Hagar followed by men including Matchett, Robert Rochon, Doug Laufman, and the creative David Heymes, who’d also worked at clubs including Nuts & Bolts, The Copa, and Lizard Lounge.

In addition to Richard McNicoll and Brent Storey, regulars like Brian Wheatley, David Beaulieu, and Pascal Pennella lit up Boots’ dancefloors while DJs Krys Shepherd and Bob Currer played in the club’s early years. [Addendum: Following the original publication of this piece, Bob Currer responded to say that he had DJed five nights weekly at Boots from 1985 to 1987, and to dispute that the club was "a ghost town" during this time. His full statement can be found in the comments thread below.]

Alberto Zara and Boots also helped inspire DJ/producer Barry Harris to return to the booth. Harris had known Zara since the days when they’d both DJed at Dudes cruise bar, with Harris going on to play clubs including 101 Jarvis, The Copa, and Stilife before he formed pop-dance project Kon Kan in 1988, and had a massive pop hit in the form of “I Beg Your Pardon.”

Kon Kan was slowing by the time Harris visited Zara at Boots, and was asked to fill-in on occasion.

“I fell back into DJing after taking three years off; it was like riding a bike,” exclaims Harris, who played many a weekend night at Boots, between 1992-94.

“For fun, I did a Kon Kan track show of ‘Sinful Wishes’ in my underwear, along with a big muscular body builder and three nuns in drag. I guess that was the last ‘show’ Kon Kan ever did.”

Harris tells me he felt a little stifled by the Electric Circus and Energy 108 pop leanings of Boots’ crowds, but also enjoyed playing many tracks of the time, like “Swamp Thing” by The Grid, and Lectroluv’s “Dream Drums.”

“I still love this track! It really turned me on to the ‘new house’ scene,” says Harris, who observes that by 1994, “house—real house—was finally becoming huge in the gay scene.”

Harris points to the rise of gay Toronto DJs like Scott Cairns and Mark Falco, both of whom played at Boots Warehouse for brief periods. (Cairns’ Circuit Wednesdays ran during the warm months of 1996 and, despite the event name, featured underground house.)

Circuit promo courtesy of Scott Cairns.

“It was like another whole new generation was moving into the gay dance-club scene again—something I’d already seen happen when the 1980s generation took over from the ’70s disco generation,” Harris adds. “But Boots was still a part of the ‘old’ generation. I could get away with only a bit of the mainstream vocal pop house that was coming out, like Juliet Roberts’ ‘I Want You‘ and Crystal Waters’ ‘100% Pure Love.’

Frustrated, he left in the fall of 1994 to develop a house night on Wednesdays at The Barn before moving to Los Angeles in 1998, and soon hitting it big with Thunderpuss remixes of Amber, Whitney Houston and others. (More recently, Harris has returned to his alt-rock roots as he fronts the band Sick Seconds. He also continues to DJ and produce dancefloor remixes.)

I also DJed at Boots for a few years in the mid-’90s, first as a resident of the Betty Page Society Fetish Night; presented by Northbound Leather, this bi-weekly affair ran for many years at Boots, and is at the root of the fetish events they continue to produce. Then, I became the host of Crush, a series that raised funds for queer community groups for much of 1996.

Despite all the success of Boots Warehouse and the Kurbash, however, all was not well behind the scenes. Stenhouse took Hotel Selby and the Boots Warehouse complex into receivership in fall of 1995, prompting Matchett and others to leave.

“I found out that Rick was going to let Boots go into receivership a few days before Pride ’95,” Storey reveals. “It was a crushing blow to learn the news, and I was one of only a very few he told. We were going strong at that point, and I was excited about the Pride décor, free barbecue, pyrotechnics, and Boots’ parade float. Having to hold this secret that weekend was a burden; to do it cheerfully was an effort.

“Rick continued to operate the place for a couple years after the banks took over. A few managers who weren’t familiar with the bar or club scene were hired, before the eventual sale.”

Still, weekends at Boots remained hugely popular. One manager appointed by the receivership company had even suggested a Sunday retro night, which proved to be a big hit.

“When that night began, we weren’t too sure how it would go,” admits its resident DJ, Alain Plamondon. “The third week fell on a Labour Day weekend holiday Sunday, and I will never forget that night. We were packed! For nearly two hours solid during peak time, people on the dancefloor cheered for every mix I did. After that, Retro Sundays were a success.”

Boots Warehouse and the Kurbash were now packed all three nights of the weekend.

The final iteration of the Boots bar, circa 1997. Photo courtesy of Brent Storey.

What happened to it: In late 1997, the building was purchased by husband and wife Nazir and Anish Akbarali, who initially developed Hotel Selby into a Howard Johnson.

“Nazir and Anish were in the hotel business, but kept Boots running for a few years because it generated money,” says Plamondon. “Anish had a brother named Ralph who became a manager, and was loved by the staff.”

The Akbaralis’ daughters also worked coat check at Boots Warehouse, but all was not harmonious.

“Anish did not believe in nudity of any kind,” says Plamondon. “The Kurbash had to go! The porn on the TVs had to go! Any nudity—even if it was on a safe-sex poster—had to go! This infuriated many, and we lost part of the crowd. We were still quite busy, but the crowds slowly dwindled.”

“The Akbaralis always claimed ‘not to have a problem’ with homosexuality, but never intended to keep the bar long anyway,” adds Storey. “It was a cash cow to generate money to put into the hotel’s renovations. They always put the hotel first, and allowed the bar to deteriorate. It was a battle to keep it going as long as we did.

“Before Pride 2000, there were problems with the sound, lighting, and bar equipment, so [friend and then manager] Roger Bonnell and I had a planning meeting with the owners. They announced that no repairs would be done, there was to be no money spent, and that they were planning a $10 Friday and $20 Saturday cover charge. They explained that any ill will generated didn’t matter as they were closing Boots soon after.

“After sleeping on it, I called Roger, and we quickly agreed we didn’t want to be part of it, and quit. The owner seemed quite pleased he could start building hotel rooms in the bar space sooner.” (In an Xtra! article dated June 28, 2000, Anish Akbarali cited sound complaints as reason for closing the club.)

Others on staff, including Plamondon and Casey McNeill, also made it clear that they would not work the weekend of Pride 2000.

“It was our way of slapping them in the face by not allowing them the immense profits of one last Pride,” says McNeill. “Plus, we all got Pride off! It was a little bittersweet for the staff.”

Boots Warehouse closed with a hastily produced, but well-attended party on June 18, 2000.

Storey decorated with his personal collection of staff t-shirts and other Boots memorabilia, many of which were taken by patrons for souvenirs. Some people also smashed toilets in protest.

“On that last night, people were in shock when they walked in, and the word went around,” explains Plamondon, who closed the club with Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

“After DJing in the gay scene for 26 years, I can honestly say that Boots Warehouse was my all-time favourite club to play at,” he says. (Plamondon continues to DJ, including at Woody’s, The Vic, and Zipperz/Cellblock, where his Retro Sunday tradition lives on.)

“Boots was an original, and has never been duplicated; I don’t think it ever will,” says McNeill. “What always comes to mind are the positive feel, and the energy of the place. People celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, Pride, Halloween, anything. Everybody has a few good stories about their times at Boots.” (McNeill later worked in hospitality, and as an HR coordinator at an entertainment company before returning to school this year to study business.)

Storey, who went on to do lighting and décor at Fly nightclub for six years, maintains an interest in the development at 592 Sherbourne St., but his heart belongs to Boots.

“I lost my connection to the building as soon as the entrance to Boots was bricked in, but I still remember the fun people had there, and I’m proud of what we achieved in giving them the best we could.”

592 Sherbourne currently operates as The Clarion Hotel & Suites Selby.

592 Sherbourne currently operates as The Clarion Hotel & Suites Selby. The building, which was granted official heritage status in 1989, is likely to be relocated closer to Sherbourne as part of The Selby Condos, a 49-storey development project now in pre-construction stage.

Thank you to participants Alain Plamondon, Alberto Zara, Barry Harris, Bob Harrison Drue, Brent Storey, Casey McNeill, and Gregg Matchett, as well as to Scott Cairns, the late Rick Bébout for his Promiscuous Affections diaries, and the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

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

Article originally published March 26, 2013 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

In its brief lifespan, this ‘70s hotspot served as both a gay disco and punk-rock haven—before it all ended in a mysterious fire and murder.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Club David’s, 16 Phipps

Years in operation: 1975-1977

History: The allure that the Yonge and St. Joseph area once held for creatures of the night has been detailed in a number of previous Then & Now pieces, including those about early 1980s venues Voodoo and Club Z. Here, we visit a prior decade to travel a short distance south, down a once-existing strip of the St. Nicholas alleyway, to a barely-there street called Phipps.

Moving and storage company Rawlinson Cartage constructed the building at 16 Phipps in the late 1890s. A small tunnel, thought to once hold a conveyor belt, connected it to the building directly north, at 11A St. Joseph. As with a number of neighbouring structures, it was also erected by Rawlinson.

In the early 1970s, 11A St. Joseph was home to popular all-ages gay male dance club The Manatee. Nearby Yonge Street bars The Parkside Tavern and St. Charles Tavern were gay hotspots, as was intimate Isabella Street disco Mrs. Knights.

Club David’s added new possibilities to the mix when Jay Cochrane and Sandy Leblanc opened it in the spring of 1975.

Image courtesy of Wendy Peacock.

“Jay had already experienced many clubs in the U.S. and was meticulous about how he wanted things run,” recalls John Weber, the discotheque’s main DJ. “He wanted to create a safe atmosphere for everybody to enjoy.

“David’s was a step up on the décor [of the time]. It was really clean, they had sofas in there, and carpeting. You could go and actually sit on what felt like living room furniture. David’s had a billiards room too. It was the beginning of Jay’s vision of having a place where you could socialize and do more than just go and dance.”

Not licensed to sell alcohol at first, David’s opened doors to men aged 16-and-older. The club ran Friday through Sunday, with music heard until 6am on weekend nights. The crowds would soon grow far more mixed.

Photo courtesy of Wendy Peacock.

Why it was important: Although David’s was not the biggest or even busiest gay disco of its time, the club was one of the first to actually be gay-owned and so elaborately decorated.

The club was a sizable, two-level layout. Once opened, David’s heavy wooden door revealed a path that went up a few stairs, past a ticket booth, along a catwalk, and to your choice of billiards room or the main bar. In the upper part of the main room there was plenty of seating – sofas, tables and chairs, and booths alike. The floors were red carpet. Some of the walls were, in part, also covered in red carpet while others were heavily mirrored. It was, after all, the ‘70s.

St. George riding all-candidates meeting at David’s, June 1977. Photo from The Body Politic, courtesy of Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

Two winding staircases led down to the dancefloor. Most famously, the stairs also curved around the club’s star attraction: a fountain containing a larger-than-life, and, by many accounts, excessively well-endowed replica of Michelangelo’s David. There was also a stage, raised go-go platform, and a DJ booth that overlooked the dancefloor. Of course a large mirror ball reflected the pink, purple and multi-hued lights, and the sound system is said to have been quality. David’s also boasted a snack bar, pinball machines, and a high-tech coat check system, complete with revolving hangers.

Months after it opened, David’s adopted a somewhat radical door policy. While most gay and lesbian bars of the time were segregated by gender, and most social spaces were assumed to be either straight or gay, Club David’s advertised itself as open to all genders and sexualities. Some ads, in fact, promoted it as a bisexual club. A membership policy was adopted and bouncers were on hand to keep an eye out, but in general, people mixed freely and easily.

Club David’s welcome policy, courtesy of Wendy Peacock.

“When David’s became bi-gender, it attracted those people ‘on the fringe’ or ‘closet-y,’” says gay activist and senior Ken ‘Father’ Andrews, once a phototypesetter and board member of the Canadian Homophile Association of Toronto (C.H.A.T.). “A lot of women and men came out in that club.”

“One of the things I liked most about David’s was that I could see my female friends too,” says Weber, who got his start DJing the C.H.A.T. dances and was recruited to spin by David’s original soundman, Michael Roberts.

A 17-year-old Weber began to DJ at Club David’s in the summer of 1975.

John Weber in David’s DJ booth. Photo courtesy of Andrea Wood.

Given its 16-plus-door policy, David’s was a haven for queer and questioning youth.

“David’s was home-away-from-home,” states Jacky ‘Jake’ Gabay, later to be known by the stage name of Vicki Sue. “It was difficult being out at that time, especially for teenagers. David’s was a retreat, a place where you could be yourself. I remember the first time I walked in; it was like being born again, among people like me. I was 16-going-on-17 at the time, and was enthralled by it all.”

Wendy Peacock was a Mississauga teen when she began attending David’s in 1976.

“I dated a boy, named Dave Soulsby, who worked there from 1976 to 1977,” Peacock begins. “He worked at the door, and was a go-go dancer. He was called the best robot dancer in the clubs, and even had a spot on CityTV’s Boogie show, dancing with his little brother.”

The two met at David’s, on an evening when Soulsby attended door.

“I had never been to a club so I was floored by the lights, and the sound,” she explains. “I went as much as possible. Guaranteed, I was there every Friday and Saturday night for about a year.

“I met a wonderful array of people. This was my first foray into the real world from my very suburban upbringing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better place to meet such diverse personalities. Everybody went to this club—straight, gay, bi, tough, not so tough, drag queens, transgendered people, pretty people, not so pretty people.

“There were a lot of young lesbians at the club,” Peacock adds. “Of course, they mostly went to the Cameo or other all-women clubs, but it was a young woman at David’s—she looked just like Jodie Foster—who made me dump my boyfriend.”

It’s especially difficult to resist a Jodie Foster-lookalike’s charms when the beats are pumping.

Thanks to John Weber, and his fill-in DJ Greg Howlett, David’s was a serious disco hotspot. Both men would go on to win the Billboard Disco Forum Award for ‘Best Regional DJ’ (Howlett in 1979, Weber in 1980), but before then, each would pack the David’s dancefloor as they played anthems like Silver Convention’s “Get Up and Boogie,”

“My favourite DJ at the time was Greg Howlett,” offers Weber during a lengthy phone chat. “I really admired his music and mixing.” (Visit the Then & Now Mixcloud page for live DJ sets by Howlett.)

Weber, who also DJed at The Manatee during this same period, was both a crowd-pleaser and trendsetter. As was then de rigueur, Weber would play a couple of slow songs every hour or so, but he excelled at blending danceable pop and rock—think Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music,” and “Long Train Running”—with dancefloor soul and breaking disco anthems.

“The Supremes’ ‘I’m Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking‘ and ‘He’s My Man‘ were huge at David’s, as were Vicki Sue Robinson, with ‘Turn the Beat Around,’ and Gloria Gaynor,” says Weber.

“Another song that was huge for us was “I Got Your Love” by a group called Stratavarious, which was formed by John Usry Jr. He worked back in the days with people like the O’Jays and the whole MFSB fold. He came to Toronto and formed the Stratavarious orchestra.

Poster courtesy of Wendy Peacock.

“Jay Cochrane allowed me to do a lot of things that a lot of other club owners would have shaken their heads at. He had vision, and allowed us to bring Stratavarious, a live disco orchestra, in to perform. That was quite something. I was also able to get Shirley & Company, who did the song “Shame, Shame, Shame,” to come and perform at David’s. Carol Williams, who was the first solo female artist signed to Salsoul Records and had done a disco version of the song “More,” also performed at David’s, and became a lifelong friend. Vicki Sue Robinson spent time at the club as a guest.”

Namesake female impersonator Vicki Sue, a.k.a. Jacky Gabay, was hired to perform at David’s by Tony Brown, who also took to the stage as Toni Brown.

“I auditioned for Tony in the summer of 1976, and performed “Blind Date” from Funny Lady,” recalls Gabay. “Little did I know that there were four other performers watching, including Michelle Ross. At the end of my audition they all applauded. Tony said to me ‘You’re not a drag queen like everyone else. You’re a performer, an actor.’ That was the best compliment I could have.”

Vicki Sue became part of the roster. Drag queens performed Friday nights at 2 a.m., with other memorable greats from the David’s days including Brown, Ross, Jackie Loren, Danny Love, Twilight, Jo-Jo, and Ronnie Holliday.

Vicki Sue, known for her sense of humour and original performances, won David’s Miss Starlight Pageant title in 1977, after performing solo sets on nights that included a Supremes tribute.

Vicki Sue. Photo courtesy of Jacky Gabay.

“People were in total awe the night that The Supremes—post Diana Ross—sat with me in the DJ booth, and watched themselves be performed by female impersonators,” describes Weber. “Tony Brown performed Diana Ross so gracefully, and had all of her movements and gestures down. That made this night an especially sweet moment because so many people loved and admired Tony.

“David’s was packed like a sardine can because word had leaked that The Supremes were going to be there. Tony asked if they would consider coming out of the DJ booth to say ‘Hi,’ and they did. People cleared a path a path from the booth, down the steps to the dancefloor, and Mary Wilson, Cindy Birdsong and Sherrie Payne took to the stage to greet everyone. It was one of those special club moments that was totally a David’s thing. Mary Wilson kept in touch with both Tony and I long after that.” (Brown, who went on to work and perform at clubs including Komrads, has since passed away.)

Peacock, a fan of David’s drag artists, recalls another favourite performer.

“There was this one queen there who I adored. His club name was Sister Rock-On, and his best stage act was an Elton John impression.  He was beautiful as a woman, but Elton just blew you away. He looked exactly like him.”

For a period—especially most of 1976—Club David’s flourished. People flocked to the disco for its music, performances, and anything-goes reputation.

“I got hooked on the place because of the diversity; it was the craziest place in the world for that,” states Larry Adolphe, who’d initially gone to David’s because his good friend Gordon Bishop worked there as a manager.

“If somebody had walked in there with a cow, I don’t think anybody would have batted an eyelash.”

Adolphe, whose own music tastes leaned to rock, started working at David’s in the summer of 1977. He bussed, bartended, made popcorn for the snack bar—whatever was needed. By this time, the crowds had dwindled yet the club was open nightly.

David’s audience had shrunk for multiple reasons—including the opening of red-hot gay afterhours dance club Stages in January 1977.

Jay Cochrane left David’s behind early that year, and opened the large Studio II complex. Located at the northeast corner of Carlton and Church (where gay club Zipperz now sits), Studio II was a gay paradise, with multiple dancefloors, private rooms, a library, restaurant, movie theatre and more.

John Weber and his music went with Cochrane.

“My loyalty was with Jay, and I wasn’t personally interested in the direction that things were going with Sandy,” explains the DJ. “I believed in Jay’s vision more, so was more than happy to go to Studio II.”

Leblanc, with new American co-owner Mark Lefkofski, set about trying to keep Club David’s afloat. He built an adjoining disco, called The Garage, at 19 St. Joseph. When it didn’t take off, Leblanc converted The Garage into a restaurant, open 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly. That did well, and soon people were walking through the doorway that connected the spaces.

Advertisement in Directions magazine. Courtesy of the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Archives.

David’s crowd now skewed heavily to those aged 22-and-under.

“Sandy really liked the street kids, and they liked hanging out there,” recalls Adolphe. “That was the scene at the time.”

People hung out at The Garage and danced all night in the disco, but the programming changed.

“With the opening of Studio ll, David’s lost a lot of its patrons, and the shows were changed to late afternoon on Sundays,” explains Gabay, who performed at the club as Vicki Sue until they no longer booked drag shows (He continued to perform until 1981, at clubs also including The Manatee, Carriage House, MayGay, Katrina’s, and Studio II.)

“David’s started catering to the punk crowd.”

The Ugly at David’s. Photo by Vince Carlucci.

Who else played/worked there: After the short-lived Crash ‘n’ Burn space ran its course in the summer of 1977, Club David’s became the unlikely home of Toronto’s early punk scene.

Filmmakers Tibor Takács and Stephen Zoller were the reason why.

Though he’d never set foot in David’s to dance, Takács was well aware of the club.

“David’s was sort of a big deal at the time,” he tells me in a phone call from California; “It was such a cool place – down an alleyway, with people always falling out onto the street. David’s was a very decadent, underground club that had a bit of a New York vibe to it. When David’s was in its heyday, I don’t think there was anything else like it at all in Toronto.”

He and Zoller had first approached Leblanc about shooting a scene for their first feature film, Metal Messiah, at David’s in 1976. They stayed in touch. Takács would go on to act as manager for pioneering Toronto punk bands Viletones and, to a lesser extent, Cardboard Brains.

“When we needed to find a venue for the Viletones to play in, because they were kicked out of everywhere else, we decided to go to David’s,” says Takács. “Sandy made us a good deal—we got the door and he got the bar.”

For the last four-to-six months of 1977, punk bands including Viletones, The Ugly, The Curse, B-Girls, Teenage Head, The Androids, and Cardboard Brains played at David’s once or twice a week.

The Viletones at David’s. Photo by Vince Carlucci.

“I would show up on Fridays or Saturdays to see or snap band photos,” says photographer and musician Vince Carlucci, guitarist and co-founder of Cardboard Brains.

“There was not that many bands initially – you could count all the Toronto punk bands with less than 10 fingers. Besides the Crash ‘n’ Burn, David’s was the venue for these new bands to play. There were a few gigs at The Colonial, but [it wasn’t] until 1978 and on when there was an explosion of venues and indie bands.”

Carlucci, who also documented early Toronto appearances by the likes of Patti Smith, has a soft spot for David’s to this day.

“David’s didn’t feel like a typical beer bar or club, like The Gasworks, or Yonge Station, or any of the other live music venues,” he describes; “It was kind of charming in a cheesy sort of way.”

While David’s was clearly in decline – fellow musician and photographer Don Pyle recalls that the fountain had long dried up and the club’s carpets were dirty and frayed – the club’s worn, wonky aesthetic, permanent stage, and sunken, pit-like dancefloor were perfect for the punks who played between 9pm and midnight.

“The vibe was pretty exciting, especially when bands like the Viletones played,” enthuses Carlucci. “Steven Leckie had a way of inciting kids – getting people pissed or dancing or moving. He was never much of a singer technically speaking, but had a great and sort of creepy persona onstage.

Teenage Head at David’s. Photo by Vince Carlucci.

“When Teenage Head was on, the place would typically be packed, and there was always a feeling that a riot may break out – what with all the booze and dope that was being used, and the odd mix of people. It was just not that common in ‘77.”

While the Viletones played at David’s more than any other band, Leckie recalls one especially magical night at the ‘punk palace.’

“The Poles, Teenage Head and Viletones were all on the bill,” Leckie begins. “It was like a vacuum; that was as tight as you got. I’d hear female singers later, like say in The Adverts, and think ‘Man, she doesn’t come close to Michaele Jordana.’ Teenage Head were off the map, in my opinion. They were as good as it gets. They could have been bigger than Cheap Trick.”

While footage and interviews from this show were infamously reported by punk-fearing CBC host Hana Gartner, the nascent scene at David’s was lovingly recorded by people like filmmakers Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts who shared the footage below. (Their detailed documentary about the early days of Toronto punk, The Last Pogo Jumps Again,  contains additional footage shot at David’s and is excellent.)

“David’s was an important lily pad you needed to jump onto to continue the arc of punk,” says Leckie, who sometimes DJed between bands too. “Without David’s being there, there would have been a real gap after the close of Crash ‘n’ Burn, and before the opening of The Edge. I felt absolute freedom at David’s and with Sandy. It was beautiful.”

As a venue, David’s also underscores a fact about pioneering punk scenes in Toronto and New York alike.

“The earliest days of punk had deep roots in gay spaces as safe havens or as accepting of other outsiders,” states Don Pyle, a gay man who came up in the punk scene, and came out in his later teens.

“I was only 15 when I first went to David’s and was still closeted and fearful so going there was a threat to my ‘secret,’” says Pyle, who nonetheless saw many bands at 16 Phipps (some of Pyle’s photos taken at David’s are found in his 2011 book, Trouble In the Camera Club).

Pyle points out that there were a number of “visible gays in the artier side of the punk scene—in bands like The Dishes and Drastic Measures.”

Toronto artist Bruce Eves, also co-founder of CEAC (Centre for Experimental Art and Communication), where the tiny Crash ‘n’ Burn once ran, expands on this.

“The ‘punks’ were largely art students or recent grads so the scene was, relatively speaking, fairly integrated for the time. I’d never made any secret of the fact that I’m a gay man, and had never felt threatened in any way. Some of the bands attracted a more hardcore following, but I never felt hassled.

“All this said, I would say that the punk and disco scenes were pretty segregated. Gays would go to punk concerts because the scene was hot, but not the other way around.”

The Curse at David’s. Photo by Vince Carlucci.

While most of the people I speak with say that the punk kids and disco dancers who did come together at David’s mixed comfortably (“There was this kind of respect and camaraderie betwixt the punks and the gay crowd,” says Carlucci; “Both cultures were kind of loners, rebels and rejects in a way.”), Eves’ story about one of the few times he went to David’s also speaks volumes.

“I don’t remember who was playing; it was probably the Diodes because we were friends, had collaborated on a few art projects and I was a fan,” says Eves. “During a break between sets, I was chatting up a guy I was interested in, and we kissed. This guy nearby freaked out and punched me. There was blood everywhere. I was hauled out through the restaurant, past shocked patrons with forks suspended midair. Evidently a gang of punk girls beat the shit out of the guy in revenge – my own little Altamont. I still have the scar to prove it.”

Still, the staff at David’s was just as mixed as its clientele. Leblanc also hired people from the punk scene.

“Waiter Randy Roudette was someone I came to know from just being around the scene,” offers Pyle. “He had a T-shirt that said ‘Mr. Shit’ on it the first time I recall seeing him. It was the name most people knew him by.”

Leblanc also took to booking bands. A few interviewees mention seeing Rough Trade at David’s. Disco acts still performed on occasion.

“At a certain point, Sandy started booking his own shows,” says Takács. “We were a little pissed off at him, but really, we’d run the gamut of Toronto punk groups, and he was looking for new acts. He brought in these guys from Detroit. They were a very clean-cut, new wave pop band, called The Romantics. Eventually they became kind of famous. I remember walking in and hearing “What I Like About You,” and thinking ‘Fuck, these guys are commercial. This is a hit song man.’ The first time I ever heard that song was there.”

Poster courtesy of The Last Pogo Jumps Again.

What happened to it: Club David’s burned in a fire following a New Year’s Eve punk show on December 31, 1977.

“We were one of the three unfortunate bands to have played the night the club burned down,” says Carlucci. “It was the final gig at Club David’s.” (Carlucci has written about this night in a memoir in progress, tentatively titled I Was A Cardboard Brain. He continues to take and exhibit photos, performs with the band Station Twang, and also blogs regularly.)

Cardboard Brains, along with members of Viletones and The Ugly, lost a lot of gear in the fire, which remains a mystery to this day.

“There were some rumours as to whether or not it was an insurance thing, but I was always skeptical of that because that was Sandy’s life,” says Adolphe, who worked at David’s that evening. (He now owns L&J Cycle on Davenport.)

“Sandy liked the kids, and he actually lived there—he had a loft that in the building, right above the snack bar. I think in some ways, he had more to lose.

“After it burned down, he still tried to help us out by giving Gordon and I shifts, pulling down smoke damaged drywall and cleaning the place up. Sandy had a big heart. It’s quite possible that the fire was staged, but that just didn’t seem to fit with who Sandy was.”

Takács also has his doubts.

“Something I remember very distinctly from that night is that people were throwing their cigarette butts on the wooden dancefloor. I went around stomping them out at points.”

The David’s site as it appeared in 1979.
Photos by Joan Anderson, courtesy of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

Now splitting his time between Toronto and Los Angeles, the director of films including The Gate, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Spiders 3D recalls trying to meet with Leblanc many months after the fire.

“I remember going to Sandy’s to discuss the insurance. We knocked on the door, went back a few times, and wondered ‘What the hell? Where did Sandy disappear to?’”

Leblanc was murdered in September 1978. The Toronto Star reported that he’d been stabbed more than 100 times. No one was ever charged.

Sandy LeBlanc, as featured in Directions magazine. Courtesy of Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives.

“There were suspects, but no proof,” says Ken Andrews, now retired and active as a community volunteer as he nears age 79.

“A friend discovered Sandy’s body when paying a visit to his apartment. He called police, of course, and a certain then-homicide detective by the name of Julian Fantino was an investigator. My friend thought it odd that a follow-up interview never took place.”

A few years later, former David’s co-owner Mark Lefkofski, who also co-owned Detroit men’s bar Menjo’s for a period, was murdered in that city.

“It was absolutely devastating, the way that Sandy was murdered, but at the time, it was seen as possible that he’d brought the wrong person home,” recalls John Weber, who went on to DJ at clubs including Sutton Place disco Stop 33, Space disco and The Barn (he’s now retired).

“But then, when it came to Mark also being murdered, it seemed like there was something else involved there. Maybe bikers or mob money – it seems we’ll never know.”

16 Phipps remained unused for years after the fire. In the mid 1980s, it was reborn as gay dance club Le Mystique. From 1995 to 1997, it was the home of house-centric gay afterhours club, JOY while at other points in the ’90s the building hosted underground warehouse parties and raves.

The building was torn down more than five years ago. In its place stands the 20-storey condo build on the south side of Eleven Residences at 11 St. Joseph. The St. Nicholas alleyway no longer extends that far north; it has been filled in by ongoing construction of Five Condos at Yonge and St. Joseph.

Thank you to participants Bruce Eves, Don Pyle, Jacky Gabay, John Weber, Ken Andrews, Larry Adolph, Steven Leckie, Tibor Takács, Vince Carlucci, Wendy Peacock. Thanks also to Alice Lipczak, Andrée Emond, Caroline Azar, George Fichna, Helen Lenskyj and the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives, Vince Degiorgio, and to Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts, producer/directors of The Last Pogo Jumps Again, for their suggestions and sharing of resources.

The post Then & Now: Club David’s appeared first on Then and Now: Toronto Nightlife History.

Article originally published February 12, 2013 by The Grid online (thegridto.com).

The Ballinger brothers – owners of clubs including the Big Bop and Boom Boom Room – were not known for creating sophisticated spots. That changed with the chic, tri-level super-club that brought long line-ups to the Entertainment District in the early 1990s.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: Go-Go, 250 Richmond St. W.

Years in operation: 1990-1993

History: Though based in Toronto for less than a decade, the brothers Ballinger made a long-lasting impression. The “Rock ‘n’ Roll Farmers” from Dundalk were entrepreneurs who’d originally opened a variety of venues in Cambridge, Ontario in the late 1970s.

In 1986, Lon, Stephen, Doug, and Peter Ballinger opened the multi-leveled Big Bop club at Queen and Bathurst. The wildly popular hangout would anchor the southeast corner for over two decades, and was the cornerstone of the club empire the Ballingers would build. Their Boom Boom Room, opened at Queen and Palmerston in 1988, was much smaller in size, but was trendsetting with its mix of rock, alternative, house, and queer nights. With a few years’ experience in T.O. and a staff that was willing and able to bounce between venues, the Ballingers soon set their sites on 250 Richmond St. W. for an ambitious new venture.

Richmond and Duncan was not yet an obvious choice of location. After-hours club Twilight Zone had closed just the year before, and Charles Khabouth’s Stilife, located directly across the street, was showing signs of slowing. Beyond these venues, and after-hours rave destination 23 Hop, which would soon open at 318 Richmond St. W., the area was still largely deserted at night.

But with Doug Ballinger at the wheel, the brothers would develop a 14,000 square foot, tri-level warehouse building into one of the most innovative and influential clubs Toronto would experience in the 1990s.

“I had never met anyone as driven and excited about anything as Doug,” says DJ Mark Oliver, who was convinced by Ballinger to leave his residency at Stilife in order to spin five nights per week at Go-Go.

Ballinger custom-designed one floor—what would become known as The White Room—with Oliver’s forward-thinking dance music in mind. Above that would be the large Theatre Room, with a lounge to be built on the first floor, and a rooftop patio—among the city’s first at a nightclub—complete with water fountains and a barbeque hut. This was to be a very different experience from earlier Ballinger creations.

Go-Go manager Steve McMinn with Kim Ackroyd Oka on the rooftop patio. Photo courtesy of Ackroyd Oka.

“The previous Ballinger ventures had been built according to his older brothers’ specs and tastes, but now it was Doug’s chance to shine,” recalls Oliver.

“The Ballingers were all amazingly intelligent in their own unique ways,” says Boris Khaimovich, a Toronto nightclub veteran who worked at both the Boom and the Bop before becoming involved with the construction of Go-Go, where he would head security and, later, manage.

“They were a brilliant team,” describes Khaimovich. “Doug would conceptualize everything, Lon would find a way to finance it, and Steve would build it. [Writer’s note: Peter wasn’t as actively involved.] They were creative, and they were true club owners, with all of the eccentricities involved.”

Go-Go opened to a capacity crowd on July 13, 1990, with the photography of Floria Sigismondi on display.

Go-Go Member card. Courtesy of Jeremy Markoe.

Why it was important: Go-Go took the Ballingers’ tried-and-true multi-floor format to new heights. It was, at the time, their most ambitious and upscale club project, and its success influenced not only numerous future nightclub builds in Toronto, it also cemented the approach that the brothers themselves would later apply to their New York mega-club, Webster Hall.

“The Ballingers took a building and they made a different club on every floor, which hadn’t been seen here before, except at their Big Bop,” says the straight-shooting Khaimovich during a lengthy phone discussion.

“The Bop was a cash cow; it was like there was a money press in the basement, and they just kept printing it. The Boom was the Ballingers’ first attempt at getting into a smaller, more niche market club. Go-Go was a New York style club in downtown Toronto.”

Khaimovich had himself worked at a number of New York clubs, as well as at Toronto’s renowned Yorkville spot The Copa, during the late 1980s and was impressed by Go-Go.

“There was nothing like it here before. Up to that point, you had RPM, The Copa, The Diamond, and Big Bop as the only big-venue clubs in the city. RPM was in its decline, The Copa was allowed to get rundown, The Diamond did a lot more live music, and the Bop was basically college students getting shitfaced.

“Go-Go was the first club downtown that could easily hold a thousand people, and it was stunning. The lighting was spectacular—we had intelligent lighting—and the sound was solid. The staff was dressed up; they weren’t just wearing black T-shirts. Bodies were being shown, the male bartenders were dressed up, and doormen had to wear a suit and tie.”

Much of Go-Go’s success can be attributed to the club’s stark contrasts, including the aesthetic and feel of each different room. The first-floor lounge was intimate and warm, complete with a large wooden bar and windows looking out onto the street. The spacious second-floor White Room was bold and bright. It was entirely white—the walls, bars, DJ booth, bathrooms, statues, speakers, even the staff’s clothing.

The White Room. Photo courtesy of Kim Ackroyd Oka.

“The White Room was a huge departure from any club of its time,” recalls Oliver, the room’s sole resident for a full year. “Everything was white. Back then, most DJ booths were stuck in a corner of the club. Doug, however, wanted me to be the focal point, so he had the semicircular DJ booth raised eight feet from the floor, and placed in the middle of the east wall.”

From his booth, Oliver would blend rare groove, disco, house, and early techno tracks. He recalls playing loads of early Strictly Rhythm singles, especially Logic’s “The Warning.” Other Oliver anthems heard in the otherworldly room included “Sweat” by Jay Williams, Nightmares on Wax’ “Dextrous,” Sweet Exorcist’s “Testone,” and another early Warp Records’ smash, “Tricky Disco.”

“That room had an ethereal feel to it,” Oliver recalls. ”Not only from it being entirely white, but also from the religious statues affixed to the bars. I could never tell my mum that I swore the Virgin Mary one had real eyes, and was staring at me from across the room all night. Perhaps playing five nights a week in there was a little too much for my sanity.”

One floor up was the Theatre Room, Go-Go’s largest space. During renovations, structural beams had been pulled out of the building and replaced, in order to raise this room’s already high ceiling by an additional six feet. The Theatre Room was painted a rich, dark burgundy, had faux columns on the walls, huge mirrors and multiple bars.

“Where the White Room was meant to be housey, cool and slick, the Theatre Room was meant to be heavy and pounding,” describes Khaimovich.

DJ James ‘St. Bass’ Vandervoort with bartender Michael Quintas. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Butson.

“The sound was amazing in there,” says James Vandervoort a.k.a. DJ James St. Bass, the Theatre Room’s main resident for Go-Go’s entire history. “There were two massive Electrovoice bass bins, which could knock all the bottles off of the bar. And did!”

Vandervoort, who’d gotten his start as a DJ at the Boom Boom Room, developed his skills and reputation spinning four-to-five nights a week in the raised corner booth at Go-Go. Like Oliver, Vandervoort had his ears tuned to the underground but, as St. Bass, he was also appreciated for his ability to entertain any audience. His crates contained loads of crossover faves, ranging from the likes of Prince, Deee-Lite, and RuPaul to MK’s “Burning,” Ce Ce Peniston’s “Finally,” 2 In A Room’s “Wiggle It,” and numerous Steve “Silk” Hurley remixes.

“I rarely took my eyes off the floor,” says Vandervoort of his approach. “I watched the crowd, to try and make ‘em scream! Your perfect mix and rare tunes don’t mean squat if no one is partying on the dancefloor.”

“I love James St. Bass,” enthuses Khaimovich. “To me, he’s one of the greatest DJs ever. He could make dead men dance because he had a desire to make people dance. There was no ego in James. When you had a combination of Mark on one floor and James on the other on a Saturday night, well you can’t beat that. It was beautiful.”

Initially open Thursdays through Sundays—Wednesday night’s infamous Go-Go Men would open that fall—Go-Go took a few weeks to build a steady clientele, and then caught fire. The Ballingers were also ahead of the curve in programming nights that would appeal to vastly different crowds, and it paid off. While weekends held more mainstream appeal and Thursdays were house-heavy, Wednesdays and Sundays would underscore Go-Go’s broad reach.

“One of my favourite nights was Fast Lane Sundays, with great rock in the Theatre Room, and house in the White Room,” recalls Steve Ireson, a longtime contributor to Toronto nightlife who started working for the Ballingers in 1991.

Flyer courtesy of Steve Ireson.

“I used to drive in from Hamilton every Sunday, before I started working at Go-Go. It was great for me, especially because my ‘straight’ boyfriend at the time was more of a rocker, and I loved both. Surprisingly, the two crowds mixed just fine.”

On Sundays, DJ Vania and host/co-promoter Kevin “KC” Carlisle rocked the Theatre Room. They were also the team behind Boom Boom Room’s wildly successful Sgt. Rocks Wednesdays, and brought the concept to Go-Go.

James St. Bass, K.C., and Vania in a Sgt. Rocks promo photo shot at Go-Go. Image courtesy of James Vandervoort.

“Working Sunday nights with Vania spinning was the place to be for me,” says Cheryl Butson, a Go-Go bartender for its full run. “Vania and lighting guy Jimmy Lynch did a great job of taking a big club room and giving it a real dark, underground feel.”

Like Ireson, Butson appreciated Go-Go’s versatility, and the variety of people there on Sundays.

“On one floor there would be house music, with people dancing and dressed to the nines, while on the next floor it was heavy rock, long hair, and leather jackets—with a total mix on the rooftop.”

The single-monikered Vania tells me he’s “remarkably hazy” about his many months of spinning at Go-Go, but especially enjoyed DJing in the more intimate setting of the lounge.

“Honestly,” says Vania, “I had my eye on New York, and wanted to get out of Toronto.” (He would relocate to N.Y.C. to work for the Ballingers late in 1991.)

Vandervoort, who brought the house to Go-Go’s White Room on Sundays, was also the anchor resident at the club’s other signature night: Go-Go Men on Wednesdays. He played in the Theatre Room while Oliver, who’d been a resident at Tazmanian Ballroom’s popular Rock & Roll Fag Bar in the late ’80s, DJed on the second floor.

Poster image courtesy of James ‘St. Bass’ Vandervoort.

Go-Go Men built on the success that St. Bass and host/promoter Steven Wong had had with Boys Night Out on Thursdays at the Boom, and would become Toronto’s biggest gay weekly. While Wednesdays took a few weeks to build, they would soon attract crowds of 600-1,000 party boys, fashionistas, warehouse heads, and women each week.

“The thing that gave Go-Go Men that extra boost was that Halloween fell on a Wednesday our first year, and everybody came out for that, in full costume,” recalls social butterfly Wong, then a costume designer and co-promoter of warehouse parties.

“It was very over the top,” he says. “People didn’t dress up in monster outfits or whatever. The thing to do was to emulate the supermodels and what was going on in fashion. If you were going out in drag, you were going out as Linda Evangelista wearing Chanel couture or something. At that point, vogueing and supermodels were very popular, and everyone wanted to be glamorous. Go-Go was very glamorous.”

Promo image courtesy of LAEddy

With visits from fashion-magazine editors, designers including Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors, and gay celebs including Elton John and Rupert Everett, Go-Go Men ran for more than two full years.

“Friends who worked in stores on Bloor Street told me that people would come in and buy special outfits just for their Wednesday nights,” says Wong, now half of womenswear label Greta Constantine. “They’d go in looking like a million dollars, only to get totally trashed.”

“I think Go-Go Men is where I developed my liking for tequila,” shares Ireson who, as a manager, had special duties required of him.

“I would have to help the hot shooter boys into their tequila-belt harnesses. I also have some fond memories of hot-tub parties on the rooftop patio. Go-Go Men was an absolute blast, with line-ups down the street.”

Go-Go, in fact, became notorious for long line-ups, then largely unheard of in the area.

“Go-Go was the first club to bring really big crowds,” states Khaimovich. “On weekends, we had lines all the way around to the CHUM building’s entranceway at Queen and John. Long-weekend Sundays were absolutely insane. We would open up at 8 p.m., and by then, a line-up five-or-six people deep ran to John.”

Hot dog vendors certainly took note.

“That was before all the licensing came in for their carts,” Khaimovich says. “We used to have hot-dog wars outside the club; they used to pull knives on each other, fighting for spots. We’d collect rent money off the hot dog guys for the club—they were making money off of our crowds. I was the head doorman, and worked with a very good-looking farmboy, named Owen Young, at the front door. One night, a hot dog guy didn’t want to pay the club so we took his cart, and put it in the middle of Richmond Street.”

Go-Go Bartenders Cheryl Butson (left) and Allan with cigarette girl Bastian. Photo courtesy of Butson.

Soon, with nightclubs like Klub Max opening around the corner, on Peter, Richmond was busy with traffic.

“Within two to three years, there were many clubs in the area, like Limelight and later Joker,” says Vandervoort. “But after Stilife, Go-Go was the place that anchored what would become the ‘club district.’ Even during the time we were open at Go-Go, I felt like I was living a lyric from Nina Hagen’s “New York New York”—“The newest club is opening up, the newest club is opening up…” Everyone wanted to try and repeat the success from the moment Go-Go opened, it seemed.”

Very few large, mainstream clubs would be such a hotbed for house, techno, and emerging sounds from the electronic underground. Vandervoort—by then also playing 23 Hop, warehouse parties and hosting his Harddrive mix show on CIUT—worked to “remain as cutting edge as possible for a mainstream club.

“I could drop Mike Dunn’s ‘Magic Feet,’ The Underground Solution’s ‘Luv Dancin’‘ or rave-y tunes like Psychotropic’s ‘Hypnosis‘ because I had seen people go nuts for them at underground parties.”

Oliver offers another window onto this exhilarating time in Toronto club history.

“A crew from Windsor showed up at Go-Go one night and handed me a stack of test presses from a brand new label called Plus 8. These early Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva productions caused quite a stir. A revolution was bubbling under the surface in The White Room, about to explode two blocks away at 318 Richmond.”

Fired suddenly one late summer night in 1991 by “a well-lubricated” Lon Ballinger for not having Ballinger’s specific request on hand to play long after the club had closed (“he demanded I play a Stradivarius waltz.”), Oliver would take his record crates to 318 Richmond and help create local history.

“Leaving Go-Go was probably the most pivotal moment of my career,” says the DJ, now long synonymous with The Guvernment’s Saturday nights. “The following week, Wesley Thuro asked me to take over 23 Hop on Saturdays and, within a few short weeks, Toronto’s rave scene was truly born there.”

“Mark Oliver is one of the greatest DJs that this city has ever produced,” says Khaimovich. “Mark could see the future, and had an edge.”

Go-Go bartenders Michel Quintas, Cheryl Butson (centre), Kerry Mcinerney. Photo courtesy of Butson.

Who else played/worked there: After Oliver re-located, a then-unknown DJ, Kevin Williams, was hired to play Wednesdays through Saturdays in the White Room. It was his first club residency, and he came heavy with the house and hip-hop.

“Thursdays were my favourite,” says Williams. “They started off as a throwaway night—empty, especially in the White Room. Since I didn’t have anyone to play to, I would go through a stack of new house tracks, most of which I’d purchased that same evening from Play De Record.

“I met Abel Sylla—every house DJ’s fave dancer—and Kenny Glasgow, and they hung out. They helped spread the word, and in a period of four-to-five weeks, we emptied RPM’s disco nights, and brought everyone to the White Room. Not a single flyer was handed out.”

Many other bricklayers of Toronto’s house music community—like Nick Holder, Dino & Terry, Matt C, Peter, Tyrone & Shams, and Eric Ling—were soon seen at Go-Go on Thursdays.

“They brought me into the underground house scene,” credits Williams. “Prior to this, I had no idea you could go somewhere after 2 a.m.

“Go-Go Thursdays also brought a lot of different ethnicities together,” he points out. “The crowd was definitely a new urban mix of young club-heads-to-be.”

At a time when management at many large nightclubs would fully discourage DJs from playing hip-hop, Williams deftly mixed it into his sets.

“One busy Thursday, Steve Ireson came up to the booth during a hip-hop set,” Williams recalls. “Everyone was jumping up and down like kids in a bouncy castle. Black Sheep had already skipped twice, so I started the track over from the top. Steve asked me calmly, ‘Everything okay?’ and then asked matter-of-factly, ‘Hey, do you think you can tone it down just a bit?’ This was odd because he was very liberal, and never asked me to cut the hip-hop, so I wondered why. He said, ‘Well, I was just downstairs, and I can see the ceiling buckling up and down.’”

DJ Mark Falco was also a key resident later into Go-Go’s history. Having played at popular gay clubs like Komrads and Bar One, Falco was initially hired to work lights in the Theatre Room, complementing the sounds of St. Bass at Go-Go Men. Soon after, Falco would DJ in the White Room on Wednesdays, and eventually played his then-signature tunes, like Aly-us’ “Follow Me,” Kym Sims’ “Too Blind To See It,” and Liberty City’s “Some Lovin’” several nights a week until the club’s close.

Go-Go dancer. Photo courtesy of Kim Ackroyd Oka.

“Standout Go-Go memories include Stephen Wong and Rommel doing runway in knockoff Mugler motorcycle corsets, and other White Room happenings,” says Falco, a sought-after DJ to this day. “I always loved that room on men’s night for the breakout bus-stop lines, and for the fierce vogue/runway action that would happen late at night.”

Vandervoort adds some cherished moments of his own, experienced at Go-Go primarily on Sundays.

“I met a lot of heroes, like Juan Atkins and Larry Heard a.k.a. Mr. Fingers, who was in on a Sunday night with Robert Owens. Roger S came and danced to my set!  And I had a great chat with Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys, who had a private party in the White Room one night after their concert. He came up to the booth and we chatted between mixes for half an hour. At one point, I said, ‘I think I have one of your favourite records here in my disco crate,’ and pulled out Nuance’s ‘Love Ride.’ He howled, and said, ‘You know, we based our whole first album on that track.’ You can’t ever forget what it’s like to have those kinds of heroes in your DJ booth.”

Go-Go busboys Jeremy Markoe and Dave Baker. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Butson.

But it was not all fun ‘n’ games for Go-Go DJs and staff. Working for the Ballingers could be challenging, by many accounts.

“So much of Go-Go was up and down—the stairs, the crowds, the fun, the not-fun,” admits Vandervoort. “Never for me before or since has a club so perfectly fit the cliché of ‘It was the best and worst of times.’ I knew I was fortunate to work so much but, also, if you worked there, you knew how many people came and went, and under what strange circumstances.”

“The Ballingers were notorious for firing their managers,” confirms Ireson. “I alone was fired three times—and hired back twice.”

“For all their faults, when they were sober, the Ballingers actually treated their staff spectacularly,” offers Khaimovich. “When they were drunk, they were erratic. If they kissed your forehead, you’d either get a raise or get fired. I was fired three times by them—twice hired back, the first time with a big raise.”

Go-Go bar staff Ian Bullen and Drew Rowsome. Photo courtesy of Cristy-Jane Byrom.

As evidence, many Go-Go staffers also worked at other Ballinger clubs, including original managers Mike Ibrahim, Anthony Rofosco, and Steve McMinn. Bartenders including Butson, Cristy Byrom, and Drew Rowsome also worked other Ballinger clubs, as did bar-backs Jeremy Markoe, Barry Gerreau, and “Super Dave” Baker. (Markoe even followed the Ballingers to New York, where he now resides.)

Many other members of the Go-Go staff became familiar faces on this city’s nightscape. Bartenders Daniel and Michel Quintas would later partner with Khaimovich to open Insomnia on Bloor, while Rosemary Martin and Holly Batson later worked at The Guvernment, and door man James Benecke opened both the Kat Club and Apothecary Music Bar.

Bartender Holly Batson at Go-Go. Photo courtesy of Cristy-Jane Byrom.

Most interviewed for this story mention that the Go-Go team was tight.

“Some of my fondest memories of Go-Go are of how we, as a staff, would go out all together after closing up,” recalls Ireson. “We’d show up at boozecans or warehouse parties as a crew.”

After Ireson was fired the final time, he went on to manage at clubs including Factory and OZ, where both Williams and Vandervoort would DJ, as well as 5ive and CiRCA. Go-Go alumni was hired at each venue. Ireson is now co-owner (with husband Chris Schroer) of deli-café The Hogtown Cure.

Vandervoort summarizes a statement expressed by many interviewees, albeit from a DJ’s perspective.

“I loved the first two years at Go-Go and had some of my best and most cherished nights there. It was also DJ boot camp—a total woodshed workout. I was very burned out and ready for a change when the end came, and I never worked exclusively in one club or for one owner ever again. It was definitely a case of all my eggs in one basket, and, trust me, they cracked!”

Despite requests, Lon Ballinger declined to comment for this story.

Steve Ireson (left) and Boris Khaimovich (right) with busboy David Baker.
Photo courtesy of Cheryl Butson.

What happened to it: “Go-Go was like a comet,” says Khaimovich of the club’s trajectory. “It came out of nowhere, was shining so bright that you would get blinded, and it died really fast.

“Go-Go started crashing within two years. We’d been doing such high numbers that I think everybody had seen it, done it, and moved on to something else. By that point, other spots had opened up.” (Khaimovich himself would go on to manage Limelight and now resides in Northumberland County where he indulges his love of horses.)

“Also, after about a year-and-a-half or so, the Ballingers started spending a lot more time in New York, on building Webster Hall. Their focus changed, and honestly, Webster Hall sucked the money. You could practically see suitcases leaving Go-Go and going to Webster Hall.”

Go-Go ad from 1992, courtesy of Cheryl Butson.

Attempts to revive Go-Go included painting the White Room and renaming it The Black Angel Room. The Ballingers’ attention was greatly divided. Not only had they purchased New York club The Ritz in 1990, and begun the massive undertaking of re-opening it as Webster Hall, they’d also bought The Courthouse on Adelaide East, and Mississauga all-ages club Superstars, which they opened as The World in June of 1992.

“The Ballingers were very aggressively building an empire, and I think they got spread too thin,” says Vandervoort, now a DJ who plays selective gigs, including the Black Crack Funk Attack monthly, and works by day in student support services at a city college.

“To their credit, they got what they wanted with Webster Hall,” concludes Vandervoort. “To my mind, that venture was built and financed off a lot of people’s blood, sweat, and tears at Go-Go and the Bop.”

Vania, who DJed at Webster Hall for its first six years, returned home in 1998, and now spins at venues including the Bovine Sex Club on Fridays.

“After seven years in New York with the Ballingers, it became a little wearing. But the last time I was there, they were getting keys to the city, and Webster Hall had been designated a historic landmark. Americans love a success story.”

Go-Go closed quietly in the summer of 1993. 250 Richmond St. W. soon re-opened as Whiskey Saigon where Go-Go veteran DJs including Oliver, Williams, Falco, and Vania all played. Joe Nightclub followed. The building now houses the head office of Bell Media’s Radio operations, including the studios of CHUM-FM and Flow 93.5.

250 Richmond Street W. in early 2013.

Thank you to participants Boris Khaimovich, Cheryl Butson, James Vandervoort, Kevin Williams, Mark Falco, Mark Oliver, Steve Ireson, Stephen Wong, and Vania, as well as Cristy-Jane Byrom, Jeremy Markoe, Kim Oka Ackroyd, and LAEddy.

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

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.

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

Article originally published June 7, 2012 by The Grid online (TheGridTO.com).

In this edition of her nightclub-history series, Denise Benson revisits the most sexcess-ful, celeb-studded gay house club of the ‘90s.

BY: DENISE BENSON

Club: JOY, 16 Phipps

Years of operation: 1995-1997

History: The rapidly changing streets surrounding Toronto’s Yonge and St. Joseph intersection were once a mecca for adventurous late-night dancers. Some of the hub’s gay and after-hours history was explored in earlier Then & Now pieces about influential 1980s venues Voodoo and Club Z; now, we return during the ’90s, before the area was transformed by the massive condo development we see today.

The tiny Phipps Street is tucked in just north of Wellesley and south of St. Joseph, running east-west from St. Nicholas to Bay. In the mid-’70s, while big gay dance club The Manatee drew crowds to 11A St. Joseph, Club David’s brought gay revelers south down the alley, to 16 Phipps, where a gold rendition of Michelangelo’s David presided over the dancefloor. In the ’80s, David was out and mirrors were in as the building became new gay club Le Mystique.

Although it later housed a variety of warehouse parties, early raves and other one-off events, the building still featured some of Mystique’s décor when John Wulff and silent partners went to view 16 Phipps early in March of 1995. The former storehouse, complete with its old loading dock and a small tunnel that connected it to 11A St. Joseph (it’s thought a conveyor belt once ran between the two), was in rough shape.

Outside 16 Phipps, pre-JOY. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

Wulff—who’d been socializing “seven days a week” in Toronto’s downtown gay scene since he was 16, and had worked for clubs including Gilles Belanger’s B-Bar—was ready to produce something of his own. He saw the 6,000 sq. ft. space as being well-suited to his vision of an after-hours dance club, located near the gay village, that would feature house music, art, and performance.

“The space was big, raw, and warehousey,” recalls Wulff. “We ripped everything out, soundproofed the walls, sprayed everything black, and installed a sound system.”

Inside of 16 Phipps, pre-JOY. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

“Physically, JOY was a big black box,” adds DJ Scott Cairns, who would become the club’s Saturday night resident. “It was mainly dancefloor, with a raised area in the back where people could get a bird’s-eye view of what was happening below. It was dark and sexy. The lighting was minimal, with the focus being the giant disco ball in the centre of the floor.”

JOY opened its doors at 1 a.m.—then last call at licensed bars—on Friday, March 17, 1995. Although the promotion of Fridays faltered at first, JOY’s Saturdays were an immediate hit and soon regularly exceeded the legal capacity of 472 people.

“JOY quickly became the late night go-to spot,” says Cairns. “Mainly a gay event, the Saturdays were heavily attended by a wide cross-section of people: drag queens, muscle boys, dykes, models—all the usual suspects—with a gay-positive hetero element. Straight girls and their terrified boyfriends were often on hand.”

JOY dancefloor. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

Why it was important: The timing of JOY could not have been better. As a gay-heavy, house music focussed, late-night dance club, it filled a lot of gaps. The warehouse scene had slowed, raves had grown larger and younger, and the music at Toronto gay bars had become increasingly commercial.

“JOY was completely on its own,” says Wulff. “The gay clubs, like Boots, Colby’s and The Barn, were playing Top 40 with the occasional house song while raves were playing Euro-ish fast beats. JOY was playing the newest and best underground house music, and felt like warehouse parties in Chicago or Detroit. JOY didn’t feel like Canada; it felt very New York, and people were very excited to be part of the energy.”

“JOY was very important at the time as it offered an after-hours experience that was safe and close to home for a big portion of the gay community,” adds Cairns, a 30-year DJ veteran who, by then, had wrapped up popular residencies at both The Phoenix and OZ.

“There was a definite thirst for something new in the core. I feel we provided that big time.”

“The JOY space had cachet from being a gay and alternative club over many years,” says James Vandervoort, better known as James St. Bass, a friend and frequent DJ partner of Cairns’. Vandervoort had come out while dancing in nearby ’80s clubs like Stages, Avalon, and Voodoo, and had himself brought gay clubbers west of Yonge while DJing boys’ nights at both Go-Go and Boom Boom Room.

“By the time JOY got started, it felt like coming home to gay after-hours dancing, but it was our time and our generation that was running it. JOY took the tradition of those earlier after-hours dances, but had more glamour, energy, and perhaps danger than the others that came before. It was raw, dark, sexy and, best of all, so central. JOY had the sound and feel of an illicit warehouse party, but was there every weekend—and with no chasing phone-line prompts to find it!”

Scott Cairns (left), John Wulff and Gilles Belanger. Photo courtesy of Wulff.

Cairns created much of the atmosphere with his music, often playing five full hours of the house he loved.

“Some of the best house was coming out in 1995 to ’96,” Cairns enthuses. “Big records for me at JOY included tracks from Farley & Heller a.k.a. Roach Motel, like ‘Wild Luv‘ and ‘Work 2 Doo.’ The dub of Joi Cardwell’s ‘Jump For Joi‘ was massive, as was H2O’s ‘Satisfied (Take Me Higher),’ and Robbie Tronco’s ‘Walk for Me.’ Tracks from producers like Danny Tenaglia, Roger S., MURK, Angel Moraes and Mousse T. were really big.

“And then came Boris Dlugosch and ‘Keep Pushin’,’” Cairns continues. “My friend Mitch Winthrop had just came back from visiting Boris in Germany, and arrived at JOY with a test press of this forthcoming single. I dropped it immediately and the reaction was intense. Later, in June of 1996, I had the pleasure of being joined by Boris at JOY. During his set, he dropped Giorgio Moroder’s ‘Chase.’ It’s one of my strongest memories from the club.”

LISTEN: Scott Cairns Live at JOY

The intense atmosphere of Saturdays at JOY can also be attributed to the dreams and antics of host John Wulff.

“My responsibility was to create an experience every week, and I’m proud of the events we put together,” he says.

For Halloween of 1995, Wulff performed as Carrie, complete with wig, white dress, pyrotechnics and Gilles Belanger as his Tommy Ross.

Another week, he recounts, “I rode into JOY on a motorcycle, in a star-spangled bikini, wrapped in an American flag and did Sandra Bernhardt’s strip tease from Without You I’m Nothing to [Prince's] ‘Little Red Corvette.’”

Frequently, Wulff could be found lying on a bed placed in the middle of the club on a scaffold.

“It was a mattress with gold satin sheets where whoever was feeling it would lounge or simulate sex shows,” says Wulff. “Various guests starred on that bed, from me to porn stars to beefcake male gymnasts stretching in silver sequin g-strings.”

He also recalls that JOY’s New Year’s 1996 party was perhaps the height of their (s)excess.

“We re-did the interior from black box to a glamorous ’30s speakeasy,” Wulff explains. “We installed two large chandeliers, and had an artist paint a 27-foot-long Tamara de Lempicka naked-woman portrait. We squeezed 1,200 people into that room. It was raining from the sweat and condensation—everyone was pretty much naked. I’ve never felt energy like that.”

JOY mural. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

Wulff, in fact, starred alongside the many local and international celebs who passed through the club’s doors on weekends. Dozens of actors, models and musicians took part, ranging from Madonna and her tour dancers to Alanis Morissette, Terrence Trent D’Arby, John Goodman, Geena Davis, Montreal supermodel Ève Salvail, 90210 star Kathleen Robertson, and Heather Tom of The Young and the Restless, a soap widely adored by gay men.

But it wasn’t just Saturday nights and celebrity cameos that made JOY special. About a month after the club opened, Fridays were properly launched, with Jennstar at the helm. The promoter and hostess had already worked for years at Queens Quay nightclub RPM, was a columnist for TRIBE magazine, and was known for bringing warehouse heads, clubbers, and ravers of all sexual orientations together.

Jennstar at JOY. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

Jennstar recruited fellow Futureshock crew members Gavin Bryan and Nnamdi Gryffyn a.k.a. DJ Gryphon, and they assembled a team that brought the Friday night concept called “Jennstar…She’ll Make You Famous” to life.

“We were inspired by fashion, fabulousness, fierceness, all the F words—including ‘famous,’” says Jennstar. “Everyone who attended JOY was fierce in their own way. This was a time when a lot of people were just starting their businesses—hair, make-up, graphic artists, performers, club-kids, you name it.”

Flyer courtesy of Jennstar

Opening night was packed, with NYC’s Frankie Knuckles on the decks and Jennstarr performing as Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond. Fridays consistently bridged crowds and communities, with ace rotating resident DJs Gryphon, Jason Hodges, Matt C, Mario J, and Kenny Glasgow working their musical magic.

“I remember walking down the alley, hearing the music get louder as you’d approach, and then turning the corner to see a lineup of people trying to get in every week,” recalls Hodges of his first real residency. “It was a rush.”

Lineup outside of JOY. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

“JOY was a place where that warehouse vibe was strong,” adds Hodges, a now-established DJ/producer. “The sound was big, and the vibe was dope. It was a solid night that drew music-driven crowds who knew what was up.”

Most of Fridays’ cast of players—from door staff to DJs and dancers—very much knew what was up. Many would form the core of Industry Nightclub, which opened about a year and a half after JOY.

One of these people was Rommel, a house-music lover who danced many weekends away at JOY, and frequently hosted Fridays’ VIP room.

“JOY was my version of Studio 54,” says Rommel. “Favourite memories include Frankie Knuckles playing an amazing set, Franklin Fuentes performing his club hit ‘If Madonna Calls,’ and, of course, our very own Jackae [Baker], with her many fabulous performances.”

John Wulff (left) and Rommel. Photo courtesy of Wulff.

“Jennstar, Rommel, and Jackae brought the glamour and the fun,” says Vandervoort. “It was decadent for sure, but also very funny. There were feature shows and drag-fashion fabulousness that got sloppier the later it got, so it never had the heavy dark feeling of some raves; it was more pure gay lasciviousness and bold fun. You could be any orientation and be welcome at JOY, but you likely had a better time if you liked to take most of your clothes off and dance like a maniac.”

This video, with original JOY footage shot by Rob Cluff in August of 1995, serves as evidence.

“At JOY we got away with a lot,” agrees Jennstar. “There were no rules really back then. Warehouse parties had died and the cops were paying attention to the raves, so we skirted under the radar for quite a bit. Just a bit, but boy was it fun. JOY was a place where you could come and hear fierce music and be who you wanted to be. It was definitely a birthplace for many events and parties that followed.

JOY was named the Best Nightclub of 1995 in Toronto Life magazine. It also helped bring deeper shades of house back to gay bars.

Wulff offers this tidbit: “Colby’s opened Voodoo Lounge one year after JOY, and copied it directly.”

Matt C (left) with Jason “Deko” Steele at JOY on Hallowe’en. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

At JOY. Photo courtesy of John Wulff.

Who else played there: Jennstar’s Fridays featured many guest DJs, with a heavy Montreal lean. Frequent visitors included Luc Raymond, Christian Pronovost, and Alain Vinet, now Musical Director for Cirque du Soleil.

“The biggest international artists who played JOY for us were Deep Dish,” says Jennstar. “It’s kind of a funny story. Ashley from [promotions crew] Better Days called to ask if they could come and play the night before the [Better Days’] rave; the Deep Dish boys really wanted to get a feel for the city. I said sure, but had no real idea who they were, and we didn’t have money to pay them. They showed up and rocked the house.”

While Saturdays at JOY were mainly a showcase of Scott Cairns, guests like Montreal’s Mark Anthony and Sylvain Girard were sometimes found. Matt C also guested one Halloween, as caught on film above.

JOY also occasionally opened its doors on other nights for special events, including a House of Trance Wednesday series produced by Don Berns a.k.a. Dr. Trance.

JOY dancefloor. Photo courtesy of Scott Cairns.

What happened to it: JOY closed abruptly in early 1997.

“I had a falling out with my partners,” shares Wulff. “They changed the locks, and changed the name of the club to the Cubicle. Also, I was very tired and didn’t want to fight it. The fire department was all over us for capacity and sound issues, plus [then City Councillor] Kyle Rae was not a fan and wanted us closed.”

The Cubicle was short-lived. After it closed, 16 Phipps opened very briefly again under the name of JOY, though Wulff was not involved. According to him, the building was demolished roughly five years ago. In its place stands the 20-storey condo build on the south side of Eleven Residencies at 11 St. Joseph.

Wulff left the club business after JOY, moving into corporate branding and marketing. After recovering from serious health issues in 2011, however, he decided to “come out of retirement to do quarterly events,” beginning with a JOY reunion this Friday (June 8). Many of the JOY faithful will congregate in the rooms of Buddies In Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street). Mark Falco DJs in the Cabaret, while Scott Cairns plays the main Chamber.

“I’ve been crafting the music for this night for months,” says an excited Cairns. “I’ve listened to probably a thousand records, trying to trim it down to the perfect set. I hope everyone has the best time, reuniting with friends and reliving the glory days of JOY.”

LISTEN: SCOTT LIVE at JOY mix 2

Jennstar, James St. Bass, Rommel and fellow JOY devotee Charles Pavia will host, while artists Drasko Bogdanovic and the Young Astronauts provide a wall of projections.

“With the reunion, it’s the old JOY mission: house music combined with artistic expression, through striking visuals, but on overdrive,” says Wulff. “I want to provide not only a good house-music party, but one that leaves you visually in awe.

“Also, Rommel will perform at 12:30 a.m., in something that I’ve described as her ‘Madonna Super Bowl Halftime Show.’ She’s accompanied by four clones of herself—you will die!

“I think that people are ready to have a different experience in nightclubbing,” summarizes Rommel. ”I would encourage attendees to put on their best boogie shoes, and to be as outrageous, if not courageous, in your club couture. JOY was especially known for that. Above all, I encourage everyone to just be you; that’s what JOY was and is all about.”

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