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What Killed The Club District?
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| kotsy |
| quote: | Originally posted @ http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=178708
What killed the club district?
The battle between condos and clubs in the Entertainment district is coming to an end, but is the war over nightlife just beginning?
By Benjamin Boles
Every year in Toronto, a shiny new hot nightspot appears on the scene claiming that it will revolutionize the way we party. This time, however, the bar getting all the buzz isn’t a mega-club with lasers and smoke machines – it’s a bowling alley.
The Ballroom (145 John), with its high-end lanes and sports on giant flat-screen TVs, is definitely something different for the zone in the core known as the Entertainment District, and many see it as a sign of where the area is going.
The concept seems improbable at first, but the upscale sports bar and bowling facility is already doing good business while the streets surrounding at Richmond and Adelaide are haunted by boarded-up nightclubs.
“Well, this is no longer the club district – that’s evident, right?” says co-owner Thanos Tripi. “All that club energy has left. I wanted to provide something different.”
What was once one of the busiest club districts in North America – throngs of high-spirited revellers, snarled traffic and an over-hyped reputation for rowdiness and violence – became a victim of its own success. We’re now witnessing the end of an experiment in concentrating nightlife that probably won’t be repeated in Toronto.
Too often, the nightclub debate has been framed around simplistic narratives about villains and victims, but there are no clear heroes here. While some might say clubland lost its cool points years ago, I can’t help being struck by what the loss of so many venues will mean, especially since there’s no other practical spot for the party scene to set up shop.
While some would say the idea was fatally flawed to begin with, the club district made for a great night on the town when it worked, and solved some of the very real problems cities struggle with. It kept the noise away from where people lived and revitalized a desolate post-industrial area in dire need of a second life, and its proximity to the subway helped discourage drunk driving.
Without a demarcated zone, the scene will rub up against residential neighbourhoods wherever it moves, ensuring that dance clubs will forever remain contested terrain.
Late-night partying will no longer define Richmond/Adelaide; the new Master Plan for the area (see sidebar) is pretty clear about that.
“Let’s put it this way: there are going to be fewer and fewer nightclubs, and there are fewer and fewer properties that can even accommodate them,” says Janice Solomon of the Entertainment District BIA, which sponsored the plan.
Sure enough, the plan aims to transform the streets from a playground for the young and inebriated to something that sounds more like Yorkville. Studies are being done to turn John into a pedestrian-friendly “cultural corridor” extending up to the AGO, and references to nightclubs are conspicuous by their absence in the document.
“Those days are done,” says Solomon. “It’s not feasible or affordable to take over big warehouses in the downtown core. At the same time, you don’t want things to just shut down and end up with a quiet and dark nighttime – that’s not healthy for an entertainment district, and it’s not healthy for a city.”
Solomon favours operations that aren’t solely dependent on making their money between midnight and 2 am on Friday and Saturday night. “I think we could get all kinds of nightlife in here, and a really good example is the bowling alley.”
For the King-Spadina Residents Association, this shift can’t come soon enough. For much of the 00s, co-founder Donald Rodbard led a campaign against the explosion of clubs. Media stories about an Entertainment District out of control were so common in the last decade, most people had no idea that the peak passed back in 2007 just as the much-hyped, ill-fated Circa nightclub opened.
“We’re down about 50 per cent in terms of the number of clubs,” Rodbard says with a hint of pride.
“That decline was because of the pressure put on them. We’ve heard through the grapevine that they’re moving out to College and Queen West now because there’s not as much pressure from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and the police.”
He’s right that his group’s efforts had a major effect on the recent decline, but as with most things in life, the real story is much more complicated. To get a better sense of how we got to this point, you have to go back to the beginning. Way back.
When David Assoon and his brothers opened the Twilight Zone at 185 Richmond West in 1981, this was a very different neighbourhood. The area’s first club was also T.O.’s first truly world-class dance club.
“The Richmond Street area was basically a lot of empty warehouses left over from the fashion industry,” says Assoon. “It was perfect: close to the hotels, close to the subway, tons of free parking, and there weren’t any residents to complain.”
By the time they closed their doors eight years later, a handful of other venues had followed their lead to the area. While Assoon doesn’t recall many problems with violence, he paints a picture that would horrify residents’ groups.
“We had people lined up from midnight to 4 in the morning. Customers would find the club just by following the sound of the bass. Some nights there were just as many people hanging around outside as inside. I don’t think anyone will experience that kind of thing again in Toronto.”
By the time the Twilight Zone’s impressively long run ended in 1989, the idea of pushing clubs into the desolate maze of empty warehouses had taken root. Says Tony Sbrocchi, part of the team that ran the Living Room through the 90s and into the early 00s, “They were begging people to start up places, and making it fairly easy. The rents were cheap, but it was still a gamble.”
My first experiences of the district as a teenager in the early 90s weren’t even at proper clubs, since I was too young. Some weekends, it seemed that illegal booze cans and warehouse parties outnumbered legitimate clubs. If the cops busted a rave early, the party would often end up moving to one of the clubs after the regular crowd had left for the night. By the end of the 90s, the scene had become enormous, and as the ravers entered their 20s, it shifted to the clubs.
Coinciding with this underground youth culture movement was mainstream hip-hop’s takeover of the pop charts toward the last half of the 90s. For years it was rare for an Entertainment District bar to play rap on a weekend night, but as the genre came to own the top-40 charts, the clubs finally got over their fears and embraced it as well.
Suddenly you had both the underground and mainstream crowds looking for places to dance, and the free market was more than happy to satisfy the demand. That moment didn’t last, though, and soon the vibe started to change yet again.
Money attracts money, and in the early 00s the club boom started looking like an exciting investment. The new generation of club owners saw easy money to be made, usually in the form of cookie-cutter top-40 bars catering to the same mainstream crowd as the others. Those of us searching for something different might still end up in the area for a special event, but increasingly the trendsetters looked elsewhere for places to dance.
Along with the rapid growth of the club scene in the late 90s came zoning changes (see our timeline) that allowed the industrial spaces the clubs had embraced to be converted into condos. While the influx of new residents helped provide patrons for the bars, it also meant the end of the honeymoon for clubs. A bazillion clubs crammed into one small area is not a good mix with residents trying to get a good night’s sleep.
Assoon no longer even agrees with the concept of an entertainment zone. “Toronto is too big now to force the nightclubs into that small of an area. It creates a negative environment. In the club district, no one was doing anything different from anyone else.”
Sbrocchi thinks club owners who throw a couple of million into dressing up a space but have no actual concept are partially responsible for the changing atmosphere. “They [think] you can just throw money at a club and it’ll make money, but you’ve got to create a certain vibe and feeling or you end up attracting the wrong crowd.”
Before long, the hipper aspects of Toronto nightlife started moving out. First, clubs crossed Spadina in the early 00s, where Sbrocchi opened Hush just around the corner from Roxy Blu, Una Mas and Footwork. West Queen West blew up, and the Ossington strip got a new lease on life as karaoke bars were converted into chic lounges.
To complicate things further, the divisions between underground rock and dance music were crumbling, giving the edge to venues that could handle both live bands and DJs. All the while, skyrocketing rents in the club district were reducing already meagre profit margins.
This was the environment that faced legendary NYC club king Peter Gatien when he opened ambitious mega-club Circa in October 2007. He quickly discovered it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing.
Opposition from residents and Councillor Adam Vaughan delayed the launch for so long that his initial investors backed out. When Circa finally opened its doors, it was under a huge debt load that would ultimately be its undoing. It didn’t help that the hipster crowd he hoped to attract wasn’t interested in partying in a club that looked like a mall (and is now slated to become a department store). Read more of Adam Vaughan's views on clubs here.
So 30 years after it began, Toronto’s club scene is back where it started, but the particular conditions that made clubland possible probably won’t arise here again. It seemed like a good idea at the time and worked better than most now give it credit for, but the moment has passed for good.
So what now? Does Toronto have to get used to the idea of residents and nightlife living side by side? Is there a compromise to be found between a vibrant city with a healthy nightlife and one where you can enjoy some peace and quiet in your own home? From now on, even if nightclubs aren’t in your backyard, they’re in someone else’s. |
More reading:
Where Do We Go From Here?
Number Crunch
Dangers in District Master Plan
Entertainment District: A Timeline
So Long, Jersey Shore North
On Adam Vaughan’s Dance card |
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| Shaya007 |
Nice pictures!
:toothless |
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| Abercrombie |
Video killed the radio star.
Adam Vaughan killed everyingelse |
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| b4k-oz |
| quote: | Originally posted by Abercrombie
Video killed the radio star.
Adam Vaughan killed everyingelse |
^^^+10000 to infinity |
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| StereoPrincess |
| Clubland killed itself. Also the 905ers. |
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| ChemEnhanced |
| It was only a matter of time before it killed itself. A part of me thinks Toronto will be better off without it. |
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| Swamper |
| I particularly miss the Living Room and Mad Bar... such great house nights there back in the day. |
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| GGM |
I don't miss the over saturation of top 40 crap clubs and I think in the long run this will give us more quality clubs. It's going to take some serious loophole finding to get around the banning in that bill they passed a couple months ago. Not that there is a need for one but it basically makes creating another club like the Guvernment impossible (bans multi-levels, patios such as skybar, high capacity numbers, multi rooms and the list goes on). And that is all from our good friend Adam...
One thing I will say is since the district started dying clubs have constantly been raping our wallets. Price of drinks has skyrocketted at most places and drink specials are gone unless it's a random Monday night or something lame. And 5 years ago you really HAD to justify $10 cover, now it's pretty much the standard to the point where you even have pubs like grace o'malleys charging it. |
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| Endlesswave |
| Living room was great. The area will be missed but at the same time change should hopefully be good. |
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| Jayx1 |
Adam Vaughan who was a member of the police services board, TAVIS units of the toronto police, and the AGCO are what killed the club district.
Here is an example of the AGCO in Ottawa:
| quote: | Ottawa bars near home of NHL's Senators face liquor bans
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Tom Spears, Canwest News Service · Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009
OTTAWA -- Two bars near Scotiabank Place have been hit with lengthy liquor licence suspensions after provincial inspectors found a pattern of drunken rowdiness.
Philthy McNasty’s and O’Connor’s Irish Pub, both in Kanata Centrum, are under suspension for a series of liquor offences in the fall and winter a year ago.
Philthy McNasty’s is serving a 33-day suspension lasting until Feb. 9; O’Connor’s lost its liquor licence for 17 days and can re-open on Jan. 21.
“There was quite a series of incidents that took place, and there was a continuing pattern of conduct,” said Lisa Murray, a spokeswoman for the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, which issues (and suspends) liquor licences.
“Many of them were (Ottawa Senators) game nights,” she added. The inspectors reported that many of the customers began their nights at the hockey game and came to the Centrum pubs to keep the evening going.
It’s the first suspension for Philthy McNasty’s. O’Connor’s had suspensions in 2003 (five days) and 2007 (10 days) -- one for overcrowding and one for drunkenness.
But while the suspensions are for a series of offences a year ago, the area’s councillor says fights and overdrinking have continued ever since. “There’s been some real problems there,” said Marianne Wilkinson.
“They’re very large bars. The liquor flows, and then they (customers) come out at the end of it and have fights,” Ms. Wilkinson said.
“It’s been a long time,” she said. “They had a community meeting about a month ago.
“They are serving alcohol to people who are obviously drunk, and they get even drunker, and their employees are not discouraging them.”
“The suspension is longer for Philthy McNasty’s — I hate that name — than from O’Connor’s, but both have been problems for some time,” she said.
“The police tell me it is a place they have to go to. At 2 a.m. Sunday morning (or) Saturday morning, they have to have a presence there. The mall was even considering hiring off-duty police to be there. That’s how difficult it’s become.”
At Philthy McNasty’s, the liquor inspectors, sometimes accompanied by police, found drunk customers on each of six visits from October 2007 to January 2008.
In one case, the bar’s security people did not take measures to make sure that customers were remaining calm, “and people were just getting really unruly,” Ms. Murray said.
On another, a staff member tried to block police officers who were arresting the staff member’s drunk brother.
The bar has agreed as a condition of its sentence to install video cameras at the entrances and keep video records as evidence.
O’Connor’s also admitted that liquor inspectors and police had found drunks on the premises on two visits about a year ago, Ms. Murray said.
“This is again the same type of thing: There is a pattern of conduct in allowing disruptive behaviour by patrons on sort of an ongoing basis.”
O’Connor’s also agreed to install video cameras.
At Philthy McNasty’s, the main door is boarded up and a sign reads: “We will be closed until February 9 for renovations. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause as we look forward to introducing you to our new and improved Philthy McNasty’s! Sincerely, Ownership and Management.”
This is right next to a yellow sign from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission that says the bar had its liquor licence suspended due to 10 counts of permitting drunkenness and three counts of failing to deter disorderly conduct outdoors.
Inspectors identify themselves to the staff on duty when they check out a bar or restaurant and let them know if they find problems, Ms. Murray said.
When they find problems, “then it’s likely that those establishments will see the inspectors more often.”
The suspensions were negotiated between the provincial commission and the two bars. There was no hearing for either case.
The two suspensions are very lengthy by Ontario standards, Ms. Murray said. Most offences bring a warning, a fine, or a shorter suspension. (Scotiabank Place itself served a one-day liquor licence suspension on Nov. 11.)
“Anything 14 days or over is considered a serious length.”
“We’ll abide by the laws that the government of Ontario has laid out, and do our best to follow the strict regulations of the Liquor Licensing Act,” said Jeff White, vice-president of the Pegasus Group, which sells Philthy’s franchises.
But he said it’s nearly impossible for a bar that holds 500 customers to avoid having a few drunks.
The recent suspension, he said, “put us in a tough, tough position, but there’s really not much we can do. There’s 500 people in the place, and we try to keep an eye on everybody, but it’s pretty hard to do so,” he said.
Cutting the number of customers makes the business unprofitable, said Mr. White. “When you’re busy, that’s when they (inspectors) come looking for you. They don’t go into Swiss Chalet looking for liquor infractions. They come into the busiest restaurant, and we were the busiest bar at that time.”
But he said the Philthy’s chain may have to evolve into smaller, pub-style establishments, and the day of big bars with crowds, excitement, dance floors and bands is fading away.
Representatives of O’Connor’s Irish Pub could not be reached for comment.
With files from Brendan Kennedy, Citizen staff
The Ottawa Citizen |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Ivison: Ontario is becoming an increasingly Orwellian province
Jana Chytilova for National Post
Ivison is testifying at a LCBO hearing about the pub serving alcohol to drunk people, including himself.
John Ivison, National Post · Friday, Jan. 9, 2009
It seems positively Orwellian that a private conversation in a bar can be taken down surreptitiously by a third party and used as evidence in a quasi-judicial hearing -- but that is the reality of life in a province that is under increasingly intrusive surveillance.
Readers with long memories may remember that a group of journalists was booted unceremoniously from the popular downtown Ottawa watering hole D’Arcy McGee’s on a quiet Monday night last February. There was no warning, no incident -- just no more beer.
It turned out a liquor inspector working for the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario had satisfied himself that the revellers were intoxicated and told the bar’s manager that he was filing a report that would put D’Arcy’s liquor license in jeopardy -- hence the beer yanked from the hot, clammy hand of one of my bemused colleagues.
The report was filed in the fall and D’Arcy’s decided to contest its findings. As the bar’s manager, Kevin Ferby, told me at the time, he felt the inspector was “overzealous” and had “overreacted”. “The law is there to protect extremes and there were no extremes here,” he said.
I was called as a witness this week at a hearing in front of two members of the board of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission -- and the experience was surreal. The AGCO is a unique organization, in that it decides who gets a liquor license, then enforces their operation through liquor inspectors. If the organization decides to proceed with charges, the AGCO appoints legal counsel and the case is heard by two AGCO board members. Theoretically, each stage of the process is independent of the other, though defendents say the cards are often stacked against them.
It gets worse -- unlike a criminal court, where the prosecution has to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, to a high evidentiary standard, at an AGCO hearing, the burden of proof is much lower -- on the balance of probability -- as is an evidentiary standard that allows the use of hearsay.
In the D’Arcy’s case, the prosecuting lawyer cited the Post article, in which I had described members of our band as being “moist and garrulous” , if not quite “tired and emotional”, as an admission that we were all intoxicated -- which is an offence under the Liquor License Act. I conceded that we were in high spirits but rejected the notion of intoxication, which according to the Ministry of Government Services’ own server training program means the customer is speaking too loudly, slurring, sweating and losing balance.
“You had to repeat yourself several times, did you not?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes but that happens all the time. You might have noticed I have the hint of an accent,” I replied, in my strongest west Scotland brogue.
By this time things had proceeded from farce, as the lawyer flailed away in her attempts to make me admit we were all full of loudmouth soup, or something more sinister.
“As regards the subject of your conversation, is it possible the conversation was of a sexual nature?” the lawyer asked.
“Excuse me,” I replied, taken aback.
“Is it possible the conversation was of a sexual nature?”
“I have no idea.”
“Is it possible?”
“I have no idea. Is this relevant?” I asked.
“Your job here is to answer the questions. I will do the asking,” she said, curtly.
So there you have it. It seems that not only was a public servant sitting in the shadows studying us, he was also eavesdropping on our conversation, so that he could include its contents in a report that could become a public document once the board members pronounce on whether D’Arcy’s was in breach of its licence.
I have no idea whether I am identified by name or the precise nature of the allegation -- I wasn’t allowed to listen to the inspector’s testimony.
What is clear is that Ontario’s beer police are running amok -- the number of licence suspensions has increased more than 60% in the province over the course of this decade. I was inundated with anecdotes to this effect from readers after the last article. Take the case of the Ottawa bar where a server refused a clearly inebriated customer, only for an inspector to pop up and tell her the man was now her responsibility and she was obliged to either escort him home or sober him up with a free meal.
Bad enough that a public employee, who is apparently unaccountable to the people, can temporarily close down a wealth-creating private business like D’Arcy’s, which employs 75 people, on the extremely subjective basis that a couple of 40-something suits “appeared to be intoxicated”. Much worse that government is encroaching on the rights of the individual to the extent that a supposedly private conversation becomes a matter of public record. The Ministry of Truth would have approved.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/ca...9#ixzz1BabltKGL |
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| CODE |
I Miss Limelight the most of all clubs.
The Pure wednesdays with $2 drinks was probably the best
idea in the history of Toroto Clubbing.
3 floors on a wednesday packed every week.
Limelight come back!!!! |
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