By Kate Carraway

My favourite bar in Toronto encompassed all of my teenage rock’n’roll dreams. Getting inside the tiny shack involved crossing a dark, muddy alleyway. My first night there I met a future ally when he spat on my best friend from a nearby rooftop. Some other evening ended after sprays of flowers exploded over the crowd, falling petals sticking to our sweaty hair. The bathrooms were perfect for hiding or kissing. The bartenders were my friends. All the music that I needed to see was played there. I was drunk on 50 at a punk show when the cops finally, inevitably closed it down. Devastation. And perfectly prescient of what’s been going down more recently with Toronto’s music venues.

The past year has seen the surprising and sometimes hurtful closure of several other Toronto bars that serve as a stage for indie rock, a few of them remarkable in their weirdness: The Bagel, a home base for the spectacular rise of overlapping concept bands; the Session, a nostalgically trendy Queen West bar; El Amigo, a freaky Parkdale joint on the edge of a mini-mall; dirty hole MegaCity; the east of Yonge bar, the Rockit-cum-Speakeasy.; and recently the yuppie/hippie hangout Gypsy Co-op/Hooch. Unless the renaissance of Toronto’s independent music scene is a total apparition, it seems that venues like this should be thriving, not shutting down. So what’s up?

Wavelength co-founder Jonny Dovercourt provides some context for the situation. “Right now in Toronto we are in a lucky position that there are numerous small bars that are looking for any form of entertainment to help drive business, and the cultural climate in the current decade favours live music over DJs (Sneaky Dee’s for example, returned to live music in 2001 after a shooting at a hip-hop DJ night). This means it’s easy for any band or promoter with a sense of adventure to turn any kind of drinking establishment into a music venue. The downside is that you end up with surplus of sub-standard venues, because these bar owners are only committed to selling alcohol to stay in business (and that’s really the only revenue they can generate), and their profit margins are so low they can’t justify investing in a proper sound system or paying a house tech. It’s a big mistake to think that bar owners got into the business with the aim of supporting the live music scene. They don’t really owe us anything, other than the goodwill of continuing to book us as long as the booze keeps flowing.”

All of the recent venue closures have their own stories. Of the Speakeasy, local booker Keith Hamilton says “[It] closed down when two of the three owners skipped town, took all the sound and bar equipment and left the last guy screwed. The venue got sold and turned into a transvestite strip club.” Speaking about the Session, Hamilton says “[The bar] was closed down because the rent was ridiculous, and the landlord even more so.” Hamilton stacks up the chances of newer venues, saying “Bars close down often because Toronto rent is pretty high, especially in areas where a bar stands a chance of being successful.”

Booker Trevor Coleman has a more cutting sense of why so many bars have failed lately. “The Speakeasy closed because it was in a shitty location. Absolutely terrible. The Bagel closed because the owner couldn’t get his shit together to pay rent on time — I won’t go into the reasons why. Cinecycle got shut down because people were drinking in the back alley. The 360 got shut down because of some weird Legion bullshit. The Poor Alex got shut down because it was run by assholes. There’s no grand conspiracy, it’s just part of the cycle.”

Understanding why we often give a shit about these sticky, boozy places is explained by “topophilia,” so named by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. It refers to the distinct feeling of love for a place, and the role that place has in building and maintaining identity and community. Topophilia is neatly demonstrated by Sneaky Dee’s, a bar that has more affectionate nicknames (including “Headquarters”) than your family dog. Jonny Dovercourt posits why Sneak’s has so much appeal: “It’s a club with great sound, great promotion, great location and a decent capacity -— and it’s accessible and cheap.” This sits in opposition to other established venues like the Horseshoe Tavern and Lee’s Palace. “These ‘A-list’ venues are booked up months in advance and just try getting through to their overworked booker if you’re a new band yet to be established on the scene.”

Promoter Eric Warner is sympathetic to the so-called need for venue stability. He says “I don’t feel that it’s a bad thing to use the same venues over again. If anything, it brings community together, acting as an assumed meeting point, knowing that there almost always is something interesting going on.” Coleman doesn’t agree. “The important part of a venue is the psychological space that is created,” he says. “The reason the Bagel was successful was that anything could get booked there. There was a real sense of freedom both on and off stage… Any bagel shop could have been the Bagel. Any run-down karaoke bar could be a White Orchid. The only real requirements are that it’s not too far from everything else and that good stuff happens there.” Matt McDonough, who is active as a musician and booker, says, “To me, I don’t see venues closing and opening as a general principle as a problem in Toronto. If there was a lack of venues, it would be a huge problem, as it is in many places. But here... things change and shift, and it seems there is always a healthy number of places to do a show.” Which is really what we’re after.