Gay Archiv - Then and Now: Toronto Nightlife HistoryThen and Now: Toronto Nightlife History

Contents:

• GAY
• GAY TORONTO THE 1970S
• 12 OF THE HOTTT GAY BARS TORONTO FOR STEAMY NIGHTS
• THE 5 BEST TORONTO GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TORONTO
• TORONTO GAY DISTRICT: THE VILLAGE

GAY

In this edn of her nightlife-history seri, Denise Benson tak back to the after-hours nightclub that helped mobilize Toronto’s gay-rights movement the 1980s. History: In 1980s’ Toronto, street rners and dance clubs still served as sential meetg spots for gays and other margalized muni. On the outer edg of the Church and Wellley-centred gay village, the rner was close to popular homo hnts cludg Yonge Street’s St.

Charl Tavern, Trax, and the Parksi Tavern, wh gay dance club Stag above . Nearby bathho were plentiful, Queen’s Park was still a major pick-up spot, and easy bar-hoppg meant that gay men had lots of optns even those pre-Grdr days. “The Yonge and Isabella area was really amazgly gay, ” rells event producer Maxwell Blandford, once a key figure adventurome Toronto clubs and now based Miami.

“Many bars, along wh stor like Northbound Leather, were wh a uple of blocks and fed thoands of gay people to that rridor. There was also the Chez Moi - my first gay bar Toronto and a b of a hallucatn. One of the hotels on Jarvis briefly had a gay bar too, lled "The Carriage Hoe" that was closg when my iend got here.

GAY TORONTO THE 1970S

One of the largt and longt-lastg gay dance clubs Toronto, this Sherbourne Street super-club went through a number of evolutns as spurred the lol mastreamg of gay culture durg the ’80s and ’90s. History: The story of Boots, one of Toronto’s bt-known and longt-lastg gay dance clubs, begs 1980 at the Waldorf Astoria apartment buildg. Photo by Joan Anrson, urty of the Canadian Lbian & Gay Archiv.

Wh the help of two rare DJ mix, we revis the early-‘80s Yonge Street club that provid Toronto’s gay muny wh a safe haven and showsed cuttg-edge dance-mic sounds, before the spectre of AIDS brought the party to a close. By the mid-1960s, both taverns were known to be gay bars.

12 OF THE HOTTT GAY BARS TORONTO FOR STEAMY NIGHTS

At that pot history, gay nightlife Toronto was still very much unrground.

THE 5 BEST TORONTO GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TORONTO

It was mon for the heterosexual owners of gay bars to be ntemptuo of their clientele.

TORONTO GAY DISTRICT: THE VILLAGE

Arrts were ma, and the practice ntued throughout the 1970s, even as gay activists anized leafletg mpaigns and lled for boytts of the bar.

Durg the mid-to-late-1970s, Yonge Street was the ma artery of Toronto gay social life ( would shift to Church the mid-1980s).