Trax - Gay Bar San Francis

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.

GAY TORONTO THE 1970S

“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.

12 OF THE HOTTT GAY BARS TORONTO FOR STEAMY NIGHTS

One of the hotels on Jarvis briefly had a gay bar too, lled "The Carriage Hoe" that was closg when my iend got here.

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. 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).

Those lookg to dance uld h a number of spots near Yonge and Wellley, like The Manatee, The Qut, Katra’s, Club David’s, The Maygay (later Charly’s), and Corneli, which sat above biker bar The Gasworks.