Spacing

Queer Signs of Visibility: Bar Signs in Toronto’s LGBTQ Community by Ed Jackson

Two streets in Toronto have come to be identified through successive decades as uniquely LGBTQ- linked, home to businesses choosing to cater primarily to gay men. The evolution of street signs attached to these social spaces, mostly bars and taverns, reflects a history of growing visibility of queer communities within the city.

Yonge St north of Carlton St during the 1960s and 70s was a rather non-descript stretch of small retail and restaurant businesses. As evening progressed, the mostly deserted street gradually morphed into an edgy haunt for people looking for excitement away from the prying eyes of judgemental neighbours and family. Gay men gravitated to several night spots that catered to their desire for anonymity: the Red Lion Lounge in the basement of the Westbury Hotel, the unlicensed Maison de Lys Club (later the Music Room) and, in particular, the St Charles Tavern, the Parkside Tavern, and the Quest Tavern. Because Ontario liquor control laws at the time segregated beverage rooms and taverns by gender (women could only enter “Ladies and Escorts” rooms), male-only establishments were able to exist without unwelcome scrutiny.

These early Yonge St night spots did not initially give away their identity as queer gathering places. In the decades before the 1970s, the queer community, marginalized and stigmatized, preferred to exist below the public radar, meeting primarily through networks and friendship circles. Most LGBTQ folks chose to keep a low profile in order not to risk losing their jobs, being ostracized by their families or , worse, getting arrested. Although we are now celebrate the visible diversity of the city’s LGBTQ communities, at that time only gay men, mostly white and middle-class, were able to find the few places willing to offer them places to socialize. Women’s social spaces were very rare.

Without mainstream or direct advertising, and before social media, how did gay men find these nightspots? Word-of-mouth recommendations, lists in discreet international directories, and passing references in the tabloid press of the time all helped. Tabloids like Justine Weekly and Hush featured campy columns that talked disparagingly about the “lavender set” and the “fairy clan.” Dismissive references to washroom arrests or bar activities ironically helped to identify places where gay men met or cruised for sex.

The St Charles Tavern at 488 Yonge St began life as a firehall with a distinctive clocktower before being turned into a restaurant and cocktail lounge in the early 1950s. By the mid-60s it was attracting a gay male crowd and hosting fancy drag balls at Hallowe’en, luring patrons away from what had earlier become an October tradition at Letros Nile Room at 15 King St E. In the 1950s, drag queens paraded in their finery in relative safety on King Street under the large Letros sign across from the King Edward Hotel. Photos from the time suggest that bystanders attracted by the spectacle were curious but friendly.

By the time the yearly Hallowe’en drag queen spectacle had transitioned to the St Charles Tavern, the mood of the suburban spectators gathering to watch was distinctly different. From the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s the crowds grew increasingly large, rowdy and mean. For years the police did little to contain the anti-gay mob beyond keeping them away from the front door and arresting the occasional unruly drunk. Few drag queens were brave enough to enter or exit through that front door, choosing to slip in through the rear alleyway entrance. When a foolhardy performer in costume did make a brief appearance on Yonge St, they were greeted by cat calls and pelted with eggs and tomatoes. Although the 1970s is known as the first decade of visible queer community and political organizing in Toronto, the nightspots on Yonge St continued to be operated by straight owners not particularly sympathetic to their paying customers. “You people are lucky to have a place,” a bar manager once informed a leafleting activist. It was only after repeated pressure from queer activists that in 1980 the police finally took action to bring an abrupt end to the Hallowe’en mobs.

The original St Charles restaurant sign displayed a 1950s-era script slanting jauntily upwards on the second floor. The restaurant had promoted itself with the teaser “Meet me under the clock” and this message continued as a shorthand invitation for gay men converging on the St Charles cocktail lounge. The script sign didn’t survive. A new straight owner remodeled the building front to create an unwelcoming brick façade, fortress-like narrow windows and a large sans-serif Helvetica sign spelling out a lower-case St Charles and an upper-case TAVERN spread across the full frontage.
This concealment of interiors from curious passerby glances was standard for gay bars in the 60s and 70s. The fear of homophobic violence was always present and patrons preferred social spaces that offered visual protection from intruders. Further up the street, the Parkside Tavern at 530 Yonge featured a plain inward-looking brick front with a vertical “Tavern” sign and the letters of “The Parkside” picked out in individual squares across the facade. The Quest Tavern (previously the Famous Door), at 665 Yonge St just south of Bloor, also presented a blank two-story stucco front highlighted only by a large letter Q as part of the name.

Even as times have changed with the development of a visible and vocal activist LGBTQ community in the city, many signs that identify queer spaces have continued to be low-key or unrevealing of their true function. The Manatee, a popular 1970s after-hours dance club in a warehouse building on St Joseph St, featured an unobtrusive name panel over a nearby window. Even now, the Steamworks bathhouse on Church St is accessed down an alleyway through a side door marked only by an unobtrusive painted name across its top.

George Pratt, who has owned and managed a variety of gay bars in Toronto since 1975, remembers, when he opened the gay strip club “Remington’s Men of Steel” in the early 1990s in an unlikely location along the flashy Yonge St stretch south of Gerrard St, that he did not want it to stand out unduly and attract a hostile response. This was, after all, a gritty strip exemplified by the glitzy straight strip club Zanzibar just down the street. Pratt initially buried the “Men of Steel” part of the name in a smaller sign at the door, only emphasizing “Remington’s” in a large sign.
“Remington’s was a church,” Pratt wryly commented, remembering the visual comparison at the time, “Zanzibar was a whorehouse.” In the club’s later years, images of shirtless beefy men began to grow ever more visible on the exterior façade.

The 1980s saw the gradual transition of the commercial LGBTQ community one block east to the intersection of Church and Wellesley Sts, boosted by the appearance of more friendly queer proprietors, cheap rent, and a general desire to be more visible to the world. As late as 1981, the Yonge and Wellesley intersection was chosen as the most logical site by community organizers to gather to protest police raids on gay bathhouses.
Gradually, Church and Wellesley Sts came to be identified locally and internationally as Toronto’s “Gay Village.” Queer-owned businesses slowly began to open along the strip. The concentration of commercial spaces made the street feel relatively safe as a geographical gathering place for queers, albeit still predominantly white and male. Women, trans folk and people of colour came but in fewer numbers.

Church St already had several attractions that helped to anchor the LGTBQ community there. The 519 Community Centre was an important central meeting place for the growing number of community organizations. The Steps in front of the Second Cup coffeeshop in the Churwell Centre offered a unique 24-hour public meeting place for queer and trans youth to hang out. The second-floor Hassle Free Clinic at 556 Church St was widely known as a gay men’s health clinic, although it also served women and marginalized street people. With the advent of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, it became a central space for support and anonymous HIV testing for gay men. Much more recently, Glad Day Bookshop, a venerable queer community destination, made its move from a modest second-floor space on Yonge St to a welcoming storefront on Church St.

Woody’s was the first bar to exemplify the new sense of openness on Church St. It launched in 1989 and featured windows that looked out confidently onto the street. The name was inspired by a popular bar in the US and hinted subtly at male sexuality through use of a background horned rhino image. Initially, Woody’s announced itself with a small LED sign in the window and a discreet painted rhino sign over the front canopy. The bar gained mainstream and international notice when the American version of the Queer as Folk TV series was filmed in Toronto in 2000-2005. The bar’s exterior was used as the establishing visual for the Philadelphia establishment that played a big role in the series. Queer tourists began to come from around the world to visit a bar whose entrance alone had been made famous through TV exposure.

Since that time, although bars, bathhouses and pop-up dance nights have opened in various locations around the city, a unique concentration of queer night spots has come to settle on Church St, particularly along the stretch between Alexander and Maitland St. On the west side the gaudily painted and illustrated façade of Crews and Tango stands out. On the east side, close to each other, are Woody’s, Sailor, Flash and Black Eagle, their now larger signs welcoming an ever-changing sidewalk traffic, no longer needing the anonymity of Yonge St.

The choice of many contemporary names for gay bars or bathhouses in Toronto has often drawn upon stereotypical symbols of working-class masculinity. For a savvy queer clientele these names have acted as knowing signifiers of welcoming space: Chaps, Boots, David’s, Dudes, Sailor, The Barn, Sneakers, The Barracks, Toolbox, The Stables, Black Eagle, Cellblock and The Cellar.

Still, final approval of bar names in Toronto remains closely controlled by the starchy bureaucrats at the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario. Pratt, currently the owner of Flash, a gay strip bar on Church St, decided to take advantage of COVID pandemic down time to remodel the upper floor of his establishment into a separate space with the name “Cock Bar.” The LLBO firmly rejected the name, but Pratt found a way to circumvent the restriction. The illuminated sign now simply contains the image of a rooster.

Two streets in Toronto have come to be identified as a home to businesses that choose to primarily cater to gay men, through successive decades of a predominant LGBTQ presence. The evolution of street facing signs attached to these social spaces, mostly bars and taverns, reflects a history of growing visibility for queer communities within the city.

Yonge Street north of Carlton Street during the 1960s and 70s, was a rather non-descript stretch of small retail and restaurant businesses. As evening progressed, the mostly deserted street gradually morphed into an edgy haunt for people looking for excitement away from the prying eyes of judgemental neighbours and family. Gay men gravitated to several nightlife spots that catered to their desire for anonymity: the Red Lion Lounge in the basement of the Westbury Hotel, the unlicensed Maison de Lys Club (later the Music Room) and, more notably, the St Charles Tavern, the Parkside Tavern, and the Quest Tavern. Because Ontario liquor control laws at the time segregated beverage rooms and taverns by gender where women could only enter “Ladies and Escorts” rooms and male-only establishments were able to exist with little scrutiny.

These early Yonge Street nightlife spots did not initially give away their identity as queer gathering places. In the decades before the 1970s, the queer community was marginalized and stigmatized, existing below the public radar and meeting primarily through private networks and friend circles. Most LGBTQ folks chose to keep a low profile to not risk losing their jobs, being ostracized by their families or, worse, being arrested.

Although we now visibly celebrate the diversity of the city’s LGBTQ communities, at that time only gay men, mostly white and middle-class, were able to find the few places willing to offer them escapes to socialize. Women’s social spaces were rare but one in particular, stood out. The Continental, at the corner of Dundas Street and Elizabeth Street in the Ward area, became a hangout for lesbians in the 1950s and 60s, a rough but welcome place for butch-femme dykes and sex workers.

Without clearly marked signs or mainstream advertising, and before social media, gay men found receptive nightspots through word-of-mouth recommendations, lists in discreet international directories, and passing references in the tabloid press of the time. Tabloids like Justice Weekly and Hush featured campy columns that talked disparagingly about the “lavender set” and the “fairy clan.” Ironically, dismissive references to washroom arrests or “pansy” bar activities helped interested readers identify places where they could meet other gay men or cruise for sex.

The St Charles Tavern at 488 Yonge Street began life as a firehall with a distinctive clocktower before being turned into a restaurant and cocktail lounge in the early 1950s. By the mid-1960s it attracted a gay male crowd and hosted fancy drag balls at Hallowe’en, luring patrons away from the Letros Nile Room at 15 King St E which had previously become an October tradition. At that time, drag queens paraded in their finery in relative safety on King Street under the large Letros sign across from the King Edward Hotel. Photos suggest that bystanders attracted by the spectacle were initially both curious and friendly.

However, when the annual Hallowe’en drag queen spectacle transitioned to the St Charles Tavern, the mood of the suburban spectators that gathered to watch was distinctly different. From the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s the crowds grew increasingly large, rowdy and mean-spirited. For years the police did little to contain the anti-gay mob beyond keeping them away from the front door and arresting the occasional unruly drunk. Few drag queens were brave enough to enter or exit through the front door, choosing instead to slip in through the rear alleyway entrance. When a foolhardy performer in costume did make an appearance on Yonge Street, they were greeted by cat calls and pelted with eggs and tomatoes. Although the 1970s are known as the first decade of visible queer community and political organizing in Toronto, the nightspots on Yonge Street continued to be operated by straight owners who were not particularly sympathetic to their paying customers. “You people are lucky to have a place,” a bar manager once informed a leafleting activist. It was only after repeated pressure from queer activists that the police finally took action in 1980 to bring an abrupt end to the Hallowe’en mobs.

The original St Charles restaurant sign displayed a mid-century style script slanting jauntily upwards on the second floor. The restaurant had promoted itself with the teaser “Meet me under the clock” and this message continued as a shorthand invitation for gay men converging on the St Charles beverage room. The script sign didn’t survive as a new straight owner remodeled the building front to create an unwelcoming brick façade with fortress-like narrow windows. A large sans-serif Helvetica sign was installed, spelling out a lower-case St Charles and an upper-case TAVERN spread across the facade.

This concealment of interiors from curious passerby glances was standard for gay bars in the 1960s and 70s. The ever-present fear of homophobic violence meant that patrons preferred social spaces that offered visual protection from onlookers. Further up the street, the Parkside Tavern at 530 Yonge featured a plain inward-looking brick front with a vertical “Tavern” sign and the letters of “The Parkside” spelled out in individual squares across the facade. The Quest Tavern, previously known as the Famous Door located at 665 Yonge Street just south of Bloor, also presented a blank two-story stucco front identifable only by a large letter Q.

Even as times have changed with the development of a visible and vocal activist LGBTQ community in the city, many signs that identify queer spaces have continued to be low-key or unrevealing of their true function. The Manatee, a popular 1970s after-hours dance club in a warehouse building on St Joseph St, featured an unobtrusive name panel over a window. Even now, gay bathhouses prefer simple, more discreet signage. The Steamworks bathhouse on Church Street is accessed down a laneway through a side door marked only by an unobtrusive painted sign across its top. Spa Excess on Carlton Street is only marked by small letters on one of its double wooden doors, which can only be seen when standing right in front of it.

George Pratt, who has owned and managed several gay bars in Toronto since 1975, opened the all male strip club “Remington’s Men of Steel” in the early 1990s in an unlikely location along the flashy Yonge Street stretch south of Gerrard Street. Given the high-profile area, he did not want it to stand out unduly and attract a hostile response. This was, after all, a gritty strip exemplified by the glitzy straight strip club Zanzibar just down the street.

Pratt initially buried the “Men of Steel” part of the name in a smaller sign at the door, only emphasizing “Remington’s” in large letters. “Remington’s was a church,” he wryly commented, remembering the visual comparison at the time, “Zanzibar was a whorehouse.” In the club’s later years, images of shirtless beefy men began to grow ever more visible on the exterior façade.

The 1980s saw the start of a gradual transition of the commercial LGBTQ community one block east to the intersection of Church and Wellesley Streets, boosted by the appearance of more friendly queer proprietors, the availability of cheap rent, and a general desire to be more visible to the world. However, the Yonge and Wellesley intersection still remained a central meeting space for community organizers to gather people and protest the infamous police raids and mass arrests in gay bathhouses.

Eventually Church and Wellesley Streets came to be identified locally and internationally as the centre of Toronto’s “Gay Village.” The concentration of queer-managed commercial spaces made the street feel relatively safe as a geographical gathering place for queers, albeit still predominantly white and male. Women, trans folk and people of colour felt less comfortable and came in fewer numbers.

The Church Street area already had several attractions that further anchored the LGTBQ community there. The city-run 519 Community Centre was an important central meeting place for the growing number of community organizations. The Steps in front of the Second Cup coffeeshop in the Churwell Centre offered a unique 24-hour public meeting place for queer and trans youth to hang out. The second-floor Hassle Free Clinic at 556 Church Street was widely known as a gay men’s health clinic, although it also served women and marginalized street people. With the advent of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, it became a central space for support and anonymous HIV testing for gay men. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, the in-your-face queer theatre, moved to a renovated building on nearby Alexander Street in 1994. More recently, Glad Day Bookshop, North America’s longest running LGBTQ bookshop and venerable queer community destination, made its move from a modest second-floor space on Yonge Street to a welcoming storefront on Church Street.

The choice of many contemporary names for gay bars or bathhouses in Toronto has often drawn upon stereotypical symbols of working-class masculinity. For a savvy queer clientele these names have acted as knowing signifiers of welcoming space: Chaps, Boots, David’s, Dudes, Sailor, The Barn, Sneakers, The Barracks, Toolbox, The Stables, Black Eagle, Cellblock and The Cellar.

Woody’s was the first bar to exemplify the new sense of openness on Church St. It launched in 1989 and featured large windows that looked out confidently onto the street. The name was inspired by a popular bar in the United States and hinted subtly at male sexuality through use of a horned rhino image. Initially, Woody’s announced itself only with a small illuminated sign in the window and a discreet painted rhino sign over the front canopy. The bar gained mainstream and international notice when the American version of the Queer as Folk TV series was filmed in Toronto in 2000-2005. The bar’s exterior was used as the establishing visual for the Philadelphia night spot that played a big role in the series. Queer tourists began to come from around the world to visit a bar whose entrance alone had been made famous through TV exposure.

Despite bars, bathhouses and pop-up dance nights opening in various locations around the city, especially around Queen Street West, a unique concentration of queer night spots has come to settle on Church Street between Alexander and Maitland Streets. On the west side of the street, the gaudily painted and illustrated façade of Crews and Tango stands out. On the east side in close proximity to each other, are Woody’s, Sailor, Flash and Black Eagle, with larger signs that now attract ever-changing sidewalk traffic, no longer needing the anonymity of Yonge Street.

Other businesses in the neighbourhood are no longer reluctant to cater to largely LGBTQ customers. The Church Wellesley BIA promotes the area as a tourist destination, especially for the large Pride celebration that occurs in June. Local branches of TD Bank and Royal Bank festoon themselves with rainbow imagery and the city has painted rainbow-hued crosswalks at both ends of the central commercial stretch.

Still, final approval of bar names in Toronto remains closely controlled by the starchy bureaucrats at the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario. Pratt, currently the owner of Flash, a gay strip bar on Church Street, decided to take advantage of COVID pandemic down time to remodel the upper floor of his establishment into a separate space with the name “Cock Bar.” The LLBO firmly rejected the name, but Pratt found a way to circumvent the restriction. The illuminated sign now simply contains the image of a rooster.

The Church-Wellesley Village continues to see an evolution of its queer meeting spaces. It has become increasingly mainstream, with corporate branding co-opting queer community imagery. Surging rent has driven out unique smaller shops and restaurants. The growth of online dating and hookup sites has meant that nightlife meeting spots no longer play their previously unique community role. With the emergence of younger and more diverse out queer and trans generations, queer-friendly businesses and social spaces are more likely to spring up in areas of the city that offer cheaper rent. Further, Church Street now finds itself smack-dab in the middle of a precinct of the city zoned to accommodate high-rise condos. As developers begin to replace low-rise buildings with towers soaring above generic retail frontages, the area’s queer commercial spaces are in danger of losing the visual distinctiveness that once defined them. How Toronto’s original queer village adapts to the cultural and economic pressures of a growing city will be interesting to watch.

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