Stalking the Stars in Yorkville

The interesting thing about the Avenue bar at the Four Seasons hotel (Avenue Road and Cumberland) is the preponderance of people who aren’t famous but don’t seem quite ordinary either. Apart from the basic business suit crowd, typical fashions are black jackets, t-shirts and lots of stubble (for men), slinky dresses or pricey designer jeans for women. These people might be movie producers or bartenders, I have no idea, but they look cool.

The Avenue also has an intriguingly seamy side. In the back, tables of thuggish-looking men with shaved heads and too much jewelry rub elbows with Armanied businesspeople. Women in lots of make-up and very little fabric are commonplace, often arriving alone and leaving accompanied. A friend and I once had two attractive young ladies in miniskirts wave and smile at us from across the room. Being neither handsome nor rich, the attention piqued our curiosity and we sauntered over to find out more. It turned out the girls were from Romania, and coyly acknowledged that they worked in the “personal care” field. More detail than that they declined to divulge, and you may draw your own conclusions.

As long as you’re drinking, the Avenue will refill your bowl with expensive mixed nuts that will eventually make you nauseous.

Sassafraz (Bellair and Cumberland) promotes itself as the second home to the stars, and they’ve got the photos on the wall to prove it. Mind you, most of the celebs are not top notch, around the level of a Tia Carrere or a lesser Baldwin, but based on the pics, they’ve also welcomed Greg Kinnear, Rod Stewart, and I’m pretty sure the guy who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. For me, I once saw Eddie Griffin – the poor man’s Martin Lawrence – in there, and also someone who looked like Russell Crowe in a beard but turned out not to be. Food and drink are predictably overpriced, but on the plus side you can drink until you fall off of your chair and they probably won’t cut you off as long as you’re spending money.

Club 22 at the Windsor Arms Hotel on St. Joseph St is the real deal, so much so that their bartenders are required to sign an agreement saying they won’t reveal when famous guests are staying in the hotel. Technically it’s not in Yorkville proper, being just south of Bloor, but it gets a bye because it’s such a celebrity magnet. I’ve sat in an otherwise empty bar watching Dustin Hoffman buddying up to the piano player just a few feet away, but couldn’t think of any way to approach him without looking like an asshole (“Say, can you wait here while I go home and print my screenplay?”). I’ve also spotted Renee Zellweger, tiny, timid and racing through the lobby with her head down, and Gerard Depardieu, lurking in front looking belligerent.

One of the design idiosyncrasies of Club 22 is that you have to leave the bar and go to the second floor to use the washrooms. Inconvenient as that sounds, it means that a well-timed pee break could turn into an elevator conversation with Brad Pitt about architecture or urinal cakes.

There are lots of other places in Yorkville to find the famous; I once ran into John Goodman outside a donut shop at Bay and Bloor. The lesson for all budding papparazi is to always keep your camera ready, especially during TIFF, because you might get that $10,000 shot of Colin Farrell or Lindsay Lohan drunk and groping a costar. On the other hand, people who chase stars make all of us in Toronto look needy and starved for celebrity attention, so if that’s your thing, consider a plane ticket to LA. You’ll see more stars over two martinis at Mr. Chow than you will in a whole year at Sassafraz.