Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
The Laugh Resort—one of Toronto’s few clubs devoted entirely to stand-up comedy—is closing its doors after this Saturday, possibly for good. The venue has known for some time that they would be shut down sometime this year, but the shock came last week, when they were told they had vacate the location as soon as possible.
Ever since the Hyatt purchased the Holiday Inn where club is located, they knew their days were numbered. Owner Jim Vanderberg told Torontoist that the Hyatt needed the basement space—occupied by the Laugh Resort for the past eight years—for a restaurant, one of two that are required to be officially classified as a five-star hotel. Vanderberg says that, while they are optimistic in finding a new venue, they have been looking for the past five months to no success.
The club has had a number of heavyweights over the year (Romano, DeGeneres, Sandler), but the true loss is to our local comedians who now only have the central locations Yuk Yuk’s and Absolute Comedy to rely on for bookings. Absolute Comedy is all the way at Yonge and Eglinton, and we’re pretty sure most comedians can’t afford public transit.
As a sort of last hurrah, the Laugh Resort will be having all their available regular comics performing short five-minute sets this Saturday—not an open stage, Vanderberg assured us, but more a chance for their professional comics to say their tearful but hilarious goodbyes.
Photo of Toronto comedian Nathan Macintosh courtesy of Reggie D'Souza
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How the heck are they going to turn the Holiday Inn into a 5-star hotel? I'm assuming a large amount of dynamite is involved!
Sure they want a downtown location, especially with the Lightbox under construction next door and the Ritz a few blocks away, but seriously, that Holiday Inn is horrible. White metal skin just doesn't work in Canada. Actually pretty much any white building, no matter the material, does poorly here. First Canadian's marble, when it isn't trying to kill people by jumping off the building 40 stories up, gets stained by emissions. The Holiday Inn building screams tacky 80s budget, totally appropriate for a Holiday Inn, not so much for a 5-star Hyatt.
The same way that they're trying to turn the Regal Constellation into one, the fucking assholes. The Regal's supposed to be a convention hotel, but they're turning it into a luxury one, even though luxury hotels are NEVER placed near an airport (not that the Regal Constellation's placed in a good area anyway; that hotel should be in suburban or downtown Toronto, but that's another rant.) The same idiots who also think that building condos will help Toronto somehow-of course, it's actually killing it instead.
And now, they will be killing of a good place like the Laugh Resort, so that the tourists who stay here won't be able to enjoy a good laugh. To say nothing of the NXNE festival.
The recession's looking pretty good now; I hope it can kill the condo market dead. maybe then, we can enjoy or city in peace.
Yeah. Fuck condos. Sprawl is the way to go. Fucking people and their wanting to live in the city. How dare they?