Toronto the ______?

By Jonathan Goldsbie

On May 17th, 2005, ERA Architects held a fundraiser for Spacing Magazine and [murmur] in the Fermenting Cellar of the Distillery District. It was called Toronto the Good. Admission was on a $10-20 sliding scale, the bar was open, and the buffet was impressive. Will Munro and Christopher Thinn DJed. Torontoist did not attend but trusts the many accounts of others that it was a very good time.
The following year the party relocated to Fort York. Admission was $20 and included an open bar (with limitless Mill Street Organic, KWV Chenin Blanc, and other well-chosen wines) as well as hors d’oeuvres that kept coming for the duration of the event’s eight hours. The Mayor fired a cannon at the Gardiner Expressway and relaxed in the Soft City of Upburg. The historical exhibits at Fort York revealed themselves to be endlessly fascinating when you’re drunk. Canadian Forces soldiers (in full camo gear) came by “from the adjacent army barracks, and proceeded to invade the dance floor and pick up girls.” DJ Tyler Clarke Burke played the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” not once but twice. This was not Toronto the Good. This was Toronto the Greatest-Fucking-Thing-Ever.
Last year, the party returned to the Distillery. Admission was $10. Drink tickets were $2.50 each. There was food, but it was limited and disappeared early. Chris Thinn again DJed. Some of the kegs of Organic broke, and the others were too foamy to be useable. It was fancy-ish. It wasn’t a party so much as a really nice architects’ reception. The event abruptly ended when the lights suddenly (and for contractual reasons still unknown) went on at midnight, and everyone was kicked out. It was everything the previous year’s was not; it was at best Toronto the Meh. In its crushing inability to recapture the transcendent heights of its predecessor, it was rather like Nuit Blanche 2007.
This year, they try again: Tuesday, May 27th, at the Distillery’s Fermenting Cellar, from 7:00 p.m. until a perhaps arbitrary conclusion midnight. Admission, $10, gets you some sort of free food; there is a cash bar. Perhaps the most significant change is the handing of the musical reins to Track Meet (Eye Weekly editors Ed Keenan and Dave Morris and writer Paul Isaacs), the DJ trio whose monthly nights at 751 are quickly becoming a Spacer staple. Describing their musical choices as “whorish pop and hip-hop,” Track Meet’s crowdpleasing selections will ensure that, at the least, the event won’t relapse into the stuffiness of last year.
Top photo, of the 2007 incarnation of the “now traditional stickering of the Big Map of Toronto,” by Susheela, courtesy of Spacing Magazine. Photo at left, also from 2007, by pdinnen.
Jonathan Goldsbie will be a volunteer at this year’s event, and writes for Eye under and alongside the Track Meet DJs.