Signs

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Wordless Wednesday Wordless

April 2026 - Toronto ON

Random signs around town.

They could never make me hate you?

Monday Mural

 I'm linking up at Monday Mural

August 2024 - Toronto ON

On the side of the Canadian Red Cross building.

Weekend Roundup

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1. Has a "Z"
2. A Favorite
3.  Looks like a Z- chosen by Tom

Starts with Z

ZIPPED

Men's washroom sign at Libretto's PIZZA Toronto ON

ZERO

Toronto ON

Signs

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Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day

Toronto ON

The old building of famed Toronto music venue The Matador Ballroom will be torn down.

The City has approved the application that will replace the property at 466 Dovercourt Rd. — which housed The Matador during a 43-year run that included live acts from Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and Stompin' Tom Connors — with a six-storey condo.


The property at 466 Dovercourt was first constructed in 1915 with residential units and an original dance hall, which was the dance academy of building owner Charles Freeman Davis (of the Davis clan, an established family of ballroom teachers in Toronto).


The building housed a hodgepodge of businesses over the years, including a chiropractor business, a hairdresser, a garage, and a judo school.

A bowling alley was added to the dance hall at some point in the 1920s. By 1953, there was another bowling alley on the second floor as well as part of the Elite Bowling business.

In 1964, the first-floor alley was removed to accommodate a live country music venue opened by Ann Chopik Dunn called The Matador Ballroom.


The after-hours dance venue was a hot spot among Torontonians and tourists alike, and was said to be frequented by country notables like Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, as well as local celebrities like Leonard Cohen and Catherine O'Hara. While originally a country music venue, by the 1980s the Matador featured a wider variety of music including rock 'n' roll, blues, and rockabilly. During this time the Matador was a busy and popular venue where local and itinerant headliners would regularly drop in to jam after their gigs, treating live music lovers with impromptu performances.

k.d. lang's official music video for "Turn Me Round" (1987) features the Matador sign and street frontage as well as long shots of the stage with its uniquely odd background array of dusty cowboy boots and dozens of signatures.

Big Sugar (band)'s official music video for "Ride Like Hell" (1995) was filmed here by director Eric Yealland and DP Douglas Koch and was nominated for a Much Music Video Award.

The space was a dance hall with an 18-foot ceiling, hardwood floors, a stage, and numerous items of country music memorabilia, such as antlers, cowboy boots, and records. An unlicensed establishment, the Matador Club provided live music every Friday and Saturday night from 1:30am to 5:30am.

The club was inaccurately described as a "booze can" by the time of its closure on March 1, 2010, when the dance hall was sold.

TWO

 One Word Sunday

Toronto ON

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveller

1. Starts with "D"
2. A Favorite
3. DULL - chosen by Tom

Starts with D

DOGS DONKEYS Kerry Ireland

FAVOURITE

DOOR Elicser College St. Toronto

DULL

The weather, not the Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens! NSW Australia.

T for Tuesday

 T Stands For is hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard

August 2022 - Toronto ON

From my wanders on Queen St. West and Yonge St. last week. Click here to see lots more photos including the costumes from Fan Expo.

Queen St. West - I thought this was perfect.

Window of Cocktail Emporium

At Yonge and College.

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

1. Starts with "P"
2. A Favorite
3. PAPER - chosen by Tom

Starts with "P"

Continuing with cannabis shops in Toronto PUFFS, what a great name!

On Yonge St.

FAVOURITE

Another cannabis shop on Carlton - PURPLE

Made me think of a song from my teen years.

Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

PAPER

Papel picado ("perforated paper," "pecked paper") is a decorative craft made by cutting elaborate designs into sheets of tissue paper. Papel picado is considered a Mexican folk art.

FRINGE BENEFIT

PEOPLE

By Alanna Cavanagh

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

Starts with K

Favourite

KIND - chosen by Tom

TATS and TOKES

I'm going to feature the many Toronto tattoo and cannabis outlets that are proliferating around the city.

STARTS WITH K

Lake Shore Blvd W Toronto

FAVOURITE

Copenhagen Denmark

KIND

14 KINDS (Varietes) of mussels in Lyon France

FRINGE BENEFIT

KEYBOARD Spadina and College Toronto

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 

Toronto pub on College St.

A literal description!

Queenstown New Zealand

T for Tuesday

 T Stands For is hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard

Toronto ON

Some finds around Toronto.

Coffee Dak Lak is located near the corner of College and Spadina.
Dak Lak's main specialty is its Vietnamese Egg Coffee ($4.99), a northern Vietnamese drink originating from around Hanoi. Apparently, this café is the only one in Toronto that serves this regional specialty.
The hot beverage features a fluffy whisked egg froth a top the coffee. It's meant to be consumed straight-up but there's nothing stopping you from stirring the mixture all together. Nope, not for me.

I would try this.

The more traditional Condensed Milk Coffee ($3.99) comes with a Vietnamese coffee filter and is dark and strong with a hint of creamy sweetness from the condensed milk.

Tuesday Treasures

 Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Travel Tuesday

Our World Tuesday

Image-in-ing
My Corner of the World

Postcards

October 2021 - Toronto ON

Click here for a history of Toronto lane naming and a list of other lanes. That post is a work in progress, and gets updated frequently.

It looks like I stumbled on this lane at the right moment. I was here on October 19 and on October 28 the El Mocambo Facebook page said:

Mayor John Tory has been busy, he was mentioned in yesterday's Monday Mural.

Although I think there was more painting done on the weekend of Oct 23, so I will have to go back. I also wonder if the city put up an official street sign.

The El Mocambo is a live music and entertainment venue on Spadina Avenue, just south of College Street, the bar has played an important role in the development of popular music in Toronto since the 1940s.

It is best known for the 1977 surprise show by The Rolling Stones, which became nationally notorious for the presence of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's wife, Margaret Trudeau , who was partying with the Stones.

Apocryphally, the original building at 462 Spadina had been a music venue since 1850 and was first used as a haven for escaped slaves. The current building was built in 1910 and housed a dry goods store, a barbershop, and restaurants in its first three decades. With the passage of the Liquor Licence Act of 1946, which allowed the sale of liquor in taverns and restaurants in the province for the first time since World War I, restaurateurs Joseph Brown and John Lang decided to apply for one of Toronto's first liquor licences and convert their property at 464 Spadina into one of the city's first cocktail bars. Live music was not permitted until July 1948 when the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario reversed an earlier ban. In later configurations of the establishment musical acts appeared on separate stages located on the main and second floor of the building. By the 1960s, Adam Schuy owned the venue which, by then, featured music appealing to Toronto's Hungarian, Irish, and Portuguese communities. By the time Schuy died in 1971, striptease was being featured on the main floor.

Over the years other major music acts appeared at the venue, including Marilyn Monroe, internationally famous jazz performers, including Grover Washington Jr., Charles Mingus, and Al Di Meola, and rock acts such as U2, Switchfoot, Moxy, Elvis Costello, The Ramones, John Cougar Mellencamp, Duran Duran, Dream Theater, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, April Wine, Eek A Mouse, Durutti Column, Snakefinger, Bo Diddley, Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, Blondie, The Cars, Meat Loaf, Jimi Hendrix, Queens of the Stone Age, Bon Jovi, Teenage Head, Sum 41, Shakin' Natives, Etta Royal and Congress Court.

The club was expected to close after a last show on November 6, 2014, However, on the eve of its impending closure it was announced that the club had been purchased for $3.8 million by Michael Wekerle, who intended to renovate it but maintain it as a live music venue. 

Five years and $35 million in renovations later, the big day finally arrived for Michael Wekerle in September 2020.

I took this photo just after they opened in September 2020.

The daughter of a friend was a camera person working at an opening show and took these photos inside.

Click here for more photos inside.

Washroom signs.

More photos from my October 2021 visit.

In retrospect I think they were getting ready for the weekend's events.

Painted by STEAM 2021.

Looks like an old Elicser.