A few hours after my story on The Drake Hotel story was published last week, and a few hours before the Drake's fifth anniversary party, I received an email from the hotel's press representative, asking if I was attending that night's event as a friend of the Drake, and stating that their client (namely, owner Jeff Stober), was “surprised by the tone of the piece.”While I stood behind my original assessment of the city's response to the Drake, mostly from a neighbourhood-development perspective, I agreed to meet Stober for a coffee this past Monday morning, three days after I'd had mad fun at what was, as reported by my colleague Chris Bilton, an unequivocal success of a night out. Stober was mostly disheartened, and anxious to impart the care and effort he and his staff have put into building the Drake, which employs and hosts a number of people from the neighbourhood that I identified as being generally opposed to the gentrification that the Drake had come to embody. Stober pointed to my line about “crucial ghosts” in Queen West's art history, and said that the Drake was and is mindful of the neighbourhood's legacy. Though I only mentioned the art and culture programming in passing, it is true that the Drake has focused on cultivating a scene of its own, and one that's added to the city's cultural schema. Stober and I agree, wholeheartedly, on the fact that innovators and visionairies are more likely to be punished than celebrated in Toronto, embedded as we are in our trenchantly disparaging self-image. It's useful, then, to consider that the Drake has been considered a triumph by international guests and media, drawn from towns where “legitimacy” means something different, and where “you ho” isn't the story.
See also: What a Drake It Is Getting Older and The Drake 5.0 party report.
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