The purple hearse gliding down Queen Street West on a sweltering early-’90s summer day was hard to miss.
In those days — before the invention of “Beaconsfield Village” — Parkdale extended all the way to Queen and Ossington, where I rented an apartment above a used record store. Sure, the crime rate was high, and the cockroaches fearless, but the rent was cheap. I was in love with the area. The junkies, drunks, punks, prostitutes, drug dealers and crazies living on my street were just my neighbours, each of us in our own way contributing to a deep-rooted, if slightly skewed, sense of community.
Then along came the purple hearse. The driver, a big black man with striking white hair, was instantly recognizable: “Mr. Irresistible,” Sweet Daddy Siki. In those days, he was a fixture in Parkdale, one of the many eccentric, inimitable figures who gave the area its character. But even by the standards of Queen West, Siki’s past was colourful.
Professional wrestler Reginald (Sweet Daddy) Siki relocated to Toronto from Texas in 1962. For three decades he fought the likes of The Sheik, Whipper Billy Watson and Andre the Giant in venues across North America, won what Wikipedia calls “six major wrestling belts” and, locally, attracted capacity crowds to his frequent appearances at Maple Leaf Gardens. Wrestling fans best remember Siki for his bleached-blond hair and outlandish costumes, and for his signature move: the airplane spin. But few would guess that his true passion was country-and-western music.
Over the years, Siki recorded three albums for Arc Records including Sweet Daddy Siki Squares off with Country Music. When he retired from the squared circle in the ’80s, he fronted a band called The Irresistibles and worked as a DJ in various beer parlours. When I moved to the ’hood, Sweet Daddy hosted karaoke at the seedy Stardust Hotel at the corner of Queen and Beaconsfield, just down the street from his home. I will always remember watching the big man serenade a small crowd of itching junkies in that hotel’s run-down lounge.
Today the neighbourhood has experienced a rebirth few could have predicted a decade ago. The Stardust is dust, bought in the fall of 2001 by an eager entrepreneur named Jeff Stober who, after a $7-million makeover, reopened it as the Drake Hotel five years ago last month. Seemingly overnight, designer clothing shops, hipster nightclubs and corporate-chain cafés replaced the funky antique shops, best-avoided barrooms and storefront apartments once common to the neighbourhood. These days you are more likely to see a stretch hummer than Sweet Daddy’s old purple hearse on the fashionable western strip of Queen West. I haven’t seen Sweet Daddy since before the first Starbucks surfaced in Parkdale. The velvet ropes and ironic moustaches now commonplace in the community have left me feeling wistful for the old days.
On a brisk evening in early autumn, in the grips of a feverish nostalgia, I set out in search of Sweet Daddy Siki. Revisiting an old haunt, I slip into the velvet-roped queue in front of the Drake Hotel behind a woman speaking tersely into her cellphone while scanning the horizon. When a taxi pulls up, she waves her hand frantically, shouting “you bitches” in the direction of three women spilling out of the cab. She ushers her girlfriends into the line in front of me. A burly doorman with a Bluetooth receiver in his ear lets us in.
Pretty people are sprawled across red velvet banquettes and perched on stools at bronze bartops drinking highballs and Heineken beneath chandeliers in the main floor lounge. The soul of old Parkdale will no longer be found at the old Stardust Hotel.
Back on the street, I follow a guy with a bushy beard on a boyish face a block west into the Gladstone Hotel’s Melody Bar. Like the Drake, the Gladstone had declined into a flea-infested dump before developers transformed it into a boutique destination. Unlike the Drake however, some of the local character has been preserved.
On the circular stage, a handsome, middle-aged woman in a red dress and gaudy golden earrings kills Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” Behind her, host Peter Styles raises a glittering “Applause” sign, eliciting loud hoots from the audience. A stout man with combed-back grey hair and a buttery Sinatra voice, Styles is dressed in black with a red tie neatly pinned to the front of his western shirt. A regular performer at the Gladstone for close to three decades, Styles has hosted the popular karaoke nights for the past eight years. He says that, in the old days, the Gladstone was a “redneck” bar. “Think in terms of
Road House,” he says, referring to the Patrick Swayze movie.
When the Gladstone reopened in 2005, only the most loyal regulars remained. Today it attracts a diverse crowd showing off the neighbourhood’s changing demographic. Every Thursday to Saturday, a strange mix of seniors, hipsters, rednecks and queers crowd the Gladstone’s Melody Bar to sing. “It takes an open mind to enjoy it to its fullest capacity,” explains Styles.
When I ask Peter Styles if he knows the whereabouts of the former world-champion wrestler, he becomes dreadfully earnest. “You have to understand that he is a like a godfather to me. He is a mentor and a good friend,” he says. In a confidential tone he tells me where to find the man I am looking for.
Sitting on an eastbound Queen streetcar early one Saturday afternoon, I lean my head against the window and watch as Queen Street West recedes behind me. Passing through the shadows of Bay Street skyscrapers, we cross the Don River, the threshold to the city’s east end. To a hardcore west-ender, it feels like entering the heart of darkness. Feeling like Marlow heading up the river looking for Kurtz, I am destined for Leslieville in search of the heart and soul of Parkdale.
At Leslie Street, I disembark in front of the Duke of York Hotel. Since 1886, the Duke has fed, bedded and watered wayward travellers. Today, it’s a down-at-the-heels establishment offering cheap, long-term rented rooms above a barroom where down-hearted men search for long-lost answers at the bottom of half-pints of Labatt Blue. The resemblance to the pre-revitalized Drake Hotel is uncanny.
At two in the afternoon, the streets of this blue-collar neighbourhood are uncommonly quiet, but if you believe
Toronto Life magazine and billboard-celebrity “condo king” Brad J. Lamb, sleepy Leslieville is on the brink of an awakening. Billboards sprinkled along Queen East depict artist’s renditions of loft condos in various stages of development. SUV strollers parked in front of the funky cafés herald a new era.
To step inside the Duke of York on this quiet Saturday afternoon, however, is to set foot squarely in the old era. The cry of a steel guitar serves as a soundtrack for the few lonely souls sipping beer. One by one, regulars arrive to take their customary seats at the bar. Behind the bar, manager Gus Papadopoulos, a big man with big hands and a big smile, greets each patron by name. “Three or four generations drink here,” he tells me, pointing out the oldest and the youngest.
The back door opens and a hulking silhouette appears in the doorway. Sweet Daddy Siki enters the room, burdened with road cases of equipment. Though he is pushing 70, he has maintained the fighting form of his youth; his biceps test the seams of his Phat Farm jacket as he carries the tools of his trade — a flatscreen monitor, an LED lighting system, two speakers, a mixing board and a rack-mounted Cavs karaoke system containing tens of thousands of songs. Methodically, he delivers each load to the foot of a stage stacked with drums and amplifiers, and sets up on the linoleum dance floor. From time to time he stops to catch his breath, but when I offer to help, he politely but firmly declines.
I started this journey to find out what drove Sweet Daddy out of Parkdale, but he assures me there was no conspiracy. Plugging red and yellow patch cables into the mixing console and testing his Shure wireless microphone, Siki tells me about a time he stared racism in the face. In the early ’60s, when he fought the first mixed wrestling match — black vs white — in Greensboro, Florida, the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan bought ringside tickets. “This was before Martin Luther King,” Siki says, raising an eyebrow. “When I walked to the ring you could hear a pin drop on the floor. The referee called us to the middle of the ring. He said, ‘Siki, don’t throw one punch. Don’t even attempt to throw a punch.’ I took the count and after the match we got out of town.”
The point is, a few latte-sucking hipsters couldn’t have run him out of Parkdale. In fact, he still lives there, in the same house he bought back in the ’60s. Those big homes along Jameson Avenue attracted Siki to Parkdale, then a respectable neighbourhood, in the first place. Over the years, Siki witnessed Parkdale’s sharp decline, and now he’s pleased that it has shaken its dodgy reputation.
“Times have changed in Parkdale, for the better,” he says, though he complains about the rising property taxes that have accompanied the upswing.
And when the Stardust closed a decade ago, his local gig dried up, and he has yet to be offered a slot at the new Drake. “I am not begging for anything, you know. I do this because I like to, not because I have to,” Siki says. For the past 17 years, Siki has hosted karaoke at the Duke of York hotel on Saturdays. The patrons love him and the bar manager, Papadopoulos, says, “He is the best employee we have ever had.”
Later, the joint is jumping as a crew of karaoke crooners descends on the bleak barroom to share the mic with the Sweet Daddy. I sit beside Glen, a middle-aged man with a hockey player’s gap-toothed smile and faded jailhouse tattoos. He tells me that he’s the best singer in the place, and when he gets up to sing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” I have to agree.
The scene is authentically east-side, but each week more ironic moustaches join ranks with the earnest pompadours in the crowd. Outside the tavern doors, Leslieville is quickly losing its blemishes and, like Parkdale before it, stands to lose some of its local flavour in the process. But when some high-rolling big shot with big dreams and deep pockets comes along and transforms the Duke of York into the next faux-hemian crash pad, Sweet Daddy Siki says we won’t need to worry about him.
“It’s very easy for me to get another gig. No sweat on that,” he says, and then articulates a reasoning that sets him outside the trends, immunized from revitalization strategies – and maybe summing up the spirit of old Parkdale in the process. “I am not in this business to make money because, let’s face it, I don’t make any money,” he says. “Let’s put it this way. Even if I won the lottery, say $20 million, I’d still be doing karaoke.”