According to the laws of gentrification, the post-Drake development
on Queen West should've completely consumed neighbouring Parkdale by
now. But that old railway bridge at the Gladstone/Dufferin jog remains
a physical and psychic barrier that prevents Parkdale from capitalizing
on the Drake/Gladstone/Social spillover effect. And the truth is, Queen
and Lansdowne is still not anybody's first choice for a quaint stroll
after dark. As such, the few live music venues in the area have
traditionally catered to small, built-in neighbourhood audiences,
either by operating within venerable niches (rockabilly hotbed The
Cadillac Lounge), hosting casual performances and open-mic nights
(Mitzi's Sister) or staging concerts only sporadically (Stone's Place).
But new evidence suggests Parkdale could be on its way to
becoming the right side of the tracks. Over at Mitzi's Sister, bookers
Sean Dignan and Fred Robinson are broadening the venue's programming
and upgrading the sound system, while just a few blocks east, two
music-scene veterans – Nav Sangha (a.k.a. DJ Nasty Nav) and Chris
Harper (a.k.a. DJ Jelly and your trusty Sweaty Betty's barkeep) – are
knocking out the drywall at the old Dragonfly location at 1279 Queen W.
in preparation for a new, mid-sized live-music venue called Wrongbar.
“Nav and I have been talking about doing something like this
for years,” Harper says. “And then just a month ago, he says to me,
‘This place is up for rent, let's do it.' I was like, ‘Are you crazy?'
And then a week later we were doing it.”
The duo are currently renovating the space into a front bar and
separate back room for concerts and parties, in the hope that Wrongbar
will serve as both a neighbourhood local and a prime destination venue
for international touring acts.
“It's a really big room,” Harper says, “but I hope we can make
it comfortable and cozy enough that, even in the early part of the week
when there aren't any bands playing, people will still want to come in
and hang out.
“I just want to give people in the community a voice – get
local people you like playing here, and friends from out of town. I
want it to be the kind of place where you'd see Six Organs of
Admittance here on one night, and then a few days later Nav will bring
in DJ Harvey from England to spin disco and then the day after that
have a hardcore show with Fucked Up. I might be naïve, but I just want
everything to go together. Thirty years from now, I'd like people to
think of it the same way they think of Lounge Ax in Chicago – ‘they're
really nice there, and they treated us well.'”
Once the dust settles, Sangha predicts Wrongbar will be open
for business around late November or early December – “as long as Chris
doesn't hurt himself with a sledgehammer.”