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The Big Bop shuts down (hideous purple building on Queen/Bathurst)

Ed007Toronto said:
I went when it still was a strip joint which would have been 1983 or 1984. It changed into a music venue soon after. It was a very down market strip joint. Nothing sexy about it but the drinks were cheap.
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Did the earliest lineup of Blue Rodeo ever play there? I saw them in a club waaaaay back in the mid-80s, and I'm pretty sure it was that location. They certainly weren't at all well known at the time, nobody made a fuss of them, and I couldn't believe anyone local would play that sort of music. Now Jim Cuddy and his family live in a big house at the fancy end of my street ... and I'm in my hovel-like Winter Palace at the other end.
 
wwwebster said:
It's on there as part of the Queen Street West Heritage District, but the listing doesn't say much about the building's history. Goad was a bit more helpful; the building was there in 1884, and the 1892 plan has more detail.
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Thanks for reminding me it's in the QSW District--anyway, for the record, it's the Occident Hall of 1878, one of EJ Lennox's very first works...
 
adma said:
Thanks for reminding me it's in the QSW District...
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Sorry, I simply meant that it's listed because everything between University and Bathurst is listed, as part of a Heritage District.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Did the earliest lineup of Blue Rodeo ever play there? I saw them in a club waaaaay back in the mid-80s, and I'm pretty sure it was that location. They certainly weren't at all well known at the time, nobody made a fuss of them, and I couldn't believe anyone local would play that sort of music. Now Jim Cuddy and his family live in a big house at the fancy end of my street ... and I'm in my hovel-like Winter Palace at the other end.
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Don't know if Blue Rodeo played here. The first time I saw them was sometime in 1985 or so. It was at Lee's Palace a week after that venue opened.
 
it's too bad. it's one of the last venues that "underground" bands can play at. Toronto sux music wise anyhow, so, it won't make much of a difference
 
Darkstar416 said:
As said, they aren't the same building. However, the Big Bop does includes three separate bars: Reverb, Kathedral and Holy Joe's.
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Well, here is the building I meant:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=queen and bathurst&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

They are separate, but there is a walkway connecting them. Why are these buildings connected? And who lives in the building pictured above (aside from the businesses at street level - Artistic Grounds has since closed up btw)?
 
I believe they were all part of Burroughes Furniture--the rear portion being the "warehouse" part...
 
And to repeat: I believe the Richmond + Bathurst building was also built for Burroughes--thus the above-alley bridge connection...
 
General offices and gallery space. It was adaptively reused years before (and without the hoopla of) the Queen building.
 
Darkstar416 said:
Ummm, hardly.
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umm, indeed it does. but, i guess i mean from a hardcore/punk/noise/industrial/death metal sense it does..that's the types of bands i'm talking about that played there. but it recent years,those bands have slowly died out in toronto. some bands from the USA and abroad won't even come here..smaller, more diy bands have nowhere to play...and haven't for years. so, if there is no venues for smaller acts to perform at, there is no "scene" in toronto.
 
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