Sneaky Dee’s: Say It Ain’t So?
Sneaky Dee’s circa mid-’90s - photo by Andrew McAllister.
Sunday morning of Labour Day weekend, all the dogs in my neighbourhood were barking. I don’t know what set them off – but I mused aloud to my partner that maybe they knew on some level that it was Air Show weekend in Toronto. Even though the annual display of air power had been cancelled due to Covid, the local canines were still on edge, as if they were expecting that this weekend’s peace and quiet would be disrupted by the subsonic screams of fighter jets flying low over the west end.
I mindlessly logged onto Facebook and the first post I saw was from a friend who said: “I would suffer the Air Show every year without complaint if it will save Sneaky Dee's.”
Oh no, I thought. Not Dee’s.
It seems we humans are also prepared to be on edge on Labour Day weekend, braced for another aerial assault on the city, from forces over which we have no control.
The news broke on Twitter that the city had received a development application – from an unnamed developer – for a “13-storey mixed-use building with retail/commercial at grade,” covering most of the block at the southeast corner of College and Bathurst. That corner is home to Sneaky Dee’s, a two-floor Toronto institution that’s both Tex-Mex restaurant and music venue. The proposed development also includes dance club Nest and Ramen Isshin.
Throughout Sunday, my social media feeds were overtaken with sad, grim posts lamenting another lost music venue, another cultural institution erased to make way for soulless glass towers, the death of Toronto as we know it. “Fuck Toronto,” one said. “The city is like a giant undressed potato at this point,” said another. Within 24 hours, the story had gone local-viral, gaining notice in the Toronto Star and CBC.
I haven’t weighed in until now, even though Sneaky Dee’s means a lot to me. It was one of the first downtown clubs my high school rock band played in the early ‘90s, where we felt like we were actually part of the “scene.” Sneaky Dee’s became home base for A Tuesday Weld, the shoegaze band I played with while attending U of T – we played there around a dozen times circa ‘93/’94.
Sneaky Dee’s had a great stage and sightlines, and was an easy place to set up a show and actually get people to come out – university friends already knew it, as everyone went there to eat and get cheap drunk. The downstairs restaurant was always student- or artist-priced, with legions of Gen-X’ers and elder Millennials surviving on King’s Crown nachos and pitchers of Dry Gulch. It was the best place to meet a big group of people. Hangouts there could last for hours, with parties sometimes growing to encompass multiple satellite tables. Placed on the corner of two streetcar lines, the whole city knew of Sneaky Dee’s by reputation alone – though I think it was always better known as a resto-bar. Even earlier this year, I met people who didn’t know it also had a venue upstairs.
I remember being royally pissed off in the spring of 1995, when the management made the decision to pull the plug on live bands. This was at a weird post-Nirvana moment when indie music had peaked in popularity. A year or two later, rock would be declared “dead” and electronica anointed the future. The management filled the stage with booths and constructed a railing across the front – and the “live” action moved to the DJ booth. It was a smart business decision, as DJ nights attracted a more devoted crowd of drinkers. As much as small music venues may appear to have a cultural mandate, ultimately they exist to sell alcohol, their primary revenue stream. Mid-‘90s Sneaky Dee’s decided their competition was the Dance Cave, with its black light, cheap tequila shots and alterna-hits, rather than the main floor of Lee’s Palace, and the up-and-down attendance that came with increasingly green, unsigned bands competing for an ever-thinning audience. And by then, the main floor of the El Mocambo had become the clubhouse for the indie community, after Elvis Mondays kingpin William New took over booking in late ’93.
I didn’t visit Sneaky’s much in the late ‘90s; by the time I graduated university and started working in media (while still playing in bands), there was the sense among my circle of friends that we’d all grown out of it and that its graffiti-strewn aesthetic seemed like a grunge-era relic. We started drinking at darker, classier, loungier places further west in Little Italy, like the Midtown or the Clear Spot or Souz Dal, or even across the street at Cobalt or 52 Inc.
If you’ve read this far, you might be surprised that I haven’t yet mentioned Wavelength. After all, our weekly series ran at Sneaky Dee’s every Sunday night for seven years, and for a certain generation of gig-goers, WL is still pretty much synonymous with Sundays at Dee’s. But when our series kicked off back in February 2000, the place was pretty much forgotten, as a venue at least – the main floor remained a default option for drinks or cheap eats. Wavelength actually started in Little Italy at Ted’s Wrecking Yard, a second-floor club that remains my favourite live venue I’ve ever played, attended or presented a show at – with uniformly excellent sound and sightlines from any vantage point in the club. The early days of Wavelength at Ted’s were electric in vibe and energy, and I credit that club’s magic for helping create the sense of community we began to cultivate. It was truly tragic when Ted’s Wrecking Yard shut its doors suddenly in the fall of 2001 – just weeks after the surreal sale of the El Mocambo.
After Ted’s’ sudden closure, we were approached by Dee’s sound tech Dwayne Slack, who played in punk bands, and had begun booking shows there – and I recall there was the occasional CMW or NXNE gig there in the DJ years, but it was always really awkward, as the bands played behind the railing across the front of the stage. We passed on Dwayne’s kind offer as Sneaky’s didn’t really seem ready and seemed like a strange step back into the past – instead, we moved our weekly up to Lee’s Palace on Bloor. We lasted there only last six months, as the club was too big to facilitate that intimate, community vibe we wanted.
I recall Wavelength’s eventual move to Sneaky Dee’s in the epilogue of Any Night of the Week:
But one night that April [2002], a band I was in played a show at Sneaky Dee’s. They had finally taken down that damn railing in front of the stage. The show was super fun. The crowd pressed up front in a way I hadn’t seen at a Toronto indie show, everyone mingling and chatting. The whole night, everyone asked me, ‘Why don’t you move Wavelength here?’ I remember running into Dwayne Slack at the end of the night, and we exchanged a raised eyebrows look and had that whole conversation non-verbally. Wavelength made the move to Sneaky Dee’s in May 2002. Attendance picked up, and Sneaky’s would become the longest-running home of our weekly series, an amazing seven-year run.
Sneaky Dee’s crowd at Wavelength, circa 2006 - photo by Kevin Parnell
We were lucky enough to call Sneaky Dee’s home during the heady years of the Toronto indie music explosion, soon contentiously labelled “Torontopia.” Broken Social Scene played Wavelength there in December ’02, two months after the release of You Forgot It in People – there was a lineup down the block, and it was so packed you could barely move.
There are too many more Wavelength at Sneaky’s memories for me to begin listing here, and besides, I have to ask: isn’t it a bit too soon for eulogies?
After all, it is only a development application that will require rezoning. It still has to get passed by City Council, and the local councillor, Mike Layton, appears to oppose it. And there’s a chance that the City may also approve the Kensington Market Conservation District plan, which would grant the whole area heritage protection, and potentially limit development plans. It’s also unclear if the building has actually been sold yet or not. (Does anyone know? Please email me!)
If we in the music community want to “save Sneaky Dee’s,” I think we have to ask ourselves, what does that mean? Or rather, what does that look like? Like many others, I haven’t been there much in the last 10+ years, since booker Shaun Bowring (who took over from Dwayne Slack) parted ways with Sneaky Dee’s and moved down to Dundas & Ossington, opening his own club, The Garrison, in fall 2009. Wavelength and the Trampoline Hall lecture series both followed Shaun there, and The Garrison ended up becoming the new go-to spot for live indie/arts activity. Wavelength gradually began presenting more of our events at unconventional, non-bar spaces as well. Sneaky Dee’s upstairs, meanwhile, began booking more emo DJ nights and seven-band metal shows.
Part of me does think, if people want to keep an institution alive, then they need to keep supporting it – voting with their dollars, as it were. But as someone pointed out on Facebook, “I hadn't looked at my baseball cards since I was a kid, but I was still gutted when my Mom tossed them.” It still hurts to think a place where you made so many formative memories won’t exist anymore – especially when it’s such an iconic part of the cityscape, a place that felt eternal and immortal; somewhere that would still be there for you, unchanged, whenever you decided to go back.
Sneaky Dee’s played that role for a long time. Wavelength returned there to present shows just three times after leaving, marking its 10th, 15th, and this past February, 20th anniversaries. Each time the place got a little more beaten-up and dilapidated; by 2020 even the speaker stacks were covered in graffiti. And it was glorious. Walking into the upstairs of Sneaky Dee’s felt like slipping on a well-worn leather jacket you haven’t worn in years. I could still walk from the stage to the men’s room and back with my eyes closed. Even the downstairs restaurant was fantastically immune to change: last time I met up with friends there for breakfast, circa 2019, I was amazed to see a giant burrito was still six dollars.
Even pre-Covid, the live music economy in Toronto was under huge pressure: people weren’t going out as much, due to competition from Netflix in the winter and Trinity-Bellwoods in the summer. The cost of living is too high, and gig-going isn’t an affordable or dependable entertainment option for the younger generations. Commercial rent can be suddenly doubled or tripled, and only the venues that owned their own buildings and were committed to booking live music, like [EDIT] Lula Lounge or the Cameron House, seemed secure. The lack of sustainable spaces that supported marginalized communities or BIPOC artists also raised important, difficult questions. And then the pandemic happened – shutting down all live performances and putting even the A-list clubs like the Horseshoe on life support.
The story only broke yesterday, and it’s still a long weekend – does anyone ever take a vacation from social media, by the way? – but there’s been no official statement from Sneaky Dee’s itself yet. Have they sold? Are they getting out of the game? Covid presents a pretty huge loss for a business to recover from.
On one level, I think it’s okay for venues to close. We can mourn them, and move on. I’ve mourned Sneaky Dee’s at least twice already in our respective lifetimes. I personally think that’s better than keeping somewhere alive for sentimental reasons alone. Is it really better that CBGB kept going as a museum gift shop? If venues have to die, how can we keep their memory alive? Is a heritage plaque enough? (To my knowledge, no Heritage Toronto plaques exist to commemorate any music venue active within the last 40 years; the most recent being the Riverboat coffeehouse in Yorkville, which closed in 1978.)
The problem is, when there’s nowhere left to move on to. Other venues like The Garrison, The Baby G, and the Monarch Tavern have filled in the void for small rooms that are relatively easy for young bands or DJ collectives to get booked or throw parties at. But I can’t think of an affordable eatery that’s filled the Sneaky Dee’s role for younger Millennials and Gen Z’s as it did for the grunge generation. Sorry, but El Furniture Warehouse doesn’t count! Gentrification has claimed the last few affordable corners of our downtown.
And the other issue is the destruction of our streetscape – which enacts a real emotional toll. The threat of the “imminent” closure of Sneaky Dee’s has clearly struck the same nerve as the demolition of Honest Ed’s – the landmark department store at Bloor and Bathurst, razed in 2017. The original Sneaky Dee’s location, open from 1987-90 and before my time, was across the street at 562 Bloor West. As legend has it, the name “Sneaky Dee’s” was a sly answer to “Honest Ed’s.” Fiona Smyth’s bullhorn-skull mural at the corner of College and Bathurst is just as iconically “Toronto” as Honest Ed’s’ blinking lights, cheesy puns, and hand-painted discount signs. Many Torontonians were grief-stricken by the loss of Ed’s, even if they hadn’t been inside in years.
Right now the city is facing immense pressure to create housing, with projections calling for a million new citizens to be added in the next 20 years. Residential areas are seemingly sacrosanct, and one of the few places we can create density is along our commercial thoroughfares. I’d like to think there’s some way we could preserve the Sneaky Dee’s building – as well as the business, including both nachos and live bands — and incorporate it into a new development. Much like the City has done with the Silver Dollar, but with stronger requirements to preserve the structure as is, rather than building an ersatz replica, as well as a clear cultural programming mandate. Perhaps the space could be given over to a non-profit group to program, if the current owners want out? (UPDATE: I’ve also heard via a former employee that the owners are considering a move to a new location.)
As much as it’s not a done deal, people are understandably upset, because the loss of Sneaky Dee’s still feels inevitable. Development forces are powerful, and seem depressingly unstoppable in this city. But no one is going to save a place like Sneaky Dee’s except for the people who care about it.
Jonny Dovercourt is Artistic Director and co-founder of Wavelength Music, and the author of Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music 1957-2001 on Coach House Books.
