Winter has at last come to the home of Toronto's eternal summer. Tonight, once the last bottle of Tusker beer is drained and the final bouncing refrain fades into a low hum, there'll be no more jammin' at the 'Boo.
The BamBoo, the boisterous cavern off Queen Street West, is closing its gates after nearly 20 years as the epicentre of reggae, funk, R&B and soul. And with it goes a piece of Toronto music history.
Long before the Gap and Starbucks sent Queen Street West spiralling into a retail frenzy, stopping in at the BamBoo for a beer or a bite was a rite of passage for city residents and out-of-towners alike. The Echo Beach of Martha and the Muffins could still be heard reverberating in nearby bars, such as the Horseshoe, but it was the BamBoo that took the edge off the so-hip-it-hurts attitude, with its warmth and funky and eclectic music. Everyone from Dizzie Gillespie to Erykah Badu to Hugh Masekela has played there.
The BamBoo was to the eighties music scene what the Riverboat was in the sixties, the El Mocambo in the seventies.
"I just remember in the late eighties and early nineties there was always a lineup down the street," said Fergus Hambleton, the lead singer of Toronto's poster band for reggae, the Sattalites. After its first gig there in the fall of '83, the Sattalites would be a BamBoo regular, playing five or six times a year. "We always had great evenings there," he recalled.
The band even recorded its second album, Live Via Sattalites, at the BamBoo in 1987, a memory Hambleton cherishes.
"It was hilarious," he said. "It was back in the days when Comfort Studios was there on Soho Street, and we actually ran the wires out the back door of the BamBoo and across the street and up the wall of the studio, so they were actually able to record from the studio, but we set the sound from the stage. And it turned out really well."
"The place was always about the music, and the art," co-owner Patti Habib says mournfully, pointing to some of the exuberantly colourful paintings by artists such as Fiona Smyth, Kurt Swinghammer and Barbara Klunder (who did the BamBoo's signs) that used to adorn the walls.
The club opened on Aug. 26, 1983, when Habib and Richard O'Brien, friends who met while working at the CBC and found they shared an interest in Caribbean culture and after-hours parties. (O'Brien was the host of some popular boozecans in the seventies, notably the Dream Factory.)
Walking by a wicker furniture store at 312 Queen St. W., they noticed the For Lease sign in its window and hatched a plan to introduce a new nightclub to Toronto. It took months of work cleaning up the place, which had also been a laundry.
Habib has joked that they wanted to call the place Liquor World, but settled on the BamBoo as a tribute to its former incarnation.
The place soon became as renowned for its menu as its music -- the spot is often credited with popularizing Pad Thai with the whitebread denizens of Queen West, thanks to early chefs Wandee Young and Vera Khan who created their signature East Meets West (Indian) cuisine. "We were the first restaurant in Toronto to have Pad Thai on the menu," Habib says.
The only reason the BamBoo opened as a restaurant was so that the joint could have a liquor licence (Toronto the Good in 1982 required there to be 60-per-cent dining in an establishment that sold alcohol).
It was with shock that Habib and O'Brien were given 90 days' notice from their landlord that he had decided not to renew their lease, instead opting for a tenant who promised to sink some money into the place and renovate the building.
Talking to Habib in her Toronto home, the stress of losing the club, and clearing out 20 years of memorabilia before midnight tonight, is showing in her voice. "I understand it's just business, but there is some bitterness involved."
The space has been leased to restaurateur and club king Charles Khabouth. It was Khabouth, currently the owner of the Guvernment and Kool Haus, who jump-started Toronto night life by opening Stilife in the late eighties.
An admitted fan of the BamBoo, Khabouth says he plans to open a restaurant/bar, "mature, homey but sophisticated, maybe with an African theme" in May.
He's hoping his new spot will help revitalize Queen Street.
"All the action has moved up to College Street, and it deserves it -- College has some great spots," Khabouth said on the phone. "But we need a cool, hip place on Queen. I think people have forgotten about the street and it's time to get people thinking about Queen Street again."
People were certainly thinking about Queen Street last Saturday when the BamBoo was packed with locals who came to say goodbye. The throng blocking the room-length bar was three bodies deep, while people were crammed in at the tables and the dining room.
"I love this place," said an impassioned Evelyn Tweresour, a 36-year-old machine operator. She's been coming to the BamBoo on and off since she arrived in Toronto 10 years ago from Ghana.
"It's so multicultural, you don't have to be black or white or whatever to come here. It's a shame it's closing."
A quick glance around confirms what Tweresour says -- the place is jammed with people of every colour, every age, every style united by the search for a good groove and a good time.
There's concern, too, about what is going to happen to reggae music in Toronto once the BamBoo shuts its doors.
In interviews, O'Brien has said he'll be opening another club, Bambu by the Beach, in the former Pier Museum on Queens Quay.
Whether it will have the same lineups and draw the same crowds remains to be seen.
"There was just a great feeling in the eighties and nineties, there was a real scene in Toronto for reggae music," the Sattalites' Hambleton says. "But that scene has pretty much scattered. And with the BamBoo going, obviously it's going to scatter even more."
Still, Hambleton is philosophical about the club's closing. "It was a surprise, but I wouldn't say it was upsetting. They've had a wonderful run, when you think of the life of clubs generally speaking. The Horseshoe is still there, but most clubs peter out after a few years. Times change, things move in cycles and today people spend $20 to go to a club and hear recorded music.
"I love live music, what can I say?"
But the BamBoo won't close without one final reggae lockdown. Tonight's final music acts features some familiar faces. Billy Bryans (of Parachute Club, the first band ever to play at the BamBoo) will show up for a session. And, of course, the Sattalites.
"I'd like to say I'm getting ready for a party, but it's not a party for me," Habib says. She adds that she has had enough of the nightclub biz for now, and hopes to reinvent herself as a restaurant critic.
"I've got to move the entire club. . . . I've got too much on my mind. But we did have a wonderful run."