The game went on as usual at Taygeto's Café and Greek social club this week: Retired gas station operator Peter Papas sat down with old friends at a freshly brushed green baize table as the cards were dealt. The walls were hung with prints of the Parthenon, and on a nearby TV, the Raptors were winning.
"A nice place to be with friends," said Mr. Papas, revelling in the kind of comforting order that Ernest Hemingway described in A Clean Well-Lighted Place.
Across the street, an entirely different scene played out: Behind a grease-stained window, a slurred argument raged across a table covered with beer bottles. Out in front, two prostitutes were trying to drum up business, just feet away from a crack dealer; the stretch of sidewalk was a veritable mini-mall of vice.
Overhead was a dim plastic sign that read, West Side BAR.B.Q. Restaurant -- a name that's burned into the memories of countless residents and business owners in Bloorcourt Village, a stretch of Bloor Street West near Ossington.
"A lot of trouble there," says Mr. Papas, one of the few locals willing to have his name published. And no wonder -- over the past several years, the West Side has been the scene of fights, stabbings, drug deals, prostitution arrests, and a spectacular crash that took place two days after Christmas in 2005, when an enraged patron drove a stolen Ford pickup truck through the front window.
In the past four weeks alone, police have laid more than 40 criminal charges against people connected with the bar. (Its current owner also faces charges related to the alleged sale of illegal liquor.)
West Side's liquor licence has been suspended three times, and it has been charged with a long list of offences under the liquor control act.
Getting rid of this unwelcome neighbour has not been easy. Toronto Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone has condemned the bar as "a cesspool of anti-social behaviour," and spearheaded a campaign to get it shut down.
More than 500 residents and business owners have signed a petition demanding the bar's closure. And yet the West Side goes on, at least for now, thanks to a complex bureaucracy and a loophole in the liquor licensing system.
A huge number of complaints have been lodged against the bar, but they are not collected in one place, so no one has a complete list. Some complaints have gone to the police. Others have been filed with various departments at City Hall. Still others have gone to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, which controls liquor licences.
The AGCO didn't know about the truck crash. City hall didn't know about all the liquor act charges. And at the AGCO, the complaints levelled over the years ran into yet another bureaucratic obstacle. Instead of being filed against the establishment itself, complaints go on the record of the liquor licence holder -- and when the liquor licence is transferred, the slate is effectively wiped clean.
Since it opened in 1991, the liquor licence for the West Side has been transferred seven times. Among those listed on the bar's current and past licences are five companies (two named companies, three numbered) and six different individuals.
The current licence holder is Sheng Zhai, a 33-year-old Markham man who holds the liquor licence through a numbered Ontario corporation. Mr. Zhai acquired the licence in 2003 after buying it from a woman named Jenny Ping Li, who had held the licence through another numbered Ontario corporation since 1997.
All of this has vastly complicated local efforts to deal with the bar. One building superintendent in the area estimates that he has phoned in more than 100 complaints about the West Side over the past 15 years. "It's been a stone in our shoe," he said. The superintendent said the constant changing of the names on the liquor licence had made it virtually impossible to get the problems dealt with in timely fashion.
After years of battling West Side, area residents thought they would finally get relief. The AGCO had called a public hearing for this Monday to discuss revoking the bar's liquor licence, a move that would amount to a commercial death sentence. But this week, it was announced that the meeting would be put off until April at the earliest after the bar's lawyer asked for an adjournment, arguing that more time was needed due to the large number of witnesses scheduled to testify against the bar.
For Mr. Pantalone, who has been collecting complaints against the bar for years, the adjournment is the latest in a long series of frustrations: "I consider it a delaying tactic," he said, "I am convinced that when the evidence is heard, the bar will be closed."
West Side's long list of suspensions, charges and warnings places it in what amounts to a rogues' gallery of liquor establishments. In 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available), there were 17,400 licensed establishments in Ontario. Only 310 (less than 2 per cent) had their licences temporarily suspended. Licence revocations are even rarer -- only 106 of the 17,400 establishments licensed in Ontario in 2005 had their licences revoked.
West Side has collected an ever-growing army of opponents. Last summer, the city of Toronto's legal department announced that it was joining the application to have the bar's licence revoked. "This is a beyond-hope case," says Mr. Pantalone. "We are fighting for the soul of this neighbourhood."
In June, more than 500 area residents and businesses signed a petition that was sent to city hall. The petition cited drug use, violence, and public drunkenness, and demanded the bar's closure.
The petition was added to a thick file of complaints. In 2004, a Bloorcourt Village property manager wrote to city hall, documenting what he saw as a reign of terror created by a series of bar owners who had allowed the bar to degenerate.
The property manager catalogued assaults, knife battles, drug deals, broken windows, and desperate efforts by residents to protect themselves from a criminal invasion -- the owner of a music repair shop a few doors away, he noted, had erected a steel gate in front of his steps, which he secured with a Kryptonite bicycle lock.
The property manager said there had been a brief respite in June of 2004, when West Side was shut down for two weeks when its liquor licence expired: "While it was shut down, it was as though a veil of evil had lifted," he wrote.
For vice squad officers at nearby 14 Division, West Side has been a top destination for many years. Detective Bob Monteiro said his unit has handled two stabbings in the bar, countless fights, and made a long series of arrests for drug dealing, assault and prostitution.
"It has been a difficult establishment to deal with," Det. Monteiro said. "It attracts a very undesirable crowd. ... As dive bars go, I would give it a nine out of 10."
At West Side, it was business as usual this week. A handful of customers sat at scarred tables beneath a crude sign that read, "Please pay before you drink." Another sign advertised chicken wings for $6 a pound; no one was eating.
The lighting was sickly green, supplied by a pair of dirty fluorescent fixtures, and the air was filled with the smell of sweat and insect spray. Someone had ripped off the toilet flush handle, and the bowl was filled with waste.
Proprietor Sheng Zhai sat at a back table, meeting a visitor to discuss West Side's fate. Mr. Zhai agreed that a large number of undesirables have turned up at his bar, but insisted that his establishment merely reflects the neighbourhood that surrounds it. "This is a tough area," he said.
Mr. Zhai says he's a victim of the area's woes, which have ruined his business. He says he paid $130,000 for West Side in 2003, but would be lucky to get anything for it today. He tilts his head back and displays a long scar that runs across his throat, almost from ear to ear -- two years ago, an enraged patron attacked him with a knife after Mr. Zhai refused to serve him.
"I almost died," Mr. Zhai said. "There are dangerous people around here. I am the victim of these people too."
Mr. Zhai says his lawyer asked for the adjournment of next week's public meeting. When the meeting does take place, in April, he says he will tell the AGCO that he is a responsible owner.
"I'm going to tell them that I don't want these people in my bar," he says. "If we get the support of the police, we can fix it."
As Mr. Zhai spoke, there was a loud argument at a nearby table. The door swung open and a new customer walked in. Mr. Zhai asked him to leave -- he was a known troublemaker.
"Come on," the man said. "I just want a pitcher."
Mr. Zhai escorted him to the door. The man went through it, then stood on the sidewalk. "He's going to wait until I leave, then try again," Mr. Zhai said. "That's the neighbourhood. It's not me. It's not my bar. I'm trapped here too."
But veteran observers lay the blame for the bar's problems squarely at the feet of those who have owned it over the years -- including Mr. Zhai.
"It's not hard to create a bad bar," says Detective Howie Paige of the 14 Division vice squad. "If you don't take charge, the wrong kind of people take over. And once they're in there, it's hard to get rid of them."
Det. Paige says the problems at West Side plague both the bar and the community that surrounds it. He said he has observed as many as two dozen drug dealers and customers at a time in the bar and on the sidewalk outside.
"People don't feel safe walking by that place," he said.
"The community has reached out to us and we've done our best to help them."