Historic Venue Spotlight: The Underground Garage

The Underground Garage doesn't fit into its neighbourhood. Positioned near the intersection of King Street and Blue Jays Way, it's a dive bar surrounded by some of the city's poshest night clubs and pubs. Christmas lights and flags hang from the ceilings, and the walls are covered with posters and Polaroids. A collection of bras — maybe hundreds of them — sits above the bar. The whole place is dark, chaotic, loud, and sometimes smells a little funny. Anyone looking for the usual King Street hangout would probably run away in horror. Which is exactly how the owners of The Underground Garage like it.

When Rob Picken founded the bar in 2001, he wanted a rock n' roll watering hole that put comfort before style. The idea was to recreate a special place in everyone's past — the basement where they got drunk for the first time.

"For a lot of guys and girls growing up," says Noel Copeman, The Underground Garage's barback turned marketing director, "You spend a lot of time in your best friend's basement, whoever has the coolest parents, who allows you go go downstairs and play your music really loud. You all go there and put up your christmas lights and drink your beers and play your video games. So if you recreate that environment, people will walk in and say 'Hey, I feel comfortable here.'"

Part of what creates the venue's comfort is the cheap drinks and sense of community among the bartenders and patrons. "Toronto is that city where you save your pennies working 9-5 and then hit a place on the weekend with $20 cover and $13 beers," says Copeman. The Underground Garage is known for its cheap drinks and strong cocktails, served by bartenders who will remember you if you come back. As a regular, you might get a few shots or a stiff pour. "It's just that perpetuation of friendship and regulars that makes the underground what it is," Copeman continues, recalling the bar's unofficial motto: "If Pearl Jam owned Cheers."

Tim Chaisson playing The Underground Garage

At the centre of the whole operation is rock n' roll - playing it, loving it, and living it. Picken has deep roots in Toronto's rock world, having owned BarFly, Garage Paradise, and Bungalow before settling on The Underground Garage. The first of these endeavours, BarFly, was a basement space at 48 Wellington St. As he recalls, "Grunge was killing it, and we were a goto for patrons in their early 20s." In a way, The Underground Garage is that venue's bigger brother, keeping the same DIY aesthetic, music, and, yes, probably some demographic of patrons.

In the beginning, it was a place that saw a prodigious combination of drinkers from high and low walks of life. "The big thing for the underground was the fact that The Score was right across the street," Copeman explains. "So what ended up happening is you would get all the TV guys coming over, and you'd get the Blue Jays to come down. So it was a place where people who were seen all the time could go somewhere and not be seen. That kind of created a big of a social pipeline, where Joe Blow comes off the street and runs into these people, and then ends up coming back."

Picken started hiring house bands to play at night and their shows quickly developed into wild jam sessions that included some big name rock stars. Artists like Tommy Lee, Matt Sorum from Guns n' Roses, and Gordie Johnson from Big Sugar would show up for drinks, and pick up a guitar after they'd had few. "One time the guys from Anthrax jumped up and played with a band called Alert the Medic, who play here a lot," Copeman says. "And the Trews hung out downstairs a lot. So The Trews would have one or two, or maybe a few more beers, and they would jump up with our band, and they would sort of take over. If there was a Beatles songbook in front of them and they would play Beatles Songs."

Part of the venue's legend lies in how the bar's infamous bra collection and wall of topless Polaroids got started. Some say that if you hand over your bra, the bartender gives you anything between a shot and a $25 bar tab. Others say it's just a monument to the sexual energy of rock n' roll — think girls throwing their bras at Elvis.

The Wall of Bras

Turns out, it's none of these. Picken cleared up the story by specifying that it started because of one fateful bar argument back when the venue first opened. "One day," he recalls, "this girl and her boyfriend came in, and she had just had her boobs done, so they were both bragging about how amazing her tits looked. And at some point the guy said the bar looked like Coyote Ugly in New York, but he said, 'You need some bras up there!' Then not only did his girlfriend hand us her friggin' bra, but she started the Polaroid wall too. Other girls would come in and say 'my bra is nicer' or 'my tits are nicer, I want mine up there too!'"

It's that combination of chaos and a clear rock n' roll mission statement that makes most things happen at The Underground Garage. Take the fact that the main bar is no longer located underground, as many patrons are quick to point out on first visit. Picken and company were forced to expand upstairs after a flood destroyed the original bar in October of 2007, moving into what was then a dance hall with stripper poles.

The venue still hosts a house band every Tuesday, now for a spot called "The Radio" where they "change the dial" at each show. This means they play a different kind of music at each gig.

Gordie Johnson from Big Sugar

The crowd remains a mixture of musicians, regular guys, and the occasional superstar. As always, you never know who will pop up on stage at The Underground Garage.

Greg Bouchard is a writer living in Toronto - @GregoryBouchard