A Tale of A Bar

There's a bar on 106 St.

It's just a little bar, not much to look at from the outside. What's a building really? Some walls and a roof. Just a box really.

And just like a box, it's what's inside that counts.

Thirteen years ago, a boy nearly fresh off the bus from his college career in Lethbridge, set foot in a bar on 106 St, and everything was changed. It wasn't the same kind of bar as the Roost, two floors of music and twinks and men and women and magic and patio and dancing. It wasn't the same kind of bar as Buddys, overlooking 124 St, with its amateur strips. It wasn't the same kind of space as Secrets, the lesbian bar across the alley. This was “the old man's bar”, “the leather bar”: Boots, the Blue Room.

Many years before that, it had been Club 70, and then briefly the Cha Cha Palace before becoming Boots and Saddle in the late 70s. Thirteen years ago, when this fresh-faced new-to-Edmonton boy set foot in there, it was simply Boots, and it was the domain of one Mr. Jim Schafer, whose raucous laugh and love for sambuca welcomed one and all.

Boots it was and Boots it stayed, as Buddys relocated, as Secrets closed, and became Prism, as Fly and Choices and (insert gay bar here) opened and closed, as even the Roost closed. It was home to the leather scene, the bear scene, home to some of Edmonton's best drag shows. Its eatery next door, the Garage Burger Bar, boasted the best burgers in the city year after year. It was watering hole and party palace for many, where the sambuca was cheap and the laughter was free. Whether pre-drinking before stumbling off to a dance club, or pre-drinking and post-drinking before stumbling into a cab, it was the gay bar many people loved.

There's a bar on 106 St. It's no longer called Boots. That boisterous licorice laugh of Jim went silent in March of 2010, and his business partner Ross could no longer hold onto it. A changing city, climbing debt, and the memory of his deceased partner and friend, all combined, and Boots closed its doors May 31. There was no chance to say goodbye. Those subcultures on the fringe of Edmonton's gay community, the bears, the leather daddies, the kink groups, the queens, were left homeless, waiting outside a locked door at a bar on 106 St.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, the lesbians gathered and drank and played pool and ate and laughed and made merry, first at Secrets, sharing an alley with Boots (where often-times the bartenders would run out for a shooter break with their twin from across the way). When Secrets closed (and aside from a short-lived spurt with Secrets II), there was a bar called Prism, whose ownership passed into the hands of Deborah Chymyshyn and Tracey Smith.

Our little boy from Lethbridge who'd become Boots bartender found himself a home at Prism, a home for him and the others displaced outside the locked doors of a bar on 106 St. With the Prism lease expiring, and the Boots space open, it was time for a wonderful and exciting change, a place where men and women of all ages could come together, to be themselves, to love, to laugh, to live. And that place would be called Junction.

There is a bar on 106 St, but not for much longer. The vision and dream of togetherness and camaraderie, of a community space where all were welcome and all were wanted, well, that dream couldn't survive landlords and leases and the lemons that life sometimes hands out. That dream had come true, and shined brightly, but briefly. It was a true coming together, bears and queens and bulldykes and lipstick lesbians... Community groups found a place to fundraise and to raise fun. Our bartender found his way back to himself.

But the bar on 106 St is closing, and what happens next who can say? All we know is this: there was a bar on 106 St and in those walls, under that roof, people shared laughter, loss, love, friendship, history, community, grief, joy... People shared, people cared, and now those people will go out into the world and take with them those experiences, those memories, their own stories of the bar on 106 St.

Comments? Feedback? All my articles are meant to provoke thoughts and discussion. Send me your opinions, ideas, arguments. We will revisit this topic as the need arises.