[PHOTO] On the future of Geary Avenue, Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO has written extensively in the past about Geary Avenue, an increasingly post-industrial west-east street in Davenport, just on the other side of the train tracks from me. In February 2011 it noted the decline of industry there, while two years later it introduced its readers to the street more directly and in July 2014 it noted the erection of the new Geary Lane studio. On the 4th, the Toronto Star's Stuart Berman described in "Geary Ave.: The secret life of an ugly street" how this street was starting to become trendy.

Though located just steps north of heavily trafficked Dupont St., the unremarkable, one-kilometre-long Geary Ave. — beginning at Ossington Ave. in the east and terminating just past Dufferin St. in the west — exists in the no man’s land between downtown and midtown, an area so unconcerned with keeping up appearances that its modern-furniture knock-off stores actually have names like Modern-Furniture Knock Off.

Running alongside the CP rail tracks, Geary is effectively cut off from Toronto’s urbanized core both physically and spiritually. It more closely resembles something you’d find on the city’s industrialized outskirts: a random assemblage of car-repair shops, nondescript office spaces and the greasy-spoon lunch counters that cater to them, not to mention various disused warehouses in states of serious neglect.

Up until last year, there was really only one reason to visit Geary after dark: you were among the many musicians renting a room at the labyrinthine Rehearsal Factory, the jam-space of choice for everyone from veteran rock acts like Sloan to after-work hobbyists renting by the hour. But, over the past year, Geary has become a place where local noise-makers are not only practising for their next gig but playing them, too.

Just a few doors down from the Rehearsal Factory, the street’s western dead-end has come to life with the launch of Geary Lane, a multi-purpose performance space specializing in experimental indie-rock concerts and DJ events.

On the east side of Dufferin, adjacent to three-year-old grungy taco bar Kitch, a Toronto hardcore band has taken over a basement unit in an industrial plaza and christened it S.H.I.B.G.B. (pronounced “Shee-B-G-B,” a cheeky nod to legendary New York dive CBGB), the city’s only venue devoted to all-ages punk shows. Across the street from that lies an abandoned furniture store that’s set to be transformed into the Mercury Social Club, a new restaurant and 300-person concert space due to open this spring.