[URBAN NOTE] "The Hells Angels era in Leslieville goes out with a sale"

[rfmcdonald]

As Brad Wheeler noted in The Globe and Mail, even the Hells Angels are being priced out of downtown Toronto.

Along the gritty, drab stretch of Eastern Avenue between Carlaw and Logan Avenues, more than one shabby storefront has a sign of warning to any would-be intruders: “Beware of Dog” at one place, and, at another, “Dog on Duty.” But there was a time in the neighbourhood when an angry pitbull would be the least of a punk’s concern.

For at 498 Eastern Ave. was an inelegant cinderblock establishment known to be the downtown clubhouse for the Toronto chapter of the fearsome Hells Angels. But these days, on the concrete-shielded steel front door, the outlaw bikers’ logo is barely discernible – a fading scar that remains after the gang was booted from the building after a police raid in 2007. The ownership of the land and building – commandeered by the federal government under proceeds-of-crime legislation – has been in dispute since then, but a court decision recently gave Ottawa permission to sell the 30-by-120-foot property.

The plot and its eyesore pile have now been conditionally sold, sealing the fate of a colourful part of Leslieville’s rough-and-tumble past that existed right under the noses of long-time area residents, who barely even noticed the quietly operating hooligans in their midst.

So long then, Angels, we barely knew you.