[URBAN NOTE] On the imminent end of Suspect Video in Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

Will Sloan's Torontoist post "A Quarter Century of Suspect Video", publicized by Exclaim!, mourns the imminent end of Toronto institution Suspect Video.

On August 4, 1991, Suspect Video opened its doors in the southwest corner of Honest Ed’s with an auspicious event: an autograph session with the late Gunnar Hansen. Following a busy day of meeting fans, the immortal Leatherface took some of the Suspect staff for a night on the town, climaxing with a visit to another local institution, the Brass Rail.

“The first thing he wanted to see was the strip joint,” remembers Glenn Salter, one of Suspect’s longtime register jockeys, “so, that’s where we went! Gunnar was a real hit with the strippers—they swarmed all over him. A lot of strippers are horror film fans—that’s what we figured out that night. A lot of them were really impressed, including the DJ. He specifically asked, ‘Were you the Leatherface in the original film or the second one?’ and Gunnar was like, ‘The original of course!’”

[. . .]

Salter worked fill-in shifts in those early years before joining the staff on a more full-time basis in 2002. I ask what has kept him at the store so long. “I guess there’s the lazy thing—too lazy to look for a new job,” he says. “But also, these are the kinds of people I like to be around. I like the discussions that come with this kind of job. That sense of community: the camaraderie of people who share similar tastes. … I think the real value—if there is a real value—to having a store is just that sense of community you build with the customer base. But obviously it’s a smaller customer base. It dwindles as the years go on.”

Suspect celebrates a quarter century this year, but this auspicious anniversary will also likely be its last. Along with the other businesses in Mirvish Village, it will have to shut its doors at the end of 2016 to make room for a new real estate development. The Mirvish Village bubble has so far insulated Suspect from the near-total collapse of the video store industry, but the store looks unlikely to find as fortunate circumstances elsewhere.

I ask Salter if he has any future plans. “Not really! Not at the moment. Find another similar job to this kind of job. My whole life has been slacker jobs. I’ve worked in bookstores, record stores, comic book stores, video stores… that’s what I know.”