A Zone of our Own Part VI

It had to happen eventually. We received notice from our landlord that the City of Toronto wished to satisfy itself by way of inspection that nobody was illegally residing in the building. They would be looking for beds and stoves and the landlord was confident that they wouldn't find anything that would lead them to think that almost everyone was living there.

I was prepared. My kitchen was powered by a toaster-oven and a hot plate. No big deal. My bed turned into two work benches. The matress was made from foam pads which rolled away nicely. Done. One couple turned there place into a film set, with lights and cameras pointed at a "mock kitchen" and a "mock bedroom". Nicely done.

The day before, we received a reminder. How friendly of the City to make an appointment, wasn't it? The landlord sent out a note. Be prepared. Be cool. The day after, we received another note. The City inspector was satisfied that nobody resided in the building. However, should the zoning by-law change, he was interested in getting a suite. We really were in a zone of our own.

It seems that all good things must come to an end. For me, it was the combination of two factors. My father needed my help. He was having trouble living independently. I was his primary care-giver, and although he never asked me to come look after him, I think he expected I would. Then there was the matter of my landlord, who slid a rent increase notice under my door on Christmas morning. He was such a sweetie-pie, Mr. Generosity, you might say. I called him up and voiced my delight in receiving his love-note at such an opportune time. I offered to stay if he lowered my rent by 10%. He said, well I can't do that, and I said, I'll be moving in two months.

I would have liked this story to end with the landlord being unable to rent the space, forced to watch it sit empty when he could have had my rent cheque. Unfortunately, it just wasn't so. He had it rented within days of my giving notice, at the new higher rate. It was that kind of building.

The story did have a happy ending of sorts. I moved to my father's place, setting up in his basement so I could have some independence. I'm so glad to have had a chance to get to know him really well again. Even though care-giving can be a pain in the butt and even though he could be a crusty old fart when he wanted to be, and even though he needed me increasingly, I wouldn't trade a minute of that time I had with him. We became good pals. He told me all his stories again and again. They aged well, like good wine. He couldn't get around to fish for trout but I took him up to look at a trout stream from time to time and he told me of glory days on glory pools, like the day Ob pulled the 8lb brown from under that log over there, fluttering a little Williams Wabbler on a fly rod. It was the dead of night, see, Ob always fished all night.... We went through his old jazz records and cranked the Dixieland up real loud and he told me about the day he bought a drink for Wingy Minone at the old Colonial tavern way back before it was a strip joint....

A Zone of our Own Part V

One of the highlights of our little Niagara St. community in the early to mid-90s was an annual party called Zone of Our Own. The three buildings, 89, 101 and 109 along with another chunk stuck onto 109, which we called the annex, formed a U with the hollow of the U facing the tracks and Fort York. This formed the parking lot and loading dock for the building. Each year we had a big party there. This was organized by some of the tenants in the building. Typically, there would be a huge cauldren boiling sweet corn, and a bbq set up, and one year, there was a bath-tub full of couscous. One of the tenants was a woodworker and he would supply a stage. Others would decorate the stage and the fences surrounding the property. A lot of the musicians around would get their bands together, and I can recall 8 or 9 bands playing over the afternoon and evening. To attend, you needed a ticket, and to get a ticket, you had to know somebody who lived in the building. One of the musical highlights were The Subtonic Monks. These spirit drummers captivated the crowd and were a popular favourite. Another favourite for me was Rodney Brent, who performed as Bartok Guitarsplat. These days I understand Rodney lives and performs in the Calgary area. His music was always innovative and fun and I remember him to be a really nice guy as well.

Speaking of parties, I hosted one huge party in my studio during my time on Niagara. Jughead provided the music. Jughead were a band we first saw playing outdoors, outside Natalie's cafe and also at the Drake back when it was a dive. It was a fairly early incarnation of the band, before they had accordion. There were a lot of people at the party, and it was tremendous fun, went much of the night, and taught me that the problem with hosting a party is that you have to clean up later.

Zone of our Own Part IV

Sharing the studio with Stan worked out pretty well. I was comfortable working there and I was getting used to the idea of traveling to the studio to work. I wasn't so happy with my apartment though. It was as basic and small as an apartment could be and it was hard to love. When I heard about a good studio opening up over in 101 on the other side of the building, one I could live in, I decided to take it. I knew I was going to miss sharing with Stan. We got on pretty well together, perhaps because we took such different approaches to painting.

I went to see the Superintendent about the space. Fortunately he knew I paid my rent and wasn't destructive. The next step was to get past the problem of living in the studio. There was this little matter of the zoning by-law that said thou shalt not live in yer studio. Clearly, most of the people in the building lived there anyway. The super said, "you understand this is a working studio". I replied, "I'm a painter". We understood one another.

The space was a big rectangle with a storage room and a shower and wooden storage structure that worked for stacking paintings. I had a large bank of windows and a long painting wall. I liked it quite a bit. That was before I found out about the heroin addicts next door.

I don't know how many of them actually lived there. It looked to me that their deal was, score, shoot, sell, get beat up, cough a lot, nod off. At all hours people would come to their door and knock. If they didn't get an answer, sometimes they would come to my door. "I can't help you?" "Why not?" I guess I had some kind of preconception or misconception about what heroin addicts are supposed to look like. I can tell you after viewing that scene, I was wrong. Heroin addicts looked like everyone else, with all kinds of stripes. I had a knock on my door one night from some guy in an Armani suit, standing there with his girlfriend, who was decked out in a super-expensive evening gown. They were very upset that buddy next door wasn't around. He was likely out getting beat up at the time. They couldn't understand that I couldn't help them out.

At the bottom of our street, there were often a couple cop cars. They had a good spot to take a break, at the end of a quiet street. Usually they pulled up so that one car faced in either direction, and there they sat, motor running, talking and smoking and drinking coffee. I'm sure they did good cop stuff when they weren't on break, but they were oblivious to the constant stream of customers my neighbour had. Nobody wanted to call the police though, because, even though the City was pretty slow about finding people who broke zoning by-laws, a major police action in the building just might be enough to wake them up. We didn't want to get booted out of the building. Somebody in the building thought they could shame them out. In the dead of night, in huge letters, the words "get your heroin here" went up in the hallway with a big arrow. The next day buddy was out there painting over it. Finally the landlord got rid of them. We heard the guys were actually paid to leave overnight, but I don't know that for sure. They just disappeared, soon to be replaced by a painter named Peter.

I settled into my studio. With the junk dealers gone, the whole environment was much improved. I ended up staying there for several years, and made a lot of paintings in that studio.

...more soon

Zone of our Own Part III

One of the first things I noticed, approaching 109 Niagara, was the restaurant across the street. The Speedy Restaurant was known by everyone as Billy's after the friendly fellow who ran it. It was the favourite lunchtime haunt of the guys who worked at the attached abattoir, Quality Meats. If you were walking south on Tecumseth toward Niagara at lunchtime on a nice summer day, you would typically see seven or eight guys sitting at the picnic tables outside, wearing blue hard-hats, bulky headphones, and the blood-stained white outfits that they wore on the job. It was quite a sight, but I don't think it was one that inspired many outsiders to pop in for lunch.

There used to be a lead smelter just south and east of the casket factory, in what is now a fenced off vacant lot. At one point, lead testing was available for everyone who lived in the area. This was worrisome to me because people had veggie gardens in the area, and one fellow on the north side of Niagara Street, just west of Tecumseth, had chickens. Every now and then one would get loose and we would see the guy chasing it onto the street from our window. As far as I know, all the lead tests for people who lived in the area came back negative. All the soil in the area was replaced, and not long after that, the old smelter was de-commissioned. That means that guys in space suits took down the building brick by brick. As I recall they did a lot of hosing down of the site along the way. I remember standing at the edge of our roof, trying to snap some pictures, when some very irate and officious people on the ground screamed at me to get away from there and stop taking pictures. I made two paintings at the time called The De-commissioner.

...more soon

Zone of our Own Part II

I'll bet you thought I was making up the part about the boat, didn't you? Har! Stan sent me this picture tonight.

A Zone of our Own

Since Barbara requested it, I suppose it's time to tell you a little bit about my time in the casket factory. I had found a little apartment at Harbord and Palmerston, nothing fancy - this is the late 80s now I guess - and I was looking for a shared painting studio. I was trying to convince myself that I liked to paint in a different place than I lived, but I didn't 100% believe it.

I answered an ad, it might have been in NOW but I don't remember, and rode my bicycle down to Niagara and Tecumseth to check it out. This was by no means the first ad I answered but the others were nowhere near close to what I wanted. There is one big building on the corner, but it has three separate addresses and three separate ways in, 89, 101 and 109 Niagara. The building is still there just across the tracks from Fort York, and across the road from Quality Meats and the Speedy Restaurant. I was going up to the third floor of 109 to meet a fellow named Stan Repar.

The space was big and half of it was divided. It had ratty old carpet on the floor, a couple chairs, and there was some evidence suggesting it was four studio spaces in one. The first thing I noticed, though was a large inflatable boat leaning up against one wall.

What's that?

Uh, it's a boat.

A boat?

Yeah, it's a boat. I'm selling it. Don't worry, it'll be gone.

I see.

There were in fact 4 spaces - imagine a square room cut into four squares - and the one for rent was the one closest to the entrance. It was empty, except for the boat. The second space had a few things kicking around in it but it obviously wasn't used much. Then, to the right was a third space, with an easel and, if I remember correctly, a lamp on a little table. Finally, next to that space, was Stan's studio. He was working on some kind of crazy realist painting, using triple zero watercolour brushes. I say crazy because there was something strange going on in the picture. Actually, I don't remember which painting he had up - there was something a little strange going on in many of Stan's paintings.

I liked Stan right away. He had a real bead on what he wanted to do with his paintings and he was going after it in a steady and methodical way that I admired. In other words, we were really opposites as painters. I liked the paintings, and my first impressions of Stan were positive so I jumped in and rented my share of the space.

During the time I was there, we had different people renting the other two spaces. There was Shelagh who lived down the hall and there was Mark, a sign painter who was also an excellent blues harp player. And there was Lori, a painter who had a framing business going. Mostly though, it was me and Stan there working all the time.

The building really was once a casket factory. I just found out today that it is now a "heritage building", although I'm not sure exactly what that means. It was owned by The National Casket Company, and designed by architect William Wallace Blair in 1884. The casket people had long moved out, but years later, I met a woman who worked there when the casket factory was still going. She told me they moved out to Oakville and then later went out of business. I was surprised to hear that, death being so common and all. I've heard stories that there was a time the building was owned by "the mob" and artists could get huge spaces for a song. I suspect those stories are tall tales and I can tell you that the fellow who owned the place did not give up great deals easily.

As it turned out, I knew someone in the building, a fellow named Michael, who was in the business of providing food on movie lots. I knew him via my pal Candy Minx. I liked him a lot, and somehow or other, at one point he had my mom supplying him with traditional Polish food like cabbage rolls or patychky or something like that. He had quite a business going, and rented a big space on the ground floor. Sadly, Michael became ill and checked out way way too young. Later, the same space was occupied by a fellow who was making plastic trees, but that's another story.

More soon...