Downtown Kitchener’s wild ride as a nightlife hub
KITCHENER - Back in the 1990s, downtown Kitchener was crammed with nightclubs.
Prize nights were a Wednesday regular at Stages, a club nestled at 312 King St. W., where Dallas Nightclub now sits.
Do you want to take the $10,000 cash or see what's in the pie?" Stages Nightclub manager Mike Conway would ask.
The young woman chooses the cash - but Conway knows hidden in the pie is a new car prize.
It's moments like this that stand out for Conway, who spent his nights looking after patrons in the 800-person capacity space.
It was a $2 million club with a $150,000 laser that you can now buy for probably $10,000, but at the time, it was state of the art," said Conway.
Tuesday and Thursday were live band night. Friday was rock and Saturday was disco and house. Sunday was the all-ages show.
Back then, hundreds of people in their teens and 20s came to dance in this space that held 800 people. It was exciting."
Stages opened in 1987 and for more than a decade, teens as young as 12 could be found there dancing the night away.
Stages' business soon expanded next door, with Sammy's Garage, Howl At The Moon, and The Moon sports bar. The businesses occupied almost the entire stretch of King Street West between Water and Francis Streets.
It became known as The Block That Rocks' and had a total capacity of 2,600 people.
A lot of people who had walkie talkies from one end of the street to the other," said Conway. I think I employed 150 people at that time."
Stages was just one part of the core's nightlife: Innercity nightclub, Metropolis, Club Abstract, The Volcano and The Lyric were all places people spent their nights at. Foo Fighters, The Tragically Hip, Matchbox Twenty, and Big Hip are a few of the bands that headlined downtown Kitchener venues.
A Lyric and Metropolis bouncer, Levis Becker, said clubs back then were rougher and fights would happen every night - big and small.
In those days, it was like, (if) someone's acting up, grab them and drag them to the door," said Becker, who was 18 when he started on the job.
His fondest memories are the 3 a.m. breakfasts at Mel's Diner, where the team would unwind and share crazy stories from the night.
Before claiming its name as a nightlife destination, downtown Kitchener was known for its arcades, said Bryan Stortz, who was a city councillor for Centre Ward from 1988 to 1994.
The core was perfect for transformation.
The space was relatively inexpensive and there were lots and lots of people that wanted to come in and enjoy an evening in downtown Kitchener," said Stortz.
By September 1996, there were 53 liquor-licensed businesses in downtown Kitchener with total capacity of 17,000 people.
Darryl Moore managed and operated The Lyric, which opened in 1994 in a converted movie theatre with a 1,200 capacity.
It's a snap in history that I wouldn't trade for anything," said Moore.
But Friday nights were soon dubbed Fight Night on King Street.' People would spend their post-clubbing time waiting to see a brawl break out.
Everybody likes a good show - have a few hotdogs and watch a fight go down. If there were phones, that would've been crazy," said Conway.
License suspensions in the downtown clubs became common.
Leading up to its closure in 2002, The Lyric was hit with a licence suspension for serving to intoxicated and underage patrons and permitting riotous behaviour, after 30 police officers were called to a fight that involved about 500 people broke out in the club.
Another fight at the club led to a 19-year-old Kitchener man being stabbed twice in the stomach.
As more fights broke out, who should bear the increased policing costs was a tense topic of conversation. Club owners said they weren't responsible for what happened outside of the club, while doing what they could inside.
One of the debates was whether clubs should be closed earlier in order to clean up the streets at night, but Stortz remembers owners saying this wouldn't allow partygoers enough time to decompress.
The start of the 2000s brought the slow unwinding of the core's nightlife.
Once new clubs started opening in Waterloo, Conway said it was harder for places like Stages to stay open.
If you didn't rebrand or knock it down and rebuild it, people were like: That's an old place. We're going to go to the new place,'" said Conway.
In the end, the City of Kitchener bought The Lyric, The Mayfair Hotel, and Sports Cafe bar and developed a new vision for the downtown.
Metropolis burned down in March 2000 and Barry Grieve, who owned The Block That Rocks' sold the string of businesses to a Stratford company, Bayer Hospitality Inc., in October 2001.
Moore said he doesn't see a Kitchener nightlife hub coming back, in part due to the change in today's youth.
If people wanted to meet people, they had to go out to the bars. We didn't have social media. We didn't have cellphones like we have today," said Moore.
In the 90s, a guy met a girl (or) a girl saw a guy and said I got to go back Friday night to see if they're there again. I really liked talking to them.'"
The city's downtown core now has two nightclubs - Dallas Nightclub and Wax Nightclub.
Downtown Kitchener's revitalization plan focused on developing technology and academic hubs, with the arrival of Google and Communitech.
There is now a push for patios, live music and restaurants, rather than nightclubs. Compared to a city like Toronto - as a tourist destination and with its greater population density - the needs are different.
Although downtown Kitchener's '90s nightlife is now part of the city's history, Conway took with him a network of people that are still in his life today. One of those people is his wife, who applied for a waitress job in 1992.
I ended up marrying her a year later," said Conway.
Cheyenne Bholla is a Waterloo Region-based reporter at The Record. Reach her via email: cbholla@therecord.com