The Next Seventy Years Are Anyone’s Guess
As you finish flipping through these pages, the inevitable question that comes to mind is this: What’s next for the grande dame that has stood tall at Queen and Spadina for seventy years? With a lease signed by Cohen and crew for a couple more years, the short term is in good hands. After that, it’s anyone’s guess. One thing is sure: it would be a sad day, not only for Toronto but also for Canada, if the legendary Horseshoe Tavern was no more. Here’s hoping that no matter what happens — even if Cohen decides to retire down the road — the Clairman family will decide not to sell out to the highest bidder and to keep the house that Jack built alive, to offer many more generations of musicians a place to play and music lovers a shrine to come worship their favourite bands and enjoy live music with like-minded souls.
Jeff Cohen and Craig Laskey recently celebrated their twentieth year at the helm. For a pair who started with a two-year plan, that’s pretty impressive. “We haven’t gone bankrupt or fired ourselves,” Cohen jokes. “I might start to look eventually for somebody to bring in to hand the business over to, but until then we are ready to celebrate our seventieth birthday.” (These anniversary shows and parties were in the works as this book went to print.)
When Cohen is asked what’s next, he thinks for a minute, then replies, “Hopefully we will keep it going as long as we can. We have a lease on the building signed with the Clairmans until 2018, and all indications show they will renew this again for another five or ten years.”
Owners and operators at the Horseshoe, before and after Cohen, have tried to keep this place at Queen and Spadina through rising rents. A few failed. Most succeeded. You never know whether the landlord might turn around one day and decide it’s time to cash in. The Clairman family now owns 100 percent of the building — they recently bought out the other 50 percent stake owned by one of Jack Starr’s sons.
In the meantime, Cohen, Laskey, and the rest of the ’Shoe’s team will carry the weight of the tavern’s legacy and try to keep the place running. The current majority owner says that it’s not that easy. There’s a lot more to running a bar today than there was back in Starr’s day. The biggest hurdle and challenge is navigating changing municipal bylaws and reams of red tape. Cohen admits he’s always worried that the rise in litigation in the States over slips and falls in public spaces might start to be seen in Canada as well. Sure, they have liability insurance, but one never knows. The legal costs could be crippling. “That’s always in the back of [one’s] head,” he says.
Another big challenge is ever-increasing government regulations — from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario to the province and local government. “It’s become a bureaucratic nightmare,” Cohen explains. “There are so many rules. Any night you go to any bar, a rule is being broken somewhere. It’s getting harder to do business with so many regulations that were written by people who have never owned, or most likely been in, a bar or even involved in the alcohol business.”
Cohen has stories that could fill pages. Every few years, government inspectors show up and try to tell him he is in violation of some bylaw or another. Once, a couple of years back, the City of Toronto municipal licensing folks claimed his patio was not of the same design that was stamped and approved back in 1982. He asked to see the drawing. On inspection, he told them, “I can’t have that design anymore because the fire inspector won’t allow a railing to go through the front door!”
He’s grown good at playing the political game and dealing with all these distractions, but it’s just one more hassle and reality of running the Horseshoe Tavern in 2017. “The City of Toronto is trying to regulate us to death,” he says.
Now in his mid-fifties, Cohen sees himself as a mentor and industry leader and veteran who needs to take a stand against these growing issues to help out his peers. He’s starting to get involved with local politics, and recently helped start an organization called Music Canada Live to be the voice of Canada’s live music industry, advancing and promoting its many economic, social, and cultural benefits. He advocates on its behalf to the government and to the media on issues impacting the live music industry.
At some point, Cohen may just decide he wants to get out of the business even though he loves it to death. When that time comes, he may be looking for the right person to take over, just as he and Craig were the right ones to carry on the Kenny and X-Ray era. That’s a question best left to another day. As Cohen says, “It’s been around for seventy years. Where do you think it’s going? It’s still a barometer of what a band is worth at a certain level in Canada.”
There definitely needs to be a succession plan, but until then, I encourage you to do your part to support live music wherever you live. At the end of the day, that’s what will keep clubs like the Horseshoe Tavern open and viable for the next generation. I hope this book has inspired you to go see a band play tonight — maybe, if you live in or near Toronto, at the ’Shoe. What are you waiting for? The walls at 370 Queen Street West are whispering your name.