10
Tales from the Bar
Pissing off the bartender can be a sobering experience.
— Anonymous
A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.
— Anonymous
Next to a hands-on club owner, or maybe the doorperson, who knows more about a place than the one who serves the drinks? That’s certainly the case at the Horseshoe Tavern, where there’s a pair of bartenders who are almost as legendary as the place itself: Teddy Fury and Bob Maynard. This chapter is dedicated to them.
When Teddy and I meet at a Starbucks on a Tuesday night to talk about the Horseshoe Tavern, he’s like a kid in an arcade who can’t decide which game to play first; he jumps from one tale to another. Hours quickly pass. Starbucks closes, and we shuffle up the street to the place where all those magical moments happened. As he regales me with story after story from his twenty-nine years tending bar, he laughs every few minutes, remembering all the crazy nights and memorable days spent working and playing between the weathered old walls.
Where to begin? Well, at the beginning. Teddy started slinging drinks behind the Horseshoe’s bar back in 1987. Before getting the gig, he had played there several times since 1977 with various rockabilly bands he was in, such as the Royal Crowns. He says his band was one of last ones to play there before the stage was moved from where the back bar is today to the north wall at the back of the room.
Teddy Fury, the man behind the bar for more than three decades; his stories are as legendary as the tavern.
Teddy’s first time playing the ’Shoe was around 1977, when he was in a band called the Bobcats, who opened for Willie English. “We sucked that night!” he recalls, in his typical self-deprecating manner. “Wayne Gretzky probably remembers missing the net more than he does putting it in!”
Years later, the fact that he had played in a bunch of bands there eventually led to him being offered the bartending gig. Teddy remembers:
I got kicked out of a band and was a mess at the time. I didn’t know what I was going to do. My playing had deteriorated. I knew X-Ray [MacRae] and I knew Kenny [Sprackman] since about 1977. Met Kenny first when he was running the Hotel Isabella. X-Ray was in Kingston, but had a used record store, Used Grooves, that I would always visit when my band played there. I recall going to his record store; he was a burly bear of a guy, a gentle giant. He totally dug rockabilly, and we hit it off, like Laurel and Hardy. I met Kenny around the same time, and we always kept in touch. When I lost my job gigging, I had never been a bartender before, but they offered me the job. I was never Mr. Self-Confidence. I remember saying, “I don’t think I can be a bartender,” and they said, “We’ve seen you on the other side of the bar, and you are really good at that!” My joke is, nearly thirty years later, I’m still on my three-month trial, but I still don’t have a nametag or a uniform!
Jokes aside, Fury certainly doesn’t need a nametag. Having tended bar that long, he’s a fixture, not just at the Horseshoe but also across the city. Everyone knows Teddy. When he started tending bar at the Horseshoe, a domestic bottle of beer cost $1.85. He says, over the years, the various ownership changes have always been an exercise in flux, but they’ve also been very organic and he’s never had any issues with any of the owners. By the time Jeff Cohen came on board as an owner, Teddy had already gotten to know him, since he had been the talent buyer for a decade already. “What has been great about all the owners of the Horseshoe is that they like the people, and the vibe they create is not at all corporate … it’s very family-oriented. Sure, we’ve all been suspended for stuff over the years, but they are very hands-off. A lot of times many of us feel like we are the owners, and when people ask us, we say, ‘No, we just act like it.’”
Teddy says what makes the Horseshoe Tavern tick is that it doesn’t have an identity crisis: it’s a blue-collar bar today, and it always has been. “If people come in and ask for a mojito, I tell them we have a Moe Howard! I call it a meat-and-potatoes bar. We have Chardonnay and Chardon B!” While it may be a blue-collar bar, that doesn’t mean there’s any trouble. In his nearly thirty years there, he’s seen only one fight.
Fury says they’ve figured out what works, and you can always expect the bookings to not suck. “That has been the consistent thing with the Horseshoe, even before I worked here, and I wasn’t playing and I was a patron,” says Teddy. “I would have a Friday night off, and come here knowing that whatever is on would be good. I could literally count on one hand the amount of bands that have sucked. There have been plenty that were mediocre, but in almost thirty years, there’s been maybe five that shouldn’t have been there.”
Enough of the backstory. It’s time for Teddy to share a few of his most memorable ’Shoe stories. Here’s a quick one to start:
When Kenny was still working here, the great thing was that he loved cars. One day, he had parked his car, some slick Jag, out front. We had just hired a busboy named Steve Richards. Kenny comes walking in and goes, “Jesus Christ, there is some 1950s white dump truck out back. Who the fuck owns that? Let’s get it towed!” And I went, “Kenny, I want you to meet Steve; he’s our new busboy. He owns the truck.” Then, he goes, “That’s fuckin’ great!” Later, when the drivers for the Beer Store were on strike, they sent Steve in his dump truck to the brewers directly; he filled his whole dump truck with like three hundred cases of beer. It looked like the Mardi Gras Welfare Parade. It was so awesome; that’s a total Horseshoe story.
Teddy remembers fondly the night when John Entwistle from The Who was in town:
It was mid- to late February, on a Monday or Tuesday night. I was working the front bar. There was an independent record label in Hamilton at the time called Gritty City; they were doing a whole night with their bands. It ended up turning into one of those nights. We didn’t have much snow that winter, and then all of a sudden at five o’clock, everything is iced over, then about 8:30 p.m. it got mild again. I was working with a guy named Chris Dignan, who was in the band Suckerpunch and later Dodge Fiasco. There was no one in the back, maybe fifteen people, but all the bands that were playing were great. Around 9:00 p.m. this couple comes in. A tall, thin guy in his mid-forties. The woman is pretty. They both have overcoats on. Me and Chris go, “Is that John Entwistle?” We weren’t sure, but then he takes off his coat and he has this giant gold spider on a chain. Think of his famed song “Boris the Spider.” It was a total Spinal Tap moment. We said, “It’s got to be him!”
Ever since Kenny and X-Ray owned the bar, we had a comp system, whereby you can comp a few drinks if you ever get someone in there and can keep them there. She orders a couple of drinks, and he’s not saying much. I think they paid for the first couple of rounds; then, as the banter was loosening up, everyone figured out who it was, the place wasn’t jammed, but he was kind of holding court. He was really great. He ended up drinking a bottle and a half of Rémy Martin. There were about five bands playing, and everyone would come and he’d say, “Show me your guitar,” then he would point out all the fine points to them. He was fuckin’ awesome. Guys asked for autographs, and he was happy to sign. He was hangin’ out. By 2:00 a.m., he is our oldest pal in the world. His wife is going, “We are having our house renovated,” and showing us pictures of their pad in Hollywood; then, John goes, “Listen, I don’t think these boys are interested in that. I’ll show you my guitar collection.” And he had this photo album with him. At one point, I remember this, he is making requests. It was so effing great! Later, he said, “Do you want to know how to really piss off Roger Daltrey?” He gets a cigarette and blows smoke in our faces. He is telling us all these great stories. At one point, we just happened to have on “Pretty Woman,” which I think anyone since the cavemen has played air guitar to. Chris is walking by, doing the air guitar riff, and Entwistle goes, “Chris,” and plays it to him. It was just like something out of Wayne’s World. He was the most accommodating, lovely guy. But the spider on the chain? It was like, Are you kidding me?
Teddy says he misses many of the regulars who used to hang out in the front bar:
The rounders. Now they were real characters. Look around in the bar today, and you’ll see we have plaques up for some of the people who were regulars here. At one time there were all these knitting mills around the Horseshoe, which have been knocked down over the years and replaced with giant high-rises.
We had this one regular named Jimmy. He was a little guy, about my size, with a little moustache; he looked like Clark Gable. He drank Labatt Blue and was a killer pool player. The more drunk he got, the better he got. I remember one Christmas Eve, he was in and we had cut him off early, but he didn’t want to leave. He was sitting there playing pool; he always had a Labatt Blue in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and his lighter across from him. He would always turn to me and go, “Teddy, give me another funny one!” He was fantastic!
There was another guy named Rudy who used to live at the Black Bull, across the street from Marty’s Diner (where a Subway franchise lives now). Now Rudy, he was a girl man. Coming in one afternoon, I had just arrived, and he yells, “Here comes the little cocksucker that gets all that pussy!” How poetic is that? It’s the best Charles Bukowski–like compliment I ever heard. I’ve told that story to my daughter!
There was one other guy, Danny, that we called Red. He sold those Outreach newspapers. He once wrote an IOU for a double Scotch on a napkin that we had up on the bar for about five years. He was awesome. He knew the streets. There is a horrible news story from 1977 that speaks to the end of the innocence in Toronto, when a twelve-year-old shoeshine boy named Emanuel Jaques got raped and murdered by some creepy guys down at the Zanzibar on Yonge Street. One day, I’m working and some creepy-looking older guys came into the Horseshoe. Danny said to me, “Teddy, do you remember Emanuel Jaques? Yea? Well, those were two of the guys that were in on it. Don’t serve them!” I don’t know how he knew, but we threw them out.
There’s been many a night when Teddy and the rest of the staff closed down the bar with various bands that were playing elsewhere in town: from British rockers Oasis to Celtic rockers the Pogues. Besides the Rolling Stones’ surprise show, when Teddy met Keith Richards (a story Teddy shares in detail in the preceding chapter), a few of his most memorable shows include Johnny Thunders doing two nights and Chris Isaak playing right around the time his hit “Wicked Game” came out: “I thought there would be about a hundred people, but ended up being about six hundred … it was just jammed.”
And there was Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds, who played the ’Shoe one night with his Desert Rose Band. “They were on tour as an opening act for somebody. They played the ’Shoe on a night off for two and a half hours,” Teddy remembers. “That is one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. All [the members of] that band [were] heavy players.”
Teddy says there are probably another thousand bands that never went anywhere, “but on a given night the planets aligned and they were the kings of music that night.” The one thing that sucks about bartending at a live music venue, he says, is that you don’t really get to see the show when you’re behind the bar: “If it’s a two-night stand by a band, I like to come back the night I’m not working.”
Is Teddy, going on thirty years at the bar, set to retire any time soon? He doesn’t think so, as long as his passion for the people and the place is still there. “One time I was off work, and I thought what if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t have to work at the Horseshoe again, but then I thought at the same time, if I had won, I would probably still come in anyway because I love it so much.
“Fellow bartender Bob [Maynard] and I joke that when we go we want to get taxidermied! We will be like automatons. Some people might say the service will be better!”
Bob Maynard has been bartending for thirty-one years — the bulk of them at the Horseshoe Tavern. He jokes this tenure is thirty-two and a half too many! Most likely, shortly after this book hits the shelves Bob will be retired, enjoying time at his Georgian Bay cottage, maybe moving out of Toronto to somewhere less expensive like Dundas or Hamilton, Ontario. So, how did he get the gig in the first place?
After working for Kenny Sprackman at the Hotel Isabella in the early 1980s, Bob worked out west for four years, where he had managed the biggest bar in Whistler. Coming back to Toronto, he had a hard time finding work since he was applying for bartending gigs and they felt he had too much experience. Then, by chance, he and his wife walked in to the Horseshoe one day looking for work. They were chatting with the bar’s manager, and out came Sprackman from his office to offer Bob a job.
Unlike Teddy, Maynard is not a music guy. He’s content to work the front bar, away from the instruments crashing and the sounds of whatever band is playing. “I’m not a musician, and I’ve always found the quieter spot the easier of the two bartending stations. The other reason: the people in the front room are there for one reason — to drink — so I know I’m going to make more money from the drinkers.”
Unlike the back bar, which is usually packed with music lovers, the regulars Bob sees in the front at night are a mix of characters: from street people to Bay Street lawyers, stockbrokers, and retailers. In his thirty-one years, like Teddy, Bob’s seen little trouble. He’s had to drag a few people outside, but that’s about it. Everyone in the front bar usually gets along. It’s a bit like the 1980s sitcom Cheers — where everybody knows your name. “It still bewilders me sometimes how seldom there are confrontations,” says Maynard. “It’s just the tone of the place … it just never gets ugly. It’s a blue-collar bar where nobody has any pretence. It’s just, ‘This is who I am, and I’m here to have a good time.’”
After the bar closes, or during special occasions like one of the other bartenders’ birthdays, the staff at the Horseshoe Tavern can get up to some hijinks. Bob recalls one of these celebrations: “Four of us got up on stage wearing nothing but the Horseshoe underwear we sell at the front bar. We put it on backward, though, so the horseshoe was on our butts!” Bob says all the staff members at the ’Shoe like to have fun. At heart, they are just a bunch of “goofs.”
Beyond the tips, one wonders what’s kept Bob there for three decades. “The tits!” he says, laughing. “Even my wife would tell you that. Over the years, I’ve seen lots of big tits.”
During his tenure there Maynard says he’s thought about calling it quits a few times, but life circumstances prevented him from pulling the plug on the Horseshoe gig. Generally, it’s an easy room to work and the money is good. It’s allowed him to buy a house and put his kids through college. One change he isn’t as thrilled about is how they must now be polite to everyone, even customers who are not nice. “Back in the day, we were given more freedom in how we were allowed to deal with customers,” he says. “Kenny’s philosophy was the customer is always wrong, so we did not have to put up with any nonsense. If someone was being a jerk, you get what you give. We were allowed to express our opinions. Now, we are supposed to say yes, sir, or no, sir.”
Bob’s shift in the front bar usually begins at 7:00 p.m. He hasn’t worked during the day in twenty-five years. He sees a changing clientele. There used to be sixty or seventy people every night. All of them played pool, and they all knew each other. “It was a unique atmosphere,” Maynard says. “We don’t get the after-work crowd we used to. People are more conscious about drinking and driving, and lots of businesses have relocated from downtown to the suburbs, places like Scarborough and Vaughan.”
When Bob started pouring drinks at the Horseshoe, they didn’t have doormen. You didn’t need them. You did not need to worry for your safety because the other staff and your fellow customers would police things. “That doesn’t exist anymore,” he says.
Last fall, Maynard received a one-hundred-dollar tip on two beers. The patron had already had two or three rounds. “After he had bought two beers, he gave me $120 and said give me change for twenty. I wanted to give it back, but his friend goes, ‘Keep it. He can afford it, and he’s having fun. You were funny with us and we’re having a good time, so Merry Christmas!’”