Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 10th, 2016
From The Body Politic (Toronto, ON), November 1975, page 16. (Source.)
Jay Cochrane and Sandy Leblanc opened David’s in the spring of 1975. It was one of the first clubs in Toronto to be gay-owned, and it was decorated with a decidedly gay sensibility:
The club was a sizable, two-level layout. Once opened, David’s heavy wooden door revealed a path that went up a few stairs, past a ticket booth, along a catwalk, and to your choice of billiards room or the main bar. In the upper part of the main room there was plenty of seating – sofas, tables and chairs, and booths alike. The floors were red carpet. Some of the walls were, in part, also covered in red carpet while others were heavily mirrored. It was, after all, the ‘70s.
Two winding staircases led down to the dancefloor. Most famously, the stairs also curved around the club’s star attraction: a fountain containing a larger-than-life, and, by many accounts, excessively well-endowed replica of Michelangelo’s David. There was also a stage, raised go-go platform, and a DJ booth that overlooked the dancefloor. Of course a large mirror ball reflected the pink, purple and multi-hued lights, and the sound system is said to have been quality. David’s also boasted a snack bar, pinball machines, and a high-tech coat check system, complete with revolving hangers.
Open to men-only at first, a common practice in those days. Months after it opened, the owners took the unusual step of opening it up for everyone — male or female, gay or straight. And because it wasn’t licensed to serve alcohol at first, David’s became a refuge for those sixteen and up. A few years later, with David’s open door policy and the addition of an alcohol license it quickly became an important player on Toronto’s punk rock scene:
The Viletones performing at David’s.
“David’s was sort of a big deal at the time,” (filmmaker Tibor Takács) tells me in a phone call from California; “It was such a cool place – down an alleyway, with people always falling out onto the street. David’s was a very decadent, underground club that had a bit of a New York vibe to it. When David’s was in its heyday, I don’t think there was anything else like it at all in Toronto.”
David’s burned during a show on December 31, 1977. LeBlanc was murdered the following year, stabbed more than 100 times. No one was ever charged. David’s sat empty for several years until Le Mystique opened in the mid 1980s. The building has since been torn down and replaced with a massive condo tower.
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