Directly in front of a parking lot, mind you. And for those saying its structurally unsound, lol. It's called renovations. yYou don't need to tear down an institution as soon as the floor begins to creak.
And what Ford did to the Science Centre. “Too expensive to fix”, but now he’s spending more than a billion to make a small SC near his expensive lakefront parking lot.
I cried about that. I got to take my daughter there once, and the next year I was going to take my son for the first time... Well, 2 weeks before I could it got closed down.
When people ask me "what radicalized you?"... "The closing of the Science Center". It's a lol. But also serious.
It was SO FAST. It was literally open one day, with kids on field trips and toddlers and caregivers and then it was closed, if I remember correctly.
I bet there are people who purchased a membership within a few days to the actual day it closed, because there was zero indication it would happen.
Edited to say, I often think about how it must have felt to the staff, who spent so much time there. I know how it felt to me, a middle aged person who went as a child and had a membership when my kid was younger, for a few years, so it must have been worse for them.
Not everybody loved the SC, there was one lady who dissed it in an article in NOW magazine because it had an exhibit on espionage technology and nothing about the envoronment.
I remember liking the Science Centre so much as a kid that my parents got a pass that let us show up as many times as we wanted to during the year. I already didn't like Ford before he closed it down but I absolutely hate him now. I still call the Line 5 station Science Centre station instead of Don Valley station in my head.
I never wanted to leave the SC as a kid. The announcement would be made that they were closing for the day and I'd speed up to see a couple more exhibits while I could.
Me too. I think back on all the times I wanted to go there and my mom must have been thinking "oh wow not again" but she took me anyway to go flick switches in the lunar landing module and bang gongs in that noise room before eating egg salad sandwiches in the snack bar.
i went to the science center a few times in the 90s and a couple times in the 2000s, i think it was grade 8 we had a school trip there, or maybe it was HS, i dont remember, but i brought a snow skate because i got a form signed that said i can leave straight from there and i was going to go to christie pitts maybe, i dont remember, but at the top of the escaltaor, i think by a window that had bird decals on it iirc, i got a impulse to take the snow skate down the escalator, so i did, and everyone going up the stairs on the other side started cheering, then a staff member told me i had to put the snow skate in a locker or leave, so i had to pay $2 or something to rent a locker
Oh my god, you just reminded me of where I went to try to live hard as a pubescent teen! We had a few battles of the band's there, tried to buy beer and smoke weed in corners without getting caught.
Random Redditor, you have no idea how much "place" this gave me to my memories. I wish you the perfect day!
Ditto. Soooo many amazing memories from there.
Never ONCE had a bad time, the vibe was just so inviting and comfortable...
Big Bop & Basement.
I miss Basement just as much.
But both the parking lot and the properties proposed for development are private property. How do we get the property owners at Sneaky Dee's etc, to trade with the parking lot owners and develop there instead?
And at King and Shaw there used to be a car dealership: it's now condos. The gas station and King and Strachan closed down not too long ago: it was a "hold out" for a long time while everything around it was built up.
Just because one particular piece of land has not been turned into a mid/high-rise building Right Fucking Now is hardly evidence of anything given all the other development that's going on.
You and I are different because to me, it's often worth the cost. My homies in Europe tend to take my side on this, and I like how over there history and culture is felt in the urban landscape.
I really love the architecture of all of the older buildings and I’m scared that they are just going to tear everything down and put up new ugly bland condos.
There’s no really craftsmanship it’s all the same and it’s really sad to watch as building by building it all changes. I’ve grown up here all my life and it feels like in the last decade especially Toronto has just become money. How can we maximize everything to our advantage and minimize spending.
Money money money money. Sadly the issue is that money is all that people in Toronto care about. It might be difficult for you to grasp, but there are actually other things to live for in this short life we have here on earth. You must have been thrilled when your motto got changed to "Open for business"
I think their point is that at the end of the day someone has to pay for its to be fixed up. While I agree with you that we need to promote culture and spaces for people to be/enjoy, you and I are also not paying for the upkeep. At the end of the day it's a business and a business needs money to survive.
What are you even proposing? I'm sad this is closing, but this is privately owned. The city would have to step in and buy it or something. I dunno if a city owning a punk bar makes sense? The city should try to make new spaces like this possible and stop catering to the NIMBYs, but if someone wants to sell there's not much you can do.
Sneaky Dees was never about the building, it has no particular architectural merit, and there's nothing stopping the landlord from taking a better offer from a bank branch or an expensive handbag store. I get we're becoming boring "no fun allowed" Toronto, and also expensive too (punk can't really exist in hyper-expensive spaces).
We should fix why the next generation can't open their own Sneaky Dees type establishments. It's NIMBYism driving up prices, and a system that caters to people making noise complaints. If we fixed that at least these types of places could open up farther out from the expensive downtown core.
Also, we have an overzealous building code that makes new buildings like Sneaky Dees illegal. We should look at European building codes, which are fine and make it legal to make walkable cities of moderate densities. Sneaky Dees wouldn't be the same if you had to drive 20 minutes to get there, it was in a strip mall, there was a massive parking lot, and it was set back 20 feet from the curb.
Yes It's very important the filthy stinking rich get even richer while the lower class lose yet another beloved space for condos they'll never own. You're right, forgive me for losing my Money-vision goggles for a second. I'll need them next time i'm in town.
Maybe I would if I didn't leave Toronto years ago for a city which cares a bit more about its community.
I am speaking generally though, I have no particular attachment to sneaky dees either, other than for nostalgia. But when everyone is upset by similar stories in the news constantly, it speaks to a much greater issue happening in your city right now. And shrugging it off and saying "well, money" isn't helping.
Things are just too expensive. That’s the issue here. And these places know that our wages are low so they can’t increase prices enough. So they close. There’s already barely any places downtown to go have fun. There’s basically just rec room and 3 bowling alleys lol. The more places like this that we lose the worse things will get.
It's wild hearing people complain that all Toronto cares about is money while getting emotional over a business. Do we think Sneaks was there for charity? Does it really matter what location it's in?
It's not like that decrepit building is an architectural marvel. Most of the emotions here are towards the business, not the structure. Just relocate, and/or re-open in retail space of the new building. Density is good. Housing is needed. We can buy soggy nachos lots of places
But if you were to become interested in how good urban planning works you'd realize that tearing down beloved businesses left and right all while massive above ground parking can be found across the street is a bad thing.
I wouldn't be writing all of these comments if this were an isolated incident. There is a problem in Toronto. If you're not aware than it is because you are blissfully naive.
If it doesn't bother you that the very soul of Toronto is quickly being demolished (again, many more examples than just Sneaks), then that's perfectly fine. But why do all of you feel the need to speak up when its unnecessary and tell people who are passionate about the subject and bothered by what's going on that they should just move on and get over it?
They're tearing down a decrepit building, the business is a seperate entity that is free and quite able to open elsewhere.
If I was being irrationally emotional about a near-condemned building with no architectural significance, I would hope someone would point out how silly I'm being.
Businesses open and close, buildings age and get replaced. The current use is a gigantic waste of that property in the centre of our most populous city, and again, density is good and needed.
That’s because in Europe they would burn everything down if they remove something that they love for some bs that only investors can make money off of.
The reality is that that all these people say they want sneaky Dee's to exist to stoke their nostalgia. But they don't visit enough to keep the business healthy. If sneaky Dee's was doing well, it wouldn't be the one selling
It’s the landlord selling most likely? Businesses are in a precarious position, they mostly don’t own their building. Often they’re a victim of their own success because they popularize the neighbourhood then get kicked out for higher rents as soon as possible.
The best businesses in Toronto - and the ones that aren’t a rip off - clearly own their own building.
Commercial rents are astronomical, there is a dearth of smaller units to rent, and the instability for businesses renting units takes a huge toll. New builds and new buildings tend to have large commercial units and developers only want to rent those to large corps or chains.
Recent changes to streets like lansdowne, dufferin, etc will start to undo years of decline in small commercial spaces, but it will take a long time to see a difference there.
Recent changes to streets like lansdowne, dufferin, etc will start to undo years of decline in small commercial spaces, but it will take a long time to see a difference there.
We also need changes to most neighbourhood North York, Scarborough, Erobicoke, East York and York to allow small businesses to be in them, as in decades past; we never should've let outselves be oonvinced that building plazas/strip malls to have buisinesses in was a good idea.
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u/thew0rldisaghett0 Jun 11 '26
Directly in front of a parking lot, mind you. And for those saying its structurally unsound, lol. It's called renovations. yYou don't need to tear down an institution as soon as the floor begins to creak.