Reece Martin is perhaps best known for his YouTube channel focused on transit. He has over 330,000 subscribers, and I have mentioned him a few times over the years on this blog. But he has since retired from YouTube and he now has a new blog called "Next Toronto," which you should all subscribe to. I just did that today.
In his latest post, he makes "the case for a 24-hour Toronto" and compares our city to various other global cities around the world including New York and Tokyo. This post really resonates with me and I agree with his view that there's something quintessentially urban about things being open all the time, or at the very least open late.
According to ChatGPT, Toronto is a "semi 24-hour city." Its deficiencies:
Here's how I generally think about it.
Step 1 is reasonable daytime hours. As a North American, I still find it frustrating how some/many restaurants in Europe close between lunch and dinner. Call me spoiled, but what if I got held up at work and couldn't eat during the generally accepted time? Or if I went to the gym in the morning and now I suddenly have a dire caloric deficit?
Step 2 is staying open kind of late, including on Sundays. A few weeks ago I was driving around the suburbs of Toronto — on a Sunday — and I decided to take advantage of this rare occurrence to stop in at what's called an enclosed shopping mall. So I got all the way there, pulled confidently on one of the front doors, and then realized it had closed 2 hours ago.
Step 3 is the rarified big leagues; you're a "24-hour city." Reece gives the example of Apple's Fifth Avenue store, which, in case you forgot, never closes. I don't typically shop for consumer electronics at 3AM, but I might. And there's something oddly comforting about knowing I could. This isn't possible in all cities, but it is in New York. That says something.
When I was a lot younger and growing up in Toronto, the place to go out at night was in the Entertainment District, centered around Richmond St West and Adelaide St West. This is where all of the bars and clubs were. Thinking back, the concentration of nighttime activities in this area was pretty incredible.
Those of you who are familiar with Toronto will know that this area isn't the same nighttime epicenter that it once was and that it's been this way for many years. The scene shifted westward and down to King St. It also went from larger clubs and venues to smaller bars, restaurants, and lounges. Tastes change, I guess.
So if you had to choose one intersection to be the epicenter of nightlife in Toronto right now, I think you could easily argue that it's King St West and Portland St. (Disagree with this take? Leave a comment below.)
But why this intersection? Why did the nighttime economy land right here?
Part of it was surely development pressures in the Entertainment District, which forced a broader move. I also think that these areas tend to become victims of their own success. Clubs and bars generate a lot of noise and that makes some people grouchy.
But I think you could also argue that the intersection of King and Portland has some very specific urban qualities that lend itself to becoming a kind of heart for nightlife.
It helps that it is the only north-south street that intersects King between Bathurst and Spadina. However, I think the more important point is that both Bathurst and Spadina are fairly broad arterial avenues (certainly that is the case for Spadina). These intersections aren't as hospitable to pedestrians and so they create a natural break in "the strip."
The result is that Portland, which is a much smaller street, became the heart. The intersection feels much more like an urban room. Leave one bar and another one is right in front of you. That's one of the things about cities. Intimate spaces, rather than big ones, are often what attract people.
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in New York City recently commissioned this report on the city’s nightlife economy. The study was completed by Econsult Solutions, the North Highland Company, and Urbane Development. (Full disclosure: I was a teaching assistant for the President of Econsult while at Penn.)
Here’s what they found:
The total economic impact of this industry is the sum of its direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts, as well as the ancillary spending impacts that are adjacent to nightlife activity. In 2016 (the most recent year where standardized datasets were available), the nightlife industry supported 299,000 jobs with $13.1 billion in employee compensation and $35.1 billion in economic output. This economic impact also yielded $697 million in tax revenue for New York City.
They also found that, between 2011 and 2016, the nightlife industry has outpaced the city’s overall economy. Nightlife establishments grew by a 2% annual growth rate. Jobs in the nightlife industry grew by a 5% annual growth rate. And nightlife wages have been rising by 8% annually – about double the average for the city.
I am a firm believer in the value of the nighttime economy. So I’m happy to see more people paying attention to it as of late. For the full report, click here.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash