It’s Over! – Club Toronto Closes!

Club Toronto Closes
Club Toronto Closes

It’s over! Club Toronto has closed its doors. After 37 years, a Toronto institution Club Baths Toronto has bit the dust. The article below appeared in Toronto’s Gay Bi-Weekly Newspaper Xtra (Club Toronto Closes) written by Scott Dagostino Scott writes

“It’s being gutted,” says one of them, hauling planks of wood past the pool. Another, also declining to be identified, shrugs and says, “I didn’t even know it was a bathhouse…. I thought it was just a boarded-up place.”

Peter Bochove, owner of another nearby bathhouse, Spa Excess, laughs when he hears this.

“Those workmen are actually the owners,” he says. “I knew Club Toronto was closing before they did.”

Bochove got his start in the bathhouse business at Club Toronto in 1973. He says he sent former owner and boss Peter Moloney an email recently that read, “I finally put you guys out of business!”

The club, he says, has had “ongoing difficulties” in a market that’s become increasingly constricted in an era of online pickups. If business has been tough on everyone, Bochove says, it was especially difficult for Rick Armstrong, who bought Club Toronto in 2005 but, according to Bochove, “had no money to fix it up.”

Club Toronto is housed in a 122-year-old historical site. So what is it being restored into? Under the direction of a man choosing to remain silent and inside the building, one of the workmen/owners says it will reopen in two months as a swingers’ club.

“Two months?” exclaimed one worker. “We’ll still be ripping it apart!”

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.