Reply With Quotewhat about using a room at the drake hotel, there very kitch
Is anybody aware of any 50's or 70's looking motels or hotels in Toronto?
I'm looking for something with VERY retro looking rooms for a fashion/glamour photo shoot. Think tacky wallpaper, old TV's, vintage furniture, etc.
Thanks!
what about using a room at the drake hotel, there very kitch
Interior-wise, I don't know for certain, being neither a film-location professional nor a Mayor Quimby type--but the no-brainer option would be to scout whatever's left of the Motel Strip on the Lakeshore W of the Humber, or along Kingston Rd in Scarborough.
Also keep in mind this recent Star article
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The pleasures of the interim
ROADSIDE SANCTUARY | In our series on Toronto places with special significance for local authors, poet Karen Solie recalls her running-away-from-it-all time at a motel on Lake Shore Blvd. in Etobicoke
Jul. 30, 2006. 01:00 AM
KAREN SOLIE
I was in some trouble a few summers back. Landlord trouble. Man trouble. In between acting in flagrant opposition to every piece of good advice I'd ever been given — I mean really basic advice — I was trying to write the last poems toward my second book. It wasn't working. I wasn't working. So, knowing from experience that it is possible to run away from one's problems, at least for a while, I ran. I didn't need to go far. I knew of several motels on Lake Shore Blvd. in that exotic western quadrant called Etobicoke. And, having travelled alone on many occasions between my former digs in Victoria and my parents' farm in Saskatchewan, I was well sold on the allure of the roadside motel, on the pleasures of the interim. Of being utterly alone, out of touch, but temporarily, knowing it will not always be this way. Because knowing that it might is another matter entirely.
I called around, and settled on the North American. At just over $250 a week, it was cheaper than any number of deferral/avoidance strategies I could have engaged in. The North American is the lower-rent little brother to the adjacent Hillcrest, the east anchor to the '60s-era motel strip. West are the Silver Moon, the Casa Mendoza, the Shore Breeze, and the Beach. There used to be more. Soon enough they'll all be gone, shouldered out by condos.
My check-in was handled by a woman who asked no questions upon noting my Toronto address. Moronically, I felt compelled to offer that I was a writer requiring some peace and quiet to work on a book. Of poetry. "Poetry," she said. It wasn't a question either. She went on to inform me that each overnight guest is extra. Even if they stay only a couple of hours after 11. There were no hard feelings. It's important to cover one's bases.
My room was small, but equipped with the necessities. A decent bed, a television, a mini-fridge, a good bathroom. It was clean, too. Cleaner than my apartment. Also quieter. I opted out of phone service. No one knew where I was. At the motel's nose is a cute and functional glassed-walled laundromat. It was heaven.
Mornings, I would sit in my slip at the edge of the bed and look southward out the window to the parking lot, the grass and trees and lake beyond, feeling poignant and picturesque in a slanting square of light, like the subject of an Edward Hopper painting. This wore off quickly, so I'd take books to the broad span of south lawn and read, or walk for hours in Humber Park. I watched cormorants on logs stand with wings outspread and motionless, presiding over a little inlet like stone saints over a great capital. I was chased by a nesting snow goose with murder in its eye. I sat at the southern tip of the park gauging the city's profile. It's hard sometimes not to take Toronto personally. But there, at its nominal margin, it appears as an impressive vista, without intent. The vegetal marine tang of the lake overwhelms the smells of exhaust, the Christie factory and the water treatment facility across Lake Shore, and for the bird, insect and/or plant life geek, the park offers good opportunities for observation and nerdy note taking.
In my motel at the edge of the city proper, on the edge of the lake, I relearned how to pay attention. Nights were charged with the mostly non-threatening noirish half-expectation of a knock on the door that would, for better or worse, change my life. And I wrote. Seven pages of work in seven days. Which is pact-with-the-devil-grade prolific for me.
I've been back a few times since to stay at the Hillcrest with the person who is now my husband, mini-vacations for which streetcar fare is the only travel arrangement. Having fled the heat and smog of the inner city one particularly evil July, we woke mid-morning to the place suddenly saturated with music and colour, packed to the nines with Caribana revellers from points south who had arrived in the night and set up portable CD players and lawn chairs and coolers and who were already in doors-open party mode, sitting in the shade with drinks in hand, playing cards, enjoying animated conversations, dancing in the parking lot and sending up shouts of "Caribana!" at regular intervals.
Visitors generally unimpressed by free porn channels (two or three of them, oddly located in the middle of the dial — Everybody Loves Raymond, home reno show, porn, The Simpsons, porn, etc.) may be more interested in the Hillcrest's bathrooms. Those I've encountered have thrown me into fits of delirious appreciation. Fabulous tile work in turquoise, lemon yellow or hot pink bordered with those little black half tiles. Sinks, tubs and toilets to match. Honeycomb floor tiles, and killer light fixtures over the sinks. To imagine the Hillcrest demolished, those bathrooms lying in heaps of vibrant slag, is heartbreaking.
Despite the manifold charms of the Hillcrest and North American, no sojourn to the strip is complete without a field trip to the Casa Mendoza. Its patio off the second-floor bar has a wonderful breezy view of the lake. At dusk tiny bats flit over the lawns. The number of pre- and post-tryst cocktails enjoyed here is likely staggering. The decor is Raymond Chandler à la Dick Richards. Some nights it erupts into a full-bore piano bar. On one such evening we witnessed a performer whose surreal latitude of material and style and liberties with basic accuracy were astonishing to the point of subtle menace. On another, a young Polish bartender perpetrated upon us multiple shooters of recipes forged in the desperate furnaces of hell. Tabasco sauce and kir were involved. Meanwhile, a beautifully dressed wedding party sipped white wine and exchanged gifts and toasts on the patio. You just never know.
While the strip makes for a great trashy little holiday with a certain companion, for those inclined to be alone sometimes, to run away without the hassles of burning bridges, it holds other pleasures. To sit on the fence of your life for a while, neither here nor there, incommunicado, paying attention. Being still and quiet and thinking. Imagining that knock on the door from your heart's desire. Or your heart's undoing. And what, perhaps, might happen after that.
The Lakeshore motel strip would be the perfect place.
The HAV-A-NAP MOTEL, 2733 Kingston Road might fit the bill.
Back in the '80's I was wont to visit such places with a friend but we never touched down at that particular one.
It is pictured in this blog, or whatever it is:
photos.bombippy.com/archi...hitecture/
I'd agree; the Hav-A-Nap is the "best of the East", so to speak. (But a lot of others out around there may be worth scouting out: the Avon across the street, etc...)
You guys are great. Thanks for the quick info.
Jason would probably have some good info as well. Darkstar...you out there?
The great thing about the Karen Solie piece is that it addresses interior as well as exterior. (Ah yeah. That classic c1950 motel bathroom...)
I'm here, I'm here!
Despite working in the movie business, I rarely get to go to the locations (nor do I play a role in deciding them). Still, the Etobicoke Motel Strip and the Have-A-Nap Motel in Scarborough both sound like good bets. We've done a lot of fliming at both over the years. There's also some 50s to 70s style motels all over the GTA on roads like Hwy 7, Hwy 48 and maybe even Hwy. 10. I'm not thinking of any in particular, but I know they are out there.
i grew up just down the street from the hav-a-nap. the most dated looking on the strip is easily the Americana, which is immediately to the east of the hav-a-nap. and there's another really dated one on the north side of kingston a little bit east of bellamy
i havent been inside any of them, but the americana always struck me as the seediest. there were forever police cars outside, and it seemed perpetually "closed for cleaning" (i take it "cleaning" is a motel-industry euphemism for "dead prostitute removal"). there was also one other motel a few streets over that was demolished, i believe it was called the White Star, and it was quite a bit rougher and more dilapidated
Checking out of such places, - an hour or two after checking in - is one of the more obscure pleasures in life.
There's a good collection of roadside motels in Brampton from the old days. There's one at Highways 7 and 10 (now Hurontario and Bovaird), one or two at Highway 7 and Chinguacousy, one on the old Highway 7 alignment (Beckford's), east of the CN tracks (the newer alignment passes over the tracks to the south), one at Highway 7/Queen St and Goreway (7 and 7 Motel).
And if you want more urban dives, there's the HoJo at Kennedy and Queen (it's still a dive, used to be the Thunderbird, then the Rosetown) and the Shield and Sword on Queen just east of Kennedy.
All the locations above are accessible by Brampton Transit, the HoJo is walkable from Brampton GO station, Beckford's is adjacent to the back entrance to Mount Pleasant GO Station.
Indeed...I think about one such night every night. And I think it may have been at the Hav-A-Nap, or one of its neighbours.Checking out of such places, - an hour or two after checking in - is one of the more obscure pleasures in life.
Perhaps if you're a very good boy you'll get a return visit, for your birthday on Sunday?
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