Day 99 (April 9, 2010): The baddest bar in Edmonton.....

Tonight our activity was to go to the “baddest bar in Edmonton”. We should have done a bit more research though. We picked up our friend Joey and went downtown and tried to go to a couple of places that are known for being particularly rough. The first one was The Royal  and the second was The York  however they were both shut down.  Here is a link to an article from March 26th saying that The York was closed down: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/03/26/edmonton-york-hotel-bar-closed-sale.html
This is a quote about why it was closed : "The city first revoked the bar's nightclub licence in September, citing a large number of public safety concerns and a failure to curb and report criminal activity on site."  I read another article from the Vancouver Sun that quoted a lady saying that she had been going there since she was 15 (don't we have laws against that in Alberta??) and now she is 40.....yikes is all I have to say!  Here is the link to that article: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/thewest/Edmonton+purchases+York+Hotel+tavern+closed/2730442/story.html

I couldn't find any information on The Royal.




We ended up going to The Transit.  Here is an article about the Transit.  It turned 100 years old in 2008.
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=354c6ecc-ad88-4d2c-bc3f-d42248d65dbb

Now here is my account of our expereince at The Transit......it paints a bit of a different picture than the article above, lol!
When we got out of the car the first thing that happened was a young girl bummed a cigarette off Joey. I don’t know if she was old enough to be in a bar (the older I get, the younger they look!) but she didn’t look it to me! Then as we were walking in to the bar I saw a truck pull in to the parking lot next to my car and I thought “hmm, that truck is driving really close to my car…oh well, I’m sure it’s fine”. When we left that night the passenger side mirror had been knocked off my car, grrr! I should have listened to my instincts at the time!

Anyway, back to the detailed account of our experience in The Transit. We went in to the bar and I noticed right away that there was a huge disparity in ages amongst the customers. They were either between 50 and 70 years old or 18-20. And they were rough looking. There might have been some people in their 30’s and 40’s but they all looked much older because of the hard lifestyles that they lived. We went up to order our drinks and I got ID’d. I don’t get ID’d very often but occasionally I do because I am only 5’ tall. This time however I think it was because at 31 years old I actually look my age…..I don’t look like a 55 year old crack head! So compared to the other customers in the place I looked quite young. Joey and Ken decided to play pool and they had to put down a $20.00 deposit on the pool balls. LOL, I guess it’s so people don’t steal them. The place doesn’t have debit or give tabs so I had to take money out of the bank machine. It cost me $2.35 to take money out of the machine. That is the highest charge I have ever seen on a bank machine. Anyway, I did it and paid the deposit so the guys could play pool. Oh, I forgot to mention that Joey and Ken were convinced that the bartender was a transvestite. I could see where they were coming from but I thought she was just kind of a “manly” woman, and had to be, to run a bar like that. When Joey went outside for a smoke he got offered every kind of drug you can think of from a guy who was outside smoking too. Then another guy out there told Joey that his son just died from a meth overdose. We got a lot of attention because Ken and I were wearing our Saskatchewan Roughriders shirts and I was also wearing my toque (It was Green and Gold night at the Edmonton Rush game earlier in the night so of course we had to dress up in our Rider gear to show up all of the Eskimos fans!). One old man kept calling me “Saskatchewan”. He was quite drunk and kept asking me the same questions over and over. He would say “hey, Saskatchewan!, where are you from in Saskatchewan?” and I would tell him and of course he would have no idea where Sturgis is. Then another guy came over and showed us his birth certificate to prove that he was born in Saskatchewan too, lol. I guess he wanted to be best friends with us, I’m not sure. That was particularly entertaining! One thing that I saw though that really annoyed me was two young, very beautiful Aboriginal girls were in the bar. They were hanging out with some guys who were a lot older looking than them. They weren’t drinking that I could see but one was pregnant and they kept going out to smoke. I can’t believe that pregnant women are allowed to smoke in this day and age with all of the medical information about what that does to babies! GRRR! That makes me so angry. I think there should be some sort of law against that. Anyway, after a couple games of pool and couple of drinks we left without any major incidents…….other than finding my broken mirror when we got to the car.