Yesterday my Cities for People walk ended in Kensington Market after a tour of Clubland and the Queen Street Graffiti Alley. I started to talk about how the Market has changed over the years, but not really. Certainly there are more patios now than there ever have been, and there are more boutiques among the thrift and vintage and other-stuff stores, but the rough edges have never disappeared as they have on Queen West or some other areas. It’s still an incubator of culture, art, punk rock, indie rock and whatever else. I mentioned the notorious and venerable Kensington punk band Bunchoffuckingoofs and how part of their legend involves (kind of) keeping the peace in the Market from their equally legendary headquarters/boozecan “Fort Goof” when both Skinheads and crack cocaine were rolling through the neighbourhood. How much is true or myth is certainly debatable (would love for readers who were around to recount their first-hand memories here) but it’s an instance where culture and city building went hand in hand, and artists became a kind of community leader.
I found this partial documentary that seems to date to about 1984. While showing 1980s punk rock lifestyle in all its unglamorousness, there are fantastic shots of the Market and Spadina from that era, as well as a magnificent pan of the downtown core from the CN Tower. Take a look at all those parking lots. Most of them are filled in now (the next time somebody complains to you about “Condos,” remind them of what was there before). What this video does reflect is a kind-of-roughness — a bleak, almost-British-1970s-punk-rough — that the market certainly does not have anymore writ large; though as one of the Goofs says in the video, much of Kensington still closes early, allowing bands to play and more noise to happen than would be allowed in other parts of the city, and the dumpster diving they mention still occurs (see Jessica Duffin Wolfe’s archived Spacing article on the practice from our Fall 2007 issue). For more recollections of the era, listen to this short recollection of Courage My Love’s history I recorded Stewart Scriver giving for our Kensington Market [murmur] project as well as (former Spacing intern) Liz Worth’s recent book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk Rock in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981. Below check out the Goofs, still in action, two years ago at a Pedestrian Sunday on Augusta Avenue.
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Note the shot in the first video of a ROW-less Spadina, with all the angled parking and that huge breadth which, I must confess, was a hoot to drive on. Kensington then was also much more of a working class food market than it is today, and certainly didn’t have the street/youth scene that has been its defining feature in the last several years, nor the bistros and the clothing shops and the boutiques.
Don’t forget the 2002 sequel to “Not Dead Yet”–“Punk X”
http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/en/catalogues/production/punk-x
Saw these guys in the 1980s. Amazed that they are still around!
So that’s what Kensington Market looks like underneath all the graffiti.
The Goofs did take care of people in the market.
We had a party at House O’ Fits (A mostly Haligonian off-shoot crew from the Goofs) in… I wanna say ’89… where the front door got ripped off the hinges. Steve Goof was there bright and early the next morning to fix it for us. And that’s after I made him clear out my apartment of people so I could mop the floor at 3am.
Don’t forget the live animals that used to populate the food shops!
Growing up in Niagara Falls in the late ’80’s early 90’s, these guys were gods. So much so, a buddy of mine never showed up for school for a few months. Upon his return we found out he’d been living in the Fort. After moving here myself a couple of years later, I ended up in a band with Thor – the BFG bassist and another Toronto icon – and was fortunate enough to end up hearing incredible stories and eventually experiencing some of this first hand.
Had an everlasting impact on my life. And nothing pleases me more than to see Steve still wandering the hood, practicing what he’s preached for over two decades.
I was the neighbour of the Fort for a while in 1988/1989. My first apartment! No bathroom sink, no front door and a great view of the parking lot.
Although we couldn’t get anything delivered due to dogs and bike mess, I did get goofs through the ceiling of my closet one evening (crawlspace ‘reclamation/addition’ from the fort side of the house), make a good dog friend (dirty) and I scored a Flying Pigeon bike that ended up being too heavy to ride.
Lost track of my roommate to crack but that had nothing to do with the goofs. I recommend earplug to anyone living next to communal living punk rockers though.
Grown up now and missing the wearing of VERY IMPORTANT t-shirts and having dumb hair.