In 1999, antiquated City of Toronto bureaucracy is forcing businessman Gus Koutoumanos to live in 1904.
Koutoumanos may as well be the main character in a long-running bad cowboy flick. Unfortunately, the cobwebs and tumbleweeds of this ghost town movie come straight from reality.
An outspoken victim of the Battle of the Drys, exclusive to the Toronto Junction, Koutoumanos is tied up in sticky red tape that dates all the way back to the days of cowboys and the spittoon.
Even though Davenport was a mere 24 votes short of the required 60 percent required in the last of six plebiscites to allow for the retail sale of spirits beer and wine in licenced establishments, Koutoumanos' establishment Shoxs remains arid. Geograp-hically, Shoxs is located in a tiny one and a half block strip that is Ontario’s last urban dry zone. Since the 1997 municipal election plebiscite, the issue continues to be shuffled back and forth between the province and city.
On Nov. 10, 1997, voters in the two wards of High Park and Davenport voted in favour of licenced bars and restaurants and liquor stores. The problem was provincial legislation that required a 60-per-cent majority to change the neighbourhood from "dry" to "wet". On the plebiscite question of licenced premises, High Park squeaked in with a wet victory courtesy of a single vote; Davenport, where Shoxs is located, was 24 votes short of the mandatory 60 per cent. Both ridings voted for government liquor stores.
Area businessmen like Koutoumanos have one day every three years in which to await the outcome of plebiscites. A dilemma made more complex because low voter turnout is common for civic elections.
When council refused a recount for Davenport, Coun. Betty Disero suggested the city ask the provincial government to change the legislation "to allow everyone the right and opportunity to be competitive in Toronto."
So far the province has not moved on the city request.
"It's really up to the mayor and city council to move on this issue," High Park-Swansea MPP Derwyn Shea told Our Toronto Free Press.
"We are tired and fed up with the bureaucratic boogie. We want something to be done now, Koutoumanos bottom-lined it in a recent letter to Mayor Mel Lastman.
Incredibly, the main purpose of the dry status still clinging to a one-and-a-half block stretch of a city street was to eliminate a problem the Junction once had with rowdy cattle herders and railway workers in an era where women weren't even allowed in bars.
The last plebiscite allowed the area west of Keele St. to Runnymede to become wet, while one tiny stretch of Dundas St. between Keele St. and Annette St. remains dry as saloon floor sawdust.
It's a small business story that goes all the way from the ridiculous to the sublime. Businesses on the tiny stretch of Dundas between Humberside and Bloor can be licensed, but those north of Humberside are not allowed the same advantage.
Trying to conduct business in Ontario's last urban dry zone is akin to trying to do business with all the tools packed away in mothballs. Not only has the antiquated law, in effect, split the Junction in two, it's one of the reasons why the stretch continues to stagnate.
It's also a situation that begs for bootleggers.
A Toronto Dominion bank manager by day, Koutoumanos is a caf� billiard lounge owner by night.
His closely-knit Greek family has operated the business for three and a half years at the break-even point. And it is only with hard work and dedication that the family has even survived this long.
"It's not easy trying to run a small business in the Junction, as the area is somewhat depressed and has the highest vacancy rate in the city," says Koutoumanos.
"Every day we turn away 20-30 customers because we are prohibited from offering them something that they can get anywhere else in the city—a drink’"
The Koutoumanos family invested some $300,000 in Shoxs. Bright and clean, it is a 5,000 sq. ft., up-scale Restaurant/Caf�/ Billiards Lounge that has made a drastic improvement in the depressed junction. Shoxs beckons to area residents with the tempting waft of homemade pizza.
"But the only beer to be found here is rootbeer," laments Koutoumanos. With or without alcohol, Shoxs is a seven-day-a-week operation.
Tanya Tkatchenko is the sole paid employee. Koutoumanos' aunt and uncle Voula and Spiros hold down the fort until their nephew returns from his demanding day job at the local bank.
It takes the sale of oceans of coffee and soft drinks, and mounds of pizza just to meet the break-even point, and the overworked aunt and uncle look far older than their years.
If the imposed dry zone weren’t bleak enough, there is the further bureaucratic tangle of the Shoxs' patio licence.
The temporary patio licence was revoked last summer by city council vote under misinformation provided to councillors by 11 Division. The vote occurred during council’s session July 29-31. The inaccurate information was a misinterpretation of a police report dated June 9, 1998 in which Shoxs' addresses was used as point of reference for an incident which occurred on Dundas Street West, and not in Shoxs as was originally believed.
At press time, Davenport Coun. Dennis Fotinos said he would be prepared to put a motion forward requesting council to reinstate the temporary patio.
As far as the dry-wet dilemma is concerned, Fotinos said it’s time "the whole area stays dry or goes wet."
No one would be happier to leave the high and dry zone than the hard-working Koutoumanos family.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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