The great run comes to an end
After 27 years of memories for Toronto fans, Wayne Gretzky’s closes its doors.
No, they don’t make ’em like they used to. Not at all. Go write a story about a bar, they said, knowing full well how to pick the right guy for the specific assignment, and as I’m sitting at Wayne Gretzky’s on Wednesday afternoon, that’s what keeps coming back. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Not at all. The Toronto sports bar on Blue Jays Way — in operation for 27 years in the same location, and ask someone in the bar business how ridiculous a run that is — closes for the last time Thursday to make room for condo development and, yeah, it really is the end of an era.
Parties and memories and stories, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Kids’ sports teams running through the joint in the afternoons, looking at the memorabilia and reliving their parents’ past; tourists of all ages wanting to see what the fuss is about; groups congregating on the rooftop patio or the back room watching whatever big game was going on at the time.
A communal meeting place like few others in the downtown core and none that have survived and thrived.
No, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
Not at all.
This might have been the essence of Gretzky’s for the normal folks who wanted to bask in his life, see his memorabilia, be around the brand.
It was a winter night, snow falling and temperatures dropping, no one really venturing out but a couple of tourist families, hockey fans no doubt, who had to see what all the fuss was about.
“Wayne was in town and he was still playing, he was playing the Leafs the next night,” Tom Bitove, Gretzky’s partner for all these years and still a handson operator of the space today as managing partner, recalls over a glass of water at the bar.
“It was like, not many people here, it was a cold winter night … probably
didn’t have 25 customers in the entire place and Wayne and I were literally at the front of the bar. I’m facing the door, Wayne has his back to the door, and these two young couples come in.
“The girls say, ‘Do you think Wayne Gretzky will be here?’ The guys are like, ‘No way, they just sell their names to these places, they never show up. I guarantee Wayne Gretzky’s never been here.’
“Wayne turns around and says, ‘I’m Wayne, nice to meet you.’
“The four of them almost had a heart attack.”
That’s the kind of place it was, though.
It was an era before cellphones and the ubiquitous social media and if someone famous went to a bar, he or she could probably count on some peace and quiet and not be worried about some unflattering picture showing up on some Instagram post or twitter feed.
It was a simpler time, a better time, a time of decorum and, yes, respect.
And with the Gretzkys, it went both ways. Wayne would show up when he could but his father Walter — Canada’s dad — was the best.
“I always told Wayne that Wally was my best employee,” Bitove said. ”He’d come in before the Leafs game, around 3:30 in the afternoon, he’d eat until about 6:30 when he had to go to the game. He would work the entire restaurant and make sure everyone had a picture and an autograph.
“The Gretzky family was just a pleasure to be around, such quality people.”
Gretzky’s has provided touchstone moments for Toronto sports fans like few other bars.
It opened in 1993 just before the Blue Jays won the second of their two World Series, it was a hub for downtown sports fans through FIFA World Cups and was electrified during Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal games.
Bitove says the 2002 win at the Salt Lake City Games was astonishing and Sidney Crosby’s golden goal to end the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was a seminal moment in the bar’s history.
The place ran the gamut, and the last great night had to be a goosebumps-inducing moment.
“I was up on the rooftop patio for the Raptors when they won, it was amazing,” bartender Jamie Hart recalls. “It was amazing. It’s right in the heart of the downtown core so we actually turned the sound off after the game and we just listened to everyone screaming and cheering.
“It was awesome, everyone was cheering, random groups were hugging, it was something.”
The funny part is that it became such a destination for Toronto hockey fans despite the fact it opened shortly after Gretzky ripped the heart out of Leafs fans in 1993.
Some would take years to get over it.
“On opening night, an older guy showed up at the door and I could see him kind of casing the front door,” Bitove said.
“And all of a sudden he was gone and the host came to me and said this is from the gentleman who just walked in. It was a well-written letter about how his shadow would never darken the entrance of the restaurant because of what Wayne did to Doug Gilmour and he should have been thrown out of the game.
“About five or six years later, there’s a guy and he looks familiar. I put to two and two together and it might be the same guy so I go up to him and say, ‘Hi, how are you’ (and) we have a friendly chat. I said to him, ‘I’ve got to ask you a question, did you show up here on opening day? I swear a guy like you dropped off a letter.’ “He said, ‘Yeah, that was me.’ ” Gretzky’s was the kind of place that would draw you in. You never knew who you might run into.
It might not happen these days, when a lot of athletes do indeed sell their names and personas but, again, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
“People thought we were going to be like Hard Rock Cafe or
Planet Hollywood, we wanted to take it beyond that,” Bitove, brother to Jordan Bitove, one of the owners of Torstar and publisher of the Toronto Star, said. “We wanted to be personal, the Wayne Gretzky experience, everything we focused on was making it personal.
“We didn’t want to bring tacky T-shirts, it was about enjoying the Wayne Gretzky experience.”
After a 27-year run, there’s probably not room for many regrets. There have been memories created that will last lifetimes, and the financial benefits are obvious because of how long Gretzky’s has existed.
There may be another but it likely will never match what once was.
The regret? After so many parties, so many moments, so many memories, closing quietly amid a global pandemic robs everyone of one last big-time blowout bash.
“Imagine what it would have been like the last little while with the Jays in the hunt and the Leafs season and Raptors season heating up, the buzz would have been amazing.”
No, they don’t make ’em like they used to.