I’ve heard it a few times this summer, a lament, over pints on lazy patios and between bites of eggs benedict: “There’s just nowhere good in this city to go and DANCE anymore.” If you’re of a certain nightlife persuasion (meaning you choose not to patronize any of the bars at the end of the Rob Ford Douchebag Expressway near John and Richmond), your options for a big sweaty dance jam are becoming sorely limited.

Maybe “the scene” is growing up, maybe it’s a notable cultural shift, but the bars we’ve been most excited about in the last year are cozy hole-in-the-wall joints like Camp 4 and Unlovable: great for packed people watching, not so great if you’re a dancefloor spaz.

This is why the closing of The Social has us keening an electro lament for the days when Queen West was more synonymous with tossing back shots and running barefoot though the rail yard than it was with craft beer and charcuterie.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re glad it grew up good. The vibrant neighbourhood continues to evolve, and this is exciting, but let’s have a toast for the douchebags: That is to say, me, and you, spilling out of The Social at four in the morning during an extended last call weekend, getting in line at the Pizza Pizza because Poutini’s hadn’t opened yet, walking home shoeless in the snow after seeing Flosstradamus, wearing a pasta necklace from a friend’s art fundraiser in a picture with Annie near the DJ booth, having a photoshoot and then hitting your elbow on the door in the disgusting, tiny bathrooms that were papier mache’d floor to ceiling with toilet paper. I once paid for a beer with coins in a Ziploc bag, and SOMEHOW this seemed okay to me. The Social hosted She Does The City’s launch party. How do you say goodbye to a bar that was within walking distance of your house but had accessible booze from both sides of the dancefloor? And yes, it’s entirely our fault.

We complained the crowd got too young, too 905, too whatever. We stopped going every Saturday, and then we stopped going at all. But The Social was, for me, the definitive bar in my definitive party years (in case you’re wondering, it’s when you’re 22. Trust me.) The first or last stop (sometimes both) on countless nights of debauchery. And I’m sorry to see it go. Its new incarnation will be as a British pub, and while part of me thinks maybe I’ll end up frequenting it on the regular again, I have a feeling the bleary ghosts of good times past will insist I leave the cavernous space at 1100 Queen St. W. as I remember it: ornate wallpaper, banquettes askew, lament for Parkdale on the wall, coat somewhere on the floor soaked in beer. If you feel the same, come raise a glass this Saturday to the end of an era.

LAST CALL: The Official Social Closing Party
10 pm, Saturday July 2nd
The Social, 1100 Queen St. W.
4 am last call. Of course.
~Haley Cullingham