"The Club Across The Street"
Once upon a time, across the street from The Transit Hotel, was a club called The Spartans Mens Hall It was possibly the first club in Edmonton to host punk shows. I honestly cannot remember anyone prior to that, but I could be wrong.
Before The Bronx, before Rebar on Whyte Ave, before bars downtown had punk shows, The Spartan Mens Hall did.
For many a Gen X kid, this was the place you got your first taste of real live punk.
The Transit Hotel, an entirely different story.
At the Transit on any given night you can expect to see the following:
- a knife fight
- someone stabbed staggering from the bathrooms
- a gun fight, and people being shot
- underage teens
- off work street walkers
- maybe a pimp
- bikers
- longhairs
- metalheads
- punks
- junkies
- tweakers
- winos
- passed out people on the floor or if they are lucky still in a chair
The music sucked. And fuck you so didn't want to use a bathroom in there and as a result, out back and around the corner, there was always someone talking a piss.
This was the last stop Richard and I did on our drive that summer night in 2013.
We sat across the street and he had two fresh beers from the car for us and we talked about shows at the hall, fights we had seen, what was the most fucked up event you witnessed at The Transit.
And at the end of it, we looked at one another, smiled and said, "We did okay."
Thanks Bro. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
© Scott Fraser Photography
