Address: 1279 Queen St. West

No phone. No address. Deal with it.

At first, I didn’t even want to write about Wrongbar. Some places are so good, that revealing their intimate qualities to a large number of readers could displace the very qualities you’re praising. In the end, I couldn’t resist, it’s too damn good to keep to myself.

Let’s start at the beginning: the doormen. They’re no thugs, i.e. roid-raging power-hungry pit bulls. In fact, they’re extremely friendly, curteous and make it a point to remember regulars. The bartenders are a host of great personalities who remember your drink order like your Norm at Cheers. They are also extremely knowledgable about the DJs, bands and upcoming parties, which is always nice: staff who know what’s actually going on at the bar they are employed by, never happens.

In terms of layout, there’s not much to the place. It’s a 300-person, one-room venue, dark and dank and completely focused on the stage. The crowd is relatively mixed between suburbanites still learning to crawl and full on downtown sprinters, but the balance of power lies with the locals; west-enders fed-up with the Queen West strip. They flock to Wrongbar on the weekend like rats fleeing the ship (the ship being the young Bay St. crowd who get bottle service at the Drake and think they’re slumming it when they can’t get wine at a bar). Wrongbar is the kind of place where the dancefloor gets going in a way that makes the walls sweat on the regular. No frills. No bull. Nothin’ bt net.