Seriously....We are actually doing this!!!

When: Thursday, Sept 15th - 8:00pm
What:  Grimsby Pub Crawl
Where: Grimsby (Duh?!?)

Carpool from Mike G’s House - departing around 7:30pm.

We call ourselves Bar Hoppers of Niagara. Let’s see how many members are willing to live up to that title! Our next event will be a road trip to the westernmost edge of our namesake region for our first ever Grimsby Pub Crawl! 

Directions:

Take the QEW to the Maple/Ontario/Christie Exit. Head South on Ontario Street until you hit Main. There is a large municipal parking lot off Ontario just before you reach Main Street, in behind the bars we will be visiting. Of course you can always parallel park on the street if that’s your thing.

Agenda:

8:00PM - Teddy’s Sports Bar - 30 Main Street West.
A Grimsby landmark that’s been there since the 1960’s! No Guinness on tap, but 69 cent wings on Thursday’s makes this one worth a visit. 

9:00PM - The Forty Public House - 10 Main Street West.
A Brand new bar promising a focus on local craft beers.

10:00PM - The Judge & Jester - 17 Main Street East.
A classic irish bar offering $5.99 Guinness pints on Thursday’s makes this the ideal spot to finish off the evening.

Times are subject to change, especially if one of the places is shit! Hope to see you all there. Carpool options TBD later on etc.

Update 3/23/16 - Due to the possibility of freezing rain fucking up our roadtrip, the emergency backup spot has been selected as the Celtic Club. Keep your ears open to the weather reports - if it’s shit, we jumping ship.

Update 3/24/16 - It’s miserable and crappy out, so we’ve decided to postpone this event for two weeks. Note the new date above and see you on Thursday, April 7th April 21st!!!

Update 4/5/16 - OK, so Mother Nature is a psychotic bitch and decided to fuck with us some more. More snow and crappy weather in the forecast for this week. Maybe Mother Nature has something against us visiting Grimsby? Or maybe she just hates Grimsby in general? Either way, we will postpone our pub crawl one more time. Perhaps in another two weeks the weather will decide to co-operate. So, as a backup spot - Bugsy’s! Can’t go wrong with the sole remaining 100% club member.

Update 4/20/16 - Grimsby Pub crawl has been postponed to May 5, due to one or more BHON members having injured themsleves during recent sexual acts. We felt that a Pub Crawl would be too uncomfortable.  Due to sensitivty to the nature of the injuries, details will not be shared online, but hope your balls are feeling better by Thursday Mike.

Update 5/4/16 - Grimsby Pub crawl has to be postponed again to May 19th. Due to a fire ban in effect, the township of Grimsby will no longer allow non-residents entrance to the city. Guess they are showing support for Fort McMurray. Instead, we’ve decided to show our solidarity by re-visiting a place that has already burned to the ground once. This week’s BHON night will take place at The Reeb House!

Update 5/16/16 - Due to recent alien activity in the area and a suspicious lack of wingage (possible due to said activity) the Grimsby Pub Crawl has been postponed again. Perhaps they will be able to restock in the next two weeks.

Update 6/1/2016 - We regret to inform members that due to weather forecasts indicating high probability of rain, the Grimsby pub crawl has been delayed until further notice.  This week’s BHON night will take place at the Clubhouse (Mike B house)!  BYOB, how many show up will indicate our course of action for the wingage.

Update 6/15/2016 - Once again, mother nature is putting a damper on our planned events. With a 90% chance of thunder storms in the forcast for this week’s BHON, it has been decided we would rather go to one place and sit out the rain rather than trudge to several different locations and possibly have to deal with crappy wingage and shitty beer.
So it has been decided by the triumverate that this weeks BHON will be at the Geekery Pub in Niagara Falls. Backup spot will be The Bull Market on Stanley & Main.

Update 6/23/2016 - We’re delaying again because ’Fuck You’, that’s why! 

Update 7/7/2016 - Once again, Grimsby is going to have to wait. Thunder boomers on tap for tonight and tomorrow. We don’t feel like risking rain walking and eating in the dark. So, surprise motherfockers, Grismby goes on the back burner again. Bull Market in the Falls sound reasonable.

Update 7/21/2016 - Yeah fuck Grimsby again. Let’s just go to Bugsy’s.

Update 8/2/2016 - It’s August already, who knew? Perhaps this week we’ll fit in that trip to Grimsby. Nahh....not really in the mood, plus Mike B is sick of the QEW with the commuting to Concord. So, we’re going to Celtic Pub instead.

Update 8/15/2016 - Since Mike G is taking off and going to BC for a couple weeks, he cannot attend the pub crawl this week, so we’ll have to postpone it again (Shocker?!). Instead we’ll do an emergency BHON on Wednesday, August 17th at the Overtime pub in Thorold. Perhaps we can hit Grimsby in two weeks.

Update 9/1/2016 - Eh, since the summer is winding down, why not a patio night? Mike’s back from vacation now and doesn’t feel like going anywhere, so patio night at his house. Grimsby can wait.

Update 9/13/2016 - Well it’s been six months since originally planned, maybe THIS time we will finally make it to Grimsby!!! Thursday, Sept 15th!! Let’s do this!! 

By Doug Herod - St. Catharines Standard - Friday, July 15, 2016 3:10:43 EDT

In early June, the Golden Pheasant Tavern, a longtime St. Catharines institution affectionately known as The Duck, closed its doors for good.

A few days later, Jim Bradley, a longtime St. Catharines politician, announced he was resigning as an Ontario cabinet minister.

A mere coincidence?

Hmm …

Bradley’s image in Toronto circles as an everyman was enhanced by his penchant for telling various government muckety-mucks that he took his political cues from patrons at The Duck, which he characterized as a blue-collar, neighbourhood pub in a working-class section of St. Catharines.

The latest reinforcement of this image came courtesy of former provincial cabinet minister Michael Bryant. He described in a Toronto Star column earlier this month the way Bradley often responded to cabinet colleagues who were extolling the virtues of some study or expert.

“I’m sitting here wondering what they’d be saying at The Duck about all this,” Bradley would say, according to Bryant.

But now The Duck has closed, depriving the St. Catharines MPP of his community touchstone.

What choice did he have but to quit? I mean, think of the meaningless feedback he’d get chowing down with customers at an antiseptic, cookie-cutter, franchise restaurant in a north-end strip plaza. Egads, man, they’re probably Conservatives.

Mind you, The Duck could rise again from the ashes. A couple of weeks ago, a for sale sign was affixed to the building. I contacted the agent, James Vanderburgh of Reio Realty Ltd. He said the listed sales price is $1.2 million.

That’s right, $1.2 million. Maybe there’s some wiggle room there.

I’m also thinking Bradley’s purported use of The Duck as a political barometer is a bit dated.

It’s been a couple of decades since the Golden Pheasant’s heyday, a time when thousands of factory workers toiled nearby, scads of sports teams and leagues were sponsored and plenty of neighbourhood residents saw it as their preferred hospitality destination.

True, The Duck in recent years could still pull a large audience for its live blues entertainment. But I was part of a group of aging basketball players who showed up there every Thursday night for the past several years, and, well, it wasn’t exactly rockin’ and rollin.’ This past winter we were happy if the bar featured more than one type of draught beer.

Judging by the other barflies in attendance on Thursdays, it’s probably just as well Bradley wasn’t relying on their political advice since it likely focused on the legalization all-day Happy Hours.

But enough gentle dissing of The Duck. It had a helluva run. Indeed, as far as I can tell, it was the second-longest, continuously operating tavern in St. Catharines, surpassed only by the Mansion House.

It opened on Ontario St. shortly after the Second World War. The Golden Pheasant really started to flourish, though, when Gino Castellan bought the place in 1952.

Son-in-law Ray Kelly became manager in the mid-1960s and then Kelly and his wife, Donna, along with her sister Lydia and husband Tilmon Arsenault bought the tavern from Castellan in 1977.

I wrote a column in 2002 when the family celebrated its 50th year of ownership. At the time, Kelly said that while workers from General Motors and W.S. Tyler had been “very good for business” over the years, the Golden Pheasant was a neighbourhood bar more than anything else.

Plus, it was a sports bar before that label became fashionable.

“We have always been very, very supportive of adult sports and minor sports in St. Catharines. We’ve done tons of sponsorships and players have always been very good at supporting us back,” said Kelly.

But success is never guaranteed. Despite 50 years in business, Kelly said there was a need to constantly evolve if one wanted to survive.

The business was eventually sold, and, for whatever reasons, survival strategies stopped working.

I reached current owner Jack Kizera, but he abruptly ended the conversation by saying: “I’m not talking to anybody.”

There you go. The voice of The Duck silenced.

No wonder Bradley had to go.

dherod.niagara@gmail.com