It's a sad day for me: After three years, The Grid has folded. And I'm not the only one who is sad - the outpouring on Twitter and Facebook has been amazing.
The news, however, that there were ten bottles of Eagle Rare at the Bloor-Ossington LCBO took the sting out - a little. At the same time, though, it was also a sad reminder of what the past three years have been about. It made it clear to me why I was so gutted by the news. After all, The Grid must mean a lot more to the dynamic team of staffers that worked on it full-time (often til the wee hours of the morning) than it did to me. I was just the drinks contributor. But The Grid was the first Toronto publication (that I know of, at least) to really profile bartenders and to showcase their creations. It was one of the first publications anywhere, I believe, that photographed the bartenders instead of the drinks as a regular feature. The Grid didn't just cover openings and "it spots." Over the years, we wrote about Lee's Palace, Boston Pizza and drinking at the Skydome. We tried to avoid $22 cocktails and bottles of whiskey over $50. We always tried to get at the personalities and not just the cocktails. I think we played a small role in helping the cocktail community grow; if nothing else, as a result of the Bar Stars column, we could recognize people's faces and know a little something about them.
The other thing The Grid did was to take a chance on bizarre little items. I know David Sax, who wrote about food trends for the mag, thanked The Grid for letting him such a wide berth. I agree. When I pitched the Hoarding Alert - an online column about what to get at the LCBO - I didn't hold out a lot of hope. But, despite the fact that it could only ever appeal to a small niche market that would largely consist of bartenders and cocktail geeks, they took it and ran it for over a year, right up until the first round of cuts meant the slashing of most of the on-line content.
It was probably good timing, since the Hoarding Alert was already less of a necessity. The LCBO has really responded to the demands of the growing cocktail community with well-stocked shelves and, on the whole, ample quantities of niche products. I'd still like more vermouth choices, but, overall, the things that are still worthy of Hoarding Alerts are often the things for which we get small allocations - Stagg, Sazerac and Blanton's Gold, for example. And I'm not trying to say that The Grid was responsible for all of these changes - of course cocktails were on the rise and the community was already forming and the LCBO was getting better before we launched. I just think we were a small part of the snowballing growth. And I think that's why there are so many people from a wide range of communities who have expressed sadness about the demise of The Grid today. Every section tried its best to represent what was going on in the communities it covered. What an honour that I got to be a part of that. Thanks for having me.
And to anybody still reading, let's have a toast to the Bar Stars with a shot of Eagle Rare today. Although I'd probably rather drink Booker's, it's still a good value at $49.95. The bottles seem to be trickling in - ten at the Bloor-Ossington LCBO today, a store which, I remind you, used to only stock Jim Beam and Wild Turkey (not that there's anything wrong with that) back when this column began. Cheers.
