If you love rock music, if you love history, if you're a fan of all the amazing
people and places in Toronto GTA,
this podcast is a must listen.
I had the opportunity, the pleasure, to sit down with Ryan Mangano,
who, along with his father,
Basil, are both the owners of the Linsmore Tavern, established in 1934,
and have adapted this property, which has an incredibly unique and interesting history.
Wait till you hear these stories from Ryan. They're amazing.
And it's become the rock, the local rock concert hub of the East End.
And for a lot of people across the city, it's the only place they want to go.
I've been there numerous times and I enjoy going every time. It's such a great show.
It's such a great feeling. It's, it's, it's a small venue, but it,
it, it brings you right. Like you're right on that stage.
You're as close as you could ever be way more enjoyable than the giant stadiums.
As far as I'm concerned for me as a lifelong fan of music, places like this
are what we need to support.
So that's what this podcast is designed to do to help support Ryan and Basil
at the Linsmore Tavern and keep them going for more years, more decades, maybe another hundred.
We'll see. But for now, enjoy this podcast.
And if you've got an interesting place or property that I should be talking
about here, make sure you reach out to me.
Realestatepodcastshow.com is the place where it all begins.
Four, three, two, one. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon,
wherever in the world you guys are.
I just wanted to welcome everybody back to the first new virtual podcast interview
since the studios moved.
And it's been about about a month or so now trying to get things in order,
still working out the blips of setting up a studio.
But as far as I can tell, the best thing to do is just say, you know,
when you're close enough, just go for it.
So my first guest back for this, to me, this is one of the favorite things that
I can possibly do is I love music.
And those of you out there who love music as well, may or may not know this
gentleman, but once you hear the story, you've either heard of the gentleman
or about the place that his family owns.
And I want to welcome Ryan Mangano.
I hope I pronounced that right. I don't think I pronounced your last name before.
Perfect. I've got an old last name too.
So I probably would get it close. So Ryan, thank you so much for joining me.
Let everybody know a little bit about you and of course your historic rock venue.
Yeah thanks paul for having me and yeah as as
paul was explaining my family's own the linsmore
tavern since 1982 my dad basil
bought the place right when i was a baby i was a baby in 19 i was born in august
of 1982 my dad bought the linsmore a few months after i was born happy birthday
oh yeah yeah i just i just turned 40 so he's owned it for 40 years wow there
was a one owner before him.
His name was Lou Campbell that's who he bought it from Lou Campbell I guess
the Linsmore first opened in 1934 so Lou owned it for 48 years and then my dad
owned it for has owned it for 40.
Okay and so yeah there's a lot of history behind the place we're one of the oldest I believe.
Taverns or bars in in Ontario and in Toronto there's not too many of these kind
of old school taverns left remaining for Toronto. I think. I agree.
I agree. I think you, didn't you do an interview with the owner of the Brunswick house?
Well, no, not the owner, but the daughter of the former and man,
you're, you got a good memory.
The daughter of the former, one of the singers that was there on,
I think it was Thursday nights.
I was there Thursday night and the singers were there. It was the little guy.
And then it was Rockin' Irene and it was Rockin' Irene's daughter that joined
me. So she, she, she was the history book for that place as far as I could tell.
So you're absolutely right.
I love the stories behind these venues and the fact that you guys are still,
you know, up and running and not just up and running, but evolving.
Cause as we were discussing before, you know, it wasn't always what it is now.
So obviously in the forties, it was something completely different.
Yeah. Nobody knows who's in there, all sorts of crazy activity.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, back then they used to have, so if you go in,
if you, for people that have been in the Lindsmore before, there's like a back
room and back in, in, in like the forties and the fifties,
there was like a side entrance and then a front entrance and the side entrance
and the back room would be for, for ladies and escorts.
And then the front entrance would be for, for the men that would come in.
And then there was rooms.
Like rented by the night where you could yeah pretty
much go up there with yeah so no graphics
or extra explanation requires stuff happens
back then yes yeah yeah and then and so the
the windows used to be stained glass so people can't look into the windows back
in those days the wives of the the men that were going in and drinking in the
40s and 50s couldn't couldn't see what was going on in in in the tavern and
yeah so that that was kind of the the old days when my dad took it over in 82.
It was still kind of one of those local taverns you come in get a tray of a
cheap draft and i still remember as a kid going in there with my dad because
he was playing in the local basketball league at monarch park like a men's league
and oh nice every saturday,
he pretty he sponsored that league i think
it was called paint basketball league it was like a men's league and
so all the basketball players would come by and buy trays
and their shuffleboard and pool and darts and
a lot of smoking um so i remember as a kid going in there and and just loving
the kind of the atmosphere because it was like you know it's like a real like
pub tavern type of feel to it and it used to be busy back then actually like
you know in the in the late So you grew up in that,
basically you grew up in that bar atmosphere, you know,
age, age, irregardless, you were in there as a kid.
I, I, I would go like, I wasn't going in all the time, but I would,
whenever my, like, I'd go to watch my dad play basketball on the weekends and
I'd come, I'd come there afterwards. And absolutely.
Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Pop by. And I just always kind of thought it was a really
cool place and atmosphere to, to kind of be in.
And then, you know, as the years gone by, kind of that clientele that we had,
we had a really like loyal, local clientele that would come in.
It kind of started to, it kind of slowed down a bit.
We kind of let the place down a little bit in a way where, you know,
we didn't put much money in renovations in there.
And yeah, the smoking laws, I think in 2001, I think it was 2001,
where before you're allowed to smoke in bars and restaurants.
And I think in 2001, they made it illegal.
So that really took a hit on our business because we had a lot of smokers that
would come in and drink and smoke.
And so things started to kind of slow down. We still had kind of a loyal,
regular clientele and following that would come in.
But we weren't getting people outside of our regulars coming in for a long time
because it had kind of like a dive bar feel to it a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people were a little intimidated by it.
And then other people did love that dive bar feel. So we would get the odd person
that would come in that would be like, oh, this is so cool.
So yeah that was kind of how it was and
then and then that regular clientele that
loyal following that we had you know the smokers and heavy
drinkers they started to get older and and some
of them passed away yeah so in 2010 i i came in i started working there you
know it's kind of the the idea of taking over the place and at that time you
know i just remember like it was we had a regular clientele,
but we couldn't get anyone in the, in the neighbor to, to come in really.
And you, you should know, you know, as a real estate agent in the Danforth at
that time, 2010, it was starting to really gentrify the area and,
and, you know, new people, new families.
I remember it. I remember it well. I remember, you know, the,
the early two thousands being very transitory,
very, like, very like a lot of transition like that decade
was just huge for you know things going
on so absolutely yeah 2010 too as
well yeah yeah so that was
happening and I and you know we didn't put we again we it was still kind of
we had this actually this is kind of interesting do you remember the movie the
ladies man with what's his name Tim Meadows yeah yeah good memory Tim meadows
will ferrell was in it and basically the movie was like based in the like this guy was.
Was like he was a like 1970s
like the way he dressed pimp kind of yeah and he he drank at a dive bar like
a real dive bar and it was a classic scene in the movie yeah well anyways they
they used the linsmore to film that movie was that right is that right yeah
wow yeah so it was filmed in the Linsmore.
I think that movie came out around 99 or 2000.
So anyways, that was kind of the shape, the dive bar that the Linsmore was.
Back then like we're a movie that was a
really funny movie anyone should go see it or rent
it or i didn't i didn't know there was a danforth connection
to that movie that's that's one thing i've always sort of tried to
make notes of for people as i'm doing tours obviously
it's always i've always included even before i knew
you i always sort of did a little bit of a blurb about
the lens more but again wanting to learn more and
getting to know you and obviously having you tell the
stories even better so that's awesome that there's a
movie connection there yeah yeah it was yeah
it was filmed it was filmed at the linsmore in toronto and
at the greenwood subway station yeah there's a couple there's
a few photos around i think i've posted them on you know
our pages before nice but yeah
so then when i took over in 2000 like 2010 i
started working then i eventually took over we started
to kind of figure out okay how are we going to
get this place busy again get people in
from the neighborhood and and so i started i started
working learning about the you know the area a bit and the customers and started
trying a lot of different things you know we brought in tvs and tried to make
it a sports bar and we were doing pool leagues billiard leagues dart leagues
karaoke we even tried something called sexy bingo you know what that is no.
So it's like bingo, you're playing bingo. And instead of winning money, you'd win sex toys.
Okay. So we're trying stuff like that. So I'm kind of, I'm kind of glad that
didn't work so well for you.
Cause that, that would have been a completely different direction.
If that, Oh, this is working great. Let's, let's go to the next level.
I don't know. I wouldn't want to know what the next level of that.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was tough. Like I was trying everything and i was getting
my i would get my friends to come in sometimes but again you can't rely on your
friends to come in every night so we're trying a lot of stuff to get people
from the neighborhood in and it just wasn't working and then one day some guy came into the bar,
and he said hey i play in a band i live in the neighborhood i love to love to
play your place and i'm like okay sure come on in you know a couple weeks from
now on a saturday and so there's So a couple of weeks later, this band comes in.
And i don't remember the name of the band and they were got off they were the
worst band ever they're terrible awful and if you if if this guy ends up listening
i'm really sorry but uh yeah i'm not going to say the name of the band because
i don't remember it but they're very very bad.
And so they played and then all of a sudden they started
to set up and all of a sudden all these young people from
the neighborhood came in and women were coming in like before
we didn't get young young women at all in the bar you
sure it wasn't spinal tap are you
sure could have been yeah yeah but
they're they're pretty good yeah yeah so yeah
they they came in and they had all these young people in and they're drinking
and dancing and it was like wow this is okay this worked out really well we
were busy we did great sales and stuff and it was a fun night yeah and And so
that kind of started everything where it was like, okay, that one band came in.
Now, you know, I started occasionally booking bands.
And every time I booked a band, we'd get customers done. We'd get new people
coming in and everything.
And then so, you know, one band every few weeks and then turn into a band, you know, once a week.
And then we started to book, I started to book some bigger bands.
Bands i remember booking this um really i
remember one of my regulars coming to me saying hey you know what you got to
try and book this neil young tribute band we're called the neil youngins yeah
and i was like okay so i looked them up i phoned i phoned them up and said hey
can you guys come in and they're like yeah sure it's going to cost you this
amount and i was like oh okay.
All right and then i'm thinking to myself sure let's do it and i was thinking okay
how am i gonna pay this band and then what i ended
up doing was i was like okay i'm gonna have to sell tickets the show
if yeah if you know if i'm going to be able to pay this band
that amount yeah so so i started
i i made i went to staples i i i
made these tickets for at staples i went
around the neighborhood and put up posters and and
then that night the band came in and it
was packed we sold like before the show started
we sold a number of tickets people that we never seen before
were coming buying tickets yeah and it was packed we had
you know to pass 100 you know 30 140 people coming in to see this band and it
was it was amazing it was such a cool feeling because this band was amazing
really good and all these people were in drinking having a good time dancing
singing along and like from then on it was like okay full steam ahead with with
the music that was kind of.
A big turning point and then we started you know booking every
weekend you know two bands every weekend and then
four nights a week and then you know
now we're booking we have shows pretty much
five to seven nights a weekend in fact now we're just a music venue we're not
even we're not even a bar anymore like before we were open open during the days
yeah for people to come in and drink or you know watch watch sports and stuff
now now we're just open for shows just open for shows yeah Well,
obviously the, uh, the research that you did and, and again, I'm not sure.
And, and I presume, I presume you, you, you guys live near, did you grow up near the bar or no?
So my dad grew up on Bastido.
Yeah. Which is Danforth and Foxville.
Yeah. And I, I, we grew up, I grew up in the beaches.
So close enough to basically close enough to prove my point that if you,
if you're standing at the corner of Danforth and Woodbine at any point in the
80s, 90s, or the 2000s, you're probably going to hear at least one car driving
by blasting Kim Mitchell.
That was my scientific theory. At least 80% of vehicles in East York are playing
Kim Mitchell at any given time.
Probably the other 20% Neil Young, probably April Wine.
So I think without you necessarily knowing that,
you sort of tapped into that with that Neil Young tribute with all the,
again, all the great bands that you've had, the Rush, the Rush tribute that
I went to, one of the shows I went to, they were awesome.
And then again, obviously, and then, and as we were discussing earlier on the,
for the podcast is about the actual Max Webster tribute band,
which was the night after the show that I went to.
And because, and I went to the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute, which by the way,
that guy was awesome. And I brought my buddy who is the, I would call him the
Toronto Stevie Ray Vaughan aficionado.
The guy actually has his own monogram guitar with his guitar.
Lettering you know a la stevie ray vaughn like
he did in his guitars and he had it he just
had it serviced over at the 12th fret just down so
yeah so this guy was the guy i said
if i'm going to bring anybody i'm bringing him to just verify the authenticity
of the guy and he
was like this guy's dead on like first thing he said this guy's
he's he's got the notes he's playing all the
in between stuff that stevie would do so he's even
got the tattoo he's got stevie you mentioned yeah
you mentioned that so that was an incredible show had an
awesome night you know stayed out way too late for for my old ass and then i
was thinking oh the next night is the max webster tribute guys that would be
awesome because i've seen max webster at one of the reunion shows so i was dying
to go see it just couldn't make it and then go and go and figure who shows up,
yeah kim mitchell himself shows up on the danforth walks right in people are
taking pictures with him. So I see it the next day. I'm like, God damn it.
I missed what could have been like, what, what if he had just jumped on the stage for a tune or two?
Like what if the possibilities is what I'm, I think that's what I'm getting
to at this stage in the podcast is of course, what could happen on any given night. You don't know.
So obviously, yeah, you've been doing such a great job of promoting all these
great bands and getting all these guys in.
And of course, What I'm hoping we're going to be doing, if you guys are listening,
that Ryan suggested is that we might actually even be getting,
I mean, I think some of the, maybe some of the acts, maybe, you know, one of the musicians,
maybe not the whole band, because that might be too much to ask,
but maybe, you know, having one or two or three of the musicians once in a while
jump in and talk about their story.
So there may be sort of their view from the stage sort of thing.
I don't know what we're going to call it, but something like that.
Yeah, there's definitely some really.
Musicians are really cool people with with you
know great stories and and great you know great opinions
on stuff storytellers they're the best storytellers yes yeah
absolutely and there's a lot of them it's surprising
like i didn't realize how many like amazing big
name like talented musicians that actually live
in the hood in the neighborhood yeah really close by and
it's it's so cool that that they do and you know
i think we're like the linsmore we're
really lucky that you know we have these musicians in the area
that will play our place that will come by
you know on you know one one night they're playing a stadium
you know an arena to 20 000 people and then the
next night you know they just want to play at their local bar have some
fun and so they'll play at the linsmore so it's it's it's pretty cool
who would you say just again we didn't rehearse this
at all but who would you say is the most famous person that walked
through the doors that you were aware of even if
it's a rumor well i i
don't know like there's a few of them i i did book okay so the dave matthews
band i booked boyd tinsley who's the the violinist he actually played a show
at the linsmore nice so that's and he's from the states so that was that was
pretty big yeah getting him in for a show and that was surprising that yeah.
Hmm Mm-hmm.
Like, you know, we have some big, like, that play frequently.
Timbo Vacanti was the guitar player for Burton Cummings. Burton Cummings,
yeah, yeah, you were mentioning that.
He's played probably 40, 50 shows at our place. He's playing every couple of months. Nice.
Wild T, Tony Springer was a guitar player for David Bowie, and he was in a couple weeks ago playing.
Dale Harrison, drummer for the Headstones and a number of different bands.
He's from the neighborhood. he's played you know probably 10
different bands that are placed you know a lot of really yeah okay
there's a couple of there's a couple of very odd again
this is music nerd stuff but there's actually a lot of
headstones specific trivia related
to the danforth as well and one of my good
friends a comedian by the name of darren frost was
in one of their videos oh cool a long time ago
so he was actually sort of one of the sort of the
cult figures in one
of their early videos and he's a he's a huge fan of that band so
go go figure how you know again small world and
this has been the best part about music and comedians and
this is why again podcasting weirdly enough is sort of
the same way where collaboration is such a big deal like it's not i'm not competing
i there's nobody for me to compete against as far as a podcast goes i don't
care who's bigger than me or who's just started yesterday i don't give a shit
about that i would rather have a conversation with anybody.
And for me, the best storytellers are again, always doors always open,
uh, which is why I wanted to have you and, and, and possibly also,
you know, your dad to hear any sort of untold, uh.
Possibly illegal stories about what happened in the olden days,
but exactly. We'll have him on.
He'll listen to this and he'll say, damn it. I wish I was there for the first one.
Uh, and then we'll have him on for the next one. We'll, we'll, we'll make
it interesting for i'll get him on he's for him to join
us yeah he's a good storyteller he'll tell some
i'm sure he again i mean without knowing him again i
i've got i've got the chance to again meet you this way the way we've
been meeting obviously because again you're where you are i'm where
i am but of course the connecting factor as i said
before either of us could probably walk into any place in
the world to a band that we both like and you
can start talking to somebody about that band and next thing
you know you're not strangers anymore it's literally like it's
two minutes you know even white lion absolutely for
white line as you know and this is not
even a joke but the one of my really good friends who's
a bass player with a great band called second pass which
i don't know if they played your place yet but they should him and me we talk
about white lion vito brada we talk about that guy way too you know way unnaturally
like just just way too often but it's because of the fact that we're such big
fans of the music yeah getting my i guess i getting my two minute warning here
for the, for the podcast,
but there's so much, again, there's so much to.
To talk about. And obviously the one thing I'm going to be doing as well for
the people in our local community, we're going to be working on some new ideas that we talked about.
I'm not going to release them right here, but we're going to sort of be launching
some new ideas to sort of help boost the sort of the musical presence and the
musical, I guess, just the celebration of the music.
And this is why, again, as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking to,
again, the chance I got to talk to you today is, is to me is,
it's so great because again, you're literally what's keeping live music alive.
As far as I'm concerned, like guys like you, there's not many of you.
I'm pretty sure you'll agree. There's not a lot of you guys left.
So just keeping that live music thing going, all these great bands.
And obviously I, you know, I want to keep this going.
So this is one of those podcasts that I would call a series because we're going
to be doing this, again and again, having maybe a couple of more squares on
the screen with a couple more people joining us and making it fun.
But I want to just thank you for your time today, Ryan.
I know you're a busy man. You got a wonderful family and you got yourself booking
your place nonstop. So I want to thank you for your time today. Thanks for joining me.
And by all means, again, you've got the golden key.
You're welcome back anytime to add some more juicy stories as you remember them.
Cause you know, we're, we're, we're, I'm in my late forties.
You said you're in your early forties.
Sometimes we forget things after having, you know, a lot of good years and a lot of parties.
Sometimes you forget the good stories and it all said, no, yeah.
I forget about that story. I got to bring it up.
So make sure, you know, the next time we're, we're doing this,
we'll, you know, we'll add some of those stories to the mixture.
For sure. Thanks Paul for having me. And yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to do something
with some listeners from the neighborhood, you know.
You mentioned it, we mentioned it before, we talked about it before,
but a couple of free tickets to some shows every, every month.
And that's, again, that's, that's something that, again, I definitely want to do more of.
So definitely going to be doing a bit more sort of, sort of ramping up the,
the contest idea, sort of just something I, you know, sort of came up with to
see what would happen, but I didn't really have sort of a plan.
This, I think it's getting a little bit more organized. So hopefully we'll have
something a bit more regular going and again, more storytelling.
Storytelling supporting the local music again the the huge local music element
in the in the community and of course getting musicians to join us here because
again musicians comedians,
and again podcasters and i'm trying to be one which is again obviously you know
work in progress but you know the great storytellers are you know i think the
people who are capturing people's attention these days it's not just you know
the guy on the screen with the you know the the slick background and,
uh, and the radio voice. Cause I got none of that.
So what I do is I try to get, you know, really interesting people around me
and stuff that I want to talk about.
And at the end of the day, some, for some reason, people like listening to that
stuff and, you know, I'm the same way. That's what I listened to stuff that interests me.
So once again, thank you, Ryan, for joining me and we'll be definitely doing this again soon.
Yeah. Thank you, Paul, for having me. And I love what you're doing with it,
with this podcast and, you know, all the, all the stuff that you're doing in
the community on the Danforth.
And, and it's, it's great. Like you're a, you're a key figure and,
and, and, and, and in the hood, in the neighborhood.
I appreciate that, man. I've been working at it for 24 years.
So hopefully one of these days it's going to, it's going to just, I'll get it right.
But for now, I'll just keep trying and doing my best to trying to promote it and keep things going.
But again, once again, thanks so much, Ryan. Appreciate your time. All right. Thanks.