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Come together
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The changing face of Unity
by Lorraine Carpenter
So you're gay, you're super-buffed and you own a wide array of short shorts. Very few shirts in the closet, mind you (not much of anything in the closet, really.) And every weekend, you oil up, say "superstar" in the mirror a few times and head out to pump your arms, among other things, to some serious circuit house. Is this you? No? Well, what do you do for a good time in the Village? Never fear, Unity may be coming to your rescue.
Electropub Thursdays is the cool new theme night at Unity Pub, the year-old lounge bar that sits comfortably below its mother mega-club. Not only do guest DJs spin electro-pop, trip-hop and deep house, a small coup for musical diversity in the Village, but there are electronic bands. No, not drag karaoke, live bands.
"Not a lot of Village venues book shows and we're definitely trying to be different because that's the way we work," says booker and diva Marleen Ménard. "We don't like to copy what other people do and the public seems to appreciate it. I'm very happy about the results."
The recent success of Electropub got the ball rolling for other live events at the pub, including R&B/soul-themed Fridays and Baila Latino on Sundays. The next step in this live-music revolution is to convert the pub into a proper showbar along the lines of Jello or Sofa.
"I really want to make it the best showbar in town," explains Unity owner Pierre Viens. "It's my little baby, I'm really thrilled. We're gonna have record launches there, and I already have shows planned with the MEG and MUTEK next year. It's cool, I'm sure there's a big market for that and we can already see the crowd really mixes together well--gay, straight, who cares?"
Ch-ch-changes
After a facelift and a name change, the refurbished pub will see the light in the first week of October, but that's not the only change in store for Unity. You may want to sit down for this one: while the pub remains status quo, Unity (the club) will close its doors at the end of August and reopen in the fall as a straight club.
"Straight people have always been very welcome at Unity as long as they're cool," says Viens. "There's still gonna be house in the main room, but it'll be more commercial, that's for sure, and we're gonna have an R&B room and a rock alternative room."
Ironically, all this pub/club chaos is due to an old competitor formerly owned by Viens, a classic Village club in the midst of a major comeback. "I opened Sky in '92 and I wanted to do the same thing at Unity because it worked very well," says Viens. "The stage at Unity Pub is a lot bigger than Sky Pub, so we definitely wanted to go with shows and new bands and new music. That was a goal we had, but nine months after our opening, Sky Pub reopened and a lot of people moved."
As if that weren't enough, the club part of Sky is poised to reopen too, forcing Viens make these changes before he's rendered as shirtless as his patrons. It may look grim, but Viens is so enthused about his showbar and the chance to offer Villagers (and non-Villagers) a new experience, he's still walking on sunshine.
"I'm a very positive guy. We still have the same goals, but we're gonna go a lot further than we intended to because the straight crowd is a bit more open musically. We still want the gay crowd but I really want to push the pub all over Montreal. And when you have a good team and a nice bar--yes, the room is very beautiful--people should go for it. I just have to make sure everything is perfect."
Electropub happens every Thursday at Unity Pub, 9pm, free. August guest DJ: Mark MacLeod. Live tonight, Aug. 2: Behind the Wheel (Depeche Mode tribute)
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