| It’s a sunny Saturday evening and Mortal Coil on Fourth Street S.W. is largely empty. It’s the calm before the mad rush of diners and drinkers converge for what is for many of them a regular ritual of food, conversation and, of course, beverages.
I’m seated at the bar – a familiar perch, to be honest – along with a handful of others who have made the place their second home. The plush red velvet curtains are pulled back to let the sunlight in through the purple-tinted windows, casting the small lounge in an oddly warm glow. The jokes and stories are coming fast and furious, as is so often the case here, but there are longer pauses in the conversation than usual, as the reality that these days are numbered is sinking in.
After seven-and-a-half years, Mortal Coil is closing its doors on Saturday, June 25. It comes fast on the heels of another popular hangout, the Mercury, being turned into a substantial hole in the ground (the bar will be opening at a new location in August), and is the latest casualty in the Beltline community, which has seen historic homes disappear in just hours, city blocks turned into slabs of concrete and rebar, and the intimate spaces that have served as the setting for hookups, breakups and all manner of friendships fading away in the shadows of oversized stores. "Sometimes," Mortal Coil’s co-owner and operator Brent Boeckx says, "things are just out of your hands."
A day earlier, I’m sitting with Boeckx and Todd Cornish over lunch as they relate the story of how the bar came to be and what has allowed it to last as long as it has. The interview meanders and digresses, with stories about past staff members, customers and blunders. It’s not much different than sitting at the bar as the two pour beer and mix drinks, and there is little doubt that their personalities have fuelled the bar’s success. "I think I’m better with people than most," explains Boeckx, "and I think that was almost the saving grace in a way."
That may be true, given that Mortal Coil was birthed from a concept that in retrospect seems like business suicide. "I just thought it would be cool to have a place that played cool music – plain and simple," admits Boeckx. "I didn’t care about the food, the only thing I cared about was I thought it would be cool to have martinis named after songs, and other than that it was just the music.
"As we were building it I remember thinking that this was unbelievably stupid – it was literally when Todd and I were painting I realized ‘I don’t have a chef, I don’t know how to run a business, I don’t have anything.’" Cornish chimes in sarcastically, "And with my background in the finance industry, needless to say that success was on our side."
Yet somehow it survived the lounge revival and subsequent backlash, the First Street S.W. revival and downfall, the fickleness of the 17th Avenue strip and a tumultuous initial ownership (as the doors close, Boeckx remains co-owner, along with his wife Deb and Cornish). Unfortunately, it couldn’t survive an ongoing battle with the landlord.
And it isn’t just the hipsters, scenesters and urbanites who will be quietly shedding tears into their pints. What started out as a place frequented by the gay community, Goths and Brit-pop kids now sees multimillionaire oil executives, high-ranking civic planners and long-drive golf champions rubbing elbows with the latest generation of indie rockers and romantics.
As Cornish sees it, the diversity of the clientele is based on one sole philosophy. "I think it was more that we never really discriminated. If you walked though our doors, you got treated well. Unless you were a real jackass, we treated people very well, which is not typical in the bar industry."
And while the openness undoubtedly helped create a welcoming atmosphere, Boeckx is quick to credit their menu – a jaw-droppingly reasonably priced, near-gourmet selection that likely nourished more than a few culinary-challenged hipsters over the years. But he concurs that after Mortal Coil closes, there will be no other place that knows its customers as well as they do. "I think we honestly care about a lot of the people who come in."
Back to the bar on that Saturday evening, and the feeling is mutual. "Everybody here has become my friends," explains longtime regular and local musician Conrad Sawatzky. "I can sit down at the bar and I’m sitting with friends." Adds designer Joel Jackson, another regular, "It’s like home. It’s full of the type of people I want to meet and hang out with."
Danielle Sturrock, who lived in one of the apartments just upstairs, says the bar served as a big part of her social life over the past few years. "There’s nowhere else in Calgary where you can come and have a decent conversation and the atmosphere is so good as well. Usually you don’t have both – you can people watch or you can have a good chat."
Boeckx and Cornish aren’t disappearing off the face of the earth. They, along with former Mercury employee Shane Fraser (who mirrors Boeckx’s frustration when he says that both bars’ closures "were entirely out of our hands"), have begun work on a new bar in the Devenish Building on 17th Avenue. Boeckx admits it will be different than Mortal Coil, which is to be expected, but will retain the customer service that has allowed the bar to become the institution it has. For the huge customer base that has grown accustomed to walking into a smoky, dark room to be greeted by name and handshake, it’s of little comfort. Boeckx is compiling recollections from regulars in a journal, and the scribblings – some drunker than others – reflect the vast diversity of people who called this place home. They range from intellectual analysis of just why this place worked to in-jokes to sentimentality that borders on maudlin.
Matthew Tait, a professor of engineering at the University of Calgary, sums it up best between sips from his pint. "Mortal Coil is like one of those shops in children’s books, that magically appear and disappear. People who needed to see this place tended to see this place, and people who didn’t often had no idea it existed. It’s weird. If you were here, you were supposed to be here, and when it goes, it’s going to be very, very bad for those people."
Mortal Coil by the numbers:
Years in business: 7 1/2
Capacity: 80
Number of Head Chefs: 7
Number of weddings hosted: 3
Number of break-ups: about 30 (that they know of)
Number of first dates: Countless
Number of fist fights: 1
Number of customers who used the toilet tank as a toilet: 1
Number of times a Brandy Alexander has been served with Ice Cream instead of regular cream: 1
Number of girlfriends I have had since it opened: 3 |
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