Owie.

As some of you may know I work a day / night job as a dispatcher for the Toronto Fire Department and all the news in the city today revolves around a massive, six alarm blaze in the Queen and Bathurst area, the part of Toronto that is ground zero for the best music bars, comic shops and indie video shops. And the king of the indie video stores in Toronto is, without a doubt Suspect Video. I fell in love with the place years ago when I walked in and asked if they had a copy of Lars von Trier's Europa, long before it was widely available in any format. At first the clerk said no, but after I wandered away to rummage through the stacks of martial arts flicks and cult titles he walked up to me with a naked VHS tape in his hands. "Did that film also go out as Zentropa?", he asked. When told yes, he handed me the plain tape. "Thought so. I found this in a bin somewhere a couple years ago and it's not on the shelves because it didn't have any artwork with it but I figured it's kind of rare so I should pick it up for the shop." I was in love. Then he showed me the original ending for Army of Darkness, again long before it had been released anywhere on any format, and I was in lust.

So, it was very sad news to learn that the Queen Street Suspect location was in the middle of today's raging Toronto blaze. The Markham Street location is still there, sure, and they were apparently insured and thus will be able to bounce back somewhere but this was the original location, the one where I first discovered a host of films, and it housed a huge amount of very rare inventory that won't be able to be replaced, insurance or no insurance. Sigh.