Category: It Happened to Me

Way, way back — I’m talking about twenty years ago — my friend Yann and I decided to go catch one of Reg Hartt’s Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival shows. For those of you who aren’t from around Accordion City, Reg is one of the city’s better-known eccentrics — he’s a film and cartoon buff who likes to show his collection of rare films. If you walk around some of the city’s hipper streets, you’re likely to see a poster for one of his screenings.

Yann and I had decided that after years of seeing these posters plastered all over town, we should actually attend one of these events. Reg now hosts his film screenings at his house, but back in the late eighties, he held his movie nights at the Cabana Room, which was the upstairs bar of the Spadina Hotel, which was located at the corner of King and Spadina. Today, that corner is both a nightclub and dining destination as well as home to a number of fancy offices and condos, and the Spadina Hotel has since closed and turned into a backpacker’s hostel. The corner is a yuppie haven now, but back then, it was considerably more seedy.

That upstairs bar was the sort of place you’d expect to see Charles Bukowski challenging Mickey Rourke, Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Waits to a shooter-drinking contest. It was delightfully divey, and populated with an assortment of interesting characters, from hard-drinkin’ old men to the not-quite-legal-to-drink (the legal age here being 19) spiky-haired punk and alternative rock crowd who’d spilled over from Queen Street, which was then a little edgier than it is today. The place looked like it hadn’t changed since the early 1960s. My favourite creature comforts there were the air conditioning — possibly the best in town, next to the bone-chiller at Sneaky Dee’s, then located in The Annex — and the Jiffy-Pop cooker on the bar, which was a hot plate rigged with Jiffy-Pop branding and a mechanical arm that shook the Jiffy-Pop package side-to-side as it cooked.

The Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival featured all sorts of old cartoons dating from the 1940s through the 1970s that you could no longer show in most places for their racy (and sometimes racist) content. One of Yann’s and my favourites was Thank You Mask Man, a cartoon based on a routine by Lenny Bruce, in which Lenny himself does the voices. It’s about what happens when the Lone Ranger decides to accept the thanks of the townspeople he saves, with hilarious — and very profane (especially considering the time) — results.

Thanks to this entry on MetaFilter, I know that someone put Thank You Mask Man on YouTube. Watching it makes me feel like I’m drunk and 19 again. Watch and enjoy, but be forewarned that this is a Lenny Bruce routine:

Amidst the merriment at Pete Forde’s 29th birthday party last night (Happy birthday, Pete!), I got a bit of news that concerned me: someone I know is missing.

“Take a look at this,” said my friend Rochelle as she unfolded a piece of legal-sized paper. It was a flyer with the word “MISSING” in large block letters across the top. What really caught my eye was the photo.

“That’s really weird,” I said, “the photo — she looks just like someone I knew from where I used to get my hair cut. Skater-girl type, really skinny, name’s Alex…”

I was so taken by how much the photo looked like Alex that it took me a moment to look at the missing person’s name: Alexandra Flanagan.

“Oh, shit,” I said, double-checking to make sure I wasn’t misreading the flyer.
I know her.”

The missing person wasn’t someone who looked like Alex; she is Alex, and she’s been missing for over a month.

Meeting Alex

I met Alex in 1999 at the House of Lords. It’s a cheesy rock-and-roll hair cutting place located on Yonge street’s main drag of head shops, grey market electronics stores and fast food joints. I still went there because one of their hairstylists, Roxy, had been cutting my hair just the way I like it for years.

One day, while waiting for Roxy to finish working on the customer before me, I was working on my laptop in the waiting area. I heard a voice say “Hey, you’re that guy who plays the accordion.”

I looked up from my laptop’s screen to see a skinny skater-girl type in her early twenties looking at me. She wore a raver shirt and baggy skater shorts and held out her hand.

“I’m Alex. I work in the back — I do hair colour. You ever need a colour job, come see me.”

“I’m Joey,” I replied, shaking her hand.

For years afterward, I’d run into Alex on a regular basis. I’d often run into her while grabbing a bite to eat in Chinatown, and a couple of times, I either joined her table or she joined mine. I also ran into her at dance clubs and DJ shows several times — and once, she did me a very big favour when I was on a date from Hell. I owe her one.

What’s Known About Alex’s Case

Here’s what Xtra, a local paper serving Accordion City’s Gay Village (the neighbourhood centred around Church and Wellesley) ran in a story dated August 2nd:

Posters seeking information about a woman who was last seen in Barrie dotted Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village starting on Jul 20.

A spokesperson for the Barrie Police Service says 33-year-old Alexandra Flanagan has been absent from work and has not contacted her friends or family since Jul 8.

Flanagan, who identifies as a lesbian, spent several years living and working in Toronto’s queer village, including at the House of Lords hair salon on Yonge St at Isabella.

According to Barrie Police, Flanagan was last seen in Barrie on the evening of Jul 8 walking toward her Wellington St apartment with a male friend. The friend told police he left her at Sunnidale Park, but that 30 minutes later when he tried to call her there was no answer. When she didn’t turn up for work the next morning, Flanagan’s family got worried.

Sheffer says Flanagan was wearing khaki capri pants, a black belt and a black tank top with pink flip-flops when she was last seen. She is five-feet, one-inch tall, weighs 100 pounds, has red hair and green eyes, and has piercings in both eyebrows.

For more details about what is known about Alex’s disappearance, see:

• The Barrie Police Service’s “missing persons” page for Alex’s case
• Help Find Alexandra Flanagan — a Facebook group created by Alex’s sister and close friends