London : Good 'Hoods
Waterloo Remix
By Dawn Matheson
Oct 1, 2007

The well-aged downtown strip in Southern Ontario’s high-tech hub has morphed into a playground for the young and restless

It's 1 A.M. on a Friday night at the Starlight Club. Heads bob and booties shake as DJ Charless spins vinyl like it’s 1979. A little Stevie Wonder, a tease of Parliament—old tunes cut with a modern beat: an appropriate soundtrack for today’s Uptown Waterloo.

Touted as the “2007 World’s Top Intelligent Community” by the Intelligent Communities Forum
( intelligentcommunity.org), Waterloo has, at 150 years old, become a strange hybrid of thinkers and drinkers (this month’s Oktoberfest is only topped by Bavaria’s celebrations), as well as history and technology (scores of tech and software firms are here, including RIM and Google Waterloo). This merry mix is reflected in both the businesses and the locals on the street, and the juxtaposition of old and new is pretty much everywhere.

Don’t be surprised to see a Mennonite family (Waterloo’s original European settlers) in cape dress and bonnet or straw hat and suspenders, tethering their horses at City Hall’s operating horse barn, just down from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. This modern building is not only one of the world’s leading research centres, but also hosts a remarkable public outreach program featuring live jazz, contemporary art talks and futuristic lectures on physics and the cosmos.

With a sudden surge in condo conversions in the Waterloo core, and the 2006 revamping of the Waterloo Town Square Mall into The Shops, an urbanist’s paradise has burgeoned. But many local entrepreneurs have preserved the manicured grit that attracts academics and iconoclasts from the city’s two universities.

Sisters Annissa and Lydia have injected a little of Toronto’s Queen Street West with Delirium clothing. “We’re Goth-punk-rockabilly,” says Annissa, in front of a ’50s-style dress paired with a black skull purse. DJ Charless, holed up in his vinyl fortress, has peddled nostalgia for some 14 years from Orange Monkey Music, an attic above the ultimate cool-kid hangout, the Jane Bond.

Across the street is the original Princess Cinema, an art-house movie theatre that’s screened The Rocky Horror Picture Show every year since 1985, recently expanding with the Princess Twin movie house to do battle against more mainstream film fare with the big boys at the Galaxy multiplex.

Then there’s Ethel’s Lounge, a frayed bar and patio with roadhouse eats—Southern Pulled Pork is a favourite. The ultimate retrofit, Ethel’s is housed in a former KFC, one of the first in Canada (circa 1961); the Ethel’s sign, snagged from a defunct bar in Detroit, just happened to fit perfectly atop the KFC pole. Make no qualms about the clientele here—it’s right on the menu: “Yuppies, perfect nuclear families with 2.1 children and people wearing fur, holding a Miniature Poodle named Fifi will be stuffed in the pizza oven.”

That won’t happen at stylish Hannah’s Bella Bistro—one of many fine dining establishments on King Street—in the 1890 Waterloo Hotel (restored into a deluxe Victorian-style inn). Hannah’s promises artisan fare with international flare. For $24, you can savour a delicious Guinness-soaked chicken breast, roasted in thyme grown by the local “herb man.”

If you take your beer without chicken, you won’t have to venture far: both Brick ( brickbeer.com) and Lion brew in town. The latter is the exclusive brewer for the Huether Hotel, an infamous student watering hole with pool tables, a massive patio and—in keeping with demand from newly arrived residents—a swanky new coffee pub.

If you prefer Buddhism over beer, opt for the creamy, dreamy almond tea at Lotus Tea House. Simple wicker décor, pan flute music and with Nag Champa incense wafting down from the meditation centre upstairs, the tearoom is an ancient yet contemporary addition to the area.

Probably the strongest holdover from the past is Harmony Lunch, a diner that has been flipping burgers since the ’30s without ever updating the décor or the milkshake machine. Down a few “Pork Sliders,” as the locals call them—palm-size pork burgers buried in onions and mustard for $3.45.


Starlight Club 47A King St. N. 519-885-4970
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics 31 Caroline St. N. 519-569-7600
The Shops 75 King St. S. 519-886-4190
Delirium 23 King St. N. 519-886-8480
Orange Monkey Music 5 Princess St. W. 519-886-0939
Jane Bond 5 Princess St. W. 519-886-1689
Princess Cinema 6 Princess St. W. 519-885-2950
Princess Twin 46 King St. N. 519-885-2950
Ethel’s Lounge 114 King St. N. 519-725-2361
Hannah’s Bella Bistro 4 King St. N. 519-746-3504
Waterloo Hotel 2 King St. N. 877-885-1890
Huether Hotel 59 King St. N. 519-886-3350
Lotus Tea House 79 Regina St. N. 519-880-1638
Harmony Lunch 90 King St. N. 519-886-4721