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College

You saw the line at Track & Field and said "I'd rather die." Welcome to Bangarang — the exact same bar but with slightly worse music and a crowd that looks like the coke wore off forty minutes ago and nobody's recovering gracefully. Solid backup when you need to be somewhere, anywhere, immediately. Personal vendetta with the bocce pits in the back hijacking my dancing space. Whoever greenlit lawn games at 1am owes me, my friends, and the city of Toronto an apology.

King West

King West

King West

King West

Entertainment District

King West

Ossington

Ossington

College

College

College

Queen St West

King West

Looking to rail $5 tequila shots until your knees stop working instead of dropping $15 on a beer across the street? Welcome home. RIP to the $4 era — we're still grieving. Weekdays: a moderate crowd of guys six months into their first big-boy job whose entire personality is having gone to Queen's. Weekends: full zoo. Line's biblical — show up at open or accept your fate. Three of my friends met their now-exes here. Make of that what you will.

Parkdale

Basically ABG heaven. Discounts if you speak Chinese (not joking). And for anyone who'll actually pull up: ABG天堂，DJ打碟，蹦到腿软。tequila五块一杯，比奶茶还便宜。姐妹局首选，前男友约你来你也得来。妆要野，眉毛要细，眼线要飞起来。说中文有折扣，这不是开玩笑——会说"干杯"就行。

Ossington

The only spot on Ossington where a beer won't trigger your overdraft — if you can shove your way to the bar without making three new enemies. My friends love Badlands. I hate Badlands. I've been here every weekend for six months. Busy, music's fine, and those tall green cans everyone's death-gripping are $5. No line before 10:30, then it fills up like a GO train at rush hour. Darts and shuffleboard in the back — a chance to lose at something other than your twenties.

St. Lawrence

Coolest venue in Toronto, no contest. Old church turned club — the only place in the city where the architecture does more work than the DJ. Throwback bangers all night, plus a rogue Mexican dubstep remix every 40 minutes nobody requested and nobody can explain. Heavy college crowd, real energy, and people ACTUALLY dance — a miracle in this city. Worth going once for the venue alone. Sadly my girlfriend would rather be waterboarded than stand near a 19-year-old, so I'll be observing from afar.

Ossington

You ever roll into a bar with no dance floor, drinks priced like a hostage situation, and no seating, and end up nursing a beer in the corner looking like you're casing the place? That's not you being weird. That's Bar Mordecai working as intended. Vibes immaculate, completely hostile to anyone who showed up without five hot friends, a reservation, and a clear agenda. Music slaps though, crowd is shoulder-to-shoulder, and the Karaoke in the basement is reso-only but a good time.

King West

Ever asked yourself "how do I have the most aggressively average night of my life?" Probably not, but congrats, you found the answer. Belfast is never bad, never great — it just exists, defiantly mid. Two bars, some dancing room, pool table in the back. Line looks scary but moves fast, music's solid. And like everything else here, the ratio is reliably average. Decent King West option if your standards are calibrated accordingly.

King West

Open till 4am. Venue's cool, music's decent. Gets aggressively sketchier the longer you stay. The 1am crowd and the 3am crowd share zero overlapping DNA — somewhere around 2:15 the vibe shifts and you have to decide whether you're a person who leaves or a person who stays. No correct answer, just consequences.

Queen St West

LGBTQ+ bar, open till 4am. Genuinely great for chatting and meeting new people, which is wild because most bars at 3am sound like a jet engine. Only spot I've ever seen where the line starts at 2am — when every other bar in the city is taping up the floors and lying about last call. Can't remember if there's a cover charge. One of the girls or gays will have to confirm. As a straight man I am, at best, a tourist in this review.