The Anvil: cruising IRL

22 Feb 2025 - Photos by Mitchel Raphael

I’m one of those older gays who just cannot resist a dark scary environment for cruising. I have loved back rooms and dungeons since childhood. The '90s were a golden era of frottage in total darkness, but online cruising killed everything that was good about the old days. Other than the Black Eagle, where could a midnight cruiser go for some fun in this town?

Well, the fun is back, boys and girls (okay, maybe not girls). Announcing the grand opening of The Anvil, a sex club for gay men conveniently located on Anvil Alley. The space was once the back half of Dudley’s Hardware as well as Ladybug Florist, and although there are no more flowers you can still find plenty of tools. There are, typically, no signs. You have to just know where to go, but when you get there, it’s pretty big. It has a slurp ramp and lots of booths and glory holes and a cinema at the back and an outdoor space for summer. It is designed for depravity and it is marvelously entertaining.

I went there for the grand opening and bumped into lots of old colleagues, like my former fab editor Mitchel Raphael, busy taking pictures; Andre Tardif aka Pornducer, who was nice enough to hire me as his useless assistant 15 years ago when he was shooting content for a gay porn site; Ryan Russell, a local porn star and inventor of a portable lube called Plowder; legendary costume queen Mark Henderson and his signature curly grey beard; and Patrick Marano, a former real-life porn star who is now a YouTube content creator and host of the podcast Queerly Us.

Patrick is also one of the four owners who pooled their resources to bring this happening place to downtown Toronto. The others are Chris Srnicek, who has had a long career operating bathhouses all across North America; Dave C, a former patron of the Bijou who was inspired to build the now-defunct sex club Urge and has now has poured his building skills into creating this new space; and Andrew Nolan, who worked for a decade with Squirt developing marketing strategies, as well as with the North American Bathhouse Association working on trends and innovations in sex clubs and bathhouses. 

“We believe that in today's digital and social media landscape, our community is less connected than ever,” said Patrick via email. ‘We need social spaces to convene, connect, interact and enjoy each other's company. Anvil is a judgement free space where folks can come and feel the energy of being together. It's a space for men to re-establish the lost art of cruising IRL. The tension of seeing someone across the hall. The dance of flirting. The instant connection and exchange of energy you can only feel when someone is right in front of you. In today's volatile world, now more than ever, we need to come together in physical spaces - to talk, to laugh, to love and to have sex.” I agree, we need to erase the memory of the Covid quarantine which ruined so many natural things. 

The Anvil (named for the lane it is in, although I like to think it also references the legendary NYC sex club where Freddy Mercury used to go in the early 80s, or maybe it references that happening gay steel mill from an episode of The Simpsons) is open late, so it’s the perfect place to visit after a frustrating night out at the bars. I’d say “See you there” but it is so dark you can’t see anything. Which means you have to feel your way around. Which, of course, is half the fun.