Not with a bang...

Sudbury's One Hundred Georges closes quietly while the City sleeps

by Bear Claw Bob

(November 13, 2005) It's been several months, apparently, since the One Hundred Georges bar in Sudbury, Ontario shut its doors for good amidst a flurry of rumours as to the reasons why. Since no official announcement was made locally, it took a while for the news to travel by word of mouth to other centres in Northern Ontario.

A quick visit to the Georges website http://www.100georges.com/ confirms that there's no more action on the stage in the Nickle City. All the Sudbury links are dead. You can still go to pages related to the North Bay venue of the same name, the original One Hundred Georges on 1st Avenue West.

 When the bar opened four years ago it was being promoted as an-all blues venue, and for some time hosted a string of appearances by many of the same acts that owner Dan Lindsay and impressario Peter Sabourin (SAB) had been lining up in Callander and North Bay. Back then Sudburians in the know about the blues predicted that the new enterprise would effectively kill the local promoters who were bringing in the occasional blues act to the Mine Mill Hall and other facilities in the downtown area. There just wasn't a big enough following for the blues to support a weekly schedule of performances they said, and people expressed the fear that the pumped up exposure would kill what interest there was though onver-saturation.  This prediction turned out to be dead on.

Toward the end of its run One Hundred Georges was leaning more and more away from a sole concentration on blues in an attempt to draw an audience. SAB and his band had been a regular feature since the beginning, and to this the management added R&B, folk, jazz, metal, disco, and just about everything under the sun. Blues fans were staying away from the place in droves.

News of the bar's demise was greeted with mixed feelings by blues fans in Sudbury. There's a lot of "I told you so's" going around, some bitterness around the perception that another blues venue has bit the dust in the North, and some faint hope that the opportunity might be there to re-connect with the people who used to come out to the one-time special events.

Occupying a former bank building, the venue had a lot of potential. The stage was visible from nearly every point on two levels, and the clear sightlines and clean acoustics were augmented by an innovative closed-ciruit tv and audio system. There is still an occasional good blues act on the Georges stage in North Bay.