R.A.I.D.

For over 40 years, a yellow and red awning has hung over a seemingly deserted storefront.  No one ever seemed to go in or out. 
In 2018, R.A.I.D. took over this infamous and mysterious storefront.  It was like a time capsule from the 1980s: the bar, the ticket booth window, even the disco dance floor hadn't been touched for four decades. 
Ramon Perez is not a retailer. He's a successful illustrator, a cartoonist...he draws for Archie comics and the amazing Spider-Man!...he had a burning desire to turn this deserted dilapidated eyesore into a communal artist space. So who is Ramon Perez and what is R.A.I.D.? 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Miranda Black: You've seen it. You've seen it a million times. So it's on the right-hand side when you're going toward, oh, I hope it's still there on Google. Do you remember this place? 

Can I ask you a couple of questions? 

[00:00:11] Person in Street: Of course. 

[00:00:12] Miranda Black: Have you ever seen this place? Corona Restaurant and Nightclub? 

[00:00:17] Person in Street: Yes. I've wondered if it's operational or, or what they're doing in there.

[00:00:22] Miranda Black: You go to 1720 Queen Street West on your maps, please. 

[00:00:27] Person in Street: Yeah. 

[00:00:28] Miranda Black: Look at the street view. I'm just wondering, have you ever seen this place before? Driving by? 

[00:00:33] Person in Street: Yes. The yellow? 

[00:00:34] Miranda Black: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:00:34] Person in Street: Yeah. 

[00:00:34] Miranda Black: Have you ever, do you know anything about this place? 

[00:00:38] Person in Street: No. I just know I've seen this. I can't remember. 

Oh yeah, I know that place. Yes. I've always wondered what that place is! 

[00:00:46] Miranda Black: For over 40 years, a yellow and red awning has hung over 1720 Queen Street West, the Corona Restaurant and Nightclub. The place looked boarded up from the inside. Dark black cladding covered the huge garage door windows, and no one ever seemed to go in or out. In 2018, R.A.I.D. was looking for a new home and one option was to rent an office type space that needed very little work. Or, R.A.I.D. could rent this infamous and mysterious storefront that's been deserted since the 1990s. Or has it? 

When R.A.I.D. took over the space, it was like a time capsule from the 1980s: the bar, the ticket booth window, even the disco dance floor hadn't been touched for four decades. Ramon Perez is not a retailer. He's a successful illustrator, a cartoonist. He draws for Archie comics and the amazing Spider-Man. He had a burning desire to turn this deserted, dilapidated eyesore into a communal artist space with four different business models, all working together, supporting each other. So who is Ramon Perez and what is R.A.I.D.? 

What's this place? This place. What's this place. What's this place. What's this place let's go inside and find out..

Okay. What is this place? And who are you?

[00:02:10] Ramon Perez: I was a freelance artist working for Marvel, DC, all these guys on comic books. And I also inadvertently ran a studio of artists. 

[00:02:18] Miranda Black: Okay. Break this down for me. What is R.A.I.D.? 

[00:02:21] Ramon Perez: R.A.I.D. began as three graduates and one freelance artist. They wanted to put on pants, leave the house and go to a work environment rather than freelance at home. When I was asked to join, I was feeling a little bit burnt out, and I really missed that creative environment from school where you always had this creative energy. You had artists surrounding you, you could shoot off ideas. The energy was amazing. So when this opportunity came to join R.A.I.D., like I, I, I remember the time cuz I was

dead broke. I had just come back from San Diego on a work trip. I spent my last dollars trying to get work to no avail. Then I get this call. It was these guys saying, Hey, would you want to join? It's 400 bucks a month? And I'm like, I can't afford that right now, the risk. And I started like I broke it down in my head and I was like, well, if I actually hustle a little bit harder, do one extra job a month, that pays for my rent, basically. Right. And that's what I did and my income quadruple over the next several years, because larger clients would come in, I would network, I would go to events with these other artists who had made their own connections and suddenly I'm being introduced to their clientele base. And vice versa, they were meeting some of my clients as well, so it totally blew any risk out of the water for me. Then over the years, we began soliciting newer members. What started with four, eventually grew to nine members, 10, 12, 16 until we were like packed in our old space. So what started off as a studio for four people became a co-working space for creatives.

[00:03:46] Miranda Black: So this is Ramon's primary business: R.A.I.D.. It's a coworking space for artists and it stands for Royal Academy of Illustration and Design. You're probably familiar with We Work well, this is like We Work, but with a twist. 

[00:04:00] Ramon Perez: We Work is more entrepreneurial based where it's a lot of business people. This is more creative, so you have a lot of writers, artists, animators who work on their own projects, but also because of the community aspect, collaborate and riff off each other's skill sets. So you might have a writer from film who meets an artist and they're like okay, let's collaborate on this idea I have and take it to the next level or whatever it might be. Because obviously artists, especially young artists and young creatives who are just starting, they can't afford a large overhead. 

[00:04:29] Miranda Black: Yeah.

[00:04:30] Ramon Perez: So we tried to create multiple tiers of accessibility from a financial standpoint, but also you can leave your crap here, make it home, make it like, the one thing I did it efficiently was actually research every We Work in Toronto and what they offered at what price point. Ok, can I create something that gives them this, but at better prices that they can kind of access and afford and 

[00:04:50] Miranda Black: yeah, 

[00:04:51] Ramon Perez: we'd make it like a cozy environment where it has character and personality. I'm the one who's like, put something up on the wall, put up a poster, some shelves. Whatever! Make it your own. Make it home. 

[00:05:03] Miranda Black: When R.A.I.D. started, they were in one of those gorgeous old 19th century buildings that were built with massive windows and lofty ceilings, the perfect space to create, but... 

[00:05:13] Ramon Perez: The year, year and a half before the pandemic, we had to leave our building, we found this amazing location, old bar, 5,000 square feet. It looked like a bomb went off in the place. It was just derelict. 

[00:05:26] Miranda Black: I remember that space because you would drive by it, and it was like, when you say derelict, it was derelict. Nobody was in, 

[00:05:33] Ramon Perez: well, actually, you know, the funny part was, people were actually in it. There was actually a business operating here. They made mascot costumes. So those big plush costumes, that's what the business was here. 

[00:05:45] Miranda Black: So, is there any evidence of the plushy factory that was here? 

[00:05:50] Ramon Perez: So like I came and looked at the place when they were here. They had left everything from the bar 15 years previous so when they left, 

[00:05:57] Miranda Black: Like, the actual bar was here? 

[00:05:59] Ramon Perez: Yeah. So this was the old kitchen from the bar. Like... 

[00:06:02] Miranda Black: Where did they assemble their plushies? 

[00:06:03] Ramon Perez: Oh all over the place. In here you can see, this is what they did. So they had like all that spray paint and stuff around. This is their room where they spray painted stuff 

[00:06:11] Miranda Black: Oh yeah

[00:06:12] Ramon Perez: Right now we just use it for storage. And 

[00:06:14] Miranda Black: that was where they're testing out their, 

[00:06:15] Ramon Perez: Their foam. They would spray foam or glue things. But when they left, it looked like they never existed. The dance floor was still, there was still, right over here, there was still a giant 32 inch tube TV on like a rack steel rack back when this was like a pool tables back here originally, whatever, they never removed it, they just left it there. It didn't work, didn't anything. It was just too much effort for them. So all they had between the entrance and here was like tables here, people would sew materials and stuff, 

[00:06:43] Miranda Black: But they have like big, you know, Tony, the Tiger...

[00:06:46] Ramon Perez: oh yeah. So all the, the whole basement was all these costum... 

[00:06:50] Miranda Black: This has a lower level? 

[00:06:50] Ramon Perez: Yeah. Yeah. We call it the murder basement. Cause you can touch the ceiling. It's super low and it's very musty, but they had all their characters in these giant plastic bags hanging on hooks from the ceiling. So it looked like something out of some like horror murder movie cause you just see like Tony the Tiger's face on plastic as you're walking around, you're like, oh my God, what is going on? And the whole basement was full of them from front to back. This is creepy... 

[00:07:15] Miranda Black: so when you came in, they were still kinda...

[00:07:18] Ramon Perez: oh, yeah. When I first looked at the place, they were still here operating 

[00:07:20] Miranda Black: Right

[00:07:20] Ramon Perez: and I was just like, this looks like a sweatshop. Like they had dark heavy velvet curtains covering the front window. No light came in here. 

[00:07:28] Miranda Black: God. So that's, what's been going on behind that blacked out garage door for the past 15 years. It's why the Corona Nightclub sign has persevered: the plushy factory didn't need to remove it. I heard a rumor, which I hope is true that Drake's OVO owl was created right there at the Corona Restaurant and Nightclub Plushy Factory. #legend.

[00:07:49] Ramon Perez: I've had so many people since we opened come up to me and go oh, I remember when this was like a bar called Corona, which is funny enough as we went into the coronavirus.

One dream I've always had, was have a gallery slash retail store where we can sell our own content, like a, an outlet that focused on independent creators behind all those Marvel movies you're seeing now in Hollywood, but these are the actual people who don't really get the time of day, because they're the ones that just work in the shadows. People don't really people really don't see the transition from the drawn page to what's on the Marvel screens. 

[00:08:26] Miranda Black: Right? So you are a successful. 

[00:08:31] Ramon Perez: For sure. Yeah. 

[00:08:32] Miranda Black: My big question is why would you want to get into the headache of retail? 

[00:08:37] Ramon Perez: I've never even worked retail. I worked in a comic shop for maybe a month of my life. I've been freelancing since I graduated. I am not the person who likes to work in other places. But when we were forced out of our last space, due to the building being bought out, it was either almost like an exact duplicate of the space we had at a higher price point or this space here. Completely derelict looking, not turnkey at all, but it was street front. It had amazing potential. I'd rather try and fail than not have tried at all. I saw the opportunity to create something that I've always wanted to create. It seemed like such a no brainer. There is always a risk when you move into a different facet of business, especially one that you're unfamiliar with.

[00:09:23] Miranda Black: Right. 

[00:09:24] Ramon Perez: So we took the chance. We opened our front doors, August last year. 

[00:09:29] Miranda Black: August 2020, 

[00:09:31] Ramon Perez: 2020, mid pandemic. 

[00:09:32] Miranda Black: Great time to open a buisness.

[00:09:34] Ramon Perez: I know, right? I know. Our front end is an art gallery with a small retail shop and a cafe. 

[00:09:40] Miranda Black: I have, I have some questions about the cafe. As somebody from the outside world of coffee, because I had a store, but I never had coffee.

And it seems like coffee might be like gateway retail in order to lure people. Is it just that the drug is so powerful that it stimulates sales? What is going on?

[00:10:06] Ramon Perez: Yeah, I think that's exactly what we were thinking. Cause I can't quite afford to hire someone to sit out front in a gallery or retail. So a friend of mine who operated a cafe for 10 years at Dovercourt and Queen called El Almacen which is a Argentinian cafe. He had to close his location early COVID because his building had been bought out.

[00:10:31] Estela Velasco: So it's an Argentinian slash Mexican, mostly Argentinian cafe. We have like Argentinian food cookies and the matte drink that is the most traditional. The building was sold we were in talks with the new owners, which they double the rent and then COVID hit and it's like, let's just go. So we just took all of our stuff that we had at that shop. And then we just opened here. 

[00:10:57] Miranda Black: This is Estela Velazco she and her husband Silvio own El Almacen, an Argentinian cafe. And they actually purchased a building up in North York, which they're slowly renovating. So Stella runs the cafe in R.A.I.D. while Silvio gets their building ready to open a second location. 

[00:11:14] Estela Velasco: And that's how we've been kind of surviving. I'm like most of the time here taking care of the shop while my husband is doing the renovations, at the other shop.

[00:11:22] Miranda Black: Yeah. How was the transition? Toronto is very neighborhood. Oriented, you know, something goes four blocks away and you're like, I can't possibly go there anymore. 

[00:11:32] Estela Velasco: Exactly. Well, we've been here for a little bit more than a year. So a lot of our old customers are being like finding us. We're hoping to stay over there. We had a lot of customers there, but like with COVID because the landlord offer us three months and then we have to sign a lease 

[00:11:49] Miranda Black: Three months free and 

[00:11:51] Estela Velasco: No! Not free to pay what we were paying at the moment during covid. 

[00:11:55] Miranda Black: That was their offer? 

[00:11:57] Estela Velasco: That was his offer. 

[00:11:58] Miranda Black: Three months at the rent that you're 

[00:12:00] Estela Velasco: at right now.

[00:12:01] Miranda Black: And then in three months, time, 50% more. 

[00:12:04] Estela Velasco: Yes.

[00:12:04] Miranda Black: I asked if anyone had taken over that space at that price during COVID and no one has. It's sat empty for 20 months. Any retailer will tell you how common this is. Spaces that have been sitting vacant for years. Years! You approach them and most of the time they don't even get back to you.

It's amazing to me. I mean, you're a building owner now. 

[00:12:23] Estela Velasco: Yeah. 

[00:12:24] Miranda Black: So maybe, you know, better. Why would someone go for 20 months with zero rent as opposed to having you in there? 

[00:12:32] Estela Velasco: Because they have super deep pockets. They own it's like a company it's not like a person, so they own so many other buildings. 

[00:12:41] Miranda Black: Right.

[00:12:41] Estela Velasco: They bought the building and it's been empty since then. The next door neighbor it's been empty. Like ok, in that area, each empty building, even it is for rent it's still empty. They asking for like crazy money. I don't know. They, they, they prefer to have them empty for some reason? 

[00:13:00] Miranda Black: One reason is that many cities actually incentivize building owners to keep their spaces empty via tax breaks. In early 2020 a bunch of cities in the U S and Canada were preparing to vote out the vacant storefront tax because it benefits building owners to keep their spaces empty. But then COVID hit and here in Toronto, at least, the tax incentive remains. Thousands of storefronts sit empty in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, all demanding, unrealistic rents, purposefully high to turn people away. Why? Well, rent is not the only way to generate profit from commercial properties. Speculation is very lucrative for those with deep pockets and speculation combined with those tax incentives, it's a perfect environment to keep properties vacant. And this doesn't just affect aspiring business owners. Commercial property speculation can kill a neighborhood. Those vacancies lead to increased crime, fire and vandalism. 

So that empty storefront in your area. It's probably never going to transform into a cute indie shop by an aspiring entrepreneur. More than likely it's going to sit empty for a decade or more as the numbered company waits for the value to increase, adding zippity doo dah to your community. But I digress. We were talking about the benefits of putting coffee right at the front of your retail store. 

[00:14:23] Ramon Perez: It definitely is a way to get people into a space they aren't familiar with. I mean, I'm hoping this helps us out because on top of the pandemic, they have been working on our roadway. 

[00:14:33] Miranda Black: Oh God.

[00:14:34] Ramon Perez: In front of, so for the past we're like this is great. There's a TTC stop right outside our door. People are gonna want snacks. They're gonna want coffee. Awesome. We got maybe a month of that, then the city was like, oh, we're going to close and rip up the street. They just started working again after three months of not working because they encountered problems that no one wanted to pay for.

It's just like, oh my God, can we not wait here at all? 

[00:14:56] Miranda Black: I'm not a city planner. I don't know how long these things take to book, but couldn't, you have just put it off. Because people need money right now and the road seems fine. 

[00:15:08] Ramon Perez: I know, right. They've be meaning to do that for three years. Every year they put it off. So you choose to do it when we're reopening, you don't choose to do it when everything was closed for a year like... 

[00:15:23] Miranda Black: Or put it off for another three years! You put it off for three years before, for some other reason. And you saw a direct impact on your business?

[00:15:31] Ramon Perez: I've talked to other store owners who have been here for decades and their sales income has dropped by 90%. 

[00:15:36] Miranda Black: Oh no. 

[00:15:38] Ramon Perez: they're just struggling to make it through. Restaurants, bars, like it just astounding, like the bars couldn't even put out their cafe T.O street sections because it was a construction zone. So people can't go inside. They can't put anything out front. So they're like, what are we? It's devastating. 

[00:15:56] Miranda Black: I'm not sure if that connection is happening with the powers that be of just how devastating it is. So how did you decide what products you're going to sell?

How did you create a store? 

[00:16:08] Ramon Perez: Years prior to us moving into our new space here, we also started publishing books, because there is no answer to our industry. All the publishers are in the states. There's only a couple... 

[00:16:20] Miranda Black: All the comic book publishers? 

[00:16:23] Ramon Perez: Aside from there had been a couple over the years in Toronto, but they've either taken advantage of the talent, not paid people. So out of stubbornness, I was like, you know what, we can do this and we can treat the talent right. Cause we've been on the other side, so we know how to operate in an honest and truthful manner with the people we collaborate with, 

[00:16:42] Miranda Black: Where do you get your stuff printed? 

[00:16:44] Ramon Perez: All locally. We've kept everything in Canada. We print in either Northern Ontario or Quebec.

Just trying to keep it like, keep it local. So that's how we started, our product was the first thing to go in. 

[00:16:54] Miranda Black: When you say your product, what is that? 

[00:16:56] Ramon Perez: Books, art prints, posters, t-shirts enamel pins. People are going to walk in. They're going to see the art on the walls. They look at the art and they go, oh, well this really cool? Can I buy a book? And then they see the book. Book? Oh, you mean the people back here created this? We have actually a little secret doorbell that the cafe can ring it if you want to call one of us out to sign a book or engage with 

[00:17:17] Miranda Black: Secret doorbell?!?

[00:17:17] Ramon Perez: The yeah. You know, it's just like, that's a little bit of a flare. Well, okay. 

[00:17:21] Miranda Black: So where's the secret bell? 

[00:17:23] Ramon Perez: Oh the secret bell's over here.

[00:17:36] Miranda Black: And you're the artist. What's your name? 

[00:17:41] Andrew Healy: Andrew Healy. I mostly write for kids cartoons. 

[00:17:45] Miranda Black: I have a six year old 

[00:17:48] Andrew Healy: PJ Masks. 

[00:17:51] Miranda Black: You write for PJ masks?!

[00:17:51] Andrew Healy: I wrote 2 episodes the first season. And this is the story I did with my friend, Danesh. It's kind of like an adult fairytale. 

[00:17:58] Miranda Black: What's it called? 

[00:17:59] Andrew Healy: Dr. Cucaracha. 

[00:18:01] Miranda Black: So I ring that bell and then I can meet one of the writers.

[00:18:04] Andrew Healy: What do you want me to say? 

[00:18:06] Miranda Black: I'm freezing. Cause the PJ Masks thing!

[00:18:11] Andrew Healy: I mean, crazy. The comic was a product of being part of the studio. Ramon reached out to Danesh and I to do something for the anthology 

[00:18:21] Miranda Black: so the collective, because you're part of R.A.I.D., you were able to create this book. 

[00:18:28] Andrew Healy: Exactly. 

[00:18:29] Ramon Perez: Also just seeing like people going like, oh, this is actually made here. And people are just behind that door, making it 

[00:18:36] Miranda Black: Yeah 

[00:18:36] Ramon Perez: yeah.

[00:18:36] Miranda Black: Are your T-shirts also made in Canada?

[00:18:38] Ramon Perez: Yeah yeah. We source local producers. As we moved here, we also discovered that, oh, there's a guy around the corner who does t-shirts and silk screening. Its fun and interesting being part of the community. Cause before the studio was up on the fourth floor of a building, so you didn't really engage in the street front or the local community. You went out, grabbed your coffee, you went to work. Here it's like you're meeting other shop owners who are coming into your space and seeing what you do. So that's also been a great bonus. 

[00:19:05] Miranda Black: When you're street side, you have a responsibility to the public. 

[00:19:09] Ramon Perez: Exactly right. It's explaining the space to people that come in. New artists that have discovered the space by just coming to get a coffee, like, oh, were you looking for a place to work out of what do you offer? It's a very interesting dynamic. I mean, it's like this weird confluence of retail, art gallery cafe studio, that kind of just circles. 

[00:19:26] Miranda Black: It's a really unique retail business. You're not just retail. 

[00:19:30] Ramon Perez: Yeah. The studio supports one aspect of the space and then you have the cafe. As a source of income, the gallery event space, all these things feed into each other and play off each other as well. While the studio is successful on its own, it now is part of like a nice Whirlpool effect. If we, if we were just a bookstore, I think we would die a quick death. If there's a slow month with the retail, I know the studio is there to, to back up the finances. Right. So every piece leans on the other piece.

[00:20:00] Miranda Black: Yeah. So you had a dream. If I put the dream and the reality side by side, do they match up? Is it what you expected? 

[00:20:10] Ramon Perez: I don't think we've had a perfect run yet. You know, we were open for a year, but I think that for that first year, while we survived, it gave us a very limited idea of what was possible. Cause even our, even we even had like, just between lockdowns of last year, I think there was a nice sweet window around like August, September, October of last year, where there was 

[00:20:30] Miranda Black: It was a sweet window. 

[00:20:31] Ramon Perez: You know what I mean? So that, that little sweet window. We had one event, but that one event was so limiting because we were only allowed to have 20 people in the space based on regulation. The cops were like circling. They were looking going, how many people, thay are literally counting heads as they drove by. It was a good event, but it was very limited.

So. Over the past several months, as we've been able to actually have people in the space, people are vaccinated. They're feeling more comfortable, the whole anxiety levels, for the most part, they haven't all gone away, but people's anxiety levels are going down. We've actually had days here now where you have people in the front, you can hear the chitter chatter people sitting down and having a coffee enjoying the space.

[00:21:12] Miranda Black: That's nice.

[00:21:13] Ramon Perez: Yeah. And that's something we haven't been able to have for,for the better part of the first. 

[00:21:18] Miranda Black: Seventeen years.

[00:21:20] Ramon Perez: Ha! Right. So when I'm lining them up, I'm saying they're close because I see the potential. We've even had new members join the space because people have been working from home now for a year and a half, and we're going a little bit kooky. They want to get out. Yeah. It was surprising as soon as Ontario lifted the ban. How many people you could have in your space, we were suddenly seeing like a bunch of calls. People are going, Hey, I'm double vaxxed, can I rent a spot? Yeah. So like both elements, not only the studio, but the cafe are seeing positive results due to the vaccinations, people's comfort levels and all that stuff. So I see the reality creeping up closer to the dream. And as things get better, we can try new and interesting things as well. Right. 

[00:22:04] Miranda Black: The event space sounds really cool. 

[00:22:06] Ramon Perez: We're actually having a gallery opening here in a week for a new. It will be our first event where we can have over a hundred people.

[00:22:13] Miranda Black: So how did the event go? You, you had an event, we talked about an event and for someone with a kid under 12, I'm just wondering what it was like to be at an indoor party for a hundred people. 

[00:22:24] Ramon Perez: Well, it's funny, we couldn't do a hundred, actually. The rules changed literally two days after our event. So we were limited to 30.

Okay. But, uh, the day after I think we could have had 80 or something, but it was actually quite nice to have an event with 30 people coming in and out enjoying drinks, snacks, looking at the artwork. Cause we had had one event during the earlier days of the pandemic, I think our limit at that time was 17 people, but that's including also people working.

Right? So 

[00:22:52] Miranda Black: That's like Doug Ford Thanksgiving dinner! 

[00:22:54] Ramon Perez: I know. Right, exactly. We literally had 10 people as guests rotating through the space while you have like some of the artists and the people working the bar and the cafe. 

[00:23:04] Miranda Black: So 17 people, including the workers. 

[00:23:06] Ramon Perez: Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. We made the best we could of it, right.

[00:23:10] Miranda Black: Right. 

What's the biggest success that you've had, I guess with the whole space?

[00:23:15] Ramon Perez: People discovering our product, especially new people who are unfamiliar, like comic book stores: some people just don't go into those places. They're very boutique and niche. You know what I mean? And creepy sometimes they're creepy too, I'll be honest with you.

There's I remember what I remember the first time when I was a kid and I went to a comic store. I was like, this place is weird. Like, who are these people? So. Just having people discover these things, especially our books, cuz that's really where the people here put their most. It's an urban art form, comics. You see a lot of galleries where they don't seem accessible. They're these very kind of pristine spaces that you feel awkward going in. Cause there's like one person sitting there. If you talk above a whisper, it's just weird. So by making that coffee shop the lure, you're making it more accessible to the common person who can then come in and see the artwork as well and discover the products. Oh, this is really cool. This is something not in my wheelhouse, but I stumbled across it. 

[00:24:08] Miranda Black: I have a question about the artwork, so, um, I can use the word comics, right? Sometimes I use the word comics and I thought it was like a dirty word with illustrators. 

[00:24:18] Ramon Perez: Naw!

[00:24:18] Miranda Black: Okay. I wasn't sure 

Maybe with some illustrators. 

[00:24:22] Ramon Perez: But naw, we love it.

[00:24:24] Miranda Black: Are they drawing each and every square on the, yeah, that's all hand drawn? Every everything's all hand drawn? 

[00:24:33] Ramon Perez: People are using computers, but it's still literally hand drawn on the computer. 

[00:24:37] Miranda Black: Yeah, well, I see right behind you, there's a guy he's on a computer drawing with his hands. 

[00:24:43] Ramon Perez: Yeah, exactly. It's still drawn by hand. You're just using a different tool. I draw on the computer, but I also draw on paper where the originals are 13 by 19 inches. And then they're scanned down to the book size that you would buy, like the Archie book or whatever it might be. So, yeah, it's all hand drawn. There's a lot of love that goes into these pages that people never see or are unaware of, so that was one of the main reasons behind creating the gallery. I remember the first time I saw comic strip original from, I don't know if you remember the comic Hagar the Horrible, Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield in the newspaper. That's what I read as a kid. So the comic strip is no bigger than two inches by five inches in the newspaper, but the originals are usually about eight inches by 14. They're quite large. Right. And when you see the artwork that much larger, it's a different experience from a newspaper strip down like this, to something that is probably almost two feet wide and you get a different sense of the artwork and the skill involved in creating the lines by hand with a brush or with a pen. So that was one of the primary reasons of the gallery is to expose people to that facet of the work that they're not familiar with. The reality, you know what I mean? I 

[00:25:52] Miranda Black: I love it. So all the work in the gallery, that's all for sale as well?

[00:25:56] Ramon Perez: Yeah. Unless the artists themselves doesn't want it to put it for sale, but usually everything's priced out whether they're digital prints or the originals, as well. 

[00:26:05] Miranda Black: It sounds like it could also be an easy business to do online?

[00:26:08] Ramon Perez: We are slowly creating, I mean, you, you're probably aware that you're spinning so many plates when you run a business. Like right now, I'm just finishing up the publishing side website and 

[00:26:20] Miranda Black: Do you have more plates spinning now that you're in bricks and mortar? 

[00:26:24] Ramon Perez: Oh, my God. So many plates, so many plates. You see the gray hair, like so many plates. 

[00:26:37] Miranda Black: With the bricks and 

[00:26:37] Ramon Perez: mortar. Oh my God. I also have my own career. So I still draw comic books. I still draw work for clients. Plus even like just changing the art in the gallery while it's a simple thing, there's a lot of work that you know, leads up to it, the framing of the artwork, the repainting of the walls cause they get dirty after, you know, a month, of people walking in and out, touching the handprints all over it, you know. You'd be surprised how many hand prints, you know what I mean? 

[00:27:02] Miranda Black: You don't want those ghost squares all over your walls

[00:27:07] Ramon Perez: You got to take everything down, you clean it up, you give it a paint job, wait for it to dry. YOu frame the artwork. So then you prepare for the event and you hope someone doesn't spill wine on whatever it might be. I mean, I love every second of it. It's exciting. But if I could triplicate me, 

[00:27:22] Miranda Black: it's funny to ask you because you deal with Superhero's. 

[00:27:26] Ramon Perez: Okay. 

[00:27:27] Miranda Black: What is your retail superpower?

[00:27:30] Ramon Perez: My retail superpower? I think it's plate spinning. I'm just amazed that none of them have crashed to the floor at this point. And I think my luck has been being surrounded by good people. The right people make things happen. When we made the move here a few people who kind of didn't agree with what we were doing and the direction we were taking...a colleague of mine who works for a large company, he was like, be ready. Cause it's a great thing. It's a great idea, but you're going to lose friends along the way, because they're not going to agree with it. 

[00:27:59] Miranda Black: I didn't push Ramon when we were on the call to go into detail on what sounds to be a challenging time for his business. But when we sat down a person, I asked him what kind of chaos ensues in a collective of creatives. Doing a renovation during COVID. If you could go back and do it over again, I've talked to other business owners and business owners have lost friends in COVID because you get blamed. And I'm just wondering if that's it's part of it or if there's anything that you could have done, 

[00:28:30] Ramon Perez: it's hard. Yeah, because you always wonder where you could have turned left instead of going right. We were kind of thrust into a position where we were being forced to move out of our old space. So it wasn't a scenario where we had time, not enough to actually make more informed, timely decisions. So we kind of decided on this place, knowing that there would be a huge amount of work involved, but because of the timely manner which we had to move, I guess discussions and things weren't as well communicated as they could have been and this is probably on my side as well. Things I thought I communicated well at the beginning, for example, like the arrangement of the space: I put out a floor plan and said, this is the plan for the new space. Put it up in our community, like internal message board.

And I heard crickets. So I was like, okay, no one has a problem with it. You know? And then when we move in, people were like, I don't like this here, we can't do this. I'm like, I've bought lumber for the purpose of doing this, you know, money has been spent with this idea in mind and people weren't liking it. Then it became to the point of ludicrous things like, oh, I don't like the color of the ceiling. And I'm like, what does it matter? You don't look up anyways. You're looking down, you're drawing. And then it became a stressful thing: well, should we repaint the ceiling? And I'm like, well, we don't have the budget to repaint! You know, my biggest concern was we only, the only windows we have are in the front, our old space had these beautiful, large windows.

Everybody got sunlight because we were like an old brownstone with a view of the city skyline. So it was gorgeous, 

[00:29:59] Miranda Black: hard to replicate, 

[00:30:00] Ramon Perez: hard to replicate, especially under rents in the city. So when we found this place, the only light coming in was the front garage door at the time. That was the only window.

And I said, are people okay with this? Like this is going to be something you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And people are, oh, yeah, it's fine. And then like fast forward, six months, they're like, I need natural light. And I get it. Like, I was craving natural light as well, but unfortunately, uh, our front entrance wasn't finished. So we had the things boarded up and now you you're you're here now. You've seen all the natural light coming in. It's glorious, but it's still not in the main area of the building. We're still working artificial light and the main section, right? I think a lot of people's anxieties and frustrations were high and.

People deal with things differently. And it was funny cause we had a few members join during this chaos and new members would walk into what was like a half finished environment and love it. They're like, this is the best space ever. You're like, okay. 

[00:30:58] Miranda Black: Because they hadn't seen the other ...

[00:31:00] Ramon Perez: exactly they had, they had, they had no point of reference for what, what it had before.

And unfortunately that's just, I think something you have to deal with. And would I do anything differently? If I was under the same pressures of like the time limit, I might think twice, I might just walk away from the whole scenario and just work from home as I used to do. But to be honest, like when we found this space and I saw the potential of what we could do here, I think I would probably go through it all again. I would probably go through different contractors.

 Since the dust has settled so many awesome people have come in excited by the space. So, I mean, knock on wood. I think that's been my super power this past year is being able to have the right people in my corner. 

[00:31:47] Miranda Black: What is your favorite memory of this place so far?

[00:31:52] Ramon Perez: Last summer, it must've been July. We'd been working on the facade, like putting up trim wood painting. And it was just a bunch of the members who would kind of lent their time to help paint, to help clean and sand. We opened the garage door and we were just all drinking a beer out on the front and all these people were just walking by going, what's going on in here?

This place has been like derelict for 15 years! Like so people are just walking by and people would start talking with us, we'll have events where we'll like open up the garage door in the evening, have a barbecue going. And every time we do that, it's hands down some random people come by start talking, asking about the space, come in.

And we've had some, we've had some amazing individuals just by having that garage door open, like from all walks of life, which is just fascinating. You just meet so many great people. 

[00:32:42] Miranda Black: It's what I miss most about the store. 

[00:32:45] Ramon Perez: I bet. Yeah. 

[00:32:46] Miranda Black: All the characters you meet 

[00:32:48] Ramon Perez: yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, that's my favorite memory so far. That dusty door opening and us kind of engaging cuz that door was closed and papered up.

Right. And it's just, it's like the sun beams kind of coming in and you're like, oh, the angels are singing, you know?

[00:33:09] Miranda Black: Oh, wow.

This is such a nice little patio. 

[00:33:17] Ramon Perez: Like I said, you just look out there, see the water from here. It's a nice little corner. Really nice. 

[00:33:24] Miranda Black: So the garage door at 1720 Queen Street West is no longer boarded up. The yellow and red sign has been taken down. The reign of Corona bar is over. I did my best to find someone who had worked at, or patronized, Corona Restaurant and Nightclub to find out what this place was like back in the day.

But I couldn't find anyone willing to go on the record. I did hear back from a source that I've sworn to keep anonymous and the information is secondhand. It's a friend of a friend who texted about a bouncer who worked at the club, who says at the end of a shift one night, he found a dead body in the back.

This place seems like it was destined to be rescued by Ramon Perez, creator of superhero and myth, a place where superhero Creators hangout and get inspired to tell impossible stories, a place where legends 

[00:34:16] Ramon Perez: are born.

I'm just be like, one of those guys doesn't know what they're doing. I go like, this sounds like it might work.

[00:34:22] Miranda Black: That's the best kind of entrepreneur there is! 

Thank you so much to Ramon Perez and all the artists at R.A.I.D.. Thanks to Estella Velazco and Sylvio Rodrigues from El Almacen. Thank you to Andrew Healy and Dr. Cucaracha from the R.A.I.D. Collective. Adam Wynne for his very helpful Toronto history information, the Parkdale BIA, The Walrus for my information on the vacant building tax.

If you enjoyed this episode, please gimme a review. Follow us on social media. I'll see you in two weeks.