Fine dress and dance moves abound in this veritable Where's Waldo photo of styles from the 1980s, peaking on New Year's Eve 1990.
Blade photographer Dave Zapotosky captured these revelers in downtown Toledo at Club Bijou, which was the last business to occupy what started in the 1940s as the Esquire Theatre.
Of course it went by many names over the years: The Asylum, Clubland, Red Room, Citi Theater, Pulse, the Red Room again ... and Club Bijou again.
But its prime was probably as The Asylum in the mid and late ’90s. The Blade reported that with a 1,000-head capacity, the club booked then prominent national acts such as the Tragically Hip, They Might Be Giants, GWAR, Cheap Trick, 311, Everclear, the Verve Pipe, and even Marilyn Manson.
After becoming the Bijou again in the early 2000s, it would be political and musical iconoclast Jello Biafra who headlined the Bijou's final weekend before demolition at the end of April 2007.
A Fostoria promoter did beat a drum of protest to “save” the club with a petition and attempt to get the National Register of Historic Places to recognize the site.
But Bijou owner Kip Diacou would also have had to agree. And he had already sold the building to Lucas County for about $2.3 million to make way for the Huntington Center.
He told the Blade, "If [Daniel Clowers] comes up with $3 million, he can buy the building and have any kind of petition he wants."
Though unsuccessful in finding that pocket money, the promoter did have an ear for the future of protests, titling his personally driven quest, "The Great American Protest."
Mr. Clowers said many Toledoans didn't want to see the club close, stating, “We're still going to make a stink about this.”
No one smelled that smell though, and the air at 209 N. Superior St. is now charmed by the Toledo Walleye and other national acts. Toledo has lost great buildings over its centuries, and made foolish trades on the embodied energy of existing architecture for parking lots, but the Huntington Center has been a clear sighted success.
After demolition, the Bijou did relocate to South Byrne Road for a time before closing permanently soon after.
Observant armchair semiologists will note one iteration of the magnificent Club Bijou sign still rests in a graveyard of forgotten signage at the Toledo Sign Co. on Adams Street.
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First Published December 30, 2019, 11:00 a.m.
