politics Mayoral Candidate Responds to Dance Ban With Footloose

David Soknacki clearly wants Toronto to cut loose and kick off its Sunday shoes.

Mayoral candidate David Soknacki has responded to a recent ban on electronic dance music (EDM) parties at Exhibition Place by channelling a little bit of Kevin Bacon. Exhibition Place board members voted 4-3 in favour of the ban. Supporters of it, including Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West), who headed the motion, cited drug and underage alcohol use at EDM events as the primary concern.

Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) and Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina), who voted against the motion, claimed that this concern had been exaggerated, and that Zlatko Starkovski, owner of Muzik nightclub, was supporting the ban because of his own business interests. (The mayor has been known to frequent Muzik, and is friends with Starkovski.)

Soknacki, though, has voiced his opposition to the ban in a slightly more dramatic, beloved-1980s-movie kind of way—by delivering Kevin Bacon’s monologue from Footloose (“Aren’t we told in Psalm 149 ‘Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let them praise His name in the dance?'”).

“Toronto needs to make decisions inspired by fact. Not Footloose,” reads the message at the end of his video.