Comedy Bar was born out of necessity. In the mid-2000s, sketch troupe The Sketchersons were moving their weekly Sunday Night Live show from venue to venue: first the Poor Alex, followed by the Brunswick House, and the Diesel Playhouse. Another move was likely iminent, as the Diesel’s days seemed numbered.

This month, Comedy Bar marks 10 years of being Toronto’s comedy clubhouse. It’s where new performers find their voice, alt-comedy heroes drop in, and Colin Mochrie is the subject of women’s washroom graffiti (in one stall: “he’s the best guy!”).

Pat Thornton, founding cast member and former head writer of the Sketchersons: I just said it was crazy, and it’s going to eat his whole life. Now he’s a legend, so I’m happy to be wrong about that. Not that it didn’t eat his life.

Mark Andrada, Sketchersons technical director 2004-2015, and Comedy Bar technical director since 2008: Gary told me that he was going to open Comedy Bar and I told him he was dumb. Number one, there's no way that's going to work, and number two, you're killing your own career.

Why rent another stage when they could have their own? Sketchersons cast member and producer Gary Rideout Jr. believed the Toronto market could support a venue dedicated to independently-produced comedy and serve as the troupe’s permanent home. He teamed up with his friend James Elksnitis, and sought a location.

Gary Rideout Jr., co-owner of Comedy Bar and founding cast member/producer of The Sketchersons : There was a weird room with a mattress in it. I think they were doing some prostitution in there. When we went to throw out the mattress, there was a huge scimitar under it. We found all kinds of crazy shit.

Andrada: The night Gary got the keys, we came in expecting it to be empty, but they left all the booze. We had a few of those paper-on-the-doors free booze parties because we had to get “rid of it.” I'm using air quotes. I don't know if we really had to get rid of it.

An Eritrean restaurant and pool hall near Ossington Station fit the bill. Rideout and Elksnitis bought the business in October of 2007, and it came with some surprises.

Julie Dumais Osborne, founder of PROJECTproject : There was no theatre two days before guests were coming to town. So many of the Sketchersons were doing the manual labour of pulling that space together. Feeding drywall to the drywallers. We were painting the day before.

Rideout : Our contractor was like, “there's no way, it's not safe.” And I was like, “well, then this week instead of continuing work on whatever jobs, we're going to have to re-prioritize the order of what we work on to make it safe.”

Comedy Bar was supposed to open by Christmas 2007, but as Rideout discovered, “everything was illegal” about the space. Regardless, he and Elksnitis were confident the bar would be up to code long before its first big booking: the May 2008 Combustion Festival, produced by improv collective PROJECTproject. Just one week out from the festival, however, the bar was far from ready.

Rideout: We just filled the room with folding chairs and pulled off some shows. It was kind of inspiring halfway through a long renovation, when it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to have this busy festival bring in some money.

Andrada: I teched the shows from a folding table, because there was no booth yet. The Sunday Night Live news desk was the bar. We were serving shit out of coolers because we didn't have fridges.

Rideout: We built the stage that day. Everybody who was here getting ready for that first Combustion signed the floor underneath.

In May of 2009, Andy Kindler became Comedy Bar’s first out-of-town headliner, and one of many recognizable names to host the new incarnation of Sunday Night Live.

Rideout: It was a mix of every kind of weird thing at the beginning. We did the Festival of New Formats the January after that to find a bunch of new shows. That's how Frenzy [Freddie and Miguel Rivas] came up with Rapp Battlez.

Competitive improv show Catch 23 moved in to occupy the Monday slot, PROJECTProject took Wednesday nights, and monthly shows included the still-running Mantown and Perfect 10. To fill the calendar, Rideout rented the stage to anyone, including a burlesque troupe and a rap group.

Thornton: When we first started doing Sunday Night Live there, I remember feeling like we had a home. Like, this place is ours.

Andrada : Gary was going to paint over that, and I fought him so hard. I still occasionally message the Sketchersons, because they keep hitting it with the news desk. I just love it. I think it's really important that a space remembers where it came from. It's also so ridiculous, there's all these places where you can see mistakes.

Jenna Warriner, bartender since 2010 : There’s still a mural behind the [main stage] curtains, from the bar it used to be.

Jon Blair, former cast member and head writer of The Sketchersons: Ben Mulroney was a big one for me. He was super game for everything. Bret Hart did the show a number of times, and those were always really fun shows.

Andy Kindler, comedian : It was nerve wracking, but it was really fun. It was as close as I would ever get to being in a sketch group.

Andrada: Every time Bret Hart comes by, everybody's so happy to see him. When he put Gary in a sharpshooter in the middle of Rapp Battlez, this place came unglued.

Jocelyn Geddie, former cast member/head writer/producer of The Sketchersons: We’re all sweating bullets. He proceeds to go out on stage and obliterate. Was word-perfect on absolutely everything.

Rideout: Greg Proops had maybe 45 minutes between the end of his podcast recording and the start of Sunday Night Live. He came off stage, looked at each script once—literally flipped through them—and knew them.

Greg Proops, comedian: I’m a pretty quick study. It was great, because I got to do everything that weekend. One show was a sketch show, one show was a podcast, two stand-up shows, and there was an improv show. It was a little overwhelming and a little exhausting.

Rideout: I always love when we can get people coming in to be involved in things like Catch or Sunday Night Live. It endears them to our community a little bit more. You get to see another side of them, and see them do something different than in all the other markets they play.

One comedian who didn’t endear himself was Saturday Night Live alum Tim Meadows, brought in to celebrate Comedy Bar’s first anniversary.

Andrada: He was straight up a dick. He didn't want to meet anybody. He didn't want any pictures. Which is fine. The real thing that I thought was a bit of a jerk move was him canceling one of the shows, and showing up at Second City and doing a set for free. I think Gary produced that out of pocket. That's a real slap in the face to a guy who's trying to make his money back on you.