Remembering Gord's Chick

I was reminiscing the other day while walking to the office about the changing face of the St. Catharines downtown core. I thought about Gord’s Place on James Str. and the times that I used to waste away there on weekends drinking my face off during my High School and University days.

Ahh, Gord’s. Yes, the den of inequity from which spawned a thousand pubescent substance abuse problems.

Specifically, I was thinking about what might have transpired to the infamous “Gord’s Chick” who also happened to frequent the place. “Gord’s Chick” was your typical Goth girl you see at any “alternative bar” you may wander into; all done up to the nines in retro lingerie, tights, knee high boots, pale make-up and black eyeliner…basically, your average local Siouxsie Sioux rip off. While there – and she was at Gord’s every night – she would dance up a storm to any hard-edged Goth tune the DJ had a mind to play at the time. She was part graceful ballerina; part whirling dervish. She was both scary and exhilarating to watch. It looked as if she was trying to conjure up some wrath of God via a typhoon, hurricane or some other random destructive act of nature…and man, was it sexy!

But where does someone go after being a Goth? What’s the next stage of the fashion evolution once you submit yourself to looking like a zombie corpse? I just can’t picture her in later in life wearing cowboy boots and skinny jeans dancing away at a Taylor Swift concert…but who knows? Maybe she has mellowed out in her old age (or whatever age it is that “old” constitutes itself as when you’re classified as an undead), popped out a few puppies and now lives on social assistance down by the railroad tracks.

You never know, do you?

I prefer to think of her as still raging against the dying of the light - a perpetual benchmark as far as full-time dedicated Goths go. I sincerely hope I see her again at some point. Perhaps at the market trying to buy kitten whiskers for her next witchy concoction, or maybe trying to raise spirits in some deserted graveyard or something. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a glimpse of her dancing away by herself in some abandoned bus stop somewhere without a care in the world as if time had stood still and she was still back on the dance floor at Gord’s.