Well, The Regent Theatre has reopened last night. Despite the three hour delay, the unfinished drywall, dust, flooding toilet and a city inspector who was being a pain in the ass, they reopened.

Opening act was Dr. Draw, second act David Usher and the last act was the Leahys.

Dedication ceremony right after Dr. Draw was neat. All in all, a great time was had. The owner seems to be a pretty cool guy. He let me take a number of pictures after the show was done and while he was tired, tried to look through the album of pics Shutterbug and I took of the place in 1996. Unfortunately he kept getting interrupted and finally had no choice but to give up. I will be contacting the guy and suggest that we bring the photos at another date when he's not so busy and can actually look through them. We took shots and will be posting them shortly. All in all, considering the shape the place was in when he took over, I believe they did a great job. As mentioned, there's tons of work to be done yet. I was speaking with a lady who helped with cleanup of the place about 3 years ago. Apparently, the last tenants there trashed the place badly. They smashed pipes, ripped out wiring and just let the water flow. The basement was flooded and there was about three feet of water on the stage. A lot of mould and water damage resulted and for a bit, the city had considered demolition as the place was almost damaged beyond hope of repair. She commented that they had a really hard time getting pictures of the place and the ones Shutterbug and I had would have been a great help.

We didn't get back home until around 3:30 this morning and were quite exhausted. The only disaster we had was one of the two cameras we used lost all its pics! BLARGH! Fortunately, the pics I took with the good camera turned out to be duplicates so we didn't lose much.

We're looking forward to going back when the restoration is fully completed and will try to get some more pics. Also, due to the low lighting, we will be getting a monopod to use for better pictures.

Finally got some pics posted. Sorry if the quality is not 100% but this is the first time I was shooting in low light with this camera. Also, we didn't know if photography was allowed and didn't bring the tripod. Another time though. The owner is pretty cool and said to contact him if we needed anything.

More photos to follow when the system allows. Enjoy!

Thanks for the tour. Now, if only the rest of King Street in that area can be transformed like this. Sadly much of that part of town is vacant stores and taggings with prostitots at night (or so I hear).