Meryl Lawton
Not Too Shabby | Treehouse Records co-owner Rob Clarke makes himself comfortable at Foosh.
Clarke and partner Justin Der first opened Foosh upstairs on Whyte Avenue and 105 Street in 2000. Besides being the only dedicated DJ record shop in Edmonton, the Foosh apparel brand also provided a medium for Clarke and Der’s visual designs. (Their recent “Paris Hilton behind bars” T-shirt was a worldwide hit.)
While clothing sales were strong enough to warrant moving Foosh to its main floor location in 2004, record sales didn’t keep pace. Everybody needs clothes, but not all DJs need records—at least not anymore. MP3s took care of that. Still, Clarke knew there was a niche market for DJ vinyl in Edmonton and opened Treehouse Records downtown in 2005.
“I was really excited about it,” Clarke recalls. “I moved away from Edmonton for awhile and really missed it. And I kept hearing about this ‘downtown’ thing that was happening. When I got back, it was in the paper all the time.”
Clarke had always thought a DJ record store was more of a “downtown” sort of thing—and if he could be part of downtown Edmonton’s renaissance, all the better. Along with Treehouse, he wanted to open a studio and performance space where Edmonton’s budding producers could apply their skills. Admittedly, the whole deal would have been a lot more cosmopolitan had it been located only eight blocks west from 10249 97 Street—that street is crud.
Clarke knows that—now. Not long after Treehouse moved in, the café next door and Red Strap Market shut down and area traffic slowed to a parade of litterers, graffiti taggers, pawnshoppers, addicts, and panhandlers (ironically, with the Law Courts right across the street).
Despite the area’s shabbiness—and let’s be clear about this, says Clarke—Treehouse was still in the black. The only reason he shut the shop down two weeks ago as opposed to the end of the year (like he had originally planned) was staffing issues.
Still, Clarke’s a little annoyed. He says the owners of Treehouse’s downtown building (and the owners of most every other building east of 97 Street) are laying in wait for the city and developers to move ahead with Mayor Mandel’s fabled The Quarters project. Once the downtown revitalization kicks in, they’ll sell their properties and turn a huge profit. Until then, Clarke laments, they won’t do a thing about upkeep. Not that the city is enforcing the graffiti bylaws in that neighbourhood. It’ll be gone soon enough, right?
But what does Clarke expect, right? The dance scene has always had a tough go of it in Edmonton. The studio space Clarke wanted to build in Treehouse’s basement quickly evolved into a club, KHz, that was shut down almost as quickly. Clarke notes that the police now have Y Afterhours in their sights. If it closes, Clarke says not only would Treehouse’s sales suffer, but the city’s cultural fabric would also be dealt a severe blow. As DJ Tryptomene, he’s experienced firsthand the positive effect dance music has on people.
“Some people will look up at the DJ booth and see someone like, say, Carl Cox like I did and think, ‘Man, I want to do that. I want to be that guy,’” says Clarke, who now has original dance productions out on a couple of labels himself. “Dance music represented an antidote to the mainstream and Treehouse acted like a sort of hub for us to reach out to all kinds of people who were part of the subculture: DJs, producers, dancers, artists, promoters....”
Clarke needn’t wax too nostalgic. All those cats are still around. Regardless, he can’t help but feel the pangs of empty-nest syndrome. “The downtown shop was awesome in the sense that it was its own thing,” he says. “When we moved downtown, I made a checklist of things I wanted to accomplish with the shop as part of my business plan—and I’ve managed to check off almost everything. In a way, Treehouse moving out of Foosh was a bit like having a teenager move away from home. It was cool to see the place run without us having to be there.”
