On Saturday, when Taylor Swift took her final bow in Toronto, billows of confetti rained down. Some danced in it. Others packed handfuls into Ziploc bags. The rest, no longer of use, was swept up and thrown away.
Is that an allegory for what is now happening to Toronto?
The city spent 10 days as the centre of the Taylor Swift universe, playing host to the Eras Tour and welcoming up to 500,000 visitors. Signs changed, spending increased, businesses thrived. Now, days after Swift has packed up and left for her next tour stop, perhaps the whiplash of when the world came to town is setting in.
Bars and restaurants near the Rogers Centre are no longer as busy as they were. GO trains are no longer running as frequently. Billboards advertising the Eras Tour will come down, eventually. And fans who saw the show after months and months of anticipation are feeling a touch of the postconcert blues.
Call it the Eras hangover.
“That was hard,” said Daphné Carisse, a Swiftie from Ottawa, “(the) night was magical, and then to know that it’s over.”
Carisse saw the show with her 12-year-old daughter, Emma, on Nov. 15. She still can’t talk about it without crying.
“It was the most amazing night I’ve ever had,” she said.
Carisse doesn’t get to do much with her kids. She is disabled and uses a walker, and because of the pain she feels from sitting for too long, she doesn’t even get to go to the movies with her kids.
But for $1,750 each, she got two accessible tickets to the Eras Tour. Instead of watching the concert, Carisse spent much of it watching Emma.
“I never get to do these things with my children,” Carisse said. “I couldn’t believe I got to share that moment with her and I got to be part of it.”
The letdown hit hard, though. The next night, as Carisse and Emma ate dinner in their hotel on Lower Simcoe Street, they saw the crowds lining up for Swift’s third show. Carisse scrolled StubHub to check on prices for more tickets.
To not be seeing it again while it played a block away was hard. “That’s how special that evening was,” she said.
The shows were special for businesses, too. Downtown spending during the first three Eras Tour shows jumped 57 per cent compared to the prior week, according to Canadian payment processing firm Moneris, and spending from international visitors more than doubled.
But at least one restaurant isn’t feeling much of a hangover. The shows helped boost a normally slow month of November for Trevor Brodie, director of restaurant operations at the Amsterdam Brewhouse, the waterfront restaurant located only a half-kilometre from the Rogers Centre.
The brewhouse relies on patio business, Brodie said, which carries it through the warmer months and into the early fall. But when October slips into November and the patio closes, there’s a void. Taylor Swift filled it.
The brewhouse brought in DJs, live music and custom menu items, like the Swift-themed cocktails and beers. They sold a “Look What You Made Me Do” margarita and “Bad Blood” raspberry sour. By the time the sparkles settled, they had sold around 1,500 Swift-themed drinks.
An unexpected bestseller? “Mac and cheese,” Brodie said. “Super hot with the preteen and teen category right now.”
Now that the wave has come and gone, Brodie isn’t feeling the blues. It just so happens that the end of November is when the holiday season kicks in, filled with company Christmas parties and end-of-year lunches.
“Everyone gets to catch their breath a little bit,” Brodie said, “and get ready for an amazing Christmas season.”
The Eras Tour is now barrelling onwards to Vancouver, where Swift will play her final three shows. The stop is expected to add $157 million to Vancouver’s economy and more than 82,000 hotel rooms have already been booked, according to tourism body Destination Vancouver.
Carisse is now trying to get tickets there to see the show again.
