Wait: Did Taylor Swift really visit a Toronto dive bar?

It’s been 10 days since the Eras Tour left town, but the legends of Tay-ronto 2024 live on—from the stage of the Rogers Centre to the city’s dive bars. According to a story published in the Toronto Star earlier this week, Taylor Swift made an unexpected stop at Inter Steer, a long-standing no-nonsense bar on Roncesvalles, after her final show on November 23. It makes for quite the news—world-famous pop icon hangs out at charming but random local Polish tavern! The stars really are just like us! It seems almost too good to be true, which raises the question: Is it? We decided to get to the bottom of it via this exclusive investigation.

The rumour

Per the Star story, Swift eschewed the city’s more predictable celebrity haunts, like Nobu, in favour of Inter Steer, a 30-year-old family-owned establishment previously most famous for its pierogi nachos and devoted barflies. However, the Star’s article is slim on details (no named source, no quotes, no shots of Taylor guzzling XL bottles of Zywiec) to support this massive scoop.

The background

As you may have heard, Taylor Swift played a few shows in Toronto last month. The six-night mini-residency has been hailed as both an economic boon (injecting the city with an estimated $282 million) and a modern-day Woodstock, bringing peace, love and friendship bracelets to a city desperately in need of good vibes. November 23 was Swift’s final show—so if ever there were a night to cut loose and hit up an establishment one Yelp reviewer hailed as “not just for bar brawls anymore,” this was it.

The precedent

Does Swift go to dive bars? Why yes, she does. Champagne problems notwithstanding, she grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, and her tastes have always been more down-home than haute. This is more true than ever now that she’s dating a football player. This past April, she and her beau, Travis Kelce, showed up at Barney’s Beanery in LA, the roadhouse Jim Morrison once got kicked out of for urinating on the bar. Her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, includes a shout-out to the Black Dog, a pub Swift frequented when she lived in England (and one that’s now an official stop on the TS fan tour, serving up Swift-themed burgers and cocktails). Point is, this particular pop diva loves a good hole in the wall, so an Inter Steer pit stop would not be without precedent.

The false testimony

For a second there, it seemed like we got corroboration on a neighbourhood Facebook group called Roncy/Parkdale Friendly Neighbours, where one user commented that Swift had shown up in a big hat and sunglasses and had actually arrived there on the 501 streetcar. She drank beer, played guitar and left via the back patio before the fans descended. However, the Facebook user later deleted her post and went on to explain that she thought the whole thing was a spoof and was simply indulging in some Taylor Swift x TTC fan fiction, a niche but up-and-coming sub-genre.

The slightly put-out staffer

When Toronto Life called Inter Steer to get confirmation on the Star’s report, an unnamed staff member wasn’t having it. “I wasn’t here, but I don’t even think that happened,” the staffer said. “Someone thought they saw her—that’s all. I gotta go.” A Redditor appeared to back up Inter Steer’s non-confirmation, posting yesterday evening: “I am at the Inter Steer, she DID NOT come here. Source: the owner.” This is either an outright denial or calculated misdirection—which would be weird but also very Queen West.

The inconsistencies

Local media personality Ginella Massa joked in a video posted to Tiktok that she was “highly offended” by Swift’s failure to get to know our fair city: “Why hasn’t she been spotted causing a frenzy at a Japanese cheesecake spot? She should be making a Somali restaurant go viral.” Massa noted that Niall Horan (of One Direction fame) even walked to his Toronto show (albeit because downtown traffic was so bad, but still). The answer, one assumes, has a lot to do with security concerns. And now we’re supposed to believe that the same woman who required a police motorcade to transport her from the airport was able to leave all that behind for an evening of hipster cosplay?

The Swiftie read

It’s no secret that Swift communicates with her fans via subtext and codes. There is no such thing as a meaningless decision in the Swift-o-verse, and with that in mind, we point to the surprise songs played at the November 23 concert, which included “Message in a Bottle.” The lesser-known track off the album Red is about love and anxiety—but in this case it might have also been a sign that a certain someone had a hankering for a lukewarm bottle of Labatt 50.

The flight logs

Hat tip to the Redditor who pointed us to a thread that tracks Taylor Swift’s flight logs. It seems her Falcon 7X took off from Toronto at 12:24 a.m., barely an hour after the end of the concert. And while we know girlfriend can chug, the timing just doesn’t add up.

The follow-up

Toronto Life reached out to the Star for comment, but as of 12:50 p.m., when this story was published, we had not received a response. Regardless of its veracity, the story has now been re-reported by Billboard, meaning a small bar in Toronto is now an official part of Swift folklore, and Inter Steer may want to consider some Swift-themed apps. We have a suggestion: the You Belong With Pierogi Platter.

Update: On December 5, the Star retracted its story, saying it does not meet their standards for accuracy and fairness, and it relied on a detailed account from a source that was not properly verified.

The verdict

At first, it seemed plausible. Swift, above all else, is a master in the art of reputation. Yes, tickets to her Toronto shows cost more than rent, but the cabbage rolls at Inter Steer are only $13. In theory, the optics would have provided a potent counterpoint to the out-of-touch-celebrity narrative. But, in reality, certain details just don’t pass the sniff test: the lack of hard evidence, the security concerns, the fact that her plane was verifiably in the sky around the time she would have been putting her first loonie into Inter Steer’s jukebox. Sure, it’s possible that Swift told her team to fly on ahead while she played hooky in the west end, but barring further developments, we’re having trouble (trouble, trouble) believing that’s the case.