Downtown Windsor Memories

I moved to Windsor in 2005. I had just turned 20 and was moving away from Chatham. Having some website design experience, I was tasked around 2007 to build the new version of a website that already existed about Downtown Windsor.

Slideshow Gallery of downtown Windsor photos. You can find a general directory here.

This is a map of Windsor bars around 2007.

Windsor X was a website that took photos of downtown Windsor bars and restaurants and was a venue directory. It may seem silly to think we needed that but back in the day Windsor had 60 bars and nightclubs in a one kilometre radius. It went down at some point and I was tasked to create the “new” version called Windsor Xtreme. What can I say, it was the mid 2000s.

We only did one event under the Windsor Xtreme name. I don’t even remember how long the website ended up. For years I had all of the files from the old Windsor X website on a hard drive. A few weeks ago I was with some friends and we were trying to remember the name of one of the venues (O Nightclub) and I remembered all of the files I had on a hard drive. Earlier this week I decided to post them on Facebook, just a taste of what I had.

That Facebook post went viral in the Windsor community.

A second post did half as many numbers, but it also included a photo of the Loop. The Loop was my second home in Windsor, and certainly my first home on Saturday night.

The other day, I got a message from Stacey Janzer at CBC to do a story on the posts. We walked around Windsor and talked about some of the venues. I had a good time discussing those days.

It brings me joy that so many people loved the CBC story and the Facebook posts about downtown Windsor. I know some people likely had negative memories of those days, some bad experiences, and I don’t want to minimize those. For a lot of us it was the best days of our lives, and days we wish we could experience again. Windsor had something special for a long time. I don’t think it could ever return. That said, I hope this current generation and the next finds something they could remember the same way we remember downtown Windsor.

If you are in any of the photos and do not want it uploaded please contact me at aaron@wrotkowski.ca and I will remove it.

If you are the photographer for Windsor X I will credit you for the photos. Please contact me at aaron@wrotkowski.ca