Live nude ghouls

Of all the Halloween weekend bashes geared to grown-ups, you can’t get more "adult" than Pornoween, a rock spectacle that’s evidently the first live event to ever pre-empt the decades-long XXX marathon in the main auditorium of the Metro Theatre (677 Bloor St. W.). Concerts have been held on the scary premises before, but always in the smaller secondary cinema, rather than amidst the pungent juice, nicotine and bleach aromas of Toronto’s last surviving porn palace. While the Metro has been up for sale for a few years, and its imminent closing was implied in last month’s Eye Weekly cover feature, all this renewed attention seems to anticipate its gentrification. Stranger things have happened – after all, the nearby Bloor Cinema hit its seediest nadir in the mid-’70s, when it was called the Eden, just before its repertory renaissance began in 1979, with a management change in 1999 inspiring a splendid restoration. The latest column from The Star’s Martin Knelman condenses the century at the 506 Bloor St. W. bijou, being celebrated Sunday afternoon with free admission for a documentary about the place, and non-erotic cake.