From the Times Colonist:

Derek Tusche is using sports and big TV screens to bring life -- and people -- back to a rundown pub on the Gorge.

Heckler's Bar & Grill is the newest incarnation of the basement bar in the Ramada Inn at 123 Gorge Road East. The space has had various lifeforms over the decades, including a strip bar when it was the Sherwood Inn and most recently as a bar called Fat Tuesdays.

"Sports never goes out of style ... it's always a trend, so it was a good way to design a new place," says Tusche, who is an equal partner in the hotel's food and beverage business with Aaron McGeough and Colin Lefebvre. Both Tusche and McGeough come from the Shark Club while Lefebvre is currently working on oil rigs and will join the partners in the spring.

The partners have spruced up the bar with new floors and paint, seven television screens with high-definition feeds ranging from 52 to 120 inches as well as pool, foosball and bubble hockey tables. The bar also runs a Sunday bowling league with the Wii game system.

"The whole area is going through a bit of a rebirth and we're a neighbourhood pub," says Tusche, 39, who was born and raised in Victoria and is a veteran of the pub scene, including manager of Central Bar & Grill. "There's condos going up around here and several new (administration) jobs have been added at the old (Gorge) hospital."

The partners are also running the Ramada's 50-seat restaurant, Reflections, the hotel's banquet business and plan to re-open the 85-seat lounge in April.

Darren Kloster Feb 06, 2008


"Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a homerun every time at bat, who strikes out the opposing batter when he's pitching and who throws strikes to every base when he's playing outfield. Any manager would want a guy like that playing for him. The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands and do those things."

-Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh on Hecklers