Party bus patrons filmed ‘relieving themselves’ on home in Queen West

The owner of a party bus rental company says he was disgusted to hear of a video showing patrons being let off one of their buses to relieve themselves in a West Queen West residential neighbourhood.

The video, taken by nearby resident, shows a large group of young people waiting outside a Circusbus party bus as several of them urinate on the side of a property on Argyle Street. The woman taking the video repeatedly asks why they were relieving themselves in that location.

It’s believed to have happened on Saturday around 4 p.m.

The homeowner Harry Williams was not home at the time of the incident and didn’t know about it.  He was shown on the video by CityNews and said it would’ve been a different story had he been there. The home is currently under renovations.

“This is crazy, it’s not normal, to be honest,” said Williams. “It’s a public place, public laneway and someone else’s property. In this case, it’s my property and someone urinating on it is not the right thing to do.”

He called it unacceptable that a bus would stop on a quiet residential street. “There shouldn’t be any buses, especially party buses, stopping over, urinating and disrespecting the neighbourhood.

Michael W, the owner of Circusbus, says he was quite disappointed to know that their clients made the decision to stop there.

“Unfortunately, a lot our clientele are consuming alcohol and they are on their way to a bar or something like that and if they feel the need to relieve themselves and they approach the driver, It’s not a whole lot we can do at this point,” said Michael. “The driver tries to discourage it and tries to decline, but if they continue to push and push, it sounds, like in this instance, she was forced to pull over.”

“Once they depart, there isn’t much we can do about it.”

“I’m very disappointed. We are trying to take drunk drivers off the road and provide a quality service and sometimes things like this, that are out of your control, can hurt your brand. Disgusted, I guess is that best way to put it.”

Michael said he has not yet been in touch with the driver or the clients but he plans on contacting both to understand their sides of the story.

He said their drivers are well trained and it’s quite uncommon for a bus to stop on a residential street unless they are doing pick-ups or drop-offs.

“As much as I want to try to take responsibility it’s really hard for us to do so … When you are working with that demographic and there’s alcohol involved, sometimes our hands are tied,” said Michael.

Michael said there has only been one other incident similar to this one in the last seven years they have been operating, where a complaint was lodged regarding a driver stopping to allow patrons to relieve themselves outside.

“All drivers were notified about and, in particular, the single driver that was involved was talked to, to make sure it wasn’t volunteered as a place to stop.” He said they also added details in their terms of service for clients that drivers won’t be making extra stops.

Cheryl Manning, who lives close by, said she saw the party bus on Saturday afternoon. She said the patrons in the bus were hanging out of the windows, clearly had been drinking and were shouting at passersby.

“It’s a residential street, it’s the middle of the afternoon so obviously it stood out,” said Manning. “It was definitely unusual for the neighbourhood.”

She adds she will also be following up to take the necessary steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

In dealing with those who were involved in this incident, Michael said the most they can do is ban them.

“In this circumstance, I think that’s probably a viable resolution is to prevent them from being allowed back on with our service again.” He adds they will continue to try and deter this from happening with their clients.

Michael adds if there was any illegal activity that went on during the video, he would be willing to work with police to investigate the incident.