Toronto’s College Strip is as close to nightlife diversity as any restless Torontonian is going to get. A walk from Palmerston Boulevard to, say, Shaw Street shows a range from pre-gentrification Portuguese coffee shops to fusion fantasy restaurants. The crowd in the area mixes everything from the after-school kids and local artists to incognito celebs and V-VIPs. Nightspots are numerous and open late.

In the middle of it all is Wild Indigo, a kooky-cool spot that avoids the pitfalls of some of the area's drinking establishments. It’s enough out of the way that the cap-wearing U of T crowd can’t be bothered, but it’s not a scenester showcase either. Rather, the bar plays host to a low-key crowd escaping the scene, unaware that they’ve created yet one on their own.

A few things that strike most first-timers is the decor (think Keith Partridge’s bedroom) and the unsolicited camaraderie of the place. The latter was echoed recently by a group of off-work Dominion Store clerks who informed us in slurrred English, “There’s no dancing here - so you just chill”. So succinctly put.

She’s right, Wild Indigo is a throwback martini lounge, with no dance floor, no food, and nobody seems to care. Staff and friends lounge, mingle and mix with the amalgamated crowd, making a first timer unsure of who is staff; on an earlier visit, the surfer-type dude lounging at the table beside us jumped up and took our order, suggesting the possibility that he worked there.

Wild Indigo, by name, has existed in this location for more than a decade, but re-invented itself a few years ago as a martini lounge. The best thing about this rendition is the sheer weirdness of the clientele. Martini-fiending hipsters, local revelers in dire need of escape from Li’ly, downtown wino-loners with notepads and after-work lingerers - somehow at Wild Indigo they all make sense together.