Porch times with little Mikey

*click on tiltle. he is in his underpants, but was a perfect gentleman :)

Queen Street West Business Association Interview!

*click on title :)

Queen West : Artery to my soul

I think it was the 80's but who knows..it may have been the 90's. So much is a blur. My first acid trips, my basement apartment at Portland and Adelaide. Memories of the 24 hour Future Bakery where one of the staff would always greet me warmly. I wondered if he sometimes worried about me being out alone at 2:00 a.m. - buying rye bread. He always charged me half price. There was a comfort in knowing that the bakery was humming all night and someone there who knew my name.

Sometimes, some of us would go to an all night booze can on Queen when it first was cool to be going west of Bathurst. There was no sign on the door, but I remember Terry Wilkins used to jam there along with other hipsters who arrived after Grossman's closed and played till dawn. Well it seemed like dawn anyhow. I've asked others about that venue from the 80's and no one can remember exactly where it was. Nostalgia can be dubious.

I went through my brief artsy phase (didn't everyone?) and set my wares up to sell outside the Bamboo Club and waited to see how long it would take to be asked to move along. Crudely done tie dye clothes and lucite plastic earrings...ah those large, ugly earrings of the 80's. Likely all landfill now. I recall the Satellites and Parachute Club playing at the Bamboo and the bartender there who had eyes that were like blue glass. He was a fixture for sure. Recently I was in a small country town east of Toronto having dinner at a local restaurant and there he was, running the place. He laughed when I nostalgically mentioned Queen West and he said: THAT was a long time ago.

There was hairdresser Clara, a queen of Queen West - with her inside information about bars and bands and her advice about love and style. You had to know where to find her whenever she moved locations. Scoring an appointment for a haircut with her was like winning a lottery.

The Poetry Sweatshop at the Rivoli. The room was always packed and the hosting twins were kings. There my girfriend ran into an old high school classmate and now they have been married forever, with kids ready for university and a family life filled with tranquility.

All roads lead me back to Queen West. In recent years I worked at the ultimate corner: Queen and Bathurst, running programs for the homeless and disenfranchised, drug users and ravers. Each year I rent out the Gladstone to bring talented artisans to a space that I honour as part of my past, vicarious appreciation for their youth and their talent.

Queen West is a moving sidewalk recounting adventure at each corner. For some it is a destination. In my heart it will always be an era.

gg

a tear in my beer...

I moved back to Toronto after a 10 year absence and lived on Camden street for a year.

It was a big year, growth challenges and falling in love with this city.

I used to spend a lot of time at the (no longer in the same location and therefore not the same place) tequila bookworm where they would let you read magazines and they had great food and even better music.

I had fallen hard for a boy who ended up being a boy who fucked and ran. I had just come back from a disastrous date at the AGO and was in this café. The woman at the table next to me was also drowning her sorrows, as she had just ended a three year relationship.

In what was a darkly comic moment, I was on the phone to a friend sniffling about the boy, and she was pouring her heart out to one of her friends. The staff generally were in charge of the music and they took it upon themselves to play john Denver. The woman went up to them and got them to change the music. It was funny.

I fell in love with this city really hard that day.

aa

At home...

Hail to the Queen!
You lovely old Queen, you and your:
• Fabulous chapattis from Gordon W.’s chapatti cart
• May Day parade that ended up with the Peace Flame extinguished by a chapatti
• Bamboo and painting its walls with Runt
• Donut shop on the corner of John at 6 in the morning on the way home
from the Zone
• Coolest stuff ever found at Active Surplus
• Wonderful late nights at the Cameron, the Shoe, the Riv, the Bull, the Bev.
• Duke’s with the best bike service always and especially after my
locked bike was stolen across the street from me sitting on the Riv
patio
• Bountiful Bacchus Rotis
• Hefty NOW magazine drops
• Buttski’s Munchies, much further down and farther back in time
• Art. Beads. Beer. Bikes. Books. Bread. Fabric. Feasts. Music. Paper.
Performance. Poetry. Yearning.
• Love and Memories.
Long live the Queen!
Love, Catherine

*Catherine attached two paintings that she created.... you see them above.
At the left, Shelley on the Rooftop (at The Cameron) and on the right, Molly at Home (at The Cameron). Visit her website: www.orfald.ca ... my favorite piece is breakthrough. It reminds me of driving home from my Nannys house at Christmas time. If the weather was bad, we would go "the old way", meaning we would take a route through small towns rather than risk the open highway.I remember it... clean.. like that piece.

Wanna dance?

As part of this years festival, we have a contingent from Newfoundland producing a show at The Factory Theatre... if you are trying to fill your dance card at this years festival, add this one... here are the nuts and bolts:

Don’t miss Joel Thomas Hynes in a compelling performance of Say Nothing Saw Wood, a morally complex tale of murder and redemption. Fresh out of prison, thirty-year-old Jude Traynor spins a gothic tale of a brutal murder he committed at the age of seventeen. He’s now making his way back to his hometown to come to terms with the life he’s taken, the lives he’s altered and hopefully to extend a hand to the troubled youth he once was.

Say Nothing Saw Wood originally premiered in St. John’s, NL to sold-out audiences in 2007. Say Nothing Saw Wood is a one-man play inspired by a real-life murder that occurred on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland and Labrador in the early seventies. Playing in Toronto as part of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre Mainstage:

Directed by Lois Brown
Presented by resource centre for the arts theatre company
Featuring: Joel Thomas Hynes

Fresh out of prison, Jude Traynor spins a gothic tale of a brutal murder he committed at the age of seventeen. He’s now making his way back to his hometown to come to terms with the life he’s taken, the lives he’s altered and hopefully to extend a hand to the troubled youth he once was.

Patron Warning: Mature Language & adult themes
Running time: 75 mins.

Date	Time
August 7th	6:00pm
August 9th	12:00pm
August 10th	10:00pm
August 13th	8:00pm
August 14th	10:00pm
August 16th	4:00pm

Venue
Factory Theatre Studio venues and guides information

For ticket information and show times call the Factory Theatre Box Office at 416-504-9971.

Joel Thomas Hynes is the award winning author of the novels Down to the Dirt and Right Away Monday, both available through HarperCollins Publishers. He co-wrote the celebrated stage play The Devil You Don’t Know and his most recent play Say Nothing Saw Wood, won the NL Arts and Letters Award for Best Dramatic Script. In 2008 Hynes was presented with the Lawrence Jackson Creative Writing Award and was also named the Newfoundland and Labrador Art’s Council’s Artist of the Year. Also an actor, Hynes has performed numerous leading roles for stage, film and television. He was a contributing writer and played a leading role in the CBC’s Gemini Award winning series Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, appeared in the Movie Network’s Re-Genesis, the CBC’s Ashore, performed the lead role in the film adaptation of his novel Down to the Dirt, and was featured in the upcoming film Crackie. Hynes is currently at work on a new novel and a new screenplay.

Lois Brown is a seventh generation Newfoundlander. She works in dance, theatre, and film. She was awarded Arts Achievement award by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council for her work in 2004, and short-listed for The Sminovitch Prize. She awarded the Victor Martyn Lynch Staunton Award for outstanding achievement in theatre by the Canada Council in 2005. She lives in St. John’s with her daughter Olivia.

you've got new friends....

Dear Queen Street West,

I miss you.

Remember when I used to skip school and come into town and we would have lunch together. I would usually spend all day with you, sometimes my friend Megan would bring me and show me all your little secrets.

We grew up together. You showed me to the vintage shop where I bought my first pair of bootcut courdory pants, across from Java, where I would get a cup of possibly the worst coffee ever and sit for a couple hours, the pants were blue, the coffee was grey, both were fantastically ugly and perfect with a cigarette. I was 15.

Then there was that time, when I was 17, I brought my fake ID and got my first tattoo, ala Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, a circle design on the left side of my chest, you branded me then, I felt like you really approved of this.

We used to get real drunk too, and had so many parties. it was a blast.

Its funny, cause I know we don’t live far from each other, I’m on King, in Parkdale, and you, Queen Street, are just around the corner, but something is different.

I remember something my brother told me a long time ago, that when you get older you just don’t have the time to hang out anymore, and everyone gets busy doing other things.

I see you’re still at it being the crazy social butterfly that you are, making new friends from all over.

I know we meet up every now and then, but it seems all business, I hang my art, you like it, you show it to all your new friends,

But something has definitely changed. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all that you do for me, maybe I’m just being silly, but

We’re not the same.

I know you got real busy with all the new clubs, and all you’re new friends from Mississauga make it difficult for us to really connect.

And I see you’ve upgraded your available accommodations to condos and some pretty cool slick lofts, which are nice, I guess, maybe I just liked the way things were. You’re just too busy.

Remember when my band used to play, and all the kids would come out and get down?

What’s happened, what has changed?

Maybe it’s just me.

I know the bands still play, and the kids still get drunk, and the shops are still cool….

Maybe we’ve just run our course, out grown each other, you’re still striving for that new sense of cool, whereas I have become content with myself and who I am. I don’t hold that against you though, for as long as I can remember, that’s who you are, you’re like Peter Pan, and I hope you never grow old.

So I guess what I’m saying is thanks for the memories, the good times, and helping to form who I am today, you are my Toronto, you lead me to find many of my loves, and cradled a lot of my losses.

Maybe, for old times, we can meet up this weekend, if the weather is nice, and we can grab a pint on a patio and reconnect a little?

Gregory Serpanchy
www.gregoryserpanchy.com

*Click on the link to see Simon and Garfunkel prepare to sing a special song... which is first interrupted by Paul's friend... we'll call him "Chuck", or "Mississauga"