Hot Box and Queen to High Park

On Thursday we went for a mooch around Kensington area of Tronno. Its a cool place with a real community vibe, think a sunnier, more laid back Camden crossed with the best bits of Brighton. There are no real multinationals which is refreshing, instead the area is composed of numerous unique and quirky local businesses: galleries, vintage and hippy clothes stores, grocers, bars and the place we spent the afternoon at, the appropriately named Hot Box Cafe. You can imagine what goes on here and suffice to say the ambience was friendly and laid back and with exellent food and drink options and a very mixed crowd it was really rather great.

For the last couple of nights I've been staying with my friend Bill and his girlfriend Devon who very kindly allowed me to crash in their lovely abode off College Street. Thanks again guys! Since Friday was 20 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and gorgeous I set off on a mission to walk down Queen Street West, a vibrant and inspiring street that seems to go on forever, from the skyscrapers in the centre of Downtown all the way out to High Park, one of the few large green spaces in the city (the lack of which alongside the oddly underdeveloped waterfront seem to me be the only real downsides to the place).

It takes you through galleries and cafes through the various ethnic concentrations. For five minutes you'll be walking through Vietnamese area, then later Carribean will be the dominant influence before it changes to Polish just before you get to the park. I stopped in to the Elaine Fleck Gallery which is currently exhibiting some stunning works that I immediately fell for by a guy named Glenn Wolff.


Elaine told me that he's an old artist who lives in the woods of Michigan and primarily uses found materials as a base for his pieces. I reccomend visiting his site where you can take a look at some examples of his earthy, rustic pieces. Too bad they were a little out of my price range.

Alongside a shop completely covered in scrap metal and The Knit Cafe, I saw a great range of 'Blayzin Graff' on the streets today whilst wandering and took some photos of my favourites:







High Park is a cool place to wander around and relax on a nice day and I spent most of it sat in the sun buried in an astounding book by Vera Stanley Alder that I picked up by chance that morning. Later that evening we ventured out and stumbled across a random free-jazz-fusion improv gig in a small gallery/shop with two drummers, a double bassist, two saxophonists and a guitarist really giving it some crank. The spirit and vibrance on display was pretty inspiring and the shop was full of those uber-cool and pricey art books that everyone loves to leaf through but never really buys.

Photos fromm Canada so far are up on my Flickr now.