Top Ten Lost Gems

No Ripcord has just published my latest article Top Ten Lost Gems as part of their tenth birthday content. It took a valiant effort to compose this piece whilst sorting out a whole load of moving out/travel issues so please check it out and let me know what you think.

Its also worth taking some time to visit the rest of the site, a veritable goldmine of music and film reviews and features from a wealth of seriously knowledgable sources.

Top Ten Lost Gems
No Ripcord

In case anyone was wondering, Dredg's 'El Cielo' came in at number one:

In other news, a rather long, yet hopefully interesting account of my past week's adventures in New York will be up shortly. Keep 'em peeled.

Arriving in The Big Apple

Well after a mammoth 12-hour Greyhound trip down through the mountains and green countryside of New York state I finally made it into New York City. I don't think I've ever arrived somewhere and had my breath taken away by a skyline before... simply awesome. With the help of a random Japanese guy and 'Tony from Harlem' I managed to negotiate the subway across Manhattan and up to the hostel which is in the south end of Harlem.

It's a nice enough place, the nabe is certainly lively; there were loads of folks hanging out on the streets tonight, music pumping, their kids and babies sat out too, its understandable with the temperatures they've had today - 29 degrees or so! In April! Apparantly its going to be roasting for another few days. Then whilst necking water Fox News tells us there was a shooting today just eight streets away! It's NYC baby!

Ottawa 420

This was very surreal. That big building is the seat of Canadian parliament. The majority of these people are high.

Bo Fo Sho

Maybe a few people have already seen this seeing as its got something ridiculous like four and a half MILLION views on YouTube, but my sister just showed it to me and its pretty darn amusing! NOTE: If easily offended it probably best not to watch this!

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.

Hitting Tronno

Vertigo, the perect Chai and getting on TV
I'm in Tronno (or Toronto as us English would say) for another few days before heading back to Ottawa for a week. Tronno is the largest city in Canada and while I'm not usually one for endless, sprawling metropolii, this place is pretty damn cool. The vibe is palpably chilled and there are some really interesting areas to investigate.


Today I had a bit of a steroetypical tourist's day, first hitting the Distillery district just east of Downtown which contains some of the best preserved industrial Victorian architecture in North America. Formerly the Gooderham and Worts Distillery and at one time "contributing more to the Federal coffers than any other enterprise", it has been redeveloped with creativity and culture in mind to house artist studios, loads of funky design shops, an amazing bakery, a fantastic coffee shop and even a brew pub. It's a nice little area to wander around, I especially enjoyed a little exhibition by the Lithuanian (and adopted Toronotonian) photographer George Talas and then...

The Perfect Chai
Brilliantly, most Canadian cafes I have been to have offered one of my favourite drinks on their menu, the humble Chai. You get honey to stir in and cinnamon to dust. Today I got all the above and my glass even had CINNAMON FROSTING AROUND THE RIM - joyous!

In the News
The TTC system of one-pass-fits-all for the metro, bus and streetcar is perfect for getting around quickly and easily. En-route to the CN Tower and after downing some herbal zen-juice in anticipation of my mild vertigo, we made a quick shop stop for my sister to do some gift shopping... and somehow they ended up on the 6 O'Clock TV news! Here's some photos from when the presenter Mike politely accosted us in the shop and below is a link to the video from tonight's piece. About 25 seconds in is where they pop up.


"In forty minutes here, the only people remotely interested in buying were these English tourists..."

Funnily enough the asian lady who worked there was all like "don't take my picture, don't take my picture!" and then as we watched it back she's stood there giving an interview!

Watch the Full Report here

The Vertigo of Bliss
The CN Tower is Tronno's main landmark standing as it does 553m tall. As I don't particularly enjoy being up high, I was expecting to do my usual 'creeping around as far away from the edge as possible' act but today I felt fine about it and even plucked up the courage to lark about on their famed glass floor (which makes for a quite unique and bizarre feeling of floating high above a model village, but isn't quite as cool as they make out). The views were pretty immense.

Niagara Falls

1. I didn't realise it was slapbang in the middle of a town.
2. I also had no idea about the extent to which they've exploited it commercially:


3. It's still undeniably powerful up close but the proximity to skyscrapers and streets of tacky crap really diminishes the natural beauty.
4. The spray/wind combo made my hair go all crazy like I'd been hugging a Van der Graaaf generator: