Junction Rocks!

Neko Case will be previewing her new album, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, with an up close and intimate show at the Rivoli on January 4. The venue only holds about 150 peeps, so it should be a magical night if you can get yr grubby paws on a ticket. They are going for $20 and are on sale at Ticketmaster and Rotate This. Also, being the Neko geek (stalker) that I am, I ran across a great link to an electronic press kit that features sounds clips and discusses the process behind the recording of 'Fox Confessor Brings The Flood'. It takes a few minutes to download but is well worth the wait.

My mind has still not fully processed this event and what it means to me; a person who lives and moves within this city. Having grown up next to Detroit, gun crime and random killings were common place. Not a night would go by when the news wasn't riddled with tales of shootings, stabbings and murder. As close as we lived to this chaos, there remained some comfort in knowing that such brutality didn't exist in Canada and if it did, it manifested itself in rare, isolated incidents. Not so anymore. Toronto has experienced an unsettling, violent year - one that has made many of us think twice about the neighborhoods we live in and the streets we walk on everyday. My fear is that we have not seen the worse. My thoughts are with the friends and families of the victims.

The Hidden City: Reading Toronto takes a look at the gun violence of our youth.
Photo: The Star

I'm getting ready to bust outta Torontopia and head home (Windsor) for festivus celebrations. Until we meet again, I will leave you with a photo I find both charming and creepy. "China celebrated the birthday of a giant panda who has outlived most of her peers by more than a decade, showering her with presents and even her own website." Nice.

While Americans are being spied on by their own government and facing up to the fact that 'the land of the free' is rapidly sinking into a totalitarian state, The Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada have ruled that the 'sometimes raucous activities of so-called 'swingers' clubs' are fun and do not constitute a dangerous threat. "Clubs that allow group sex and partner swapping do not harm Canadian society and should not be considered criminal, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday." Yee-haw! Screw you Tucker Carlson, we rock!

I was perusing RM Vaughan's stellar blog recently and noticed a review of an exhibiton my pal Deirdre Logue is participating in. Here is a still of Deirdre's film from the Vtape show. Says Vaughan: "Equally fun, and beautiful to look at, is Deirdre Logue’s succinct, aptly titled short 'That Beauty'. The film opens with a screen full of brilliant sparkles and fades into a heavily shadowed shot of an unidentified person (Logue, I suspect) dancing in his/her kitchen. As the figure rocks out to a looped beat and repeated, upbeat refrain, her/his body grows increasingly covered in the bright speckles of light, until the dancer looks like Tinkerbell on an ecstasy high. This film is so joyous, and so neatly self-contained, that it deserves to be viewed twice, if for nothing more than the giddy high it induces. Logue’s films have always had a playful bent, despite her reputation for making meditative, introspective work, but 'That Beauty' is her Flashdance. Split Decisions Curated by Paul Wong Vtape 401 Richmond Street, Suite 452 Until January 13

I've finally recovered from our Monday night show at The Drake. Copious amounts of liquor combined with 3 hours sleep plus having to work the next day put me into a comatose state. Anyway, as luck would have it, we were the last band on the bill so the place had pretty much cleared out except for the die-hards and the posse we brought with us. Regardless, we rocked the house in true Hemi fashion, won over a few new fans and impressed the bar staff enough that they promised to make sure we got another gig in the future. No pics from the show but I am posting a fun crowd shot from our CD release party at The Cameron House a couple months ago.

I have been hearing about this hidden playground (spadina/augusta area) for quite some time but I had no idea that some jerk took it upon themselves to destroy it. The swing, found between two converging buildings just off of the graffiti alley behind Queen West stores, had its seat and chains cut off in late November. It was recently replaced by two kind souls. On the bottom of the swing, in writing, it says: “The Secret Swing belongs to the people of Toronto.” Photography by Jenny Gao

Do you remember your first picture with Santy Claus? Did you laugh, cry or shit your pants from pure fear? Well, courtesy of the Scary Santa website, here are some thigh slapping photos of old 'Saint Nick' freakin' the babies out.

Celebration Of The Immaculate Conception
My pal (and former 'Junction' peep), Sue MacCormack, is currently in Managua, Nicaragua doing a stint with a Canadian NGO. She sends out regular updates that are as entertaining as they are educational. Here is a brief excerpt of her last post: "dec 7 was the celebration of the immaculate conception. nicaragua loves this day. sing songs, give gifts, scream at shrines, its all a bit crazy. i went to leon for ´purisima´ to join the festivities. this includes trick or treating. same concept, walking door to door, but instead you say ´quien causa tanta alegria?´ (who causes so much happiness?)" "answer: the conception of the virgin mary. then you say VIVA LA VIRGIN!! and then they give you treats. but these are more than treats, these guys give away tupperware, pens, pencils, hair accessories, candy, baked goods, instruments, home decor, buckets, mugs, jewellery... whatever you need really."

I would go around door to door screaming 'VIVA LA VIRGIN' too if I could get me some tupperware.

Yes, it's already turning into 'that' kind of day.

America Blog Busts Ford:
John Aravosis and his band of merry men force Ford Motor Company to reneg on their agreement with the American Family Association (american-taliban-gelicals) not to advertise in gay magazines. Victory is sweet in the blogosphere. Please join the conga line.

You're Not The Boss Of Me:
Prime Minister Paul Martin in full on campaign mode (or maybe he just grew some cojones) tells asshat US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, to STFU.

Two new articles in some pretty savvy US publications extolling the virtues of Toronto's music and literary scenes respectively. The first is Carl Wilson's well-written and engaging two page spread on local boy-wonder Owen Pallett in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Equally as savory is a piece by Anderson Tepper (Vanity Fair on-line) regarding the current literary buzz surrounding this city. Both are matched in their praise of a dynamic, urban centre chock full of great bands, stellar writers, ethnic diversity and good vibes.

The on going saga between CBGBs' ( the legendary downtown New York City venue) and its landlord, the Bowery Residents' Committee, is finally over - well, almost. Owner, Hilly Kristal, has reached an agreement with the BRC to keep the club's doors open through to October 31st 2006, when it will finally be forced to move. I had the great honor of visiting this punk rock landmark on one of my trips to NYC and let me tell you, it's just as skanky as it looks.

The gentrification debate continues re: the influence the Drake Hotel is having on Parkdale (See 'The Drake Is A Ho' post below). Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star wrote about this part of town and the forces of gentrification in Sunday's edition. The Gladstone Hotel was also featured in the article with a great quote by Christina Zeidler (who is overseeing the Gladstone's restoration) "The Gladstone is not gentrification,". "That means something that's not animated by an authentic force. Gentrification is Disneyland, a place where you calcify the culture to the point where it has no salience. That is not what we're doing here." Below: Room 304 at The Gladstone. An artist designed hotel room by Allyson Mitchell. "It feels like a woodsy retreat where lesbian separatist commune meets Storybook Gardens." Personally, I'm torn, on one hand, derelect, run down neighborhoods that are meccas for drugs and crime aren't exactly cultural/community contributors, then again, whitewashing affordable, ethnically/economically diverse neighborhoods sucks too. It's a big debate that has been going on in this city for quite some time. I have seen and experienced this phenomenon in my own beloved Junction which is at the tail end of it's own revitalization (gentricfication) processs.

I've been browsing Henry Calderon's site on the internets. He's the dude responsible for spearheading the Toronto Junction's revitalization project over the past 5 years. In a nutshell, sidewalks were widened, storefronts were given facelifts and new lamposts were erected. Crackheads and Hos' were disposed of discreetly (in the kindest, gentlest way of course). In a 4½-year project undertaken by Toronto Hydro, unsightly overhead cables were buried at a cost of $20-million and 162 old-fashioned black streetlights were installed on Junction streets. (see pics). Eventually, this blog will focus mostly on the west end Junction community, but for now, until I get myself a good digital camera and a bit more time, I will be posting on various blog worthy items as well as Junction/Toronto related features.

Here in the west end, several organizations have banded together to promote "cycling trail opportunity" No. 10, more commonly known as the West Toronto Railpath. The Friends of the West Toronto Railpath is a community-based working group with the goal of assisting the City of Toronto finance, design and build a 6.5 kilometre path from Toronto’s Junction Neighbourhood into the heart of downtown Toronto and the shoreline of Lake Ontario It will be a strategic green transportation corridor running diagonally across the street grid in the West end of the City. It will help change the way people travel in Toronto’s West end and it will enable them to make more environmentally-sound transportation choices. Railpath will re-connect Parkdale, Roncesvalles, The Junction, High Park, Brockton, Beaconsfield, Liberty, Trinity- Niagara, and Dundas West. It will also give residents of West Toronto direct access to downtown.

The Drake Hotel was yet again centered out as being the reason West-Queen-West (ahem, I mean Parkdale) is rapidly becoming overly gentrified. Hence, this choice piece of graffiti spray painted outside a new Starbucks at Queen and Dovercourt: "Drake you ho this is all your fault"...heh heh heh...Apparently, there is a worse culprit in 'the hood' - a bar known as 'The Social' which actually painted the word "WELFARE" on its wall in order to attract those hipster snobs who wanted to be "all ghetto" for a night - uggh! Nuff said.