It’s Tuesday, October 14, 2008. What is the ONE thing you are for SURE doing today? Yes, that’s right, voting! Last Thursday, the Department of Culture held a fundraising concert at the Phoenix to raise money so they could advertise in key ridings in Toronto about the upcoming election and how to strategically vote. The night consisted of a ton of musical acts as well as video segements to highlight how important the arts are to the country and how much of an election issue they are (and should always be).
The video is a bit of a departure from our regular style, but we wanted to highlight some of the events of the night.
If you’re still not sure who to vote for, check out these great sites to help you decide:
Katherine’s leaving the east end for the west end of the city and in homage to her tenure as an east ender, That Night In Toronto takes you through some of her favourite spots along Queen St East between Broadview and Logan Ave.
The night started off at the Dark Horse Espress Bar (not Café as Blair keeps referring to it), located at 682 Queen St. East (just west of Broadview). It’s a great place to meet up and have a coffee or tea. The atmosphere is relaxing and inviting. The large communal table with all the daily and weekly papers is one of our favourite reasons for visiting. And they display local artists’ work on the walls.
Speaking of art, Queen St. East has a great network of artists called the Artists’ Network of Riverdale (due to suspicious activity, Google has advised against visiting the site as it may harm your computer … we’re not sure what’s wrong - but hopefully the problem will be remedied soon). One of the galleries we walked by is the Hangman Gallery which is a great space to visit and support your local artists.
One of Katherine’s hang outs is Kubo Radio (894 Queen St. East) - a great restaurant sharing the joy of Asian cuisine. The vibe is cool and funky, the food is delicious and the $5 martini’s on Wednesdays is a REAL treat to get over the mid-week blues (the martini’s are made with sake … mmm mmm good!).
Our evening ended off at The Opera House where we took in a performance of She & Him - the group formed by actress Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. A quick and quirky bio on the group:
The She & Him story begins when in 2006 , renowned one man band M. Ward, recorded a duet with a girl named Zooey Deschanel. A delightful recording session, the experience lead to a dialogue between the two about collaborating further. This, in turn, led to Deschanel admitting to secretly making dozens and dozens of home demos and hoarding them like acorns for the winter. Sick and tired of being stingy and secretive about music, Deschanel realized that if songs were acorns then this was indeed her wintertime: she sent the recordings to Ward and these demos became the basis for their first record, entitled Volume One.
Here’s a little sample of their music (and music video)
The concert was fantstic! We had a great time chillin’ and hanging with some friends we saw at the concert. Overall it was a very good night.
Katherine had one last surprise to show Blair before they left for the evening … to find out what it was, watch the video.
Katherine and I are really excited to show you our first attempt at putting our first video blog together!
On June 10, 2008, we began our night at the Mille Femme exhibit at Brookfield Place, biked up town to see Black Watch at Varsity Arena, stopped off at Hart House to observe Slow Dance, grabbed a bite to eat at Queen and Spadina before rockin’ out at The Horseshoe Tavern with Sebastien Grainger And The Mountains.
Here’s how much we spent tonight: approximately $47.
Unfortunately we couldn’t take any footage of the Black Watch performance - lucky for us though, there’s a great preview on YouTube - check it out here:
We hope you enjoy the first of our vlogs about culture in Toronto. Do you know of an event or exhibition or show we should check out? Give us a shout!
Did you see one of the events we saw? What did you think of it? Leave a comment!
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