WHAT'S GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD: PARKDALE

COMING DECEMBER 16TH: PM GETS COOKING - NELLA CUCINA

WHAT'S GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD - BLOORDALE

20 QUESTIONS WITH RAD PEOPLE

CROSS-CANADA STREET TEAM

This week marks one of the newest festivals to come to Toronto, Locals Only, an event celebrating the city’s best music, art and food.  In the last year, Toronto has grown it’s food trucks and food truck culture with thousands of foodies, entrepreneurs and creatives hopping aboard this nu-wave of cheeky food philosophy. 

At the Locals Only festival (Saturday, July 7), some of Toronto’s up and coming mobile diner restauranteurs will be serving up their goods and I had a chance to preview their wares and ask them some questions. 

My boyfriend of 3 years is a great cook – he can whip up a meal in 20 minutes that would put a number of local chefs to shame.  He’s made pretty much every meal throughout our relationship…and I’m starting to feel bad.  My mother never raised me to learn how to cook, she didn’t think it was necessary for men to know how (but my sister seemingly has the same ability as my bf).  I lack creativity when it comes to food prep, so I need some easy tips.  His birthday is this weekend and I want to impress him with my skills.  What do I do?! 

For this month’s Bloghunter series we have recruited the talented Camille Byrne of Cambie Design to share with us some of her insight and summer inspiration for interior design.  This is part one, check back every Monday for the month of July for her posts. 

I would introduce you to her here, but she has done such a beautiful job of explaining her business herself I wouldn’t want to take away from it.  Enjoy! 

Hey, hey, hey my peeps!  I must apologize for missing my last post.  I was beyond wiped from Power Ball and MMVA ish.  Nonetheless.  I’m back bringing the fashion frontier fire as per usual. 

FRONTIER BUZZ

For all of you die hard fashion elite, I know you damn near lost your mind when your heard Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana will be doing a tiny couture show.  I know I still can’t believe it that D&G, the boys that make me love animal print like no other, will test the waters of couture with an itsy bitsy collection in Taormina, Sicily, on July 9.  All I know is the guest list couldn’t be more exclusive.  It’s reported that only clients and three undisclosed media outlets — none of them American — are on the list.  Damn, can we get a livestream? 

If you are anything like every other sighted woman on the planet, you probably didn’t go see Drive for the music.  Once you were there though, you would’ve heard this amazing song by Toronto’s own Electric Youth and might have been able to focus on something other than Ryan Gosling for a minute (while he was offscreen, of course). 

“I like to bring the heat with me from New Orleans” Big Freedia said casually on the phone yesterday.  I’d love to report so much more, but I was all flustered and fan-girl about it and she had such lovely manners that I just kinda got stuck in the awe of it all.  Here’s what I managed to muster: She’s excited to play Toronto tonight at the Drake Hotel and promises a “very exciting and energetic show” as usual, and she has fond memories of her last trip to Canada, when “Toronto and Montreal both came out to support”, and she has mad love for Lesbians on Ecstasy who were the first ladies to bring her here. 

That’s all I got. 

But for serious, do you need any more?  Big Freedia is gonna set the Drake on fire tonight.  You know it, I know, and she sure as hell knows it.  Tickets are 80% sold out, so you should scramble to handle that right here. 

Brenmar is also on the bill, it’s 4AM last call for Gay Christmas, so start doing your stretches now. 

Having studied at the Beckenham School of Arts (which closed in 1962 and subsequently was burned down by vandals in 1978), Leslie “Les” Usherwood (1932 – 1983) had mastered the arts of both hand-painted signs and letter setting before coming to Canada from England.  In his short life, he would go on to be Canada’s most well known, if not our most prolific, type designer. 

Ottawa was the first show.  Oh Ottawa, I don’t know what it is about you… we didn’t see any fights – this time.  We saw a bird eat some vomit though, which nearly made me do the same.  Show was fun.  We played with Doll and, of course, reunited with our tour/label mates Die Mannequin.  And it was Tony’s birthday! 

Linus Booth (a.k.a DJ Booth) is probably best known as one half of the super successful DJ partnership Jokers of the Scene.  In an epic collaboration, Booth and JOTS partner Chris Macintyre (a.k.a.  Chameleonic), teamed up with fellow Canadian electronic artist VitaminsForYou to create Blank Capsule with a special focus on live performances. 

Blank Capsule will be releasing a new remix EP in the fall, and JOTS is currently working has a bunch of new singles, collaborations and remixes in the works.  Before any of that happens, though, make sure you come and see Blank Capsule performing live at Locals Only to get a taste for what we mean when we say “epic collaboration.” 

Accessories are all about having fun and personal expression.  Toronto based indie jewellery designer G FOX GEM get the point of accessorizing so deeply, you’d think they invented it.  They are all about being yourself and being damn proud of it. 

“When you’re different and proud, you gotta share your story with the world,” is their motto. 

So for this week’s #HumpDayHandout they wanna deck you out in great accessories for Pride Weekend.