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Kensington Market

http://torontoist.com/2008/10/didgeridoo_it_to_me_one_more_time.php

Didgeridoo It to Me One More Time

Is the didgeridoo the new cheap guitar? That could be the case among Toronto’s street musicians, as evidenced by these shots at Kensington Market’s monthly Pedestrian Sunday and, yesterday, on the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets across from Dundas Square. You can pair it with almost any other instrument, though a sitar seems a rather eclectic choice, or make it the basis for a one-man band. You can even put three of them together for the ultimate Pipes of Pan (eat your heart out, Zamfir!). Almost guaranteed to draw a crowd.

They’re not terribly expensive to buy. There’s one for sale in Oshawa, made in Indonesia rather than Australia, for $160. Or you can make your own from a length of plastic, wood, or metal tubing. Though the "circular breathing" technique, which allows the musician to keep playing on and on without seeming to take a breath, is tricky to master, you can pick up the basics faster than you’d learn to strum the three fundamental guitar chords.

On the serious side, Australian aboriginals regard the didgeridoo very profoundly and use it in their religious rites. They don’t take kindly to women playing it. An Agence France-Presse story last month quoted Aboriginals warning that Australian girls who were taking up the instrument ran the risk of infertility for playing around with "men’s business."
 
http://space.canoe.ca/IndieJAM/blog/view/282542

Halloween in Kensington Market - Honouring Our Ancestors.

For the last P.S. Kensington of the year, share messages with departed loved ones to be carried to the heavens, bang your head to local punk and hardcore at Kensington Rocks (Augusta and College), sign up for the Halloween fashion contest (2-3pm) and strut your stuff on the runway at 5pm (Kensington Ave.), stick around for the Halloween parade at dusk, and go on a special journey where we meet Papa Legba at the crossroads to the underworld. Plus all the usual P.S. Kensington fun, with walking labyrinths, loads of music and spooky surprises.

This month's musical acts include:
- The Diableros - http://www.myspace.com/thediableros
- Buckets Of - http://www.bucketsof.com
 
Alley Kat said:
http://space.canoe.ca/IndieJAM/blog/view/282542

Halloween in Kensington Market - Honouring Our Ancestors.

For the last P.S. Kensington of the year, share messages with departed loved ones to be carried to the heavens, bang your head to local punk and hardcore at Kensington Rocks (Augusta and College), sign up for the Halloween fashion contest (2-3pm) and strut your stuff on the runway at 5pm (Kensington Ave.), stick around for the Halloween parade at dusk, and go on a special journey where we meet Papa Legba at the crossroads to the underworld. Plus all the usual P.S. Kensington fun, with walking labyrinths, loads of music and spooky surprises.

This month's musical acts include:
- The Diableros - http://www.myspace.com/thediableros
- Buckets Of - http://www.bucketsof.com
Click to expand...

Diggin this; our own little new Orleans:)
 
Twitch City

This 1998 offering created by Canada’s film and television don, Don McKellar, is one in grave need of rerun.

McKellar stars as wittily apathetic Curtis, a shut-in living in Toronto’s Kensington Market who is addicted to ... bad television. We don’t know where he gets his money, how he nabbed a girlfriend or why the cats take over the world in a second-season episode, but it doesn’t matter!

When you’re frustrated with substance absence on the tube, watching a reflection of yourself who’s watching TV is refreshingly entertaining. Twitch City is the nearest program to perfection this author has discovered.
 
How influential was growing up Kensington Market on your life-long love of music?

Yes, I grew up in Kensington Market, which was very multi-cultural with different musical influences. You know it's really interesting, in old neighborhoods like that, you knew everybody, and everybody knew you and everybody was in the same boat, nobody had money. But there was lots of music, and there was lots of different food and people from different countries and different places. You can't help but be somebody who just soaks it in like a sponge and it was great because it was sort of my first music influences.

http://blogto.com/city/2008/11/behind_the_mic_larry_green_at_jazz_fm/
 
A monumental moment

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081107.wrochon08/BNStory/Entertainment

The remodelled AGO, whose budget was in the neighbourhood of a quarter-billion dollars, is as much about looking at art as it is about looking out with fresh eyes to the city. From the second-storey Galleria Italia, there are treetops and the mansard rooftops of 19th-century mansions, as well as the scruffy businesses of Chinatown. The city, its flow of immigrants, its varied ambitions, seem to rise up and smack against the glass. In previous guises – there have been seven expansions since the gallery first opened in the Grange in 1911 – the AGO looked inward, keeping minds focused on the art and bodies safely encased behind walls of brick or precast concrete. With Gehry's redesign, the city seems more protean, more weirdly and wildly forgiving than before.

This is the neighbourhood where British government officials were granted large “park lots†of land in the early 1800s; where, 100 years later, Jews persecuted in Eastern Europe made their way, eventually setting up stalls in Kensington Market. It's where Gehry went to the AGO when he was 8; where carp was purchased with his grandmother to make gefilte fish for the Sabbath; where Gehry's bar mitzvah took place. In November, 1946, Gehry heard Alvar Aalto speak at a free public lecture at the University of Toronto. The humanity of the great Finnish architect resonated profoundly with him.
 
http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/570 ...for images

STANDING GLASS FISH
FRANK GEHRY
1986

"In Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She'd put it in the bathtub, fill the bathtub with water, and this big black carp--two or three feet long--would swim around in the bathtub and I would play with it. I would stand up there and watch it turn and twist . . . and then she'd kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly."--Frank Gehry

American artist-architect Frank Gehry's Standing Glass Fish is installed in the Cowles Conservatory, suspended on invisible supports over a rectangular lily pond and surrounded by palm trees. Known for his innovative architectural projects that often include such ordinary materials as raw plywood and chain-link fencing, Gehry also experiments with nontraditional materials for his sculptural works. The body of the 22-foot Standing Glass Fish is constructed of glass and silicone, supported by a wooden armature with steel rods. Before finalizing his design for the sculpture, Gehry made a number of plexiglass models to study the flip of the fish's tail, the characteristics of its eyes, and the shape of the scales. The fish is a personal symbol for Gehry--a fond remembrance of the live carp his grandmother would buy at the market and leave swimming in the bathtub each week before she prepared gefilte fish for the family meal. He likes the patterns made by fish scales and the fluid movement of fish in water. Gehry includes fish in his drawings for buildings, makes fish lamps, and has even designed buildings shaped like fish.
 
Alley Kat said:
http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/570 ...for images

STANDING GLASS FISH
FRANK GEHRY
1986

"In Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She'd put it in the bathtub, fill the bathtub with water, and this big black carp--two or three feet long--would swim around in the bathtub and I would play with it. I would stand up there and watch it turn and twist . . . and then she'd kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly."--Frank Gehry

American artist-architect Frank Gehry's Standing Glass Fish is installed in the Cowles Conservatory, suspended on invisible supports over a rectangular lily pond and surrounded by palm trees. Known for his innovative architectural projects that often include such ordinary materials as raw plywood and chain-link fencing, Gehry also experiments with nontraditional materials for his sculptural works. The body of the 22-foot Standing Glass Fish is constructed of glass and silicone, supported by a wooden armature with steel rods. Before finalizing his design for the sculpture, Gehry made a number of plexiglass models to study the flip of the fish's tail, the characteristics of its eyes, and the shape of the scales. The fish is a personal symbol for Gehry--a fond remembrance of the live carp his grandmother would buy at the market and leave swimming in the bathtub each week before she prepared gefilte fish for the family meal. He likes the patterns made by fish scales and the fluid movement of fish in water. Gehry includes fish in his drawings for buildings, makes fish lamps, and has even designed buildings shaped like fish.
Click to expand...

Interesting... I'm not Jewish, but it was the place everyone went to to buy live chickens as well. Even though supermarkets had mass production cleaned chickens since, what, the 1930s? This practice was outlawed by the City around 1970 I believe. That's when the cages disappeared off the sidewalks anyways.

You picked out the live chicken from its sidewalk cage... Paid the nice Jewish man, and gramps and I took it home. Its feet were tied and it was wrapped in newspaper with the head sticking out.

Grandma would slice its neck and it would bleed to death - it took about 5 minutes. Its eyes would close after about 2 minutes. It would be gutted. Boiling water would be poured over it, then the plucking; which was my job.

I still can't listen to the cries of pigs or cows in tractor trailers to this day.
 
Con Artists

Written by: Stefan New

Getting their start in 2000, the Constantines have been together for almost a decade, making their mark on the Canadian music scene and influencing performers and listeners, young and old, across Southern Ontario and the world. Last April, Cons released their latest, Kensington Heights, a nod toward the area they love and reside in, Kensington Market.

When asked about the album, lead singer and guitarist Bryan Webb explained that it is nothing more than “just a rock n’ roll record, we just got together as friends to make some music.†Drawing influence from the struggles of various people in his life, Webb explained that he has never considered Cons an overly political band. “We’re just a rock and roll band,†he reiterated. “Any politics in our lives is more individual."
 
Immigrants delighted by surprise gift boxes

DEBRA BLACK
STAFF REPORTER

It was just before Christmas in 1970 when a 6-year-old Manny Goncalves came to Canada from his home in Portugal with his parents and younger sister. It was bitterly cold and there was a snowstorm a couple of days after their arrival.

"I came here in shorts and sandals," he said. The snow and the cold were big surprises. But the biggest concern for Goncalves and his sister wasn't the weather but rather, would Santa Claus know where they had gone.

On Christmas morning they were much relieved. They were all staying with his uncle who lived on Augusta Ave. in Kensington Market. Goncalves and his sister woke up early and were totally taken by surprise when they were given gifts from Santa Claus.

"I remember waking up Christmas morning and there were these boxes and my uncle handed each of us a box. I turned to my sister and said in Portuguese: `See Santa knew where we moved to.'"

http://www.thestar.com/SantaClausFund/article/540855
 
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_29402.aspx

Cafe Raid Sparks Controversy Over Marijuana Use

Friday November 21, 2008
CityNews.ca Staff

A police raid of a downtown café has some pot-loving Torontonians crying foul.

The Kindred Café in the Yonge and College area was busted up Thursday night. Most of the establishment's furniture was seized in the process. Two people were arrested and summonses were issued to four more, but spokesperson Chad Cooke says he doesn't see what all the fuss is about.

"People are going to use marijuana in particular medicinally, and they're going to use it recreationally, so we don't understand what the problem is with providing an area where they can do that," he said.

And the fact is the Kindred Cafe isn't the only place in Toronto where people go to smoke dope.

There's the Vapour Lounge as well as the Hot Box Cafe in Kensington Market.

A frequenter of the Kindred, Matt Menargh says he uses Marijuana to control his pain.

"I'm here almost everyday," he admitted, standing out in the cold in front Friday night. "If you're a medicinal marijuana user, there's nowhere you can go to use your medicine."

What about home?

"They don't have that interaction at home and they may not have it anywhere else," insists Cooke. "So we provide that safe haven."

But the safe haven has now become a police target.

And those cops say they raided the Kindred Cafe after receiving complaints from the community.

They also allege that not only did they remove the furniture, but confiscated a large quantity of marijuana.
 
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...canada-s-best-watering-holes-in-the-wall.aspx

Graffiti’s

Graffiti’s is a great little place in the Kensington Market in Toronto. Owned and operated by our good friend Steve Mitchell, it’s one of two small places in Toronto where our career really started. We recently went back there to see Steve after a couple of years. I asked, “so what’s new?†He answered, “nothing.â€...and I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I hope the place never changes. It’s also one of the few bars where you can get Molson Stock Ale.
 
Bathurst Street

This may be an short lived thread but I have always wondered why Bathurst between Queen and Bloor never seems to 'take off'. Having a streetcar and literally a thousand potential storefronts make it seem ideal yet it is the streets around it and not Bathurst itself that are flourishing.

Are the houses built in a way to make first floor conversion to retail impossible? Are there restrictive bylaws not present on other arterials? With artists setting up shop as far away as The Junction and Parkdale (not a judgment on either of those nabes) it seems Bathurst would be a natural.

Any ideas?
 
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