[Alley Kat]

Kensington royal racks up 50 years without price tags

May 07, 2008 04:30 AM
JOE FIORITO

Tom Mihalik is not the King of Kensington – that crown belongs to another man – but some think of him as the Prince, and he was in a ruminative mood the other day. Tom's Place – his clothing store in Kensington Market – has just entered its 50th year.

If the Market is not quite a souk, at Tom's the price is famously never the price: you see a piece of clothing you like, you ask for Tom; he winces as if he were parting with a portion of the golden fleece. Or perhaps he appears judicious, parsing your good taste, the nature of your character, and his regard for your esteem. And then he offers you a better price.

They should teach this stuff in business school.

Tom, in his broom closet of an office, explained the origins of the famous semi-haggle: "My father never put price tags. When I took over from him in 1980-81, I started to put price tags like a regular store. The customers complained. They thought I was taking the store in a different direction."

Walk softly, carry a big shtick.

To survive in business, it is necessary to be more than nimble. Tom nearly went broke in the '80s. He couldn't pay the rent. A friend in the Market floated him a loan of a thousand dollars cash, no questions asked. Things looked grim.

"And then I had a call from a distributor in Montreal. He had some leather coats. They were made for Harry Rosen, but in the wrong colour. They were supposed to be dark blue, but they came out lighter. He said I could have 50 or 75 coats. I said I had no money. He said he knew my father, and he would send me six coats, and if I couldn't sell them, I could send them back. I had nothing to lose.

"I went to the bus terminal on the streetcar to get the coats. Beautiful leather, I put them on a rack outside; gorgeous, with the Harry Rosen label." Tom paid $100 each for the coats and sold them for $150, and he ordered more and he sold those, too.

"My luck changed. I saw I had to bring in newer styles. There was a niche in ladies' wear. I became friends with the president of Jones New York. I bought clearances from him."

Soon, all the well-heeled ladies pressed Tom to carry designer clothes for men.

Tom, a charmer, knows how to listen. "I met the distributor of Hugo Boss. I knocked at his door and said, `I have a store in the Market. I would like to buy your samples, anything you have left over.' He liked me right away."

The man from Hugo Boss made a buck, and so did Tom, and what was in the early days an adventure – finding designer rags for an occasional bargain – has now become the norm, carried on the shoulders of a guy whose business roots are planted in the Kensington of the past.

Tom does not think his story could happen the same way today, given that modern clothing manufacturers make only what is pre-ordered and no more. What he has done may not be done again.

We're glad he did it once.

But I have questions. Thousands of immigrants still arrive, like Tom, armed with little more than native wit; we all need clothes and food and durable goods; most of us are broke; and we all want a bargain. Is there, in this town, another incubator like the Kensington of old? Can there ever be another? Who is our future prince?

Happy 50th, Tom.

http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Columnist/article/422300

 

[Alley Kat]

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/428254

Tortilleria wraps up true taste of Mexico

May 22, 2008 04:30 AM
JUDY GERSTEL
LIVING REPORTER

Hi-tech equipment creates traditional soft tortillas at an impressive rate of 3,000 an hour. Steven Gomes says to make sure his name is spelled with an "s" at the end. "I'm Portuguese," he proclaims. He's also a Torontonian – which means he likes his ethnic food to be authentic.

"Are they hard tacos?" he asks, somewhat suspiciously, as he shops the menu of eight offerings at La Tortilleria, including chorizo, mole and tinga, with its shredded chicken, onion and tomatoes.

"They're soft," reassures Axel Arvizu, the 25-year-old proprietor of the new hole-in-the-wall tortilla manufacturer and eatery near Kensington Market.

"We're authentic. Hard tacos are Tex-Mex."

He explains, "Our motto is `Authentic Mexican food for everyone.'"

Arvizu, who came to Canada from Mexico City when he was 14, and his business partner, Juan Roman, 26, are proud of being the first fresh tortilla manufacturers, distributors and retailers in Toronto.

They're especially proud of importing Canada's first "state-of-the-art" tortilla machine, a large stainless steel apparatus that occupies half the tiny premises and can flip out 3,000 tortillas an hour.

The raw dough that's fed into the machine is made from masa, Arvizu explains. Masa is corn meal that's been specially treated to release the niacin in the corn, making it more nutritious and easier to digest.

From 15 kg of dough, the machine sections and shapes through rollers approximately 40 to 50 tortillas, slipping them on a conveyor belt and baking for exactly 18 seconds before ejecting them, hot and fresh.

In business just a few weeks, with the consul general of Mexico participating in grand opening ceremonies last week, La Tortilleria already supplies several restaurants with fresh tortillas and fresh nacho chips. At lunchtime, there's often a line out the door for takeout tacos, made with fresh tortillas, at $2.50 each or 4 for $8.50. (Organic Mexican coffee is $1.)

Arvizu realizes all his customers aren't familiar with authentic Mexican tacos and so he has a poster on the wall that explains how to eat them.

"A lot expect Tex-Mex," he says about his walk-in customers.

"They expect cheese and sour cream and sliced tomatoes and lettuce. I let them know we're more authentic."

The takeout tortilla business is booming, too, says Arvizu, with people stopping after work to pick up a fresh batch ($3 per kg) just as they do in Mexico.

"There's one tortilleria per block in Mexico," he explains. The fresh tortilla is as important to Mexicans, he says, as the fresh baguette is to the French.

That's why he sees La Tortilleria as a two-way street – "bringing a little bit of Mexico to Torontonians" and providing the growing Mexican and Latin American community in Toronto with their daily bread.

 

[Alley Kat]

Kensington residents on their feet for celebration

Pedestrian Sundays returns to Kensington Market

BY JUSTIN SKINNER
MAY 22, 2008 03:15 PM

What began as a peaceful protest of sorts has become a popular staple of summer life in the Kensington Market area.

The neighbourhood is welcoming back Pedestrian Sundays for the fifth straight year, with local musicians and businesses taking to the streets in celebration of the unique and eclectic community.

The event started out when a group of Kensington residents grew tired of cars filling the streets within the small community. Concerned over the smog, traffic and lack of space on the roads for cyclists, they decided to take action.

"We had a parking meter party where people parked their bikes or tricycles in front the meters," said Kelsey Carriere, one of the driving forces behind Pedestrian Sundays. "Who's to say a car driver is the only one to rent that space? We paid the meters and took up the whole north block of Augusta Avenue."

Intrigued by what was happening, a local band asked if they could move their rehearsal to the street. Passersby soon joined in, dancing along and turning the event into an impromptu party.

"The possibilities of a street being used for something other than cars just opened up," Carriere said.

The organizers soon had a petition with 500 signatures asking the city to help them make the pedestrian party into a regular event. After a year of deliberations and community consultations, the group got the go-ahead. The event now draws thousands of people onto the streets of Kensington Market on the last Sunday of every month from May to October.

"It's kind of a potluck party, all run by volunteers," Carriere said. "Everything you see on the street is local musicians, residents and merchants who love Kensington and love what they do."

This year's first Pedestrian Sunday will take place from 2 to 10 p.m. on Sunday, May 25, with a fashion show, a giant pinata, live musicians, activities and games, street theatre, the resturn of the Garden Car, a dance around the Maypole and a ceremony unveiling Kensington Market's National Historic Recognition plaque. Visit www.pskensington.ca for details.

http://www.mirror-guardian.com/News/Annex/article/48486

 

[Alley Kat]

Kensington history honoured

Market designated national historic site although residents focus mainly on its future

May 25, 2008 04:30 AM
MURRAY WHYTE
STAFF REPORTER

At 4 p.m. today, in an endearingly shabby little park under the eternal gaze of a bronze-cast Al Waxman, Kensington Market will take its place in Canada's very official history as a national historic site.

Historic? No doubt. From its birth as a Jewish market early last century, Kensington has been a revolving door of ethnicities, from Eastern European to Italian to Portuguese to Jamaican to South and Central American to Asian.

Official, though? That's always been a little harder to apply here.

The happy accident of the market's geography – an internal network of one way streets, not easily car-accessible – has always given it the air of a mini-city state, and, along with it, an outsider mentality.

Kensington has always been a haven for difference – new immigrant, draft dodger, political radical alike.

And while no one disputes the significance of its past, most of the talk around the market these days is about its future – and how, or if, that difference might figure into it.

"I've heard the argument – `we don't need this designation, it'll bring more people, more money, the market will be ruined,'" says Carlos Texeira.

For him, the market is both an academic fascination – his PhD thesis in social geography was on immigrant migration into, and out of, the area – and a personal, passionate obsession.

It was Texeira's nomination, in 2003, that led to the designation; he's been studying it for two decades.

And he's been hearing arguments just as long.

Depending on who you talk to, Kensington Market has been on the brink of one cataclysm or another for decades: "Urban renewal" in the '70s, when a residents' group stopped it from being bulldozed; or economic collapse, when empty storefronts and pervasive lawlessness gripped the market in the downturn of the '90s.

But in development-mad Toronto, the market, on a prime patch of real estate near the city's core, now faces a different threat.

"Look at what happened to Queen Street in the '90s – it was annihilated," says Chris Devita, the chair of the Kensington Market Action Committee, a coalition of market residents and business owners.

Just a few blocks south, international chain retailers – The Gap, H&M, Urban Planet, Starbucks – cluster along a strip of Queen that used to host a vibrant art community.

In the past few years, small properties in alleyways all over the market have quietly been acquired. Some projects have slipped in under residents' noses, Devita says.

"If we don't get some kind of blueprint for development, it'll be no different here," he says.

With the market thriving, old hackles have been raised. Architect Will Alsop, who designed the new OCAD, was rumoured to be involved with its redevelopment; he met with residents last summer, but has since withdrawn. "You know how the market can be," Devita shrugs. "I guess they scared him off."

But change has already come, and quickly. In the past few years, new retailers have filled most of the abandoned spaces.

"There's a lot of new blood here, it's true," says Julian Finkel, who moved his clothing store, Model Citizen, to Augusta St. in the market from Dundas St. in March. "But there's a respect for the past, too. You don't come here if you don't appreciate what it is already."

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/429683

 

[syn]

I was looking forward to seeing what Alsop could come up with. Does he have any other up-and-coming projects in the city?

I wonder who they'll get to replace him.

 

[Alley Kat]

MORE THAN ANYWHERE ELSE, KENSINGTON THRIVED ON PERSONAL RESOURCEFULNESS AND MUTUAL GENEROSITY.

Crowning Kensington

CAN HISTORIC PLAQUE SAVE HAVEN FOR WORLD’S OPPRESSED?

MICHAEL LOUIS JOHNSON

It won’t necessarily save it from being carved up into condos – and there won’t be cobblestone streets and gas lamps either – but Kensington Market will receive the highest historical honour this Sunday when it’s officially designated a national historic site.

Sure, it will just get a plaque and a mere dot on Parks Canada’s map of places to visit on your vacation, but think of it as another moral ar gu ment against those developers poised to diminish Kensington’s poly glot glory.

“Tolerance and integration have been vital to the development of this cosmopolitan community” reads the inscription on the bronze to be installed Sunday (May 25) at 4 pm in Bellevue Square Park, followed by a parade.

And it’s true. From punk rockers fleeing the mindless boredom of sub urbia and Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing oppression after World War I to survivors of the Nazi camps of World War II, Hungarian merchants whose life’s work was snatched by communism, Portuguese escaping fas cism and Latinos the dictators of Central America, the Market has always been a refuge.

“Kensington was a safe zone,” says Sam Lunansky, who was 12 when his family moved to Kensington in the 1930s. His mother, after selling fruit from her front lawn, established the Augusta Fruit Market at the corner of Nassau and Augusta.

For a young Jewish boy from Poland, Toronto seemed menacing. He recalls the 1933 Christie Pits riot where “the Spadina boys really taught those fascists a lesson.”

But the city’s racism went beyond that famous incident. “Who ate garlic?!” chastised his Anglo teacher at Lord Lansdowne Public School. Anglo-?Saxon stores sold no “ethnic foods,” and there was widespread dis dain for those whose command of the English language wasn’t up to snuff.

Not so in Kensington Market. Food was fresh, just like back home. People bartered using emphatic sounds and gestures – Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Italian all mixed with smatterings of English.

“Times were tough. There was no money, but we ate well,” grins Lunansky.

Tom Mihalik (Tom’s Place, 190 Bald win) agrees. “We had the best of everything: Hungarian butchers, Polish bakers. Daiter’s Creamery had the best cream cheese anywhere.”

In his eyes it’s 1958 and he’s a boy running through the Market to fetch a snack for his dad, who’s minding the family’s used furniture and cloth ing shop.

The plaque explains that newcomers were “attracted by the relative affordability of the area.” But did they really come for cheap rent? Zoltan Zimmerman, in 1951, found $8 a month too much. He spent his first summer sleeping in the delivery truck of the fruit market where he worked. Two years later, Zimmerman, now one of the biggest property owners in the area, opened Zimmerman Bros. Grocery with his cousin, and then Zimmerman’s Discount (210 Augusta), which he still runs with his son.

Rent was cheap in many parts of Toronto, but people were drawn to Kensington because it offered something more. Max Fisher came because his brother told him it had the best Hungarian sausage around. Perhaps the taste of home drew many. (Imagine choosing the location of your residence based on the availability of fresh local food.)

Perhaps what it really offered was freedom – to be your own boss, to survive on your cunning, to improvise a store out of the front of your home. Zoning bylaws? Commercial? Residential? Not an issue.

Business in Kensington thrived or failed on the strength of personal relationships. Joe Amaro was 15 in 1968 when he started working with Sam Lunansky at Augusta Fruit. “There’s an onion farmer Sam has had dinner with every week for the last 60 years.”

Though it is a zone of competitive business, Kensington was built on a balance of personal resourcefulness and generosity. Octogenarian David Pinkus, who’s lived in the same house on Nassau since he was three, tells how the neighbourhood kids were the recycling program.

“We’d scour the back lanes collecting bushel baskets and empty bottles, returning them for pennies. No body had an allowance in those days.”

Lunansky’s father had a side business bundling newspapers to sell as wrappers to the fishmongers.

Today, Victor Pavao sells bulk candies, coffee, nuts and spices from Casa Acoreana (235 Baldwin) with his brother Ossie. In the late 1950s they lived above P.K. Poultry on Baldwin. Their mother worked all day plucking chickens by hand. In summer, she’d get extra work picking worms on golf courses at night.

“Benny and Cheyanne (the owners of the poultry shop) would leave pennies in the till so we could buy doughnuts on Sundays,” Pavao remembers.

Perhaps Kensington was no different from your average Old World village. Kids made up games in the streets; merchants competed for cus tomers; neighbours’ sons and daughters fell in love and got married; businesses were passed down through generations.

What makes this area so special is that it happened in a city with a reputation for coldness and anony mity, where people politely follow the rules, where time is money and money is king.

Kensington Market’s designation as a historic site may not stop the in flux of chain stores or condo towers, but it will, hopefully, remind us of the spirit of independence and ingenuity that helped this neighbourhood thrive, the dream that drew so many oppressed people and the sense of freedom and camaraderie that made it home regardless of language, culture or financial status.

news@nowtoronto.com

http://nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=163186

 

[Alley Kat]

May 25, 2008 16:00 ET

Government of Canada Commemorates the National Historic Significance of Kensington Market

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - May 25, 2008) - The Honourable Jason Kenney, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, today presented for the first time a Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaque commemorating the national historic significance of Kensington Market.

The presentation of the plaque took place during a ceremony marking the importance of the market and its impact on the history of Canada. Secretary of State Kenney made the announcement on behalf of Canada's Environment Minister, John Baird.

"Our Government is proud to recognize Kensington Market as a national historic site," said Kenney."The commemoration of Kensington Market by the Government of Canada will ensure that the important history of this district will be appreciated for generations to come."

In 2006, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recommended that Kensington Market be designated a site of national historic significance. Today, this vibrant neighbourhood finds its roots in the early 20th century, when it was built by immigrants from around the world who helped build our country. Its narrow streets are lined with shops, houses, and religious, cultural and community institutions that reflect the evolution of this living urban district.

Created in 1919, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada advises the Minister of the Environment about the national historic significance of places, persons and events that have marked Canada's history. The placement of a commemorative plaque represents an official recognition of their historic value. It creates public awareness about Canada's rich cultural heritage, which must be preserved for present and future generations.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=860785

 

[ganjavih]

Does this mean the area will be safe from glassy point towers for the foreseeable future?

 

[adma]

Jason Kenney and Kensington. That's like oil and water.

(NB: that's Toronto's Kensington, not Calgary's)

 

[Alley Kat]

This past Sunday in Kensington...

And a few more shots...

http://torontoist.com/2008/05/phototo_pedestrian_sunday.php?gallery3757Pic=1#gallery

.

 

[Alley Kat]

Wanted: a recipe for preserving anarchy

Kensington Market has always been a volatile blend of ingredients. What will a historical designation do to the mix?

Jun 01, 2008 04:30 AM
MURRAY WHYTE
STAFF REPORTER

In his office – more an outsized closet, made the more so by the racks of suits that line the small space – Tom Mihalik keeps a triptych of photos: One, of his 12-year old self, hunched on the front stairs of his family's Kensington Ave. storefront in 1968; another of the store itself, an array of second-hand clothing, furniture and TV sets; and a third, of his father, William, who had brought the family from Hungary here, to Kensington Market, and the prospect of a better life.

It worked. Fifty years after William's Clothing first opened, Tom and the half-dozen or so Mihaliks still involved in the business – now the iconic designer discount store Tom's of Kensington – are prepping for their mid-century anniversary celebration this Saturday .

And the market outside Mihalik's front door, now on Baldwin St. (Tom suggested to his father a move north; William obliged by nudging the shop around the corner in the mid-70s) shares much with the market of his childhood: bustling and eclectic, a medley of ethnicities and cultures, the sounds and smells of urban market vitality hanging heavy in the wet, early-summer air.

But truth to tell, the market is different. Kensington, in order, has been a Jewish market, an Italian market, and a Portuguese market; a marijuana-tinged hippy haven, a vintage clothing bonanza, and a punk-rock epicentre; and now Jamaican, Latin American and Asian businesses have moved in, adding their own flavours to the happily muddled pastiche of market life.

Over the near-century this small cluster of blocks a little south and west of College and Spadina have played host to waves of immigrants and outsiders, the only constant has been change. And true to form, the market is changing again – into what, no-one can say for sure, but everyone seems to care.

"Everything in the market is kind of like herding cats," says Adam Vaughan, the area's city councillor. "You've got radicals that don't want a thing to change. You've got conservative people that want to throw caution to the wind. There are a lot of interesting divisions that have to be coalesced."

For decades, the market has been happily insulated from the world Out There – an urban fortress that took self-preservation to a not-surprising activist extreme. But with real estate spiking upward all around it the market's precious eclecticism is facing a new kind of transformation.

As a new generation – the children of the suburbs – has re-embraced urban living continent-wide, vibrant, diverse neighbourhoods everywhere have been rapidly homogenized as urban playgrounds for the wealthy. Manhattan, once a hodgepodge of culture and class, has transformed into an exclusive haven for upper-wage earners and luxury name-brand services and goods.

More broadly drawn, the crux of the market struggle is akin the proverbial nailing of jelly to the wall: How to preserve something that is, by its very nature, organic and dynamic, an urban chameleon constantly shedding its skin?

This is not to say there have not been attempts, the most recent being the designation of the market of a national historic site. Carlos Teixeira, the academic who nominated the market for the designation in 2003, favours controls to keep market change in check.

"I nominated it because the market was a port of entry for immigrants from all over the world – thousands and thousands of families," Teixeira says. "But I always have the question in the back of my mind: Will residential and commercial gentrification destroy what has been built here?"

Teixeira's designation is a pyrrhic victory at best. The market got the standard plaque, trumpeting its significance as an immigrant gateway; with it come no safeguards or guidelines on building, land use or anything else. Its most potent weapon is moral suasion – a slippery concept in an authority-resistant zone used to having its own rules.

But Teixeira's observation isn't just alarmist. In the past few years, new restaurants and boutiques have filled abandoned spaces. The Freshwood Grill, a casually upscale restaurant focused on organic and local ingredients, replaced the venerable punk-rock dump Planet Kensington on Baldwin St; Miss Cora's Kitchen, a gourmet caterer, fills a space next to a butcher shop on Kensington Ave. where a grisly piece of tripe dangles from a steel hook in the window.

With them comes the split-personality of the Kensington mindset: Twin surges of relief and dread. Quietly, developers have been massing properties in the market's orphan spaces, in alleyways and courtyards. Long-time landowners – some of whom own own large portions of the market's real estate – are pondering their options.

Residents have softened, but remain wary. "Gentrification's not the four-letter word it used to be here," says Chris DeVita, the chair of the Kensington Market Action Committee, a coalition of residents and business owners. "It's going to happen. It has to happen. We know that. What we want is some kind of blueprint to make sure Kensington stays Kensington."

One landowner, Lorne Gertner, is also a developer. He doesn't see a danger. "I think the market scares everyone in the city," says Gertner, grandson of a shopowner here. "It's not an easy place to step into. But it's an incredible opportunity, and someone needs to nurture it along the way."

Vaughan's office has been drawing up a plan, in consult with people in the market, to try to find the right path. "There is no neighbourhood in the city that has enjoyed the anarchy that the market has enjoyed – in the most positive sense of the word," Vaughan says. "It's a precious, delicate, beautiful part of the city, and it requires the same approach from government. That's my challenge."

Mihalik has advice to offer. He remembers the downturn of the mid-90s. "Ten years ago, we talked about the death of the market – empty storefronts everywhere, things looked gloomy," he says Mihalik. "Back then, I never would have believed this. But the market is alive again. The future is bright."

For his anniversary, he hired his newest neighbour, Miss Cora's, to cater it. "I told her I wanted the flavour of the market," Mihalik says. She proposed everything from perogies to Jamaican patties to empanadas.

"That's someone who gets it," Mihalik beams.

Across Baldwin St., an old Victorian façade is getting a major overhaul, sealed off from the sidewalk by two storeys of plywood. "There's still plenty of truth in the market," Mihalik says.

"You can see the flour being unloaded at the bakeries, the fish trucks rolling in. That's our history. But we're not a museum. History's still being written here. I think it will be for a long time."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/434832

 

[Alley Kat]

Brisket and twister bagels find their way back downtown

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080607.DELI07/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Ontario/

In the first half of the 20th century, Toronto's Jewish population largely lived in and around Kensington Market. Much like New York's fabled Lower East Side, the dense tenements teemed with dozens of kosher butchers, fishmongers, bagel bakeries, appetizing stores and delicatessens. It was a rich cultural life defined by the poverty of immigrants, new opportunity and the adherence to biblical law.

But the postwar era saw Toronto's Jewish population shift drastically. Many migrated north up Bathurst Street, to the more spacious neighbourhoods of Forest Hill, North York, Thornhill and Richmond Hill, where one could buy a detached house in a safe, Jewish neighbourhood.

Several downtown Jewish eateries followed, establishing themselves in new strip malls and plazas. United Bakers Dairy Restaurant, Coleman's Restaurant and Deli, and Moe Pancer's Delicatessen, all located on Bathurst at or north of Lawrence, are migrants from downtown. Each displays worn photographs of their old stomping grounds on walls brimming with nostalgia.

Spadina's mostly Jewish-owned garment trade gradually disappeared, taking with it the lunchtime crowds that sustained the neighbourhood delis and bagel shops. As the Jews departed, Kensington Market was given over to the tastes of Jamaican patties, grilled Portuguese sardines and Chinese dim sum. The remaining Jewish restaurants and stores that didn't make the move north eventually went out of business.

 

[Alley Kat]

A love story

Adrean Farrugia and Sophia Perlman

Jun 19, 2008 04:30 AM

Ten months after their initial meeting – during a late-night jam at the 2006 jazz festival – friendship turned to romance for vocalist Sophia Perlman, 22, and pianist Adrean Farrugia, 33. Now they live in a Kensington Market apartment with a Bechstein Piano and 15-week-old kittens. They each have various gigs during the jazz fest, but only one date together – Monday with The Vipers at the Reservoir (9:30 p.m., Pay What You Can).

Q: What do you recall about the first time you saw Sophia perform?

Farrugia: I was blown away by her sound and command of the music. I heard this great powerful and whimsical sound coming out of this young petite gorgeous girl. It was love at first sight (hear).

Q: In a blindfold test, what hallmarks would distinguish Adrean's playing?

Perlman: Adrean has a style that is so uniquely his own.... He'll play a groove that makes me want to dance, then move into rhythmic ideas that set my head spinning, and then suddenly he'll weave in a melody that makes me want to cry.

Q: What has Sophia contributed to you musically?

Farrugia: Sophia knows how to go straight to the essence of the music. She can get in the zone and bring out the pure spirit of anything she sings.

Q: If your relationship had a theme song what would it be?

Perlman: "Blackberry Winter" by Alec Wilder. I remember being in my first rehearsal with Adrean, and discovering he was the only other musician I had ever met who knew the song. We played it together as a duo on our first real gig together and it was absolutely magical.

Ashante Infantry

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/445621

 

[Alley Kat]

http://www.insidetoronto.com/News/Centre/article/51569

[murmur] turns five

Story-sharing project has become an international success

BY JUSTIN SKINNER
JULY 10, 2008 10:37 AM

When Toronto residents Gabe Sawhney, Shawn Micallef and James Roussel decided five years ago that Torontonians needed to share more of their stories, they had no idea their idea would take off the way it has.
The trio came up with the concept of having local residents tell their own stories about some of the city's various locales, then making those stories accessible through phone numbers provided at those locations.
"We bonded over an interest in the city and the weird stories of the city everyone gets from having lived here a while," Sawhney said. "There are so many stories that you hear through the grapevine but that we tend not to share."
He added those stories are made all the more important by the constant change across the city. As pieces of Toronto's past are torn down or swallowed up by larger developments, the need to find a way to connect to the city's past is greater than ever.
"The stories about places are even harder to maintain without a building there (to remind people)," he said.
The project, dubbed [murmur], started out in Kensington Market in 2003 and has since spread to various communities across Toronto. Kensington Market was seen as an ideal starting point in part because of its rich history and in part because it was artistic and eclectic enough that the [murmur] signs would most likely be accepted.
"We didn't know how the project would be received and we didn't know how the signs would be received," Sawhney said. "Toronto is so undermythologized but Kensington's one of the best (communities) at keeping their stories."
Despite the preponderance of interesting stories based in Kensington Market, early response to the project was non-existent. The [murmur] founders set up posters asking people to call in with their stories and were disappointed when the phone did not ring. Eventually they went out and began canvassing the community in person.
"People liked the idea but their initial response was 'You're not interested in my story'," Sawhney said. "As soon as they started actually thinking about it, these fabulous stories started to come out."
[murmur] recently expanded into the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, with the expansion coinciding with this year's Pride Toronto Festival. The project has already taken root in the Annex, down Spadina Road, at Fort York, Little India and at the Toronto Reference Library.
"We always thought it was a really cool idea and it's rewarding that other people think so as well," Sawhney said. "The five years we've been working on the project have been a pretty good five years for Toronto, and you're seeing that in the stories."
[murmur] has since been adopted in Montreal and Vancouver; San Jose, California; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Sao Paolo, Brazil. Throughout those eight cities, 250 [murmur] signs have been put up and more than 600 stories collected.
"People here were a lot more reluctant to share their stories, but the stories here are just as good or better," Sawhney said.
[murmur] will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a party at the Canadian Corps Hall, 201 Niagara Street, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 17. Visit www.murmurtoronto.ca for details.

 

[Alley Kat]

DIY comic strips: Born in Kensington Market, soon going global

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv....BITSTRIPS12/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Ontario/

DIY comic strips: Born in Kensington Market, soon going global
IVOR TOSSELL
Special to The Globe and Mail
July 12, 2008

Forget three-dimensional virtual worlds. If the global success of one Toronto website is any indicator, the future of the Web is flat.

After a meteoric first few months of existence, Bitstrips (http://www.bitstrips.com), a site that makes it easy for anyone to create and share his own cartoons, will be celebrating its official launch this week with an awards show that will have more than a few eyeballs glued to their screens.

"Comics are totally relegated to those who have very specific drawing skills," says Jesse Brown, a Toronto-based journalist and CBC personality who is also one of the site's founders. "What if anybody could make a comic strip in a few minutes?"

In the four months since a beta version of the site launched at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, it has racked up 20,000 registered users, who in turn have churned out more than 70,000 comic strips.

On Wednesday at 8:30 p.m., the best of them will be honoured in a to-the-point awards presentation, to be broadcast on the Internet from a party at the LeVack Block Bar on Ossington.

"Awards shows are interminable," Mr. Brown says. "We're going to blitz through the winners in five minutes."

Bitstrips encourages users to piece together characters and scenes from stock art, then solicit feedback from friends. It's flexible enough to let users caricature friends and celebrities - from Jian Ghomeshi (who, reportedly, was not enamoured with his likeness) to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Harper. Like much of the content on Bitstrips, once a user has created a character, other users can reuse it in their own cartoons.

Moreover, Bitstrips users are encouraged to create cartoon avatars of themselves. This has led to an innovative community system that not only lets people keep tabs on their friends' creations, but insert their friends' cartoon selves into new comics.

The site's six-person crew is spearheaded by artist and animator Jacob (Ba) Blackstock, whose firm, Core Matrix, operates from a Kensington Market studio. The site is actually a byproduct of a larger cartoon-based project; Mr. Blackstock needed a tool to ease the tedious task of drawing comics.

"I always think ... in terms of a light bulb and a stopwatch," he says. "The light bulb goes off over your head when you've had an idea. But as soon as you have, the stopwatch starts ticking."

Next up for Bitstrips is a Facebook application that will let people work cartoons straight into their profiles, and plans for cleverly embedded advertising - so far, the site has been financed out-of-pocket. But with thousands of fans on board and some leading-edge ideas to show the world, Bitstrips has something to celebrate.