Evergreen Brick Works

This past Sunday, my cohort and I visited the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto.  Evergreen, a national charity, has changed the old Don Valley Brick Works from a collection of deteriorating heritage buildings into a gorgeous area of urban sustainability and eco-conscious design that is open all year long. 

As we walked around this amazing building a rather attractive and charming wood worker was working some wood.  Should have taken a picture of that.

All of the foliage was screaming with personality as we walked through the trails that circled some small but duck-filled ponds.

Having no idea what to expect when we walked into The Kilns building, we were greeted with an onslaught of art installations and graffiti.  A far more impressive collection than what we saw during the entire evening at Nuit Blanche this year.  At the end of this corridor was a screen showing a Werner Herzog short.  There were three more of these featuring various films that I believe were created for this project.

I felt like this place crept up on me out of nowhere and now I can't wait until our next visit!  Highly recommended.

xoxo
Amarina

Tuesday Tunes - Best Coast (on Thursday, natch)

My ears have been lusting after Best Coast all summer and I finally got to see them when they rolled through Toronto last weekend.  The sold out show at Lee's Palace turned out to be really! fucking! amazing! despite singer Bethany suffering from what appeared to be the flu.

Already a road veteran at the tender age of 23, she powered through almost puking several times on stage stopping only to sip water and smoke a joint that a bold (and clearly awesome) audience member passed to her in between songs.  Bethany even announced that it was the first time she's ever smoked on stage much to our surprise, since 90% of their songs talk about being in love and being high.

This is their new video for "When I'm With You", which I can't watch due to my coulrophobia and added hatred of Ronald McDonald.  But I imagine it's good anyway, plus the song is amazing.

Dance, dance, dance!

xoxo Amarina

Retro Hibou

So here I am:

It's 1997, I was obsessed with Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness and The Cure, wearing electric blue eyeshadow around my entire eyeball, and buying conversational clothing from the now gone strips of vintage stores on Queen St West. I had just talked my brother (pre-his growth spurt to 6'4") into wearing this amazing white men's jacket to his grade 8 graduation instead of the obvious black. It was a good day.

Having eccentric taste in polyester button down shirts and neon makeup, my look at the time was very much "I care so much about my look that it's gone past caring and is now a total shitshow".  And as you can see by the cornucopia of self-made necklaces that look like White Rose threw up all over my chest, I was already paving the road to my future jewellery-infused lifestyle.  I am proud of this.

My brother and I were obsessed with By Divine Right and this video in particular. You know what? It still fucking rocks. Also check out Feist pre-superstardom!

Tuesday Tunes (But on Wed) - The Chemical Brothers + Wayne Coyne

One of my favourite songs of the last decade, three weirdos get together and make weirdo music and a perfect song comes out of that weirdness. The video is pretty sweet too.

LOVE.

xoxo
Amarina