The Music Series is every night of the festival, with acts performing on the main stage upstairs, and in the new Performance bar downstairs. A great list of Canadian talent kicks off August 5 with The Hidden Cameras playing two nights on the mainstage, and other names like Laura Barrett, The Mountains & The Trees and more.  The schedule for both theatre and music at The Lower Ossington Theatre is here:

Individual tickets for theatre and music shows are $10, with package deals available and shows run Aug 5-15.

The mentions are coming as far off as Ireland, where an article in the Irish Times cites our neighborhood as the “rising area” thanks to our bars and restaurants.

Another recent mention that garnered attention is from the Huffington Post, which calls Toronto “the capital of cool” and mentions Ossington as one of the “once dodgy, but now trendy…neighborhoods” for it’s galleries, shops and restaurants.

This sort of news must come in threes, because Daily Candy, a popular U.S. fashion and lifestyle blog, also visits Toronto and recommends Ossington for its restaurants and shops. Notably highlighted by Daily Candy are Jonathan + Olivia, Delux, Pizzeria Libretto and Camp 4.

So maybe we can expect to hear more Irish and American accents when we shop and eat on Ossington.

Finally, closer to home, new coffee shop Crafted by Te Aro is receiving positive press. We can attest to the quality of their coffees (both hot and cold) and the professionalism and dedication of their staff.  If you follow them on Twitter, you would have read about their very high rating from The Coffee Review. Kudos and welcome to the neighborhood!

The Toronto Youth Theatre

“Hair” runs from July 21-31: Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30PM and Saturdays at 2PM at the Lower Ossington Theatre, 100 Ossington Ave. You can buy tickets online or other ways.

The pub crawl is scheduled to run next Wednesday, July 7 at 7PM at Camp 4, Reposado, The Ossington, Baby Huey, and Levack Block. Don’t forget though, this pub crawl is literary: Chart your own course through the evening: 18 Toronto writers are positioned in competing timeslots and venues along Ossington Avenue. Pick up your itinerary, a Choose Your Own Poetic Adventure storybook at each venue, or download a pdf from thescream.ca.

The Cardboard Brains - by Vincent Carlucci

Vince Carlucci is a long-time Toronto musician, having co-founded the band Cardboard Brains back in 1976. Back then he was also taking pictures of his favourite bands, Iggy Pop, The Ugly, The Ramones, Blondie and others. Toronto, along with New York and London, was pivotal in the late 70s punk movement and many of the best musicians the the time came and played.

There are shots from Patti Smith’s show at Seneca College in 1976, (price of entry: $7.50) as well as Lou Reed playing Massey Hall.

Recently Joe Fuda connected with Vince and put together an expo of some of the shots he took which went up recently at the Oz Studios at 134 Ossington. It’s a cool little show to walk around and remember the era.

The Summerworks festival will be in August 2010, and includes a variety of plays throughout town, and nightly music performances at the Lower Ossington Theatre. We’ll keep you posted when the festival approaches.

Devan, who writes a blog called Eat it or Leave it, and is obviously passionate about both food and art, took over the place for friends and onlookers to host his 26th birthday.

His mandate? To depict the relationship between food and art via various visual, edible and inedible exhibitions.

It was a well attended night with some great art and good food, both real and artistic.

The room was busy:

There was some cool food related art:

And these were my favourite pieces. A sushi dinner, all made with candy:

and this “stadium” made with watermelon, pasta, broccoli trees, and little gummi bears as the people – fantastic:

We love how the new Meta Gallery has evolved. Looking forward to more events like this.

Last week, we were invited for a personal tour by Craig Boyko and Eugene Paunil, two of the artists who founded 1st Run. Their art, and those of Ian Vandenberg and Mark Mazurak, are part of the exhibit running through this weekend. These artists, and some of their friends, spent their nights cleaning out and renovating the space to make it functional and accessible for their art, and, being artists, they filmed the entire process. The video was playing in the back room of the gallery while we were there, and you can watch it here as well!

Craig’s thought is that 194 Ossington could be a permanent co-op gallery with different artists renting it out for shows and events, a sort of rotating line-up of Toronto’s emerging art stars. As he pointed out, most of the galleries are on the south end of Ossington, and then on Dundas west, so 194 makes a nice addition to this side of the street.

This weekend is the last weekend of 1st Run at 194 Ossington. Like I said, check out this creative place, and the inventive folks behind it, before it’s gone.

Want to see how the space was transformed? Check out this great video Craig made of the transformation of Monarch into 1st Run.

1st Run - from Brian Sharwood on Vimeo.

As we’re somewhat stuck with the restaurant we have right now due to mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone‘s ill-advised and ill-conceived restrictions on ‘fun’ on Ossington, we’ve got a new Gallery.

It either looks like it’s called 1st Run, or that’s the title of the first exhibit they are running.

Walking by tonight and peeking through the windows it looks like the first exhibit is mostly photography.

More to come, or feel free to post in the comment below if you know more about our new neighbours.

When: May 14, 15, 16, 2010

Hours: 12:00 to 8:00 PM daily

Admission: $5.00 students, seniors, artists. $8.00 general public.

Refreshments: An on site café will serve lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks.