you should drink your coffee here:

this is the bellevue. it sits, appropriately, at the corner of bellevue and nassau streets in kensington market. apparently many other business have held reign at this location in the past, and apparently when these three guys leased it for their own purposes, it was little more than a flat white box.

now inside it's warm, cozy, made of wood; there are baked goods, there are hot sandwiches, breakfast; there is fresh warm pie with cream; there are french pressed batches of what they affectionately call 'cowboy coffee', for its dark, thick, strength and potency. there are also any number of foamy espresso drinks crafted meticulously by the tall drink of water counterman; sugary treats, a lite-brite, a typewriter, and cds for sale. there is just the right amount of hot steam in the place so that the windows get a bit fogged up but not too much.

soon, there will also be booze and music and nighttime fun.

for now, they are waiting for you from:
8-5 on wednesdays and thursdays and
8-6 on friday, saturday and sunday.

if you're anywhere nearby anytime soon, you should really go.

just another sunday afternoon at the office

with my headphones on and the volume loud i hardly notice the commotion out on the street until it must have been in full tilt for some minutes, because the noise of the yelling and carrying on finally got so loud that i took out my earbuds and had a look out the open second floor window of my little office.

up the street about 50 feet on the other side of traffic from our house, a long, thin woman with scraggling fake long yellow-blonde hair was hunched over screaming herself hoarse against the pane of a basement window. i squinted to see past the sun and could make out just a fragment of a pale soft male inner forearm and heel of hand of the person the blonde beanpole was spitting venom at on the other side of the glass. he was gesturing. possibly lewdly.

what ever it was he gesticulated made the woman on the street catapult up and out in an all-out explosion of hair and hands on the ends of raving arms and legs akimbo and purse and bags flying out then in again. she leaned in real close to the window. the man inside must have moved back some because i could no longer see any hint of skin there through the reflection.

“No!” the woman screamed. “You don’t FUCK me, force me to SUCK your DICK, then toss me out like i’m your GODDAMNED FUCKING WHORE.”

She collected her things from the pavement and began to stalk off the side of the curb, still screaming as she crossed the street through heavy, fast moving traffic. She turned back with a final venomous burst to leave him, and the rest of us on the street, with these words hanging strange and ugly before us for the rest of the afternoon.

“YOU have FUCKED with the wrong fucking BITCH, my FRIEND.”

top less gay love tekno party

to give you an idea:

once i was in a park in strathcona (vancouver) with guitarist / vocalist / writer / dancer / all-round angelfromheaven and producer mikey shindler, his sister, and a dear scottish friend in town for a few weeks of goodtimes. it was nearing the end of summer but our tallcans and the smoking of things kept us warm and merry against the ever-creeping shadows of dusk.

mikey said something like: “i gotta make some changes, kids. things are gonna change around daddy’s house. it’s the revolution. you gotta get into it. i’m into it.”

and his sister asked: “what’s the revolution this time?”

“easy,” he told her. “whole new me. i’m a respectable, peaceloving citizen of the world. everynight’s gonna be the same routine: smoke a joint, watch the news at eleven, go to bed. wake up. repeat. that’s it.”


and to give you another idea:

that refrain: “smoke a joint. watch the news. go to bed. wake up, repeat, repeat” is now the featured chorus of one of their newer songs.

toplessgayloveteknoparty is all spandex-onesies and getupandgo, a delightfully orchestrated seeming-chaos of guitars, drums, keyboards, sweeping harmonies and rousing choruses, sexy basslines and songs so riprollicking with love happiness and joy that i dare you not to dance and pump your fist in the air when you listen to them.

liveshows are a feast for pretty much every sense.

give them a wee listen here:


http://www.myspace.com/toplessgayloveteknoparty


and do me a favor: don’t let their name, or the fullbodyglittersuits, or the fact that soon everyone you know will be talking about them and singing their glorious praises lead you to believe that this band is just another over-hyped, immaterial, flashinthepan kind of situation.

the difference, friends, is that all the beautiful creatures (6-8, depending on the time and place) of tgltp are each exquisitely talented in what they do: individually they are all among those humans with a kind of preternatural genius; as a mass-ensemble, they are like an all-encompassing juggernaut of energy, dynamism and unfailingly a straight-up balls-out pique of all that talent crystallized in such a way that to experience them playing in a room is to be close to something special, something rare, something that will make you forget yourself and dance.


toplessgayloveteknoparty is:

Mike Shindler
Donne Torr
Benny Schutze
Sean Tyson
Dave Vertesi
Kevin Fairburn

Honorary Members:
Lucas Hamilton
Jon McMoran
Krisdy Shindler - Art Director
Alex Duncan - Performance Dance Director