That whiff of change blowing over our neighbours to the south seems to have blown across Toronto.
Affable two-time political loser and somewhat queer-friendly Progressive Conservative John Tory appears to be mulling yet another bid for the mayoralty in 2010. Well, that’ll certainly make the next municipal campaign interesting. Consider the economic impact of the national media decamping to Toronto to find out if this election will be Tory’s redemption or the final nail in his political coffin. All the reporters in town spending their massive journalist paycheques are sure to add dozens of dollars to local businesses.
And dick-and-fart-joke purveyor Kevin Smith has revealed that his recent visit to Toronto for the Kevin Smith film festival convinced him to finally abandon the genre of lovable raunchy slacker films his “askewniverse” helped to popularise. His next feature is the much more mature sounding A Couple of Dicks starring Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis, about a pair of private detectives.
A woman claims she was sexually assaulted by a male dancer at a strip club in Etobicoke. I know it’s horrible, but I couldn’t help the fact that my first reaction to this story was “There are male strip clubs in Etobicoke? You mean we have an option other than Remington’s?” And my second reaction was “Yes, because it’s usually the paying clients who are victims of sexual assault by sex workers.” I’d post the link to the Foxxes Den web site, but Google warns it’s full of malicious software, and I wasn’t sure if it was talking about the web site or the dancers.
The Entertainment District may be getting a makeover with a complete proposed redesign of John Street.
And it’s Pride Week, so go out and do some Prideful stuff. Buddies hosts its youth creation project PrideCab tomorrow night, and Xtra’s Pride Party Thursday night.
Also debuting tomorrow night is a workshop production of classic queer playwright Jean Genet’s groundbreaking work, Deathwatch, about three hot young criminals in a prison cell. One faces execution, one faces parole, and all three are charged with desperate sexual desire. Playing at XPACE (58 Ossington Ave, at Queen St) Jun 17-20 at 8pm, with a 2pm matinee on Jun 20. Tickets are $15 with $2 going to Pride Toronto and can be purchased at ToTix.ca. The collective creating the show is composed entirely of young, emerging, (and yes, hot) queer artists, so come out and show your support. Full disclosure: I did research for the show and am the co-producer, so I know that it’s very good indeed.
Why you can trust Xtra
