Voxpluma

By Stephen Keefe

The author, aspiring member of society

Stephen Keefe

JFK. International departures lounge. 6 PM. The screams get louder as they come down the hallway towards us. I get out of my seat and see four security guards emotionlessly carrying a screaming black man in a straightjacket through the terminal. He writhes desperately in their grip and yells for help in between throaty, incomprehensible shrieks. His head, a mass of dreadlocks atop a white tube of limbs, twists toward me. We make fleeting, piercing eye contact before his head twists back forward.

Deli, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

I look around looking for some other form of human contact — some validation that this really just happened — but find myself in a room just as detached as before. Rows of heads hunched over a sea of glowing rectangles, either indifferent or oblivious to the fact that a hysterically screaming man was just carried through the terminal in a straightjacket.

I had spent a month and a half here and it was time to leave New York City, the greatest place on earth, the piss-drenched center of the universe, the city that makes you ignore the homeless and the insane as a coping mechanism.

I had everything I owned on me- three suitcases- and was going to Europe to take one of the biggest risks of my life: to try to make a career out of being a model.

I started modeling a year ago when I was scouted at 5 AM in the bathroom of a Montreal after-hours club. “We’ll get you walking in two weeks,” he said, looking me up and down under the neon lighting, his jaw grinding from amphetamines, “But right now you’re nothing”

Upper West Side, Manhattan

So I dove headfirst into a categorically superficial industry that promises you money, excitement and travel in exchange for a good chunk of your dignity and the respect of everyone who thinks you’ve become a sold-out narcissist. Within months I was optioned for Calvin Klein and Versace, signed in New York and shot with Kate Hudson. Despite being told I was in the 1% of success for this point in my career, I was still occasionally sleeping on couches to make ends meet.

The author, generally disappointed with his life

My visions of champagne, cocaine and limousines had faded into me drooling onto a pile of mouse shit off the side of a couch in Brooklyn with perfectly coiffed hair, hoping someone with an inflated sense of self-importance would call my agency for work.

To make it out of tuna can-drenched mediocrity I needed to expand to more, bigger markets, and there is no better place to do so than Europe; the heart of global fashion.

Campari Calendar, 2016

The intercom blasted through the terminal and a few hundred of us were herded onto overnight flight 478 to Istanbul. I’d bought a travel pillow, a magazine and a box of sleeping pills, “I want something that will knock me out,” I told the perma-smiling Asian woman offering foot massages.

I got into my window seat and waited for everyone to shuffle past each other. I inhaled the lingering scent of coffee, jet fuel and crusted-on B.O. Someone handed me a Batman overnight kit containing slippers, a toothbrush and compression socks.

Turkish Airline’s Batman overnight kit

I took a look at the guy waving neon orange cones on the runway outside and thought about how the next time I landed I would be fighting for my livelihood — fully confronting the massive risk I was taking and living with the outcome.

“You know who the first person to get into heaven was? Jesus”, said the guy behind me to the passenger beside him.

I popped three sleeping pills as the stewardesses, who looked like they’d been unfrozen from pre-racial America, gave a Bleach-toothed demonstration of what to do if the plane crashed into the side of a mountain.

We took off as a baby started crying three rows down. The teenage girl beside me captured the moment on snapchat: “omg baby crying kill me now” before scrolling through her Facebook, satisfied with her work.

20 minutes later I felt weak but awake, so I browsed through Air-Turkey’s in-flight entertainment to see if I could ease my way into sleep. I almost chose ‘Murder, She Baked: a Peach Cobbler Mystery’ on title alone but landed on ‘The Martian’, propped up my freakishly long neck with the travel pillow and pressed play.

The plotline filtered through my drugged, distracted mind like a schizophrenic slideshow.

Matt Damon

Big storm on mars. They think Matt Damon’s dead but Matt Damon’s not dead. Sexy intern discovers Matt Damon’s not dead. Something about a satellite. I was starting to get a headache from the pills but still couldn’t sleep. Matt Damon makes potatoes with his own shit and does some math. It’s been like two hours and I’m still awake. Bad guy from NASA is a bad guy. Fucking Matt Damon. I really don’t care if he dies or not I need something else.

I put on Modern Family. Boobs. A minivan. I was conscious but barely holding it together. I tried a different position and popped 2 more pills. Their voices were slowing down now, but the pain in my twisted body was keeping me just above sleep.

I was stuck in some kind of cruel sitcom-fueled purgatory, unable to sleep or fully wake up.

The mustached man to my left had his legs up, pointing his soggy, wrinkled ass right at me, reminding me that I would be forced to breathe whatever came out of it for another 7 hours. I would be forced to breathe whatever came out of everyone’s ass for another 7 hours.

Sunrise above Instanbul

I angrily watched the sun set through a crack in the window and then scanned the cabin. Everyone else was asleep, most of them chin-down in a sea of their own fat. I sat there miserably and listened to the chorus of mucusy snoring, grunting and shifting limbs around me.

I curled up in a ball and put on a movie about a dinosaur and a little boy becoming friends. I closed my eyes and after a few hours of anxious, nonsensical thoughts the stewardess slid a tray of rubbery scrambled eggs in front of me.

The Turkish Airlines theme song punctuated the landing and we shuffled off like zombies into a pitch-black Istanbul. I followed about half the passengers through the packed airport onto a bus to the connecting flight to Paris at 6 AM.

Instanbul Atatürk airport at 6 AM

My body forced me into micronaps as my neck snapped up and down in a dysfunctional rhythm. The sun rose through the clouds, the theme music played again and we got off in Paris.

I took a taxi into town and he ripped me off for €80 but I was too tired to fight it. I had been travelling sleeplessly for 28 hours and my clothes were drenched in a putrid mixture of old and new sweat.

My host, a friend of a friend, welcomed me in and showed me my room. She went out for drinks and I couldn’t figure out how the bathroom light worked, so I took a shower in the dark and went to bed.

The author, after a terrible flight

I looked at myself in the bedside mirror. I had meetings with two of the biggest modeling agencies in the world the next day and I looked like I’d just escaped from a Turkish POW Camp. I desperately needed a good night’s sleep.

I popped two more pills and lay there in a frustrated haze staring at the ceiling fan, suspended in insomnia. At 4 AM I went for a walk to calm my nerves.

The streets were eerily quiet. Only the faint hue of the streetlights lit up the cobblestone streets. The rhythmic click-clack of my boots rang out through the walls of the blacked-out apartment buildings and supermarkets that wouldn’t have life for another few hours.

Paris, 5 AM

I followed the sound of a motor to find a guy doing donuts on his motorcycle in the village square. I asked him if he knew where to eat and then watched him for a few minutes before going back to bed.

I connected to the wifi and looked at my phone. A random on Instagram wanted to see my dick. I politely declined and lay out my casting clothes for the next day.

I had 3 hours to sleep before my first meeting the next day at 9 AM. My head touched the pillow and I free fell into a coma.

My alarm woke me what felt like seconds later. I slapped myself awake and sat up on the side of the bed, about to take on the day that could change the rest of my life.

Follow us on Facebook to see PART II, coming soon.

Follow Stephen Keefe on Twitter

Exported from Medium on May 16, 2016.

By Sebastién Pol

For Garret (DJ Drumspeak) it all began with a mix tape of Willy Colon, Joe Cuba, and Tito Puente he listened to as a teenager. For Anton (DJ Blancon) it all began with La Murga’s trombone intro one night in a bar in Stockholm. Today, after years of exploring a multiplicity of Latin rhythms and collecting hundreds of records from around the world, it is precisely the love for classic salsa what brought them together to make La Rumba Buena[i]; a night exclusively dedicated to salsa brava[ii] in Toronto where you can dance your heart out just as if you were in the barrios[iii] of Cali, San Juan, el Callao, or Havana.

 Talking about how they fell in love with salsa dura, both Garret and Anton maintain that being hip-hop kids in the early 90s in Toronto played a significant part in it. “If you listen to East Coast hip-hop, there is a certain hard vibe, an attitude in the music that is influenced by the hardness of being in Harlem or in the Bronx that is present in New York salsa in the 60s and 70s. That was appealing to us”.

 Years later, that passion for Latin rhythms translated into an actual cross-cultural exchange that took them to many places in the Americas where they spent months not only learning the language and visiting a variety of salsa clubs, but also getting collecting vintage records almost with a methodology of trained musical anthropologists. “If you travel and are exposed to the music of the place you are visiting, there is a point where the deep connection between the people and their music makes sense”, says Garret recounting the three months he spent exploring the musical scene in Colombia: 

“What in Toronto would be the most obscure die-hard salsa record of the night that any DJ would want to hide from you, a bartender in Cali of an average salsa bar would tell you the name of the band, the year, and even the record label by heart. The knowledge and passion for the music there is unbelievable.”

  Acknowledging the fact that they are indebted to people like William Holland Quantic, Miles Cleret of Soundway Records, A Man Called Warwick, and others in Toronto who have paved the way for the recapturing of classic rhythms to new audiences, Garret and Anton have honoured this legacy by creating an all-night vinyl salsa dura in Toronto that resembles the salsatecas[iv] of neighbourhoods in Latin America where people not only dance until their feet hurt, but can sing and play along to live percussion among the flashiest dancers. A true homage to los rumberos[v].

 “Since we started DJing around 2008 in the city, we always had a Latin music segment of half an hour or so, and every time we played salsa we saw how the whole vibe changed” says DJ Blancon. “People loved it, so we decided to make it a whole night”.

    They say that the original idea was to make a salsa night two or three times a year, but after the first night the people who attended, including the owner of the venue, begged them to create another salsa night soon. Today, hosted by renowned Cuban musician Edrey Riveri (Ogguere) whose interaction with the people in between performances adds heart and soul to the Latin vibe of the event, La Rumba Buena has consolidated itself as a monthly no frills night of pure rhythm, classic tunes, humidity from sweaty bodies, and dancing. It’s a of hectic dancing for those able to catch and endure the frenetic rhythms.

Garret and Anton’s vision is to continue creating salsa nights to the point that they would eventually be capable of bringing big names from around the world to Toronto and make an iconic night in the city. As far as I know, we might be witnessing something that could provide a beautiful twist to the salsa scene in Toronto. Who knows? All I know for sure, after having experienced the closest thing to a night of pure salsa from el barrio in Toronto, is that even if it had been true for the Lebron that “sin negro no hay guaguancó”[vi], it would be hard to deny that in the blood of these two Torontonian DJs there is more than enough rhythm and guaguancó. It is truly contagious.

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[i]La Rumba Buena is a term that refers to a great party in Latin America.

[ii] Salsa dura, also known as salsa brava, is a style of salsa music developed in New York in the 1970s with an emphasis on the instrumental part of the music over the lead vocals.

[iii] Literally “the hood” in Latin America.

[iv] A term that refers to clubs that only play salsa music.

[v] Literally people who love to dance.

[vi] A song of the Lebron Brothers that says that without black people there would not be any “guaguancó” which is one of the traditional Cuban rhythms from which salsa was derived.

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For the next La Rumba Buena check its Facebook event site

https://www.facebook.com/events/1598205270418084/

I push open the bright green door, shut it behind me, and take off my boots. I climb up the narrow, brightly lit stairwell to the second floor. Vast windows, the ebb and flow of natural light, the sudden yet calming splash of colour on a wall hanging; I find myself inside Nagomi Beauty Room, a studio that embodies Japanese minimalism located five minutes away from the intersection of Bloor and Jane, a community thriving with anything and everything Ukrainian.

Megumi Ono Overton is the owner of Nagomi, which is a mandarin word for “harmony.” She also happens to be the mother of two adorable toddlers, and the wife of Christian Overton, Toronto’s very own jazz trombonist. Her soft voice and smile contrast with the energetic excitement in her eyes. For her, Nagomi Beauty Room is not just a spa; it’s a nexus for Japanese artists and artisans, a throbbing hub for Torontonians exploring Japanese culture.

Megumi is all about creating community. Her spa is a space where her clients can be rejuvenated mentally and physically. It’s a space which allows her to give back to the wider Torontonian community by supporting Japanese artists and artisans who want to impact Toronto with their talents and wellness products.

Megumi and her team use reflexology, acupuncture, yoga, and nutrition based on Chinese herbal therapy to give her clients a well-rounded treatment that focuses on both their bodies and minds. When she’s not giving you a facial, she’s hosting everything from wellness workshops and markets, to kimono photoshoots, to tea ceremonies, to baby-and-mum yoga. And she wants to do so much more. “I want to do weddings!” she says excitedly, “My Japanese friends are kimono stylists, makeup artists, florists, photographers, we can totally organize Japanese weddings. My husband can do the music,” she laughs.

Everything about Nagomi harkens back to Megumi’s roots. Growing up, her mother had a salon in their home. “My mother’s clients were very casual,” she says, “I’m from a small city, so the clientele wasn’t at all like the crowd you would find in bigger cities like Tokyo or Osaka. But even though these women would come over to the salon in simple dresses and aprons, they would always leave feeling so happy and good about themselves. Even a little bit of lipstick would make them feel beautiful and I want to replicate the warmth my mother created. Nagomi is about my roots and carrying on what my mother started. I want to connect with my clients the way my mum did. I want to form relationships with my clients and have tea with them.”

I am struck deeply by Megumi’s genuine care for her clients. The more I observe her, the more I begin to understand that the dynamic character of the spa stems from her philosophy of beauty; beauty is found in individuals who are healthy mentally and physically. And her desire is for Nagomi to be a space that promotes this relationship between beauty and health, a space where her clients can walk in stressed and leave happier and with a more positive outlook on life.

Megumi’s fearlessness in dreaming big and the ease with which she connects with people have been the keys to her success. Her clients cannot stop talking about her. Not only does she desire to give Toronto the gift of physical and mental wellness but she also desires to bolster the ambitions of the Japanese Torontonians she has met through the spa and the events she hosts. She empowers them by giving them a platform to market their products and exercise their talents while tying in her own vision for Nagomi; she creates a relationship where both sides win. For Megumi, it’s an ever expanding universe.

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Written by Stephen Keefe

Photos by Kate Mada

Marcelo told me he moved here 25 years ago with the hope of finding a good job. He got a cushy 9 to 5 office gig but didn’t really feel at home until he started driving the bus. At the wheel, he’s happily traded the office for a little bit more freedom, even if it comes with a tainted social stigma.Ever notice how when your house is on fire, you’re having a stroke, or you need to get literally anywhere in the city, there’s something in place to help you out? This invisible hand that has your back 24 / 7 is made up of our municipal workers, a group that’s in a bit of a hellish nightmare right now.

On December 4, Quebec’s municipal workers took a nasty bureaucratic blow to the face when the provincial government passed Bill 3.

The bill made it so that workers’ pension funds — you know, the things that allow veteran cops to eventually spend time with their granddaughters and not get shot — were restructured, leaving a larger part of the fund to be paid out of their pocket.

And there’s not much they can do about it.

The importance of their jobs makes striking illegal. So, stuck in a prison of their own obligation to society, they covered city buses in libre nego stickers and wore pink camouflage pants to show how fucked they are.I took a ride on the bus with Municipal worker Marcelo to hear what he had to say.

‘We have to pay the difference now,’ Marcelo says, nodding at boarding passengers and checking his mirrors at one of the 52 stops on the St Joseph route. His hands slide smoothly over the wheel as he merges back onto the road, his movements calm and calculated. This guy drives his bus better than most people watch TV.

Marcelo told me he moved here 25 years ago with the hope of finding a good job. He got a cushy 9 to 5 office gig but didn’t really feel at home until he started driving the bus. At the wheel, he’s happily traded the office for a little bit more freedom, even if it comes with a tainted social stigma.

As he waves to another bus driver and jokes with passengers about his salsa dancing and Luis Suarez, all while keeping his eyes on the road at all times, I realized that public workers like Marcelo are the back and soul of this city.

Above all, he refuses to feel victimized.

After living and working in a number of countries, he’s become somewhat of a connoisseur of political corruption. This has been key in helping him keep a level head while his proverbial lunch money has been taken away.

‘it’s all corrupt politics, anywhere you go in the world man, it’s the same.’

His words roll off his tongue like a cascade of Uruguayan butterflies, and with his perfectly ironed shirt and groomed hair it starts to feel like we’re at his outdoor juice bar instead of a public bus.

That’s when I realized that his amicable traits are part of why he and the other municipal workers are being exploited. The pride he takes in doing this job well is what keeps him doing it — no matter how badly he’s paid.

Taking away their pension showed us that- to a certain extent- they’re doing these jobs for their inherent value. So the next time you ride the bus and the driver gives you a smile or even a courteous nod, think about what it took to offer that to you.

Think about who’s holding your city together. Think about having their back after they’ve had yours for so long.

Written by Stephen Keefe 

Photos by Kate Mada

Thousands of tired, young fingers are at work right now, patching together the clothes you might wear later. Cut, printed, marketed, then shipped off into an economy that burns through Adele remixes and Drake gifs like coal, that chases ‘cool’ like it’s the cure for cancer.Enter Once Again, an ethikwear collective striving to put some humanity back into fashion. The small Montreal label is made up of Louis Aka-Trudel and his girlfriend Lawrence Lambert.I met up with Once Again in their Mile End studio in Montréal to see the project in person and get a feel for what makes them so different.

Louis stands at 10'5" (give or take) so I saw him right away, sauntering towards me at a distance of five blocks. He has a slow, kind gate, like he’s strolling through his hand-grown apple orchard in the middle of an industrial cityscape. He greets me with a Cheshire cat grin and introduces me to the team, eyes wide and attentive through his giant glasses. 

We rode the rickety elevator up to their studio and Louis told me about Once Again’s background — how much of it is based on the art and culture he grew up with in Ivory Coast, how he has a vision to fuse those patterns with themes from Montréal urban art and hip-hop. How he and his team have always respected the wisdom of our ancestors, and how that’s inspired the design and ethical production of the clothes.

On the surface it all sounds like a marketing cliché-material for a feel-good TV commercial, one that flashes the words ‘diversity’, ‘innovation’ and ‘global economy’ in front of b-footage of a homeless man playing saxophone and a guy in a suit dancing in a puddle.

The difference is, Louis actually lives his vision, down to every last bead of sweat he’s poured into this. When Louis says he draws inspiration from urban life and art around him, that means the creation of a hip-hop EP as well that touches on the same themes.

When Louis says he’s inspired to do things ethically, that means he uses fair-trade, eco-friendly textiles in his clothes and garments. When he says he believes in being local, that means those clothes are made in house, with the same creative hands that designed them. 

I found myself standing in their dusty studio, the smell from sewing machine motors still hot in the air, measuring tape thrown haphazardly on the table, clothes folded carefully around a boombox on the wall, and began to better understand how and why Once Again came from this duo of grassroots creatives.

Their vision was never clothing per se. It’s just what emerged from this hub of explosive and eclectic creative energy they’ve cultivated — an inevitable goodness that erupted from having so much swagger.

Once Again have already made a name for themselves in Montreal’s street market scene, where they’ve been setting up shop for over a year now. To spread the love to the rest of Canada, they’ve recently launched a websitewhere for the first time you can order their creations directly, not just from a clothing stand in Montreal. From humble, local beginnings, Once Again is staying true to its roots while enjoying the rise to success.

So let’s shine a light on Once Again, the urban collective that sees a future fueled by innovation and creativity, not tired little hands.

If you’re anything like me, your nightly walk to the Depanneur is not so easily interrupted. But trust the streets of Montreal to shake you from a sleepy stumble when you least expect it.

When my hot latino friends told me about a group of church dancers organizing the latest mile end artsy gig, I thought it might be the latest stylish attempt to convert me to christianity. But what I uncovered was something that redefined my mental picture of ‘church performance’. And it wasn’t exactly religious.

When I strolled by the St Viateur d’Outremont church my attention was immediately grabbed by two dancers, leaping and crawling across the church steps — white capes billowing behind them in the wind.

They danced from the sunset into darkness. A darkness illuminated by coloured lights that cast spooky shadows on the building’s stone walls — the overall effect highlighting the church facade in a way that makes you stop and think twice.

And first you might think, what the heck are they doing? Did they drink too many bottles of the $8 Dep wine? Is it just another drunk dance escapade of aspiring artists, after they were kicked out of the closest bar? But as I kept watching, I realized that it was more than that. Their movements carried meaning.

So I talked to the choreographer Lea Tremblay-Fong to find out more.

Fong explained to me that her and her creative partner, Irvine Chow, want to capture the interaction between dancers and place. As they move across this church-turned-stage, they hope their performance sparks you to think about the relationship between dance, architecture, and socio-cultural interpretation. It’s all about interaction. They want the specific meaning to be crafted by the passerby — by you.

Fong described their choreography as a “site-specific process” — the creators and performers are immersed in real life interactions with the space.

“We aren’t just reading about it in a studio,” Lea explained. “I realize now that most dance performances are created in isolation from reality.” To this purpose they spent extensive time in the space — they interviewed the priest, the sweet old ladies of the parish, and observed routine ceremonies.

The average passerby who doesn’t have any connection to the church will start to pay attention. And for those who already find the building significant, Fong and Irvine have aimed to portray it in a new light — one that requires you to take a moment out of your evening stroll and give it some thoughtful consideration.

Whether or not you do this with some dep wine in a brown bag is still up to you.

(Article by Kate Mada)

I was sitting on the floor at a Mothlight event and I was having one of those moments: bright-eyed nostalgia—for a night that was currently happening.

You know what I’m talking about.

It happens when you find yourself in a scene so perfectly set for ‘the memories’ that you’re already mindfully reminiscing, smiling like a middle-aged mom after a red wine.

Mothlight is a monthly house-concert series that showcases talented local artists, both emerging and established, and its setting is one for the mental scrapbooks. The series was developed with the goal of building a community, a network of conscious artists and music appreciators amassing at a personal level.  Now each event hosts around 40 or so people, and it’s growing grassroots style. It’s something you want to ask around about.

Let me paint you a picture. A dimly lit bay-window stage casts dramatic shadows around the featured musicians. Dozens of people fill the rest of the floor — some cross-legged, some draped across the couch at the back, others standing and leaning on walls as they peek through the hallway doors. The feature room is filled with the trappings of a vintage designer’s bedroom: found-trinkets tacked to the walls, cascading plants and wood trimmings. A cat.

It’s a nasty March night outside, of course, but the contrast only adds to the warmth of the indoor space, full of thick embarrassing socks and thawing faces. There’s a weird sort of kindness that pulses through the venue, different from a crusting Mile End dive. Perhaps for some, calling it “kind” is merely crapping on any serious artistic legitimacy, but no — it means that when you walk in you are immediately handed crafted sangria by one of the hosts. “Sorry it’s not cider,” he said to me, apologizing in actual earnest. Kind.

It’s not just the subtle warmth that smacks your fuzzy feelings, the ones many of us try to pretend away with quick-witted quips and ironic finger paintings. In such an intimate space, the music gets more personal, stripped down, raw—dare I say even say soulful.

“Music is so beautiful when you really get to pay attention to the idea of the artist, or their perception of their project. It’s so much more than just a noisy bar,” says Daniela Madrid, who started the event in November with her boyfriend Siavash Kolaei.

We’re not just talking biblical love ballads with ukuleles. Madrid tells me, “People come in and play who they are. We have some dark wave, new wave, grunge, acoustic, anything really.” Take the first Mothlight concert I found myself at. It opened with local musician Paul De Rita, with his long dark mass of thick dreadlocks paired with an uncanny ability to smoothly work a guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Other artists recently featured were Ceilidh Michelle, a chick with cheekbones and a rad, delicate, grunge sound—sort of a lady Kurt Vile. And then LUKA from Toronto.  A brave, youthful-faced acoustic player who unashamedly encouraged people to ‘sing along’—which may sound like a recipe for awkward looks.  But it took LUKA all of one song to convince his audience that he is the next Leonard Cohen (or is Leonard Cohen).

During all this, you get to just sit. Relax. Some people even draw. It’s like hanging at home and listening to music, except it’s live and there are 45 other people. Maybe that’s an understatement. What Mothlight really is, is a movement. A statement taking music away from the monopoly of the bars and clubs, then stripping it down intimately and accessibly for a community.

Melina’s is one of those places that’s actually as cool as your excited roommate says it is.

It’s not armsleeves, touques in the summer and their buddy’s band drifting over a sea of macbooks. It’s the type of place you walk into and want to stay for an obnoxious amount of time, which is actually what most of its customers do.

The surrounding streets are buzzing with an eclectic mix of Hasidic jewish people, tight jeaned, starry-eyed artists and packs of unaccompanied kids on tricycles. The neighborhood smells like Jewish pastries and old beer bottles fermenting in the sun.

Holding it down behind the counter is Joanna, the half-Greek, half-Haitian pillar of steel who will cut you open like a fish and make you wonder where she’s been all your life. 

The place itself is about the size of a small shoebox, with flowers on the windowsill, posters on the wall for local starving artists and a handwritten chalkboard menu. A coke machine hums in the corner across from a collage photo tribute to 50’s Greek actress Melina Mercouri.

Somewhere in between melting a handmade Greek pastry on your tongue, chatting with Joanna about how everything’s gonna be OK because you’re still young, and folding your feet under your chair so more people can come in, you think: ‘Wait a second, did I just learn something? Is this pastry exceptionally good? Does Joanna have eyes softer than a mother’s kiss and make you feel like you’re staring into the glowing abyss of the universe? Did that man with the salt and pepper hair just order a Greek Phyllo snack like he stumbled out of his living room in Athens?’ 

Yes, he did. And you’re not the only one impressed by this golden ray of sunshine disguised as a café. The neighbourhood likes it so much they’re basically moving in.

“It’s sort of becoming like an Agora.  Like the places in Ancient Greece where they’d get together and talk shit, like talk politics. I think it’s because it’s so small you have no choice, so you just start talking to each other.”