Wexford Heights, the New Queen West?

54east, the half-art, half-BIAish, bus route inspired magazine recently released its Spring 2006 issue. The cover story, points of origin, profiles in a positive, hard working way, successful entrepreneurs whose businesses line the Wexford neighbourhood. The article includes photos of Ian Leventhal's murals of the same business owners.

Fortunately, the subscribe button on the 54east website doesn't work, which means you'll have to go out and visit this free-from-gentrification-worry neighbourhood and pick yourself up a copy. They're currently available at The Triple Crown Restaurant, Elements Coffee Bar and Scarborough Libraries, among other places. As well, volunteers will be handing them out on the 54 Lawrence East route May 23rd-30th. But if you're anxious to get the scoop right away, you can read it all online.

Not so new, but worthy of mention, are a kind of cool far removed from Queen West:

The difficult to link to 54east soundtrack: 3 songs for traveling eastbound, 3 songs for traveling westbound: www.thinktanktoronto.ca --> Projects --> 54East --> 54East Soundtrack --> 54East Soundtrack (again) --> underneath Download the tracks

Honk if you love Scarborough T-shirts