Extra, Extra: Lace and Leather Took Over Church, and SummerWorks Worked

By Meg Campbell

Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

Photo by yedman from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

• Revellers leathered and laced up for yesterday’s Church Street Village Fair, a celebration of fetish garb and culture. The event underwent some rebranding and so organizers announced this year’s fair as a “NEW community fair celebrating the diversity and creativity of our community and exploring the continuum of sexual fantasy and freedom of expression from leather to lace.”
• Over the weekend, New York magazine published Yvonne Bambrick’s guide to touring Toronto by Bixi as part of a larger Toronto travel feature. The cycling advocate and consultant—and former executive director of the Toronto Cyclists Union—recommends four trips by bike, including one through U of T and Kensington Market and another down Jarvis and along front to the St. Lawrence Market area.
• This time next year, Toronto will be playing host to the 2012 Ontario Summer Games. Yep, those are a thing, and they’re happening from August 16 to 19 next year, in various venues in the city and surrounding regions. About 2,500 athletes competing in 28 sports will travel to Toronto from across the province, and organizers are looking for 1,000 or so volunteers to help make it happen, adding that it “serves as a stepping stone to many national and international competitions.” It sure isn’t easy being an amateur athlete in Canada, so we hope they get all the help they need, and more.
• They fought through the threat of having their federal funding cut, and even despite a bit less programming this year, the people at SummerWorks have announced that more than 20,000 people attended this year’s festival, a stronger turnout than last year, and attendance of Music Series events was up by 25 per cent. They also handed out awards last night at the festival’s closing party; the list of winners is here. A big congrats to the winners and everyone involved in this year’s SummerWorks.

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