Any cool, local events?

Well, I live just outside of a small city called Newmarket, which is a half an hour north of Toronto, Ontario. It's the typical high schools, mall, and a bar or two, for the most part but every once in a while there's some cool stuff going on. The biggest draw is that Newmarket has a pretty large indie music scene, with shows happening all the time if you know where to go. Sometimes you'll have bands just show up to parties and play, too, which is always exciting.

This past weekend was an interesting show, actually. There's this sketchy little bar in the middle of town that puts on some serious shows, considering it's size. D12 has played there, apparently. But on Friday there was a charity show for a local hospice. The opening act was a band called The Elwins, who are what you might consider "Newmarket-celebrities". They're one of the biggest indie acts in the area. After that was Ruby Coast, who you may or may not have heard of. They're getting quite big in Toronto, and played the Sound Academy with The Arkells (who opened a music festival put on by an alt-rock radio station earlier this summer) earlier this month. Then, finally, the headliners were Tokyo Police Club, who you're more likely to have heard of as they're a fair bit bigger. They've just finished a tour, including playing some dates on the Virgin Festival tour, and when they got back to their home town they decided to play a small show. So I saw three awesome indie bands of varying fame for under twenty bucks. Not too shabby for not having to drive more than 20 minutes.

Meanwhile Toronto has always got some sort of event on! Recently there was Caribanna, closely followed by "The Taste of the Danforth", which is essentially a giant festival of Greek culture that attracts millions of tourists and visitors. There's really no shortage of things to do if you're willing to make the trip.

In September I'm going to be moving to Waterloo for my first year of university at Laurier, and that's looking to be a town packed full of events. With two universities and a college within blocks of each other, and other universities such as Guelph so close by, I find it hard to imagine ever being bored. I've already bought tickets to see METRIC when they play in Kitchener, and they're also playing the closing cerimonies of my orientation week!

EDIT: I suppose I should mention my hometown, where I've grown up. It's a rural town, more than anything, and the only yearly event we have is the Sports Day Spring Fair. For one weekend in July, a fair comes to town with rides and games and the whole show. There's soap-box car races, tractor pulls, and all that fun stuff. In the end, though, it's really just an excuse for everyone to go to the beer tent and get really, really drunk.