A Night Out and All That Jazz
Built in 1832, the Gooderham and Worts Distillery southeast of Parliment and Front. has sat idle for a long time. It used to produce 10% of Canada’a national revenue. True! It has lots of cool old brick buildings and cobblestone (well, brick) streets. It’s a pedestrian-only village that is going to be a new entertainment district. They've kept the original architecture and even restarted up a small brewery there. The venue opened last night with the Distillery Jazz Festival.

The Jazz Festival is great because you buy one pass and visit different venues including indoor and outdoor stages. It’s not really solely “jazz”. We saw:
Ron Davies Trio with Lori Cullen – Jazz with vocals. Weird choices but amazingly done very well. Their version of Alone Again Naturally pleasantly surprised me. We bought TWO of their CDs and got Lori to sign one.
Tasa – caught the tail end of this waiting for the next show. Like George Harrison’s Indian period. Bleagh.
Daniel Barnes Trio – Free form jazz. Not really my style, but the drum solos were great. He reminded me of Steven Banks. If you don’t know who Steven Banks is, you’re really missing out. If you know him and don’t like him, you’re Crabby.

They also have art galleries throughout the buildings. Fresh and I found a picture we like, but it’s $1700. We even found a picture by Billy Dee Williams for $7000. It was not too bad.

Buskers and street vendors line the streets.

The beer varies wildly. If you can, get the Wheat Beer. The Sparkling ale is OK too. The wine isn’t the best, but it’s not Sawmill creek either, so that’s good.

The festival is on until June 1. Go! Enjoy! Tickets range from free on weekend afternoons to $25 in the evening.

Oh and how did the babysitter work out? Well, Ice Prince went to bed before she arrived and slept through the whole night. (Unfortunately, he hit his head TWICE before bedtime, so of course I assumed his deep sleep was due to a concussion. It wasn't. Just a belly full of rice and a warm bath.) The cats never appeared. We must do that more often.