Author: Joey deVilla

I wasn’t the only one who made it to the Dark Horse Cafe Spadina branch’s grand opening. Matthew Burpee was also there, hanging out with one-woman media machine Rochelle Latinsky, and he shot this photo of the lower level:

I was at U of T looking at demos of projects by computer science students for the consulting course, where I ran into Andrew Louis, who told me that the Dark Horse had finally opened and invited me along. He took a number of photos, some of which are shown below. If you want to see all of them, check out his Flickr set:

 

 

Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, a rather lazy and facile laundry list of historic news events (the worst line of the song is “Trouble in the Su-ez”), got a new lease on life online when The Richter Scales’ borrowed it tune to create Here Comes Another Bubble, their 2007 ditty about overvalued tech companies and the people behind those crazy valuations:

CollegeHumor have given the song another lease on life with the more slick We Didn’t Start the Flamewar, an ode to the great tradition of arguing on the internet in comments sections and forums. I’m pretty impressed with the audio and video production on this number; the CollegeHumor guys keep raising the bar on internet funny:

The original Dark Horse Cafe, located in Accordion City’s East End, is a much-loved, much-praised cafe known for friendly service, excellent coffee and tasty snacks. They’ve been so successful that they decided to open a second branch in a more central location: the Robertson Building  in the Queen/Spadina area, where Chinatown meets the warehouse district housing the city’s tech startup and “Creative Class” crowds. Their grand opening has been held up by red tape, but at long last, the city’s most anticipated cafe of the year finally opened yesterday. I had a chance to drop by for a visit, sample their wares and take some photos.

It’s not much to look at from the outside thanks to the scaffolding (but it looks rather New York-y that way)":

…but inside, it’s a big, bright and beautiful space. Here’s the first thing you see when you walk in: their wide, welcoming coffee bar.

The cafe is split into two levels: a lower level at the front of the cafe and an upper level in the back. Here’s a view of the lower level, as seen from the north end:

Rather than fill the lower level with many small tables, the folks at the Dark Horse decided to use two ginormous tables, each of which can accommodate a dozen people quite handily. Here’s the square table at the north end of the room:

And here’s the rectangular table at the south end:

A small staircase to the left of the coffee bar leads you to the upper level located in the back. It’s more living room-like, with many small coffee tables and couches and chairs spread throughout:

Here’s a view of the coffee bar from the upper level:

Their selection was a bit limited on their first day: they didn’t have chocolate for mochas, nor ice for iced coffees, and the panini presses still had the plastic wrap on them; that’s all forgivable for the first couple of days. They did have an interesting-looking selection of pastries, and the peanut butter cream brownie I had was worth killing for (I suspect that the Ginger Ninja would absolutely love it).

It’s a gorgeous place with a lot of promise; my only real complaint is that it wasn’t around when I lived in the neighbourhood. I’m looking to hanging out there often.

This Friday’s Coffee and Code

With its grand opening, there’s no better venue for this Friday’s Toronto Coffee and Code. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a regular event in which I work out of a cafe so that I’m accessible to the public, where you can come join me for a coffee, ask about Microsoft, Windows 7, Microsoft tools and technology, the industry in general, accordions or whatever else. Yes, I could reach more people through email, blog and social networking software, but there’s no substitute for a friendly face-to-face meetup in a relaxed settings over coffee (or tea, or whatever your favourite beverage is).

Here are the details:

• What: Coffee and Code
• When: Friday, April 17th from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• Where: Dark Horse Cafe, 215 Spadina Avenue (at Sullivan Street)

See you there!

If you somehow manage to get your hands on a time machine and subsequently find yourself trapped in the past, the Time Travel Cheat Sheet, should come in handy. It lists some important discoveries, inventions and advances that we enjoy today; all you have to do is “invent” them and you’ll be running the show in no time:You can buy the Time Travel Cheat Sheet as a poster or t-shirt from TopatoCo. Maybe I’ll buy the poster for the Hacklab.

Artwork courtesy of "Spoon".