Summer In The City

Toronto has been sitting under a heat dome that's been cranking up the temperature day by day. Thursday, the temperature reached 37+ C. Living without AC and electric fans is a bit of a bother, but I've been coping reasonably well. I've been losing about 1 hour of sleep because of the oppressive heat. However, Thursday was definitely a test. I could feel the heat, accumulated in the roof over the course of the day, radiating from my walls. Combined that with small windows poorly positioned for a breeze and it was a sauna in my 3rd floor apartment.

I finally decided to leave my place around 9:45 pm in search of cooler environs. Although the Horseshoe was incredibly hot for NxNE, a tweet told me that they had fixed their AC. I arrived too late to see first act Huddle, but I caught the last few songs from Skirt Chaser. Their straight up standard rock was enthusiastically received by the crowd full of bros. So many wife-beater shirts, chains, and tattoos.

The Lovely Killbots was next and they played to a decidedly smaller crowd. Their electronica style doesn't come across well in a sparse crowd who are satisfied to stand around. They did their best but was hampered by a poor sound mix in general. In fact, at the start of one song, the mic for the lead singer was turned off.

There wasn't much of a crowd left for Birthday Boys so I decided to head on home. Even the guy manning the admission table had left. But given how long the guest lists were for each band, I wonder if anybody even paid the $6 cover. I got in for free when I ran into the Killbots' drummer at the front. It's great for me (and everybody else on those lists), but probably not great for the bands.

My place was still an oven when I came home, but I managed to get 35 winks. The elevated temperature caused numerous strange dreams including one where I hung a man to death in Chinatown. In my defense, he was trying to maim me with a metal chain.