Yesterday was the fifth annual Subway Pub Crawl, my fourth and probably my last. In a nutshell – a posse starts at Spadina Station and takes the Yonge-University subway line all the way around the loop to Bloor station, getting off at each stop, finding the closest bar and having a drink. Sound stupid? Yeah, it pretty much is, but usually pretty fun too.

This year’s edition was considerably smaller than the last few since it was decided to keep certain elements from past years who cause excessive problems out of the mix. A nice idea, but not terribly effective – even without the kiddies, we still managed to not only get tossed out of a bar, but the seediest, most ghetto bar on the schedule. Now that takes some doing. I’d like to point out that I had nothing to do with the turfing, but that’s not really important.

I didn’t have all that much to drink this time around, I started off pretty strong but just lost interest for lack of a better explanation. But on the plus side, I didn’t spend as much money as I’d expected. As I said, I think I’m done with these hijinks – I’ll find some other excuse to catch up with friends I don’t see as often as I like. Like, “hey, I don’t see you guys as often as I like, let’s do something”. That’s just crazy enough to work. I started off taking photos but again, lost interest about halfway in since people drinking beer isn’t a terribly compelling subject matter. So no photos, sorry.

Biking to work season is over for me – I’ve bought my transit pass for November which allows me a greater pointless roaming radius. I gave Vortex at Yonge and Eglinton a visit this afternoon in the rain, and was rewarded with used copies of the new Belle & Sebastian (one listen in and I like it – some of it is very different but some of it is hardly a huge departure from the last few albums), a Billy Bragg official bootleg from the Mermaid Avenue tour and the second Flying Burrito Brothers record, Burrito Deluxe. Good stuff.

All you Bright Eyes fans out there, feast on this archive of mp3s, link from LHB. I don’t know if these are rarities, album tracks, whatever, but if you’re interested, go to it. You may note there’s a track from Melon Galia, whom we did a show with this summer – a couple members of BE played on their album, hence the inclusion here.

Exclaim talks to James Mercer about the Shins’s Chutes Too Narrow and writing jingles for The Gap.

np – Billy Bragg & The Blokes / Mermaid Avenue Tour

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