As a Jew and a former underage drinker, I have nothing but love for this establishment.

Dive into the inspiring transformation of Alexandra Park with our latest iteration of The City Beat

#Urbanism #Toronto #Architecture #Toronto Design

designlinesmagazine.com/alexandra-park…

Here's the fourth instalment of my City Beat column for Designlines. At Alexandra Park, Toronto's architectural heritage is, once again, meeting the bulldozer. Maybe that's okay.
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🔄 Congrats to the Azure Magazine team! 'The Future of Circular Design' is nominated for Best Series of Articles. Giovanna Dunmall Elizabeth Pagliacolo Andrew Braithwaite Simon Lewsen Stefan Novakovic #NMAB2B24 buff.ly/3xPzG5d

I'm happy to be co-nominated for a National Magazine Awards: B2B award—along with my colleagues Elizabeth Pagliacolo, Stefan Novakovic, Giovanna Dunmall, and Andrew Braithwaite—for a series we did on circular architecture. Here's my contribution to this exciting project:
azuremagazine.com/article/the-ne…

The hedonism of the 1960s gave way to reactionism in writers like Leonard Cohen and Joan Didion. As Simon Lewsen writes, Didion argued that “when you replace scripture with rock ’n’ roll and supplication with LSD, you don’t get utopia; you get entropy.”

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My latest for The Walrus: Caitlin Cronenberg asks 'who would you kill off in your family? (For the good of humanity, of course.)'
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Humane, Caitlin Cronenberg’s debut film, is an action-packed, satirical melodrama almost entirely confined to one spooky mansion—but enveloped by world building that tells a story of a society living in environmental collapse, writes Simon Lewsen.

thewalrus.ca/caitlin-cronen…

“Some things we simply want to forget.” Less than a year after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the pandemic was no longer a global emergency, our cultural landscape has quickly moved on to action movies, Barbie, and Beyoncé, writes Simon Lewsen.

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I wrote about Caitlin Cronenberg's debut film, Humane. It's about four siblings trapped in a house and killing each other as a climate crisis rages outside. Why does it feel relatable?

Government-instituted euthanasia, creepy euphemisms, an old Richardsonian Romanesque mansion. Humane, photographer Caitlin Cronenberg’s debut film, is a melodramatic, blood-spattered domestic drama, writes Simon Lewsen.

thewalrus.ca/caitlin-cronen…

I wrote about Caitlin Cronenberg, whose debut film, Humane, comes out today. It's a wild ride. It takes place in a dystopia that feels eerily like the world we know. The Walrus
thewalrus.ca/caitlin-cronen…

Great to see these nominations, and love that most of them are for big ambitious projects like our Finch West issue and election coverage, which took the whole team plus an army of genius freelancers. Congrats and thanks to the dozens of Local contributors recognized here!

Apple News's Must Reads from last night: 1) My Toronto Life cover story on international students, 2) a thumbsucker about Taylor Swift: Is she a tortured poet?

It was one of the greatest honors of my career to work with Helen Vendler. Every single issue I looked forward to the hours-long phone calls we would have to go over her essays, and to discuss both our lives. It felt gluttonous to have direct access to such sharp wisdom.

I will miss living in the same world as Helen Vendler.

Leonard Cohen wasn’t just a fedora-clad sex symbol: he had a conservative, reactionary side—a part of his personality that only complicated his humanity. “You can’t wish it away. Nor should you want to,” writes Simon Lewsen.

thewalrus.ca/leonard-cohen-…

When I started reporting this feature—the cover story for the May issue of Toronto Life magazine—I had no idea how dark it would get. We are failing international students in this country, setting them up for the worst kinds of exploitation and abuse.

In Canada, international students live in a reality in which exploitation is endemic, legal protections are elusive and safety is far from guaranteed torontolife.com/deep-dives/the…

In his editor's letter for the May issue of Toronto Life, Malcolm Johnston discusses my feature on international students and the criminal exploitation—extortion, theft, kidnapping—they often experience in Canada.