WHEN: TONIGHT! at 7:30pm
WHERE: Gladstone Hotel 1214 Queen West
HOW MUCH: Free!
RSVP: Facebook event page
As Torontonians we are sad about the closing of Pages Books on Queen Street just as so many others are — but as indie-magazine makers, we’re worried. Pages was a huge factor in our success and responsible for so many sales that kept this operation afloat over the last six years. Like other bookstores around town like This Ain’t The Rosedale Library it became a community centre, a site of cultural exchange and saw no mean amount of significant-other-meeting take place over the book tables. To celebrate these 30 years (nearly to the day) Spacing, along with Coach House Books, The Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, and Take Five On CIUT, are holding a wake next week. It’s free, should be more fun than sorrow and we hope you’ll come.
AFTERWORD: A CELEBRATION OF 30 YEARS
For the past thirty years, Pages Books & Magazines has been a place where the culturally engaged citizens of Toronto met one another, conspired, fell in love, debated aesthetics and, occasionally, bought books. Skyrocketing rent, not a drop in sales, has forced Proprietor Marc Glassman to close the celebrated bookstore at Queen and John streets on August 31. To mark this occassion, many of the artists and thinkers whose work has graced Pages’ shelves over the past three decades will deliver short tributes to Glassman and his iconic indie institution, at “Afterword: A Celebration of 30 Yearsâ€.
Come, raise a glass with such notable friends of Pages as Rob Bowman, Eldon Garnet, Greg Gatenby, Laurence Hill, Mike Hoolboom, Mark Kingwell, Barbara Klunder, Andy Paterson, Seth and Alana Wilcox — to name but a few. Canadian Comedy Award winners Monkey Toast will perform improvised comedy based on your stories about Pages. The evening will be structured like a virtual tour of the store, and conclude where it all began thirty years ago: Glassman’s office. Veteran actor Jack Blum will host the evening. — A This Is Not A Reading Series event presented by Coach House Books, Spacing Magazine, Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, and Take Five On CIUT.
Photo by Janet Bike Girl.
