I add my vote to suggest Rapp Optical as the place for glasses. Mel Rapp is a constant innovator of coolness. His designs and selection are great. He’s a tough independent in a field dominated by big cutthroat companies, and he was an early supporter of the Journal of Wild Culture when we started out in the late 80s. His shop is sometimes a gallery too – I had a photo exhibit there some years ago. Mel rocks!

Among all the funky shops on Kensington Avenue, this is my favorite. A place to find hand-picked treasures from around the world, vintage and exotic clothes, jewellery. If you are lucky enough to talk to the owners, they have the dust of adventure on their shoulders, the sparkle of strange sights in their eyes, and deep knowledge about everything in the store. We got a full set of Mexican Day of the Dead sculptures and candle holders there, as fine as any you'd find in the Sat. market in Oaxaca.

I had a house just next to Kensington Market on Wales Avenue for 18 years, the one covered in ivey, with the big Gingko tree in front. There are so many great spots in the market, and interesting characters in every shop. This is a neighborhood to visit and hang out in, especially on car-free Kensington Sundays in the summertime.

I love the Textile Museum. It always has exquisite exhibits, it is small and easy to get through in less than an hour so you never get museum fatigue, and the gallery shop there is the best kept secret gift shop in the city, with unbelievably reasonable prices for carefully curated fine textile items from all over the hand-made world.

I like to visit the only outdoor Totem Pole in T.O., at the bottom of Bathurst street in the park next to the Island airport ferry terminal. There is a cool kid park there too.

The Bring Back the Don mural of the fish going from skeleton to life on the fence down in the Don Valley is a simple uplifting mysterious graphic, and I love the words on the arch of the bridge where Queen crosses the Don, about never stepping in the same river twice.

My favorite piece of public art in Toronto is Joe’s cows, the small herd of seven life-sized black bronze Jerseys that are hunkered down in the grass under the black office towers just west of the TD Centre on Wellington near Bay St., waiting for a thunderstorm, forever about-to-burst above them.

It’s our dogwalking heaven. This park gets more beautiful and wild with each new season. If you have never walked through the abandoned brickworks buildings at magic hour (4 pm to 7 pm) when the sunlight is warm and the colours most saturated, you are in for a bit of an epiphany. It’s a photographer’s destination, there are lots of images of it on the internet.

High Park has a really fine cluster of woodland trails in the northeast part. The Black oak savannah habitat is particularly interesting and lovely, an example of native grasslands that existed here before the Euros came over and cleared the big old hardwood forests. Great picnic spots, and this walk takes you past the beloved community gardens and the outdoor theatre space that has free Shakespeare in the summer.

skating in December - just after the ice freezes to a skateable 2”+ thickness, and before any heavy snow – is a great winter passtime. The pond freezes over with black ice - smooth as glass and transparent, so you can see the bottom as you skate over the shallows

It has the best view of the lake, is a great cycling destination, and there is a café right on the sand by the water - a very rare and wonderful thing in this city.

Visit Leda and the Swan, the orchids, and the cactus garden, and just breathe the pungent green.

Explore the villages of Toronto on foot - with bike or a TTC day pass. Toronto is really a city of neighborhoods with great character, unique independent stores, and street life all their own. You can appreciate this best on foot, with some time on your hands to wander.