{"id":28466,"date":"2016-06-15T10:20:33","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T14:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=28466"},"modified":"2016-06-14T14:21:01","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T18:21:01","slug":"an-ode-to-lees-palace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2016\/06\/15\/an-ode-to-lees-palace\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ode to Lee’s Palace"},"content":{"rendered":"This past school year, I lived in a creaky, vintage (old) house comprised of both students and young professionals. Inside, examples of some common occurrences were: uncomfortable heating spikes, cleaning up other peoples\u2019 messes so I could cook dinner, and, my personal favourite, forgetting to bring some toilet paper rolls from my room to the bathroom only to realize the terrible mistake I made later on in the day.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNaturally, I had to leave the house to recover from these traumatizing events. Unfortunately, my immediate surrounding area was Fratcentral, which meant dodging red plastic cups and every so often avoiding puddles of regret in the form of the previous night. This story, though tragic so far, has a bright side. \u00a0You see, I lived in the Annex \u2013 a lively, vibrant neighbourhood \u2013 filled with restaurants, bars, and the esteemed Lee\u2019s Palace<\/strong>. Lee\u2019s Palace had garnered a kind of royal reputation, an allure for me that had been building up from first year.\r\n\r\n
\"ALT="Pink<\/a>
The Annex gorgeously framed under a pink sky.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nI fell in love with the concert venue the very first show I saw there in October \u2013 and here\u2019s why.\r\n\r\nFirst, the setting. Lee\u2019s is dark, but illuminated with colourful glowing lanterns and soft incandescent light bulbs from the bar. The room smells like sweat, anticipation, and spilt beer. Little stools are scattered on the border of the dance floor with narrow ledges acting as makeshift bars. The stage glistens under the spotlight. The environment encourages you to move, and laugh, and feel like you\u2019re at a decked out backyard party that\u2019s indoors.\r\n\r\n
\"ALT="the<\/a>
An opener band I'd seen at the Palace. My view: right at the front.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nSecond, the people. The bouncers are friendly (if you\u2019re of age, that is) and young. There is a thrum<\/em> of contagious energy and excitement in the air, and everyone is smiling. Lee\u2019s Palace is filled with those who bought tickets in advance to their favourite bands, or those who decided last minute to see a Toronto concert. Everyone is looking to have a good time, not trying to force their way to the front and barge by anyone.\r\n\r\nWhich brings me to my third point: the music. From the 11 shows I\u2019ve seen so far at the venue, the lineups at Lee\u2019s Palace have continuously surprised me. From hard rock to pop punk to indie to alternative, music is so incredibly diverse there. They also feature a lot of local Toronto or GTA bands. And when the band gets on stage, mere inches away from the dancefloor, the music commands the audience. You enter a sort of hive mentality because of how close and intimate the show becomes; people chant together and they shuffle together, perhaps unknowingly. I recently saw The Staves<\/strong> just last week, and their angelic harmonies resonated throughout the room, silencing and encouraging cheers throughout the night.\r\n\r\n
\"ALT="Me<\/a>
Me at Lee's Palace totally feeling the vibes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nI highly recommend you check out a show at the Palace this summer. The best part? Tickets are relatively inexpensive (around $15-$40, usually). You can expect to see groups like Catfish & The Bottlemen<\/strong>, Wild Child<\/strong>, and Black Mountain<\/strong> in the next few weeks.\r\n\r\nWhile I reminisce over my favourite concert experience there, I\u2019ll leave you all with a joke. What if a hippopotamus isn\u2019t really an opotamus, but just a really cool opotamus?\r\n\r\nQuestions about my life in the Annex? Did I convince you to check out a show at the Palace? Are you recovering from how good (bad) my joke was? Let me know in the comments!\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nA brief review of one of my favourite concert venues in Toronto -- Lee's Palace.\n<\/div>This past school year, I lived in a creaky, vintage (old) house comprised of both students and young professionals. Inside, examples of some common occurrences were: uncomfortable heating spikes, cleaning up other peoples\u2019 messes so I could cook dinner, and, my personal favourite, forgetting to bring some toilet paper rolls from my room to the bathroom only to realize the terrible mistake I made later on in the day.\r\n\r\n
Continue reading “An Ode to Lee’s Palace”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>This past school year, I lived in a creaky, vintage (old) house comprised of both students and young professionals. Inside, examples of some common occurrences were: uncomfortable heating spikes, cleaning up other peoples\u2019 messes so I could cook dinner, and, my personal favourite, forgetting to bring some toilet paper rolls from my room to the bathroom only to realize the terrible mistake I made later on in the day.\r\n\r\n
Continue reading “An Ode to Lee’s Palace”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,7204,65,67],"tags":[227,12743,16272,1837],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28473,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28466\/revisions\/28473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}