Damian.

Bedford Avenue’s notorious street vendors are moving on up. The Book Thug Nation just moved their well-curated selection of everything good and indecent from the last 130 years of fiction indoors. The used bookstore moonlights as a community space, which hosts a fine range of free readings and lectures by drunk “intellectuals” from the area. The prices are good, the thugs are fair and the erotica section is right next to the children’s section.

For you street shoppers who have grown to love and depend on the book table, you have nothing to fear; the book thugs are still slinging Bolaño and Bukowski on the sidewalk outside the Blackbird. Though now immune to rain and brutal temperatures (though not to neighborhood wing nuts), the book thugs won’t be flying south for the winter.

With Corey Feldman and Corey Heim. Relive it!

As someone who went to Toronto on whim because of free promotional bus tickets, I knew nothing about the city like where to go, what to do, etcetera. But someone suggested I check out the car-free islands. Without automobiles, the islands assumed a more human scale. There were no grotesque mansions or wide boulevards, only cottages and walking paths.

I brought my bike and explored. I found secret beaches, a lighthouse, and an abandoned swing set in an empty clearing, which also had a fire pit with a melted bicycle in it.

If you’re on a shoestring budget, the price of the ferry is a little steep. But then again, if you were on a shoestring budget, why would you be in a mediocre city like Toronto? Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere much cooler where it’s fun and easy to be a bum? Anyway, I felt like I got my money’s worth.

If you’re too chickenshit to break into an abandoned building, or it’s just not your thing, then fork out some dough and go on a tour of a real-deal tenement building. While some of the rooms are excellently refurbished to look like they did at various time periods, the museum left many of the rooms, including the hallways, just as they found them when they bought the building in the eighties.

The Tenement Museum is unique in that you can only experience it by guided tour. In curating the exhibits, researchers tracked down descendents of people who actually lived at 97 Orchard and based tours on information pieced together from family stories, city records, and artifacts

The museum is a celebration of the immigrant spirit and it honors the hardships that people endure when they leave their homes for a fresh, but often sour start. That struggle continues today, a pertinent reminder in an age of border walls, Minutemen, and general anti-immigrant sentiment.

From here you can sail away to a magical land with no cars where the streets are as wide as sidewalks.

I found a piece of hardware in my burrito. I think it was a 8mm nut. I can't decide if that's cool or not, so I'm giving it three stars.

First pillar of Burritodom: A good burrito costs more than $3.50 and less than $6. This is because anything less than $3.50 is going to be a gnarly bean and cheese burrito and anything more than $6 is a bourgeois imitation. El Matate makes an exceptional super veggie burrito that fits this criterion. And they have good horchata and friendly staff.

Once I had a wart and no health insurance. I also had a friend who worked at the Exploratorium. He borrowed some dry ice and we sat outside near the duck pond and burned off my wart. Then I threw the remainder of the ice into the pond, but immediately regretted it when a paddling of ducks became curious.

Anyway, the Exploratorium is a wonderful museum that uses interactive exhibits to illustrate scientific principles. Free admission first Wednesday of every month.

As we cycled from San Francisco to Los Angeles, we spent the long days in the saddle staring out into the ocean, listening to it crash against the rocks and pondering its vast expanse and the secrets within. Occasionally we noticed huge swaths of seaweed floating out at sea, but didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium that we learned that what we were seeing was just the very top of a thriving underwater ecosystem, the kelp forest. Its similarity to a terrestrial forest blew our minds.

For the most part, the aquarium is ethical and ecologically minded. There are no large mammals such as whales or walruses. And the rescued sea otters are adorable. We managed to get in for free, but even if you have to pay, the aquarium is well worth it. We spent hours there and only left because we were hungry for seafood.

Can you believe that there are big, bubbling pits of tar right in the middle of America’s second-largest metropolis? It’s true! These things are for real, just like in all those dinosaur books that you read as a kid. And you can see them for free!

The Bike Kitchen is a prime example of DIY ethos in action. Enthusiastic mechanics provide you with the tools and know-how to fix your own bicycle (or the one that you’re borrowing from your host). It’s also an essential place to check out if what you seek is an inroad into the city’s fun-loving bike culture. Just about everyone that surrounds this place is fun and welcoming.

One note: to keep the place going, the Bike Kitchen asks for a $5 donation for use of the tools, which can also be worked off.

Drink some coffee, stare hopelessly at the first paragraph of Finnegan’s wake, then write some stream-of-conscience prose that no one will ever want to read. Pause, look out the window at the river, and repeat.

Well, it’s probably not a secret, but it’s a little bit hidden behind the Palais de Tokyo. It’s dark and lush and would make for a good drinking spot and/or make-out spot. Too bad I was with my homeboy and his dad. Next time, baby.

If you’re not shy and speak maybe a gram of French, then Zero Zero is a good spot to hit up if you want to find out what’s going on around Paris in the way of shows and dance parties. The bar is crowded and noisy, so communicating is done with direct and deliberate shouting, but everyone is very jovial and drunk. If you get done here, you can go down the block to Pop In.

Marche Vernaisson is one of the many flea markets in the Saint Ouen area. It’s a shantytown of antique dealers and junk vendors. I’m not much into antique shopping, but I enjoyed wandering the many alleyways looking at all the old European relics and admiring the ivy.

While Marche Vernaisson seems to be one of the nicest markets, everyone in the neighborhood is getting in on the action of selling used stuff. As you walk away from the central area, the merchandise goes from expensive eighteenth century credenzas to knock-off Gucci to cheap hardware goods. If you continue further under the freeway overpass, you can find half-empty cans of shaving cream and that left loafer you’ve been looking everywhere for.

The Bois de Boulogne is a vast park with ancient woods, miniature railroad tracks, and a boat lake. But all my memories of the park are eclipsed by the image of the giant fucken fish we found laying next to a garbage can. The can’s close proximity to the lake suggests that that was where the fish was from, but there was no explanation for why it was laying in a heap of trash. It was probably the most absurd thing I saw in Paris. I wonder what Richard Brautigan would have to say about it.

On my neverending quest to find a restroom, I came upon the Maison de l’Europe. As an avid beer and coffee drinker, I’ve become quite savvy over the years in sniffing out obscure public toilets. Cultural centers, corporate bookstores, and small museums are all good bets. Not only did the Maison have a restroom, it also came with a nice little public park out back in the courtyard. I wonder if you’re allowed to drink here.

I rarely go out to Italian places because, really, it’s just pasta, which I can make at home for a tenth of the cost and it tastes the same. Not so with L’Osteria. I’ve never had pasta this delicious before. And it wasn’t just my dish – squids in their own ink – that was exceptional. Everyone in our party was amazed.

The atmosphere was intimate and friendly. While we were waiting for our order, the waitress brought out their English-language menu prototype to have us give it an edit. We passed it around and had a lot of fun with it. After dinner we were rewarded with a free round of digestifs.

Including wine, the bill came out to about €17 per person. A splurge for sure, but worth every Euro cent.

Le Kitsch is a small, cozy bar filled to capacity with happy Parisians. It’s done up in an ad hoc Caribbean theme with the bright pink walls adorned with random kitschy island objects. The bartenders are kind and adorable. Happy hour goes till nine, offering up five-Euro cocktails like mojitos made with Cuban rum. Their signature drink is the Shrek, a sort of mojito smoothie made with gin. I don’t know what their obsession is with the fat, green computer generated ogre, but the drink is damned tasty.

Save yourself thirty bucks – or however much it costs to go to Versailles – and head over to the Luxembourg Garden. Maybe it’s a little smaller than the garden at Versailles, but all that rich, baroque French shit looks the same to me. Bring some beer from the Monoprix and ramble around the well-manicured grounds like a dandy. And for three Euro you can rent a sailboat and push it around with a stick. You can’t beat that for an afternoon.

Seriously, it makes Paris look like Las Vegas. All that's missing is a hot air balloon and some fucking slot machines.

Messrs Maguire is a swig of fresh draught in the midst of Ireland’s homogenous beer culture. I drank a pint of every beer on tap and I’ll have to agree with Jem Casey: A pint of plain is your man. But the other beers are quality as well.

The Phoenix Park is a vast green space with forests and meadows where deer and people freely roam. It’s almost twice the size of Central Park and features nature trails, polo fields, gardens, and an old fort.

Give it up for the Turks for staving off imminent heart failure by providing a healthy alternative to the prevalent pommes frites and schnitzel. I have found that Europe lacks an on-the-cheap dining out culture, but the fine Turkish pizza restaurants on Sleepstraat step up and offer a filling meal accompanied by wine for less than seven Euro.