Hangout Handbook

In our annual Hangout Handbook, Exclaim! asks some of our favourite artists to discuss their favourite hometown haunts. Here, Pkew Pkew Pkew discuss their ideal places to grab food and drinks in Toronto.

Don't Drink on an Empty Stomach
We're starting with breakfast at Figs (344 Queen St. E.). We ate there every morning that we worked on our album. The spinach Eggs Benedict is very decadent. I got that every time, so I have no clue what else is good.

Parked for the Afternoon
We go by Bellwoods Brewery (124 Ossington Ave.) and shop for some beers. Drinking in Trinity Bellwoods Park (790 Queen W.) is a staple of summer life, but if you're us, you probably do it all year because it's more fun to drink outside. We've gotten drinking tickets there, but nowhere near as many times as we've gotten drunk there — we just think of a drinking ticket as a season's pass to public drunkenness. A good trick is to pour your beer into a Starbucks cup with the string of a tea bag still hanging from the lid. No one is going to look into that.

Lunch Beers
Hurricanes (963 Bloor St. W.) is our favourite place to go after playing football in the park. The grownup grilled cheese is probably the best thing on the menu. They have lots of good beers, but we're poor so we stick to the house lager. 

Reparked
Christie Pits (750 Bloor St. W.) is a much smaller park in the northern part of downtown, so it attracts fewer people who don't want you drinking in the park. It also has fewer hippies slack-lining and more kids playing baseball, which is pretty darn entertaining when you're drunk.

Burger Time
The burger at The Federal (1438 Dundas St. W) is the best in the city. They are food dorks — they know what they're doing.

Doing the Hop(s)
Our friend Matt at Bar Hop Brew Co. (137 Peter St.) runs the beer program there, and has a million tasty local and not-as-local craft beers on the menu. We'll run out of money pretty quickly there, so we'll head to The Lab (298 Brunswick Ave) for some extremely cheap drinky-poos in a great atmosphere.

Pkew Pkew Pkew's self-titled sophomore album is out now on Royal Mountain.