ou spent the winter scrubbing sludge from your shoes and redoing your hair three times a day, but the city will soon reward you for your travails. Three smells dominate the summertime olfactory landscape: street meat, rotting trash, and culture. It is once again time to suck in the latter. Leave the overpriced gas and mosquitoes to cottagers; Toronto is the best place to be this time of year. A surfeit of culture smacks the city in the face just as sunglass prices skyrocket. Here is your a guide to the city’s best summer happenings and events. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen.

Olympic Island Festival: Jun. 7
Unlike its behemoth cousin, the Virgin Festival, this Olympic Island gig eschews corporate fellatio in favour of a music-first dogma. Sad-kid heroes, Death Cab for Cutie co-headline, so expect pathos and Ben Gibbard’s trademark whinny. Also, Montreal’s Stars and Vancouver’s Young Galaxy fill out the almost-annual festival’s Arts and Crafts requirements. Rogue Wave round out the bill. Even disregarding the solid line-up, any show on the island is worth the ferry trip. Go. –S.T.
Olympic Island, 416-870-8000

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Luminato: Jun. 6 – Jun. 15
Teasing the blind while wagging culture in front of more than a million aesthetes – temporary and otherwise – Luminato is back for its second year. Last year, over a million people took in a huge variety of events and spectacles from a number of disciplines, including film, music, dance, theatre, and literature. Highlights include the Canadian Songbook at Massey Hall, which sees singer-songwriters like Ron Sexsmith, Luke Doucet, and Danny Michel grace the same stage; the Political Graphic Novel, a look at, um, graphic novels and their, well, political role; Green Flag Song, an exhibit of Joni Mitchell’s visual art; and Luminato at the Distillery, a cultural feast on cobble stones. –S.T.
Various Venues, 416-368-3100

NXNE: Jun. 12 – Jun. 15
Let the UK have Glasto, we’re too refined for that; we want our tunes covered by a roof. There was a time when indie music lovers had to drive all the way to Texas to get a taste of a four-letter acronym festival. However, thanks to NXNE, that epoch of international car-trips is a thing of the distant past. Taking over every soundboard in the city, hundreds of bands descend on Toronto for three days of broken strings, scratched records, dripped sweat, ruined voices, beaten amps, and universal aural satisfaction. Bringing together international musical intelligentsia, industry Blackberry addicts, and more musicians than all the hippie drum circles in the universe combined, NXNE is the single most important weekend in Toronto’s music-related calendar. This year’s highlights include The Besnard Lakes, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Great Lake Swimmers, Donovan Woods, Ladyhawk, Jule Doiron, Spiral Beach, the Diableros, and OPOPO, though serendipitously discovered gems are the real draw. Get a wristband and more info at NXNE. –S.T.
Various Venues, 416-863-6963