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; A surfeit of culture smacks the city in the face just as sunglasses prices skyrocket. Here is your guide to the city’s best summer happenings and events. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen.

Pride Week: Jun. 20 – Jun. 29
With more rainbows than a leprechaun convention, one of the brightest events in the summer cultural firmament, Pride Week, returns for its 28th year. Begun in protest of the infamous 1981 Bathhouse raids, it has ballooned into a behemoth celebration, drawing well over a million revellers annually. While retaining its socio-political roots, it is one of the biggest parties in North America. Spread throughout the city, from the village to Parkdale, events abound. The centerpieces of the Week are the penultimate day’s Dyke March and the concluding Pride Parade, but there is no shortage of activities, from concerts and dance parties to lectures and stand-up comedy. –S.T.
Various Venues, 416 927 7433

Fringe Festival: Jul. 2 – Jul. 13
Like the current trend in bangs, the Fringe Festival is not afraid of the asymmetrical. Now in its 20th year, Fringe continues to bring Toronto avant-garde, innovative, and brazenly independent theatre from around the world. This year, look for productions with inspired titles (i.e. Blastback Babyzap, Floozy: The Musical, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Abortion, and Balls!). Will there be another Drowsy Chaperone? Go see every play, wait a few years, and find out. -S.T.
Various Venues, 416-966-1062

Boy’s Night Out: Jul. 10

Toronto is the best place to be this time of year.

Concerned that all of these music festivals will be filled with too many young folks and beer-swilling ruffians for your style? Wary of there being far too many females at your major social events? Then fear not testosterone-laden debutant, there is a special night in this city specially designed for you. Boy’s Night Out is a charity event held in the Distillery District that’s dedicated to all the favorite past times of the well-to-do gentleman. Steak eating, cigar sucking, wine tasting, if wealthy men enjoy an activity, Boy’s Night Out will offer it in spades (provided that it doesn’t break any major laws of course). Plus, it’s a charity event, so you’ll be able to alleviate some liberal guilt and feel as though you’re helping the greater good by attending. Last year over 500 guests made an appearance, raising $30,000 for prostate cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital.-P.B.
The Fermenting Cellar, 416-440-4101


Rogers Picnic: Jul. 20
If Yogi were a music geek, he and Boo Boo would salivate all over this big gig. Belying its bland corporate moniker, the Rogers Picnic has a varied and tremendous line-up. From my sometimes-crazy crush, Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) to the UK’s grime hero, Dizzee Rascal, this eclectic bill is stacked. The local representation is stellar, with Toronto’s own ebullient polka-dot rock purveyors, the Born Ruffians, and Newmarket/Japan’s favourite sons, Tokyo Police Club, on the docket. Buzz-kings, the will-be gigantic Vampire Weekend, will suck the post-post punk out of rock, replacing it with joyous world-friendly sounds, while fellow Brooklynites, Animal Collective, could steal the day with their sublimely shambolic racket. Incidentally, animal collectives are better than animal farms; just ask Boxer. Chromeo and City and Colour are also on the bill. –S.T.
Historic Fort York, 416-870-8000

Beaches Jazz Festival: Jul. 18 – Jul. 27
Get Neal-Cassidy excited (preferably without the Benzedrine) and sweat to jazz and yell “go!” whenever you feel the urge. If you get too hot, jump in the lake. Now two decades old, the BJF can grow a killer goatee. The festivities begin on July18th at Woodbine Park as hep-cat tunes kiss the lake. The following weekend, the action moves to Queen East before closing out at KEW Gardens. Expect ice cream licking, street splendour, wet reeds, and booming antiperspirant sales. -S.T.
Woodbine Park, KEW Gardens, Queen Street East, 416-698-2152

Caribana: Jun. 13 – Aug. 3
Every year, brightly-clad droves take in Caribana, flooding the streets of Toronto with Caribbean-themed ebullience, spice-food par excellence, and aural brightness. Over a million people take part in the revelry. This 41st edition kicks off on June 13th and culminates in the annual parade on August 2nd. Expect to sweat, souse, and satiate in a rainbow of Carib cultural explosion. Look for celebrity scandals and heightened camera-flash density. -S.T.
Various Venues, 416-391-5608

Taste of the Danforth: Aug. 8 – Aug. 10
If you could carve up the Danforth, fry it, and wrap it in a pita, what would it taste like? Souvlaki? Probably not. Luckily, Taste of the Danforth doesn't take itself literally. The annual festival, now in its 14th year, draws over one million Greek-hungry epicureans and epi-curious biters. As the Blue and White proliferates to Homeric proportions, over 50 Danforth restaurants open their doors and offer abundant and affordable fare options, running from rotating meat and other Greek favourites to samosas and sushi. Performances with a Greco bent fill stages while wine, beer, martini, and ouzo gardens encourage a slosh tzatziki accompaniment. Bring breath mints. -S.T.
Danforth Avenue, 416-469-5634

Summerworks Theatre Festival: Aug. 7 - Aug. 17
I love Fringe, but the running around and occasional self-indulgent missteps can sometimes prove exigent. Though Summerworks doesn't shy away from the risqué, it does have a tradition of consistently solid stagings. A respite from summer-long tan and vapidity pageantry, the fest returns asses to seats. With nearly 50 productions, an emphasis on emerging writers and companies, and a solid representation from established scribes, Summerworks continues to build on its theatric significance. -S.T.
Various Venues, 1-888-222-6608

Romantic Reels: Jun. 24 – Aug. 26
The cheap Tuesday movie is going the way of household-name astronauts, e-grammatical correctness, and moustache discrimination (i.e. it's disappearing). Like an altruistic reactionary, the continuing-to-develop Dundas Square again offers free movies every Tuesday throughout the summer. Kicking off with Gone with the Wind and ending with Casablanca, the aptly titled Romantic Reels has compiled a roster of the most heart-wrenching and affecting love movies ever made. Don’t expect conventional Rom-Coms (the Hugh Grant contingent is nil). The stellar schedule features a lately bittersweet range romance, the original star-crossed pair, the truest surreal love story ever filmed, a giant sinking boat, Inigo Montoya, and Woody Allen. Bring tissues and cola. –S.T.
Yonge-Dundas Square, 416-979-9960

V-Fest: Sep. 6 – Sep. 7
Though Labour Day Weekend marks your last opportunity to wear white, the two-day, Island-based V-Fest can be taxing for your apparel; perhaps you should go with clothing that doesn’t pick up grass stains. Foo Fighters are on top of the marquee for day one, but look for Bloc Party to steal the festival. The zeitgeist-capturing, post-punk dynamo seamlessly roves form sonic booms to regal snail builds and Mayan pyramid layering to resonant, sad-kid weep-induction. Spiritulaized, Wintersleep, the Constantines, and MGMT round out the day’s stellar line-up. Day two is an anglophile’s wet dream with Oasis headlining and Paul Weller and Stereophonics supporting. The Brit-theme continues with the Wombats and the Pigeon Detectives, but incorporates palpable Canadian talent by way of one of the greatest socially/politically conscious literary rock outfits of all time: the Weakerthans. –S.T.
Toronto Islands, 416-870-8000