Sway Magazine

It says a lot that one of the top-rated users of RapSpace.tv is a 44-year-old married man from Hartford, Connecticut. With almost 300 fans regularly "bombing" his webcam-shot freestyles (which sometimes include the odd cameo appearance by his rapping daughter), emerging hip-hop MC Al Boog stands out amongst the registered 40,000 users of this popular underground hip-hop social network site as everything the typical mainstream hip-hop artist isn't: real, approachable and yes, just like one of us.

Representative of the new wave of niche-driven social utilities, the almost two-year-old RapSpace.tv is MySpace and YouTube, freshened up with a pair of shell toes. It's yet another by-product of the trademarked McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves cross-platform media mandate - to empower marginalized communities online and filter their previously undistributed quality content to the masses.

Simultaneously heralded a "web hero" and "media mogul" by The Village Voice, the new media entrepreneur has long been involved in harnessing user-generated content with video-based media.

Currently the CEO of The NIMBLE Company, Mashingaidze-Greaves has been involved in the field one way or the other for the past 15 years as executive producer of the innovative interactive CBC TV series ZeD and founder of the influential urban dot-com company, Virtual Melanin. It should be noted that former clientele for the latter include Spike Lee, Diddy and Time Warner.

His desire to create Black-focused online content came from being raised in a predominantly white small town in British Columbia.

"When you grow up in an environment like that, you have a longing and romanticized [version] of [black] identity," Mashingaidze-Greaves explains. "You see all these people that look like yourself, but are surrounded by people who don't look like you."

'Web connections', Summer 2008. (Business profile on McLean Greaves.)

National Post

In 1972, Sam Mirshak - then a University of Toronto architecture student who witnessed the wrecking ball demolitions of the Annex neighbourhood - opened a Queen West antique shop called the Old Same Place.

Mr. Mirshak specialized in the upscale, but couldn't help notice all the stained glass-and-oak doors discarded at the side of the road. Slowly, these architectural antiques found their way next to the Middle Eastern antiquities and Roman glass he already stocked.

"In those days, you could pick the dump at Parliament and Lake Shore," recalls Mr. Mirshak, still mystified. "We'd pull out doors, hardware, copper pots and pans."

More than 30 years later, the Old Same Place is now the Door Store, emphasizing Mr. Mirshak's most reliable and enduring find. While those days of dump picking are long gone, the established dealer of architectural salvage now strikes the necessary balance between local and international reclamations.

The inventory of his 11,000-square-foot Castlefield Design District showroom reflects that range, from a pair of weathered green Ontario farm doors with original strap hinges ($800 for the pair) to a set of tall primitive Egyptian-carved doors with a rusted patina ($1,800 for the set of three).

Today, homeowners get creative with their finds: a heavy maple luggage cart is used as coffee table, a country door is a headboard.

Salvaged goods are a growing niche market. The relics of the past may go through auctions, appraised by rarity, age and condition. But salvage dealers - many of whom were once in the antique trade - are curators of the landfill.

'Sweet Salvage', June 4, 2009. (Feature on the Toronto salvage market for the Posted Homes section.)

The Edible City

The Edible City | Coach House Books
'So, you want to make roti.' (Fun facts about The Edible City)

Inspiration Point (July 2008-December 2009)

Inspiration Point was a style column I wrote for Toronto’s Eye Weekly [...] The idea was to hijack the stereotypical newspaper fash spread (product shot on white backdrop accompanied by swishy-style-copy-with-shop-info-deet captions) and convey how style is something that isn’t solely determined on the runway, but by the ideas and shared references that we often get so entangled in. (And why yes! The column’s name is a Happy Days reference. THX DAMIAN.)

ree raw reeraw re rea re: ree raw - December 11, 2009

Select Clippings:
'Trop belle pour toi', July 23, 2008. (Inspiration: Antonio Lopez)
'Girl Friday', August 27, 2008. (Inspiration: I've Heard The Mermaids Singing)
'The doyenne of bad taste', September 10, 2008. (Inspiration: Diana Vreeland)
'Gift of Screws', October 1, 2008. (Inspiration: Buckingham Nicks)
'The feel-good fitness craze', December 30, 2008. (Inspiration: Koodo's 'fat-free mobility' ad campaign)
'Pucker up', May 6, 2009. (Inspiration: The AGO's 'Surreal Things' exhibit)
'Forever young', June 30, 2009. (Inspiration: Cinematheque Ontario's French New Wave program)
'A one man show', August 5, 2009. (Inspiration: Grace Jones)
'Almodóvar’s muses', September 2, 2009. (Inspiration: Pedro Almodóvar)
'Portrait of a lady', September 30, 2009. (Inspiration: Edward Steichen)
'Queen of soul', November 4, 2009. (Inspiration: Aretha Franklin)

Eye Weekly

'The youth program that worked', November 7, 2007.

'Fall Style Guide', October 16, 2008.

Fashion:
'Back in the day', November 7, 2007. (Profile on Hoboken & Haberdashery, local "hood vintage" dealers.)
'Is fur fair?', January 23, 2008. (Feature on the politics of the fur trend.)
'Who's watching who?', March 19, 2008. (Profile of the Toronto Fashion Bloggers Brunch, an early look at the then-nouveau 'style bloggers'.)
'Digital dress up', April 23, 2008. (Profiling early iterations of online casual gaming in fashion.)
'The Louis Vuitton Con', November 24, 2008. (Marcus Boon discussing the Louis Vuitton bag and it's many knockoffs as a way to understand our copying culture.)
'Sell love', March 18, 2008. (Feature on the Festival of Canadian Fashion, a significant but forgotten part of Canadian fashion history.)
'A Date with the Sartorialist', July 23, 2009. (Interview with the Sartorialist's Scott Schuman.)

Performance:
'Sister Slam', November 1, 2007. (Interview with Staceyann Chin.)
'Interview: d'bi.young', December 17, 2008.

Art:
'Eye Candy: Wanda Ewing's "The Ladies Room"', October 22, 2008.
'The big picture', July 29, 2009. (Feature on the ROM's Caribana exhibit.)