The End of Summer (or Hamilton's endless summer?)

In Toronto, the “universally” accepted definition of the end of summer is the arrival of the CNE – the Ex. Personally, the Ex has never really been a part of my end of summer traditions (ie: I’ve obviously been, but its not a tradition), but without fail, when it comes to town, talk of school starting and the arrival of fall are not far behind.

This led me to wonder about the equivalent “end of summer” sign in Hamilton. What I do know is that Hamilton had a ton of summer festivals, and we managed to make it to a great deal of them, as mentioned in previous posts – Its Your Festival, Festival of Friends, BuskerFest and most recently, the Augusta Block Party (awesome chili cook-off!) and the Winona Peach Festival (which, as an aside, was much bigger than we thought it would be!)

My conclusion is that Hamilton doesn’t really have an end of summer tradition (not that I’m aware of anyway), but the party seems to continue into fall, with exciting events like the Locke Street Festival and the James Street North Supercrawl to look forward to in the next couple of weeks, along with all of the usual pumpkin and apple-related events that fall seems to bring. I’m particularly interested to see how James Street North hosts such a large event, with concerts and the like.

Looking forward to our first autumn in The Hammer! If you know of any other great end of summer or early fall events that we should check out, please let me know!

Patio season starts at Hess Village

A few weeks ago, we were greeted with a particularly sunny Friday afternoon. It was the first warm, sunny Friday of the season, so naturally, our minds drifted to patios.

Now, back in our former Toronto neighbourhood, we knew the patio options like the backs of our hands. No debate, we just headed up the street to one of three or so fave places. Hamilton is a different story - here we were, in the throes of this nice afternoon/evening, and no idea where to go to sit and enjoy a drink outside.

After some brief inquiries on Twitter, we found out that Hess Village was the place to go. Hess Village? The only thing I'd ever heard about this particular part of town was from my friend who went to McMaster for undergrad (you can see where this is going). Essentially, the only time she ever left campus was to party in Hess Village.

Well, that was not exactly the scene I was looking for on that particular day (or really ever these days!) but we headed off to Hess Village anyway, not really knowing what to expect.

To our surprise and delight, Hess Village (only about a block or two in size) was busy but not rowdy, and ideal. We settled on the Gown & Gavel patio, and sat down for a great dinner and drinks out in the sun. (This was also apparently voted best patio!)

Keep in mind that this was May (school was out!) I gather that September-April can be quite different in this area....

Hess Village is an interesting street - lots of eating/drinking options, obviously a desirable area for pubs/clubs and some other businesses as well. Our first thought was that a pedestrianized Hess Village (even one that is only pedestrianized on weekends) would be really cool - especially with the addition of street musicians or performers on busy evenings, for example.

I'm sure we'll be spending a few more warm, sunny afternoons there between now and August (but I'll be honest and say we likely won't be heading to Hess during the school year!)

We've also heard about a few other great patios to visit in the area - what's your fave summer patio in Hamilton?