Then why not live here?
$580/month from May1 to Sept1 gets you a room in the third-floor apartment of this building here, at Queen St. West and Portland. Everything is included in that figure: all utilities, cable tv, high-speed wireless internet, and telephone with unlimited long-distance in North America. It's a great location in the heart of hip-and-happening Queen St. West; you can walk to pretty much anything you need, and oh so conveniently close to Subway. Mmmm..

The catch is you have to live with Julia and Mark for the whole summer. They're pretty cool people though. Julia is a photography student at Ryerson and she likes Lost, her fish, Lululemon, grilled-cheese sandwiches, emo music, Y&R, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Mark is an English/Sociology/History/Philosophy/Media Theory student at UofT and he likes sneakers, hockey, The Office, indie music, grilled-cheese sandwiches and the Blue Jays.
You might meet the other people in the above picture as well. Vanessa is the person you'll be subletting from. She likes the early-1990's, veganism, and going home to Waterloo for the summer. Brie is a modern woman-about-town. She likes indie power-pop, "fashion", and Cadbury Creme Eggs. Jess is an International Interesting Person. She likes blogging, beards, and Vanuatu.


Let's cut to the chase: this could be your bedroom! It's 8' x 14'. There are no windows but it does have a skylight.


We'll get all this crap out of here. There is as much furniture available as you need. Bed, desk, dresser, nightstand, whatever. We've also got a couple fans.


There's a little window that goes into the hallway. We have noooooo clue at all why it's there. The room is purple on one wall right now, the rest of it is white. If purple's not your thing, feel free to bring some paint.


This is the hallway, the door to the available room is just off to the left. Entrances to Mark's room and the kitchen are ahead, and the bathroom and the vanity are off to the right.


The kitchen. Oooooh. The door leads out the back to a fire-escape and a patio. The guy downstairs says we can use his BBQ. Thanks, Trevor!


More of the kitchen. We actually have two blenders; sometimes we have milkshake races.


This is the bathroom. It is what it is. Feel free to draw on the door, or paint the toilet tank lid, or pretty much anything else actually.


This is the vanity, also known as "Bathroom 1.5"


This is the entranceway, affectionately known as the "lobby". As you may have observed, there is no consistent colour scheme in this house. There are about 67 different paint colours on the walls. The purple door here actually has a little red square in the top left corner. Seriously. But that adds character..?


The rest of the lobby. It's got all this stuff in it right now because we're helping a friend out and letting her crash in our living room. She's gone at the end of April and this will be a lot less cluttered. We've got a spacious living room at the front of the house (to the left of this picture) that is well-ventilated and great to hang out in. It's about 14' x 16' and has ample lounging potential.

Overall the apartment has a wonky layout but there's lots of living space and privacy at the same time. We're friendly people who do our best to be clean and orderly. As you can see there's lots of art up on the walls (sometimes literally) and you, as a future tenant, are encouraged to use the apartment to express yourself.

E-mail mark.homer@utoronto.ca