Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Richard Trapunski: Toronto Mike'd #1077

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

In this 1077th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Richard Trapunski about his years writing for Chart Attack and being the Music Editor at NOW Magazine. Richard explains in great detail what happened at NOW Magazine and why he's no longer there. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Duer Pants and Shorts.

Welcome to episode 1077 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees

from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Dewar. The world's most comfortable pants and shorts. Save 15% with the promo code Toronto Mike. Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

And Canna Cabana, the lowest prices on cannabis, guaranteed. Over 100 stores across the country. Learn more at canna cabana.com joining me this week making his toronto mic debut is richard trapunski welcome richard thank you hey good to be here whereabouts are you coming from this afternoon? What neck of the GTA? I live on McCall Street in the Village by the Grange, just pretty near the old Much Music building.

299 Queen Street West. Not far from there, yeah. That's that one. You said old Much Music building. I have to shout out. 299 Queen. Okay. Now, you took the TTC, right? Yeah, I did. shout out 299 queen okay now you took the ttc right yeah what was the experience like um i want to hear what was your ttc experience like to the tmds studio here it wasn't bad i was surprised because it's far away but it was all one bus the uh the queen street replacement bus because the the streetcar is i guess there's construction being done like there always is stay on that

mic richard we're gonna capture this gold buddy i apologize keep going that's good yeah um yeah so it was the it was okay it was okay it was like an hour-long bus ride but um yeah it got me it works for you okay i'm glad you i'm glad you uh took public transit instead of another car on the uh on the highway so thank you for doing that uh do you ever bike i'm just curious like do you ever bike from a to a to b or a to z i'm not a big bike guy but uh i'm in favor of bikes you're pro bike okay i would love to meet the guy who's like uh anti-bike like i i won't accept these bicycles on our trails i've met a lot of those guys no i get those those are the guys you're like these roads are for cars working for now magazine i think you saw it a lot in the comments we're gonna talk now we're gonna talk a lot Yeah, those are the guys who are like, these roads are for cars. Working for Now Magazine, I think.

You saw it a lot in the comments. We're going to talk now. We're going to talk a lot about now. I just want to let the listenership know, let the FOTMs know that your mother, so Richard, we got to start by talking about your mom. Sure. Your mom's an FOTM. She is.

She's been on twice, I think. Yeah, twice, absolutely. Is your mom a proud FOTM? Is this something she wears like a badge of honor? She was really excited for me to be on the podcast. Okay. Yeah. I think she had a great time both times. Now, because people heard Richard Trapunsky

and they're wondering, who the hell is your mom? Who is your mother? My mom is Ellen Roseman, longtime columnist for the toronto star she does like personal finance and consumers like a consumer advocate almost uh love your mom so shout out to ellen roseman she's like like you said been on here multiple times so my question for you the first hard-hitting question for you richard treponski did you listen to your mom's appearances on toronto mic this isn't the hard

hitting question I was expecting okay there's more no I did I did um I think I'm conflating both she was on once in the zoom era she was here yeah in the big one I'll say is her first appearance where she's physically here like you are now and we discuss her career like uh from A to Z the second was like a uh a zoom during the covid era but that first episode did you listen to that one i did i did uh don't quiz me on what she said but i did listen i was what did she say at the 23 minute mark i want to know i was listening to see if she mentioned my name but i don't remember if she did no uh she kept you a dark secret she didn't want people to know but i'm glad you're here. I will shout out now.

This is something exciting I'm going to do before we crack open our Great Lake beers on the microphone. I'm going to shout out all previous parent-child combos to appear on Toronto Mic'd, okay? So these are, and I think I have a full list here, the parent-slash-child FOTM combos. Are you ready? All right. Like, this is now the company you're joining like you and ellen your mother are now in this exclusive club okay a trivia question

for future guests right just don't ask me who was the first because i haven't done that homework but okay uh let's say let's start with kate wheeler do you know kate wheeler i'm gonna put you on the spot here a long time like cfto journalist uh i think she's at global news now but kate wheeler okay she uh was on the show uh she came on with christine bentley and then a couple years later her daughter alexandra beaton who's an actress came on the program so there there's one set, Kate Wheeler and Alexandra Beaton. Nice. Pauly Morris from Hits FM in St. Catharines. He helped build the White House

of Rock, Paul Morris. Pauly Morris came on and also on this program is Pauly's daughter, Siobhan Morris. Siobhan works now. She works for CTV Toronto covering Queen's Park, I believe. Nice. So you go, yeah, just fake interest.

No, I'm very interested. Paul Burford, who is a co-creator and producer of Just Like Mom. You might be a bit young. Did you ever see Just Like Mom? No. Too young. You're too young. Okay, I'll tell you stories about just like mom another day but okay so paul uh co-created that with fergie oliver and paul's

son is an fotm because brock burford is paul's son and brock is also known as broccoli one half of sunshine and broccoli do you have kids richard i don't okay well kids might know sunshine and broccoli uh if you don't have kids it's probably best you don't know sunshine and broccoli but i'm not done yet a couple more here maybe a few more i could do the whole episode about the parent children combos that have done the program but steve simmons is this a name you've heard of steve simmons i do know steve simmons i don't know him personally because you're a sports fan right yeah yeah what's your favorite sport to watch on television uh basketball i'm big raptors you're a big raptors guy okay so steve simmons works for the toronto sun long time

journalist there his son is a guest on this program as well uh jeff simmons and we're not done yet richard uh bear with me here. Barry Witkin. Barry Witkin. Well, let me start with his son, Andrew Witkin. Andrew Witkin is the owner of StickerU.com, a proud sponsor of the program, and he's an FOTM. There's a Toronto Mike sticker for you in that ashtray. So you're taking that home with you, Richard. Thank you, StickerU.com.

That's where you get your stickers and such. And that ashtray, by the way, I know your mom's listening, which might make this awkward, but do you smoke weed? I would say I'm a very occasional weed guy. Okay, well, when you occasionally smoke weed, make sure you pick that up at Canna Cabana because they won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. And then you can use that ashtray and keep things tidy around your home.

And why am I mentioning Andrew Witkin? Well, because his dad, Barry Witkin, was on the program, because Barry Witkin is one of the co-founders of the Purple Onion, which was a Yorkville folk coffee shop back in the early 60s. And last but not least,il osborne from 5440 and his daughter candle osborne are fotm so there you go there is the full and complete list of uh parent children combos to be on toronto mic'd that's way more than i would have expected well thanks to the vps sales who helped me out because i didn't expect that many either. There are two on my hit list. I will point out.

So I've had Brian, Brian Hayes is on my, my hit list. His dad has been on the show. So Brian Hayes, I would like to get on your sports fans. You know, he's on TSN radio and I've had a Macco junior on the show.

I would like Bob McAwitt senior on the program. So I'm just putting this into the universe. I'm looking for Brian Hayes and Macco senior to uh increase that uh that list there nice you could do a family reunion episode that's just like mom we could do like a just like mom episode okay what are you drinking there this is great lakes lager uh from great lakes brewery okay richard on that mic right on the mic right in front okay let's do it gotta get started first wait it takes practice to get perfect at it okay sounds good here i'll show you how you do it right and this is again a sunny side because i'm in love with it okay that's way better than mine lots of practice so cheers to great lakes i'm actually tomorrow night i'm going to attend the grand opening of,

they have a new location at Jarvis and Queens Quay, Lower Jarvis. So I'm going to be there tomorrow night if you're looking for me. If you want to, you know,

punch me in the nose or just say hi, come to, I shouldn't say the first line anymore because there are people who want to punch me in the nose. But, so don't come and punch me in the nose,

but if you want to come and say hi, then I'm at Great Lakes. It's called the Beer Pub. No, Brew Pub. They're calling it the Brew Pub, so I'll be there tomorrow night. Where do I begin with you, Richard? Do you mind if we go back?

I'm curious about what you can tell me about Chart Attack when you worked there. Like Chart Attack, I remember fondly Chart Attack, but just give us as many details as you can about when you got involved with Chart Attack and what exactly you did and what it was like there at the time.

Yeah, sure. When I started there, it was 2013. So it was past the golden era, I think. It was actually different ownership than probably the chart that most people know. Channel Zero. Channel Zero was the owner. CHCH. Yeah, exactly. CHCH was out of Hamilton. We were in an office in Toronto at the junction right at Dundas and K CHCH. Yeah, exactly. CHCH was out of Hamilton.

We were in an office in Toronto at the junction, right, at Dundas and Keele. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's where my buddy Joe, people know him as Joe from TO, but his dad used to cut hair there. Oh, okay. A little Maltese, very strong Maltese population there. Yeah, definitely. I was back in the junction recently, and it was only like five years since the last time maybe I'd really hung out there.

It's totally, totally different. Oh, you gentrified the fuck out of that, okay? I mean, just like the rest of the city, I guess. Yeah, so I was there in 2013. I became the editor-in-chief. By that time, you know, it evolved out of Chart Magazine in the 90s. Oh, I have a copy. Oh, you do?

Just because Brother Bill sent this to me because he thought I might enjoy it. I'll just, you can take a peek at that. But that's like a vintage. Yeah, this is probably a collector's item here. So that's from the good old days, the 90s, as I say. But you know that, you can get lost breezing through that. Brother Bill just thought it would speak to me

and he knows me very well. So he sent me that copy of it. Do you know? So it's the top 50 Canadian albums of all time? Right. Is that the one that Sloan wins? I was just going to ask you. I was just going to ask you if you knew, but yes, it was Sloan.

Yeah, and I don't remember the rest of that list, except that I'm familiar with most of those gems. So yeah, this version of Chart was like it was you know the can rock bible it was it was sloan and neil young and the tragically hip love junk love junks on there shout out to mo yeah um and yeah the the version that that i did was sort of what i was trying to do was the next evolution of that like what does can rock mean now um you know it was a lot less give us the era what years are we talking about 2013 to 2017 i want to say no 2016 2016 so this is a very different chart attack than the one that we uh we think of from back in the day i would say it was it was not totally different it wasn't a reinvention but it was sort of the evolution.

You know, I had been covering music for a lot of years already by that point. And I had seen sort of a sea change in how we define Canadian music, you know, or can rock especially, you know. It was a lot of like white guys and guitars. Is that Hoxley Workman or are we going no more recent than that? Hawksley Workman, well, I don't know.

I'm thinking of the, that was the canon of Canadian albums right there. Top 50 Canadian albums of all time. So Neil Young's on there. Yeah. And, you know, I was seeing a lot of, and this has continued, obviously, for the past decade or more,

but, you know, I think there's a different canon of what we would consider the top, uh, what we would consider even a Canadian musician necessarily. Um, there's a lot more recognition of indigenous music, for instance. Um, you know, there's a lot more and being a multicultural place, like you'll, you'll see music in Spanish, you'll, you know, music from, from different countries in africa and it's and it's not considered world music necessarily anymore it's canadian music now what what music when you're listening on your own time to music you legit like for your own personal pleasure what kind of music is uh richard truponsky uh spinning uh i mean i'm like all over the place probably um for for so long at now right i was covering

toronto artists so i think that i always have a bit of a like homerism uh you know a hometown love okay shout out something we're gonna obviously dive deep into the now experience but even right now just um get specific like name check some toronto artists that you dig okay i'll tell you one in particular uh which is uh the band fucked up i assume i can can you can swear i think i already dropped an f-bomb actually um i'm actually going to see them tonight okay yeah that's way cooler i'm going to see black crows which i'm looking forward to tonight but uh yeah fucked up there you go buddy yeah so it's the 10 year anniversary of their david comes to album, which was their gigantic concept album sort of opus.

And the fact that it's a 10-year anniversary is crazy to me because I wrote the cover story on them for that album 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah. And the fact that it's turning 10 is just like, I guess I'm that age now. And you wrote that for Chart Attack. No, no, no guess i'm that age now and you wrote that for chart chart attack no no no i did that for now i was i was actually a uh a long time freelance contributor okay okay okay okay we're getting so we gotta get so so why do you leave chart attack what happens with chart and and yeah any other details you can tell me about sure yeah okay so um yeah chart attack

because we'll go in chronological order and then I'll just pepper you with annoying questions. No problem. Well, yeah, Chart Attack, it evolved out of Chart Magazine. It was bought, they actually, I think they went dark. They folded, essentially, and there were all the eulogies, Canada's losing one of its big music magazines. Right. It went dark for, I don't know know how long maybe six months or so and then um it got bought by a guy named rob osfield and he had a company called

and pop which was sort of um you know it was like teen teen pop was sort of their you know their bailey wick and the coreys and there's that i just dated myself with the Corys well this was the early 2010s it was probably more Justin Bieber that's right and yeah so they had their alternative site side thing called and pop side B

and then they bought the CharterTech brand and just relaunched side BS CharterTech essentially and then eventually both those sites got sold to Channel Zero and they got amalgamated. They moved into that office at Dundas and Kiel. And that's when they hired me.

So is this one of your first gigs in media? Like what came before that? Just so I have the right Richard Chraponsky timeline here. I mean, if you want to go super far back, my first job was at a website called martiniboys.com. Not many people are probably going to remember this. And you were a model on that site, is that correct? Yeah, that's what it sounded like.

That's what it sounded like, but it covered bars and restaurants and stores in Toronto. It had a very, I think, millennial aesthetic. It was in the days of long guest lists and bouncers at the door. And, you know, I was a 22-year-old, like, pretending like I was part of that scene in any way. And I'm guessing because of who your mother is, who, you know, wrote at the Toronto Star for so many years, that you had been exposed to, you know, writing as a career. Like, this was an option for you growing up because you saw mom do

it yeah i mean i definitely grew up in it um i remember going to take your kid to work day uh in grade whatever that was grade eight i guess um and i went nine maybe maybe nine i went to the toronto star newsroom at one one young street there right And there were a bunch of other kids who, some of whom I think are also journalists now. Um, Adam Miller, he works for, oh man, I shouldn't have brought his name up without knowing exactly where he works for, but he's like a hard, hard news journalist guy. Um, but he was there too with me. We, we sat in on the pitch meeting and then, uh, you know, my mom took me to the cafeteria, to the, to the gym, I think. And then in the, you know, my mom took me to the cafeteria, to the gym, I think. And then in the, you know, the one hour of work she was able to do while I was there, she just put me on a computer and let me play on the computer.

But I remember going by the music critic. It wasn't Ben Rayner yet. I don't know who it would have been. Going by his desk and he said, oh, you can take some promo CDs if you want. Wow. I don't remember peter howell by any chance i'm trying to think peter howell did music before movies yeah peter howell was a music guy i don't think it was still him at that point i don't know it's a good question

this would have been how can i date myself this would have been um the late 90s okay it's not peter goddard obviously who we recently lost. Whoever it was, he wasn't there. It must have been a Peter, okay? There are all Peters over there. But okay, it was John. I'm just trying to think of all the music writers at Star. Now they don't have any, but they had many for a long time. Yeah, and I don't remember what the promo CDs I got either, but it was probably like, I feel like it was like Papa Roach or...

Cut my life into pieces there you go perfect um i saw them open for eminem and limp biscuit at the sky dome back in 2000 nice toronto's a small town also like one of my friends growing up do you know do you know the uh the music journalist nicholas jennings um no but i know the journalist peter jennings great but you should have nick jnings on your, on your show. He's still, still doing it. He's still really good. He's kind of a historian.

Um, he recently wrote a book about Joni Mitchell, I think. Okay. Don't upset Liz Braun. Okay. Uh, she came over here a couple of weeks ago and went off on Joni Mitchell. Oh, okay. All right. Um, yeah, Gordon Lightfoot.

He also wrote a recent book on Gordon Lightfoot. Nice. But yeah, he was my friend's dad growing up. And I think I got some promo CDs out of him too. So I was, I was... You were exposed to it. To you, it was, this is a realistic option for you. Because I think a lot of us fantasize. Even I think when I'm journaling back in the day, you're fantasizing that one day you're going to be like, you're going to write for Rolling Stone magazine or something like this is sort of like this was viable to you. I was exposed to it. I don't know if I ever, I mean, my mom definitely wasn't in the music

sphere, um, writing about business. Uh, my dad did work for a few years for Milestone Radio, which was the company that was eventually became Flow 93.5. Of course. that was eventually became flow 93.5 of course um when he was working there it was the first time they were bidding for a frequency and they didn't get it it was cbc that got it right but a few years later then that they did launch the yeah and i think i went to i think kiss got it i mean there was a country station that got it too before uh before a flow became and uh yeah shout out to farley flex he's a good fot yeah farley flex i think i met him when i was you know 12 years old before Flo became and yeah shout out to Farley Flex he's a good FOTM

I think I met him when I was 12 years old we still talk all the time I think he's a fascinating cat big Farley Flex fan big shout out to him yeah he was on your show right yeah he's been on the show a couple times and John Sinden too was there in the early days

because I'm trying to get them to do an episode like basically what the fuck happened to Flo like there was this whole problem promise and pledge and mandate and i think they it it failed it failed the city and i know that you'll say that they basically sold the or gave away the logo basically this is a weird move here you take the logo and call yourself this and then we're gonna go become something i don't know where the audience is for what they are now uh some kind of a talk play what we want hybrid thing that right i can't imagine will succeed but i i've been wrong before but please continue yeah i um denim jolly was the owner at that point and uh he sold it long ago

he sold it to i think whatever the precursor to bell media was uh flow has been by this point like when it's never been uh yeah okay flow's been passed around so many times new cap had it and then it was stingray and now that's it was given away to g98 right and they rebranded and then they rebranded back right they became the move yeah and then they went back and they did yeah they've been all over the place and and again now i mean i talk about this quite a bit with mark weisblood who's going to be here on thursday but i don't i personally don't understand who the the current what is it 93.5 is that the frequency i don't know who it's for right now like i'm not too sure these are people i don't know with very like phony stories that seem like they're

actors on the phone, and then they're just playing whatever. So you might hear a 90s dance track or something, and then you're going to hear a country song. I just don't understand. What do I know? I'm not from radio. I don't understand who that's for.

Yeah, I can't say I've listened much to the... I don't even fully remember what it's called. I know. I should look it up. I can't remember what it's called either. I'm going to look it up. I can't remember what it's called either. I'm going to look it up right now. But you tell me what happens to you at Chart Attack. Right.

So, yeah, eventually I end up at Chart Attack. I was the editor-in-chief there. It's called Today. Today. What a forgettable name that is. Holy smokes. Okay. Today Radio.

I work for a place called Now. It's kind of similar. But, yeah, I was at Chart Attack in those days, basically trying to figure out what does a 21st century version of that magazine look like. All online. We didn't have a print publication at that point. And we had a big video division as well. That was the other thing. The big pivot to video. Yeah, we were before people started talking about pivots to video. Have they all pivoted back yet? I'm just waiting. I'm just wondering. most of them i probably have or they pivoted to tiktok or something like that podcasts

right yeah um but yeah i did that for three to four years something like that um and okay that's fun because you're writing about music yeah exactly and it was it was really cool to be able to kind of define where it was going to go and what we were going to do. And I think that we were able to do some really cool stuff over there. It was sort of, you know, how can we cover Canada and all its facets really on a, and we really tried to be like on a ground level, I think.

And, you know, being able to, to tell, you know, big think PC things. And then also like, you know,

little scene reports of whatever, London, Ontario. And yeah, it was fun to do. It was really fun for that three or four years. I work with some really, really talented writers. And is it at this time, because you become a Polaris Music Prize juror. So is that coinciding with your work at Chart Attack?

Or does that come when you join now? I've been a juror for a really long time now i want to say over a decade uh i think i was still at now when i when i started there um okay yeah so okay so what we need now is uh why do you leave chart attack and how do you end up at now and then i have lots of now questions okay um yeah i mean i feel like i could write a book about digital media right and and the way that it's been. No, don't write the book. Just spill it all into my microphone right now. I'll capture as much as I can. Oh, shout out to Cam Gordon, I think, who wants to write that actual very book.

Oh, there you go. I know he sent me screencaps of something he'd submit and write for Chart Attack. I feel like cam's been in that uh on that publication at some point by the way i want to shout out a guy he was over here the other day we did an episode with a guy called promo man his name's nick panaseko and there is a book about promo man written by bob clannock and i hope i said bob's last name right bob clannock and bob clannock also i believe on the jury for the polararis Music Prize at some point. Yeah. Yeah. So you asked me how I left there. Yeah.

I got laid off. The guy who was my boss left. And I think that we were always sort of, you know, Channel Zero is a very old media company. They had CHCH, mostly a TV company, to be honest. Right. media company. They had CHCH, mostly a TV company, to be honest. And I think that, you know, Rob, when he sold them Chart Attack and ANPOP was able to convince them that, you know, they need some digital properties to be able to modernize. The thing about that is they never really invested in the digital properties. I kind of felt like we were the kids, you know, we were at the kids table in the office. And nobody quite knew what we did or, or, you know, why we were there.

And then when he was gone, we got shuffled into, I think, programming, which was a weird division for us to be in. And for the very first time, they looked at Chart Attack and said, Hey, I don't know if this is making us any money. So Chart Attack was to Channel Zero what BlogTO is to Zoomer. Yeah, that's actually probably a fair comparison. Except they probably didn't pay $15 million for Chart Attack. Yeah, I don't know what the price was, but I don't think it was $15 million. All right. We'll get back to the old BlogTO situation when we talk more about now.

But, okay, so basically you're out of a job and how do you end up at now um yeah i mean i um i freelanced for a little bit at that point um i just kind of kept my ear to the ground i had already been i was a long time not only now reader but i was a now contributor from 2010 to 13 before i got that chart job right um i was a freelancer but what did they back then what would they pay for a freelancer who wrote something for them? Give me the real, look, I want the real talk. The real talk. The, the, okay. So the rates were not great, but I'd say they were comparable among magazines like this. For a feature, you know, it was a lot of, at that point, it was a lot of like a band would be coming to town that week. They're the horseshoe you'd interview them you'd you know you'd write your it was kind

of a template you'd write your story you'd have a catchy lead two or three different quotes um and let's say it was uh 600 to 800 words i think i would get paid 100 bucks i want to say um there were album reviews that were little just capsules. They were, you know, 150 words or something like that. And those ran for, I think, 75. And show reviews and this kind of thing. But, you know, I was, even though I was a freelancer, I was a permalancer. I was in the music section, I'd say, every single week single week most of the time often with like a feature and two album reviews and maybe a live review so you can kind of you could kind of add them up um yeah you know it's volume right like you gotta yeah to to make ends meet you gotta

do a bunch of that yeah exactly um and then when i was music editor and i i was holding the purse strings we we adjusted the rates a little bit but um you know it was still the features got a little bit longer and we we paid a little bit more for them same with the live reviews but well none of that so firstly none of this shocks me because two days ago rashmi nair was here sitting where you're sitting and rashmi is he she's got the afternoon drive show on 1010 right now. It's called The Rush. So Reshmi was telling me about like, you know, in Vancouver,

she was on the sister station. So we have 680 News here and they had whatever their frequency was, but it's the same station in Vancouver. And she said she had to leave because she was a reporter for their equivalent to 680 News. And we're going back like 15 years, but she was a reporter for their, their equivalent to six 80 news. And we're going back like 15 years,

but she was making 40,000 a year and she could not afford to live in Vancouver, which at the time was more expensive than Toronto. I think we might've, I read a report like we just passed them. Like this was like breaking news. Toronto's number one now. And who the hell knows whether that's true or not.

But bottom line is she could not afford to live in vancouver making forty thousand dollars a year as a reporter at that station and i and again it is going back 15 years so hopefully those salaries like are at least increasing with the cost of living which is you would hope so yeah don't by the way there's no guarantee that happened but i so but but i so so when I hear this like, okay, this is what this Canadian media property is paying for this. I've learned to just really lower my expectations so that, you know, because I've never worked in this industry. So that sounds like, so a hundred bucks for your big story about the band coming to the horseshoe. Yeah, exactly. Something like that.

And, but you know, I wrote hundreds of those. Um, well you'd have to. Yeah. And I was just constantly doing them every week. I,

you know, I had a really good time. I was in my early twenties. Uh, I was going to fucking like, I want to say like three concerts a week, something like that. Uh,

I don't think I can, can still do that. I don't have the stamina, but, um, yeah, those are, you could do it. I'm, I'm going to go to, a week something like that uh i don't think i can can still do that i don't have the stamina but um yeah those you could do it i'm i'm gonna go to so i went to uh moist and tea party on saturday and then i went to the jays game sunday tonight i'm at black crows and friday i'm at roger waters like if i can maintain this at my old old age you can do it richard yeah i mean i just it's a it's a different lifestyle now being a, now I'm the,

or I was, I guess the guy who was sending other people out to three shows a week. Okay. So let's, let's dive into this. So you said you were a freelancer at Now Magazine from 2010 to 2013, but you don't start as a music editor until 2016, right? 2016. Not, not long after I was gone from Chart Attack. And how did that happen? I was still friends with some people who worked there. Do you want to name check them? I'm fascinated by... I had Michael Hollett here not too long

ago. Now he's Mr. Next. I'm fascinated by now and most of the stuff that Michael couldn't speak to because post-Michael Hollett. I'm fascinated by now and most of the stuff that michael couldn't speak to because post michael holland but i'm fascinated by the last five years at now what you're here now as the guy who's going to give me the details like so when you join now who owns it um alice

klein right who's the spouse the former spouse they co-owned it michael holland and alice klein she bought him out at some point she did buy him out when i was freelancing in the early 2010s there i think that they were still co-owning it and sometime when i was at chart attack was when she bought him out so when i came back it was just her well it's what you know the age-old story that when the relationship breaks down then the business relationship sometimes i mean they were married and they got divorced you know probably in the 90s and they they continued running the paper together that you know better than i do quite a while quite a while right um and and so this is alice klein

alice klein right so she's the owner when you arrived she was the owner i had heard i had heard on the street that they were looking for i think a copy a copy editor. And then also Susan Cole was retiring. She was the longtime entertainment editor from the beginning, I think. And also, if you don't, man, Richard, I'm really asking a lot of you here, but any memories, like if you can name check anyone else you remember at the publication.

Like, I'm archiving Toronto's history here, okay? Richard, you're're gonna be a key witness names drop names like that's your job right well yeah so susan was retiring um and yeah i knew that and there was a copy editor who uh was taking a leave i want to say and um i was friends with uh kevin ritchie he was the um. He became the culture editor actually when Susan retired, but he was working for the music section at the time. And Carla Gillis, who was the music editor at that point. And so I knew they were looking for someone.

I asked Alice Klein out for coffee because I knew her a little bit. I didn't know her well, but I knew her from my days of freelancing. This is my networking talk. And I said, hey, I know that you've got some people leaving. I know you're looking for people. I was just editor-in-chief at Chart Attack. I'm familiar with now. I know how it all operates. But now I have all this experience. Hire me as just an editor, a jack- a jack of all trades kind of guy. And she was interested. She heard my proposal. Now is a union shop. So I don't think the union loved the idea of just creating a new position. Usually that has to be negotiated. It has to be advertised. And so the solution was we need, you know, we need a copy editor right now. Come into the door, be a copy editor.

We'll top that up with a lot of freelance. And while you're just here in the doors, we'll create a position for you. And do it through the regular channels. Do it legit. But during that time, while that was happening, Carla announced she was leaving as music editor. And pulled me aside and said, hey, you should apply for this. And I waffled for a while whether or not I should do that or wait to create a new job.

But, you know, I think I think for a long time, especially I was a contributor for a long time there in the music section, like being the now music editor was kind of a dream job for a lot of people, I think. If you were a music writer, being the music editor at the Alt Weekly, and by that point, The Grid and I had both folded. Being that guy was kind of a dream job. It might have been a dream job from an earlier version of myself, but I felt like I had to go for it. No, I can totally see that. When you're designing your career path and you're thinking that's the definitive alt weekly and that's where I would like to cover, write music and become the music editor.

Like, yeah, sure. That'd be amazing. And you made it happen. Yeah, so I applied. I still had to go through the whole thing. I did, you know, I did multiple interviews. I might've even done an editing test even though I was already in the door as an editor. Right. Yeah. And I got the job. So. And that's 2016. 20. Yeah, probably 2016.

OK. It's funny you mentioned, you know, having coffee with Alice Klein and to feel things out or whatever, because, again, the last episode of Reshmi she was talking about how she kept taking Mike Ben Dixon out for coffee and Ben Dixon was the program director at 1010 because Reshmi wanted to get on the air at 1010 and I was like if you were in a hiring position for some media

company in Canada you would never have to buy a coffee in your life like everybody just wants to buy you coffees. It's true I mean I'm an editor too I've had people ask me for coffee nowadays it's a lot of zoom you want to get on a zoom well that's bullshit how do you get a coffee that way exactly they'll email you like a starbucks gift card or something and say get your own coffee and then meet me on the zoom yeah um so yeah i was in the door there and it was kind of a kind of a similar deal to Chart Attack, actually, where, you know, this was a brand that had a long history. People knew it.

People loved it. And it was kind of at an impasse, right? Things were changing quite quickly in the media landscape. And it was sort of like, how do we evolve this thing? How do we, you know, change with the times? It was probably happening a little too late, but that was one of the things that I tried to do. So by that point, you know, I talked about how we were doing a lot of those, you know, every week you'd open the paper and it would be the same. The music section would be essentially the same. You'd open it up to a page of live reviews, whatever the concerts

were that day, one giant photo at the top, a live photo, right. Bunch of live reviews. Then, you know, maybe three or four of those profiles of whoever's playing that week. Here's the band. Here's why you should check them out. And then a page of album reviews. And it was like that every single week for probably decades.

Part of the thing was that the section was then smaller. The paper in general was smaller. There were fewer ads, so there were fewer pages to fill. The staff was smaller. So in some ways it's circumstance. It's like now we don't have room to do that exact template that I just laid out there. What can we do?

What can we do creatively to make this work? And instead of just doing a smaller version of the same thing it's sort of like let's use this as an opportunity to really do some interesting stuff um and so you know it was a lot less um when we were thinking about profiles it was a lot less tied to just you know here's a preview of a band that's playing um you know it'd be maybe more issue-based if we were doing a live review we'd treat it as a feature and give it a lot of space and sort of use it as context to explain whatever the cultural moment is. I think if you're reading NOW Magazine

to read your review of OVO Fest or whatever, you probably want more than 150 words about Drake. You probably want to know exactly who was there, what it meant, what it means to the hip- hop scene at the time or the pop scene or Toronto. Yeah. So it was sort of thinking, I guess, bigger picture a lot of the time. Okay. So much ground to cover here. I do want to, before it gets away from me, my question for you is, do you enjoy Italian food? I do enjoy Italian food. Did you anticipate this question no okay well my mom was on so i know you have a heads up okay because i do have a frozen lasagna for you

in my freezer and that's courtesy of palma pasta delicious authentic italian food they're in mississauga and oakville go to palmapasta.com much love to to those good people. Nice. That's for you, buddy. And before I forget, the freshman had a good time with this. Measuring tape, because you never know, my friend, when you got to measure something. And that is courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home,

pillars of this community since 1921. And I urge everyone listening to check out Brad Jones's podcast. He's the funeral director at Ridley Funeral Home. His podcast is called Life's Undertaking. He records a new episode every couple of weeks. Always thought-provoking and interesting. And I love producing that show. And I urge you to check it out.

So, Richard, that's your job, buddy. You're going to check out Brad Jones's Life's Undertaking. Will do. Thanks for all the prizes. All the prizes. and 15% off. How's that for a gift for everybody listening? I'm a big fan of Dewar, D-U-E-R, the world's most comfortable pants and shorts.

And I'm throwing in shirts too because those shirts feel like no other t-shirts in my collection. They feel amazing. This is rugged. This is great looking. It's comfortable as heck and you can save 15 at doer.ca d-u-e-r.ca or go to the the new retail store in toronto

on queen street west shout out and much love to doer all right richard so first a couple of nice notes before we get into the nitty-gritty here which uh warts and all okay sean william clark who is a fotm himself he's a great musician he wrote me a tweet and said richard wrote the first serious review i ever got in paper seeing my album positively reviewed and now was so special so sean will never forget you buddy oh that's nice i've met him a few times super nice guy super nice guy he's got a jam called i think it's called autumn in new brunswick that i kicked out during autumn jams on a pandemic friday because i legit love this beautiful song it's so lush and gorgeous yeah good job sean and i think i met sean i think i met sean somehow through um

the lowest of the low somehow there was a connection i think a wolf island collect connection uh i believe but okay brother bill he says presuming now still had them so you'll tell me when these disappeared but did richard ever call one of those numbers in the back pages what this is what people remember about now magazine in the you know the 90s and such when did these uh what do we call these personal what are these called uh the adult pages the adult pages yes yeah although adult classified the escort ads etc when did they disappear from now uh were they there when you got there they were yes um they disappeared and they came back i'm pretty sure they came back i don't know if they're still

running i think they are um i think that that was a so you know there was a long time that they ran them michael hollett went to jail for it i think right um, you know, they justified having these ads for a really long time. They fought for their right to do it. And then, you know, I think that it was when they eventually made the decision to get rid of them, I think it was a business decision, right? There were certain advertisers who they felt were not going to advertise in now to be in the same paper as those pages of adult classifieds um and so they got rid of them for that reason i don't know if the gambit really worked off or not worked out or not but um i think looking back at it probably was also part of the effort to find a buyer to sell the magazine

right um which they did eventually do um and but then they brought they brought them back at some point i think they were a big money maker honestly i would imagine so i would imagine they were a big which they did eventually do. But then they brought them back at some point. I think they were a big moneymaker, honestly. I would imagine so. I would imagine they were a big moneymaker. So when and to whom does Alice Klein sell Now Magazine? What year was it? I feel like it was 2019, maybe.

The end of 2018? I know. The pandemic has messed up our sense of timing, I think. We know it's pre-pandemic i keep saying things things happened two years ago and then i think no that was the pandemic see my brain goes was that during the pandemic or before the pandemic that's the first thing and then once i determine it's before the pandemic i'm like okay well the pandemic starts in march 2020 and i work backwards or whatever well it was not a super long time before the pandemic started that the sale happened. Probably 2019.

Probably 2019. Yeah. So they sold to a company called Media Central. Company no longer exists, but there is sort of still a lineage there. Is this the German penny stock company? They were selling on the Berlin Stock Exchange, I want to say. I think essentially this company formed to buy Now Magazine and later the Georgia Strait as well. Right.

Okay, so this was big news. They made ridiculous claims at the time that they were going to save Now Magazine. I remember the rhetoric at the time that, you know, they were going to save this all. I remember the rhetoric at the time that they were going to save this all weekly, and you're still there. What was it like inside the office when Media Central took over? Good question.

Full of good questions, Richard. Yeah. It was kind of interesting because they... I don't know how to explain it. They were talking about a partnership already at this point, media central, their first site that they had before they were media central was a site called can central,

a cannabis website, C A N. Right. Um, and they were running content inside now magazine. Like there was a, the cannabis page would be brought to you by can central. Right.

Uh, this was before the sale happened. And, you know, Alice would talk about it. She said, oh, it's a cannabis company that we've, or a cannabis publication, I think, that we've partnered with. And then there was talk that they were going to move into our office and we were going to share the office with them. Is this the Church Street office?

Which office is it? This was on Spadina. Spadina. Yeah, right across the street from the dark horse there it's the uh the csi building the the center for social innovation okay yeah and we had a floor in that in that building okay um which i think was like an old um you know fashion district like a schmata factory we'd'd say. But, you know. Say that word again. Schmata. That means like a garment.

And is that Yiddish? What is that word? It is Yiddish. Okay. I know a lot of Yiddish because I co-host a show with Mark Hebbshire and he drops lots of Yiddish on me. And I enjoy like learning new Yiddish words. But say that one more time slowly.

Schmata? Schmata. Schmata. Yeah. My grandfather owned a factory, a sweater factory in Montreal. So it's like the garment district. The garment district. Right.

Yeah. That was what Spadina was 100 years ago. Sure. Sure. Sure. And they had converted that building into what was then the CSI building, the Center for Social Innovation. And the office was not super nice, I wouldn't say.

I was in the church office and I never actually worked there but I visited a lot as a freelancer. I would open mail and pick up promo CDs because that's the vintage that it was. By the time I was working there, it was Spadina. The nice part was it was a 10-minute walk from my house. Where was I going with this what were we talking about well i guess okay i'm curious like when you're working for now and i

mean i'm thinking who have i had from now not that many actually but norm willner for sure multiple times so so norm willner when you guys are there on the inside and you know alice klein is sold to media central and which when you know when I call it the German penny stock company that's because that is the that's the handle that Mark Weisblatt gave it so it's like okay the German penny stock company okay so but what is the chit chat like on the inside when that goes down like are are you guys buying into the rhetoric like this is a good thing or is there a great grave concern like i just want the real talk on this well honestly we found out about it at the same time that the

internet did uh we got there and there was like some commotion in the i think we were supposed to have a board meeting that day like our ed board meeting which happened every thursday morning right we came in and it wasn't happening and there were other people meeting in the in the boardroom and i think michael hallett was there even though he was no longer involved or he was at some point um and we're sort of like okay something's happening right um we have hallett's here something's going down it might have been a few days before but we're thinking oh something's happening and then we sort of found out oh there's a sale happening, you know, we all had a big meeting in the back office, the office that was supposed to be for CanCentral.

Right. Yeah, where we met the new CEO, and he sort of explained, here's who we are, here's what we want to do. They had a really big grand plan. This was sort of what they were talking about, of consolidating, buying and consolidating 100 Alt Weeklys across Canada. and now was to be the first now and then georgia straight and then the

rest and then the rest they yeah they ended up buying two but uh the plan was 100 and wow yeah and they were gonna um introduce a bunch of new verticals, eSports, cannabis, sneakers. Sure, for the sneakerheads. They had a diagram that showed how it was all going to work out and a lot of people were passing around the diagram. Wow. Did you keep a copy? I want to see it.

So cannabis, that makes sense considering the cannabis and then the eSports. By the way, I've been hearing forever about how e-sports is going to be the next big, huge fucking thing. And maybe it is. I'm just like not exposed to any of it. I think e-sports is really big.

I believe so. But it's like a vertical that's like somehow in my little circle. It's just not touching any of that. There's a big arena that they're building on the CNE or something, a company called Overactive Media, which is co-owned by Abel Tesfaye of The Weeknd, aka The Weeknd. Sure, sure.

I heard John Torrey, what is it, the league? John Torrey is going to give them the key to the city or something this weekend or something. I didn't know that. But yeah, the Toronto Overwatch team is going to play there. I think that's going to be their home arena. I got to say, man, this might be a generational thing, and that's fine. I'm willing to admit I am Gen X.

I want to know, like, I mean, you're not Gen X. I'm guessing you're millennial. I'm a millennial, and I'm just as perplexed as you are. Okay, okay. I always have to keep it. I have to remember that some of the stuff we did, those boomers didn't understand it either. So it's like,

I don't want to become Abe Simpson, right? Shaking my fist at the cloud. We'll see what happens with this wonderful world of e-sports. I do remember this, the, the announcement about the fundamental change that they were going to merge the editorial department with the marketing and the sales

department so sales marketing editorial were like merged so what is the rhetoric what's the what's the thought like on the inside with with that well that was that was at least a year later that was when we were all working from home uh that's a pandemic announcement and that was a similar thing we found out about that at the same time as everyone else and at this point in when the pandemic starts you're and i'm gonna ask some personal questions about your uh pay from now magazine okay it's all normal right like they're making payroll and they're paying you 100 of your promise compensation at this time um technically Okay. Why do you say it like that? Well, and this actually dates back to before the sale. We were being paid 15% less than our salaries. And this is something we agreed to.

Because, you know, we're a union shop, as I mentioned. Unifor was our union. And every few years, you renegotiate your collective agreement okay um and you know it was time to do that we had a few union meetings where it was sort of like okay what what do we want to to ask for in the negotiations this time around for our contract uh because it's coming up it's going to be 2019 and um you know they get into negotiations it's it's with alice klein media central wasn't in the in the picture yet um and then we had another union meeting where they said okay we're going to discuss uh how the negotiations went and we came in and they said so things are really bad we weren't able to come to an agreement the company is struggling um

basically do you want to accept a 15 pay cut and hour reduction they called it an emergency wage reduction something like that so this is in lieu of like a body count like in lieu of layoffs or is it to save the paper i think a little bit of both okay um so it was not only are we not coming to an agreement on the contract, it's do you want to accept a pay cut? And if not, you know, I don't know if they said this outright, but there's a chance that the paper will just fold. And none of us wanted that to happen. Right. Of course. So we voted for it and we agreed to it. And the idea was we would work for 15% less and we'd reduce our hours by 15 percent by this point none of us were really

working 40 hours a week we were working 60 hours a week wow i mean a lot of the time but now they're basically saying instead of 40 they're saying and i can't do the math but 30 something yeah something like that give me that calculator yeah i need it uh whatever it was but 15 percent less than the 40 that you were supposed to be working even though it sounds like you're working 60 because there's less bodies 60 might be an exaggeration but it was a lot yeah there was less bodies and even before that like especially being music editor was always a job that colored outside the nine to five sure monday to friday like if somebody wrote a live review the the concert's happening probably on Friday.

That means I'm at my computer on Saturday editing it and posting it. You know, and I, it was sort of like, oh, it'll all come out in the wash. Right. But then now we're being paid 15% less. So we started keeping timesheets as if we were hourly employees. Right. And, you know, calculating it and asking for loo days if, you know, if we went over, which all of us did.

Right. And, yeah, so, and then after we had already agreed. And at this point, though, as you talk about it, do you still love your job at this point? Because you're still the music editor at now, but is it, like, one of those things where it's like, oh, this looked better from the outside than it is on the inside like are you still digging your job richard i know i am i

good i am and i think everyone was like i think that's why we agreed to this honestly um we could have said no we don't accept this and and have to continue to negotiate and who knows what would have happened it's possible right that would have been the end of now magazine i think that you know even beyond our own livelihoods whatever you know you're working at an alt weekly um you're probably not necessarily in it for the money no no that's a good point like because i have you know friends who are like working for non-profits and different things and they're like yeah we don't do this for the money like you know you can sell out and i don't know get some investment banking job job i don't know there's a lot of jobs out there that'll pay you good money but you're you're in it for love of the game you're in it so you

could write about you know art yeah and we had all grown up you know reading now i in high school i would pick up a copy of now every week i'd you know i'd open to the music section i'd see even the basically was an ad i didn't even know it wasn't at the time the full page collective concerts ad every week that just showed who was playing at the horseshoe and lee's palace that right right um because you only have the two i mean i mean i used to once a week because i was going to school at tobiko but i was once a week i'd go downtown and i couldn't leave downtown without my copies of Now and iWeekly. Like I had to have that.

That was the must have on your journey to downtown Toronto. And so I think that we all kind of felt a bit of a responsibility for it. Right. To to the magazine and to the community that we were covering the music scene, the theater scene, you know, art, movies, what have you. And OK, so we're now we've got you i think we're in like 2020 or something now but do you want to i can how many of the uh people that were writing for now at that time can you can you name check um who was writing there we talked about norm wilner who's covering film norm was a long time guy i don't know what year he started uh whether it was the 90s or the

early 2000s but close to two decades, I feel like he was there for sure. Kevin Ritchie was still there at the time he became the editor after the sale to Media Central, the editor in chief, essentially. Carla was still there, Carla Gillis. Enzo DiMatteo was the news editor. And he was a longtime guy, too. I think he was there since the early 90s, something like that. Right. Has sort of like a political columnist most of the time. Who else was there? Glenn Sumi, did I mention him already?

No, that's a good one, too. Okay. Yeah, so he was the theater editor. He's still there. He's one of the, basically there's two editors who are still there so who who was there with glenn uh rad radhan sam sum palai rad rad simon palai we call him rad right right right um well i know i even know about rad later because um i guess i don't know if you know this but every time there's a new issue of now uh mark wiseblood doesn't believe they're printing it okay right

i've seen a lot of this on the 1236 twitter and on uh so rad swears they're printing it but there's very little like evidence of this like other than some that are kind of like do you know are they actually still printing now or is it just like, like a nominal number to say it's still in print and not just a digital property? I think they're still printing. You know, the, the word is that they're printing and then they just immediately are all taken by the end of the day. You know, I can't say whether, you know, whether that's happening or not, but I do think that,

you know, we go through a lot of effort, think that we go through a lot of effort, or we would go through a lot of effort laying it out and placing ads and all this kind of thing. I don't think that they would be doing it if it wasn't going out. Okay, because there's a lot of now street boxes that seem to be gathering rust. The entire circulation team was laid off

at the beginning of the pandemic. Well, right, exactly. No, no, this is, I mean, this is just all like interesting fodder for the conversation on what happened in now and where it's at now. But we're kind of out of, we're out of our chronological order here.

Okay, so you're still there. You're making 15% less than you agreed to at the beginning because you all voted as a union shop and you agreed to that to keep the paper alive. For the emergency cost-saving measure. Right, yes, I love it. And then Media Central, of course, is the new owner. And we talked about how they were merging the editorial

with the marketing and sales and marketing department. Well, so yeah, there was a Toronto Star story. I'm sure you probably read it, right? About everything that's happened at now in the last little while. Yes, but you're now here to tell us more detail. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to talk out of turn, I guess you would say.

I don't want you or me to get sued by anybody. Well, just tell the truth then. My lawyer has advised me that as long as you tell the truth, you can't really get yourself in trouble. Right. Um, well, yeah, I'll tell the truth. And I'm not, again, same thing. Like we all, this whole time, even, even now I feel very positive about now and the work that we were doing. And, you know, anytime somebody asked, asked me about what's going on at media central, what does this mean for you? My answer would sort of be like, I can control what I can control.

My job never really changed, although it did later. But my job never fully changed. And the good part about writing for now always and working for now was it was a lot of really smart, passionate, dedicated people in a room together. Without a doubt. I think you people who are writing and putting this paper together, your heart's in the game, best of intentions, and you're all very talented people. Yeah, and being able to just go to our ed board meeting and talk through ideas.

We're all on that page. We're excited about whatever band is playing at Leeds Palace that week, you know, and what it means for the state of the city and, you know, what our angle is going to be on Carabana this year or, you know, what about street food? Can we do a big street food issue?

And, you know, those were the times where the job was really rewarding, I think. And so, you know, that was sort of what I was focused on, but then in the, in the background, there is all this stuff happening with, you know, the company changing hands and we're, we're working for 15% less. Um, you know, I think after the sale happened, um, to media central, my immediate thought was, okay, we're going to get our salaries restored. We're going back up to our regular salaries. Right. And that never happened to this day. Right.

We we stuck out at 15 percent, but our hours did go back up to 40 a week. And so but, you know, we were still doing the doing the work. Negotiations were ongoing that never really amounted at that point. So, you know, like I said, negotiations broke down. We agreed to that 15% number, and then the company was sold. And so to get back to the negotiation table, and I wasn't in those rooms, but they were then negotiating with media central and not with

alice klein right um and they were never really able to come to an agreement um and so we had a union meeting um and again the uh i'm i'm only saying facts here yeah honestly richard uh if you tell the facts you can't get in trouble yeah well we had we had a union meeting where we voted for whether or not we were going to get a strike mandate basically whether we were going to empower the union to strike if our demands were not met and you know negotiations were breaking down it seemed like they weren't not only on the pay issue, but I think on just about every clause that they were trying to fight for, they weren't making any headway.

And so it's sort of like we can either agree to a contract that none of us are really in favor for, or we can vote for a strike mandate, and those are our two options. And so we voted for a strike mandate. And what that does, that means that the union, basically, it doesn't mean we're going on strike. It just means that we're giving the union the power to play that card in negotiations to say, okay, if like, if,

you know, if we're not coming at anything, then, then our workers have voted and, you know, if we're not coming at anything, then our workers have voted and, you know, we can go on strike. And at this point, you know, we didn't have a contract. It goes on for a while. At that point, like after a certain point with the strike mandate, essentially what it means is, and it's not like a workshop, work stoppage is on the table from both sides. So either they can lock us out and say, you know, it's the opposite of a strike, I guess. It means we're stopping work. You're not working here for the time being. It's a lockout.

Yeah, a lockout. And then as a sports fan, we know these. Yeah, that's how I learned about it. Or there'll be a strike. And we were prepared for that to happen. It's funny. It was, I feel like, March 2020. Something like that leading up to it.

I took all my stuff home from the office thinking, hey, you know, we might be going on strike here. And we had planned to. We were going to go on strike. I took all my stuff home and I was thinking, hey, you know, we might be going on strike here. And we had we had planned to we were going to go on strike. I took all my stuff home. And I was thinking, well, I guess this is going to be an indefinite period. I guess this is going to be an indefinite period of time at home, not in the office where, you know, we don't know how long it's going to last and what's going to happen. Right. And then that is what happened, but not in the way that we thought. Okay, so now in great detail

i'm fascinated with this detail give it to me there so now we're in now the pandemic strikes okay that was uh the last day of school this is the friday the 13th it was march 13 2020 that's when i picked up my kids at school and march break was the next week but we didn't know if they'd be coming back. Spoiler alert, that was it for the rest of the school year. I remember I was halfway out the door. I had a foot out the door. I was going to go to the reopening of the Wheat Chief Tavern on King Street, the oldest bar in Toronto.

Absolutely. They were relaunching it as sort of a music venue, and they were going to throw a big party March 13th, I think. They were relaunching it as sort of a music venue and they were going to throw a big party. Right. March 13th, I think. And I had one foot out the door and I had basketball on in the background. And that was the... Rudy Gobert.

That was the Rudy Gobert game where they canceled the game. And I'm watching and I'm thinking, what the hell is going on here? I had been here, you know, obviously the pandemic was in the air at that point. Right. And then the news came out that Tom Hanks had COVID. Right. And then I was thinking, you know, maybe I'm going to stay home. air at that point right um and then the news came out that that tom hanks had covid right and then uh i was thinking you know maybe i'm gonna stay home i'm not gonna go to this thing uh and then you know and the rest is history no i i mean my daughter my youngest had a birthday party

scheduled for march 14 at like a children's playground thing for all her friends and because the on the 13th they had all been together in class right there were no masks back then they were all just doing normal so we actually did it and i remember march 14 and it felt like i remember thinking like oh this feels dangerous this is very dangerous what we're doing right now but we're we're in some kind of a kid's birthday party on march 14, 2020. And that was it on the next. Then I remember telling Peter Gross because he would visit me every Monday to do his podcast down the stretch.

I remember saying, Peter, I don't think you can visit anymore. Like, I don't think I can have visitors anymore. And it's like, what's going on here? So now here we are. OK, so now what happens next in terms of of you and now and uh well yeah so then we all you know we had a big meeting where we it said this is what's you know i'm as i'm sure every company did this is how it's going to work you're all working from home right um we're going to figure out how to and it was hard because it's sort of like we're so used to putting together

a paper every week um you know there's a whole like page checking process that involves printing the page, handing it to the editor, signing off on every page, all that kind of stuff. Like, how are we going to pivot that online and through Slack or whatever? Sure. And, you know, the like archaic soft Adobe software that we're using to, you know, for all our workflow, all our print workflow, how are we going to do that from home? Right. And, you know, those were the immediate discussions. We had this ongoing labor dispute that was unsolved, but it was sort of like, you know, our plans were going to be, you know, our strategy was go and pick it at the now office, you know, you know, tell the story through the media, capture people's attention.

But of course, that's not going to happen. COVID is happening. That's that's on every page of the news. Right. We're not going to go picket a office that nobody is in. Right. So and, you know, honestly, we were all just pretty happy to be working at all. We at all.

We at all. We you know, we'd look around and we saw our friends getting licked off. You know, we were working from home. We were happy to be able to do that. And so it was sort of like, let's hold off on this for a while. We don't know what a strike would look like. Let's just play this out and see what happens. And so, you know, and again, it's sort of like we all came together as a group to to figure out what now magazine was going to be through the pandemic and you know I'm pretty proud of of what we did especially for that beginning there we made some really interesting pandemic issues of now that of course you know they laid off the circulation staff so they didn't end up in the boxes right but they were in the subway but people would have been afraid to touch them anyways exactly it's actually it's funny it's kind of ironic i

guess um the big issue that we made that week that was hitting the stands that week of the pandemic yeah was um about the ttc because it was we had just gotten back into the they had just renewed their uh partnership with gateway which had they didn't have for a while right um so they were back in the ttc so we made a ttc themed issue and and no nobody was on that yeah nobody wanted nobody wanted to touch it right literally nobody wanted to touch what a time and that's this is what a time i don't this is an aside and then we're going to get back to now magazine but part wonders, like, can we do that again? Because we shut everything down.

Like, think about it. Everything got shut down. Think of what that did to mental health, to the economy, to everything. But we did. We shuttered everything for a long period of time, actually. Like, for, and again, I'll be careful when I say this, but for a pandemic that had a, its kill rate wasn't particularly high like this people did die and that's tragic and i'm not trying to make light of that but what if the next pandemic comes and

it's got a i don't know 10 of people who get this die like what if it's got one of those you can see in the movies one of those real killer and 10 what if it's 20 or 30 percent like like how do you shut it down again now there's some mentality, not myself necessarily, but there are people out there who are like, you know, basically like rage against the machine. Like, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Like, there's this whole like defiance. Like, I'm not shutting down.

I'm not doing that again. So now that we've fired that shot, which we might've only had that one bullet when I look back at how mankind behaves. You shot the bullet on COVID-19 because we didn't know. And it was something, yeah, I'm not even saying we shouldn't have shot the bullet, but I'm not sure we have another one. You know what? I was so naive when, when the first, when it happened. And like I said, we all came together despite whatever labor dispute we had in the world. I felt like that's what's happening. We're all just going to come together.

Who cares what your politics are? There's a public health crisis. We're all just going to do what's necessary. Of course, what the fuck was I thinking? That lasted two weeks, and then there were anti-maskers out protesting. Anti-maskers, and then eventually when science delivers this vaccination,

like, oh my goodness, here's my arm. Where's my fourth jab, though? You and I,, here's my arm. Where's my fourth jab, though? You and I, under 60 years of age. Where's our fourth jab? Good question. I've got the three. I bet your mom's got a fourth jab. She does.

Mine does, too. My parents both got it quite a while ago, actually. Right, I know. But I produce a show for Humble and Fred, okay? Humble and Fred have had a fourth shot in their arm for months now. Let's get this in our arms before the september uh spike we're anticipating i kind of wonder if the fourth shot is available what

the rate will be like of people who get it i feel like people just kind of want to forget well you and i are going to get it that's what matters here let's see yeah i'm going to get it my brothers will get it my wife will get it anyway uh back to now So, because walk me through it. When do things change for the negative in terms of this working arrangement with Media Central? Change for the negative? Like, okay, because at some point, I've been reading reports, like at some point, for example,

you're not getting paid that 15% less. You're getting paid like 100% less. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, that mostly started happening just uh this year at the beginning of this year so like january 2022 january 20 but are you given like are you given a heads up like okay we can't pay you anymore like what happened like how does that conversation go um because to say you you will you please agree to 15 less so we can continue the paper? It's one thing. But to say, hey, we can't make payroll.

Like, tell me. Well, I mean, to get into the, we were working without a contract. Like I said, there was, you know, the negotiations broke down. We were working without a contract for two years, I want to say, until early 2022. There was no contract. And so, you know, essentially what that meant is we didn't have any power as a union. The, you know, at least in terms of enforcing the collective agreement, the collective agreement was out of date. And so technically the company could just go and impose their own terms

and we wouldn't have had much recourse. And eventually they did get back to the negotiation table, right? And this was just at the beginning of this year. And at this point it was pretty clear what the financial situation of the company was, which, you know know was not great um and so like they were basically bleeding money i can't remember the numbers anymore but it was worthless because of the debt that had been incurred yeah i mean it depends how you define yeah i mean yeah right i never thought of it as worthless at least now as a as a magazine like i

thought it had it i i honestly still think it does have have a ton of value as a brand um now as a magazine, I honestly still think it does have a ton of value as a brand and as a paper, right? And as the people who are working for it. Yeah, I shouldn't have said it that way. I meant just on the financial statements were like, okay, we have this debt of millions of dollars, which is what I meant by that. Right. which is what I meant by that. Right. So, you know, by that point,

the union did get back to the table and agreed to continue working for 15% less because, you know, essentially the company said we can't afford to pay you more than that. And there's a clause in there that says if the company has two or three profitable quarters in a row, then we immediately go back to our regular salary, something like that. And, you know, we're not stupid. We could see the reports. We didn't necessarily think that that was going to happen, but this was the best we were going to get at that point.

And, you know, like I said, there was a lot of goodwill. We want the company to survive. We want this paper to work. And I think that it's really hard as, you know, there's a labor movement happening across the world. You know, the great resignation, the anti-work movement. You see this everywhere. Right. work movement. You see this everywhere. And more specifically, there's also like a unionization drive happening at digital media properties, which hadn't existed before. You know, BuzzFeed

unionized, Vice did for a while. These are places that I feel like, I feel like for a long time, the big newspapers were like, you know, the Toronto Star was unionized and the Globe and Mail. But the newer media publications, the disruptors, you know, it's sort of the tech company model. They're kind of allergic to unions a lot of the time. Right. And it started to happen. And I think that media workers were thinking of themselves as workers for the first time in a long time, especially us young underpaid millennials and Gen Z. And journalism itself especially too.

It's sort of like you have the mentality like we're doing good work, we're working crazy hours. In the past it was like chain smoking and typewriting and whatever it is now. We weren't thinking of ourselves as like, this is the money that we're going to get. Like I said, we're working for an alt weekly. None of us were under any illusions that we're getting rich from this.

But I think throughout the world, it's like, especially during the pandemic, people sort of have been coming to terms with or realizing, A, the value of their labor, and B, the importance of life outside of work. There was a really good story, I think, in Chatelaine about, it was called like Losing My Ambition. And it was, you know, a journalist journalist there i think it was emil niazi wrote a story and you know she was coming from a feminist perspective as a mother as well but it really resonated with me still about uh you know we have this ambition that the hard work is

going to pay off later and you know it's going to be worth it in the end and you know i think a lot of people throughout the pandemic realized like maybe it's not uh right great great awakening right and in media especially like looking around you know you see all your friends getting laid off left and right um you know at the same time this is happening to us you look at vice and you see like a hundred people who were laid off today you you know even the the big media the star like there were a ton of layoffs and um you know it it makes it really hard to you know it like i said we again going back to that 15 thing when we were counting our hours you know i feel like we all were sort of like okay we got to sort of do a little soft work to rule here. We got to make sure we're not working over these hours and giving away our labor at a time where they're not properly valuing it.

And that was really hard for a lot of us, honestly, because we cared. Right. Yeah, you gave a shit. We gave a shit. And in media too, I think that when you're talking about a typical labor dispute, it's sort of like you have the two parties. It's the workers and management. And in our case, there's a third party, which is the readers.

And even a fourth party, which is like the, you know, the music scene, the communities that we were covering, the artists. Right. And we felt a responsibility to all of them, right? And so it's sort of like if you're sacrificing a bit of your own labor rights to meet this goal, you know, you might do it voluntarily. And we did do it voluntarily. And, you know, some of us tried. I feel like there was talk of doing that, of sort of like we're not going to give them more work than they're paying us for.

But I don't think any of us were really able to do it like you know well that's the problem with giving a shit right yeah like if you don't own it yeah like i mean i i give a shit now but it feels so different when you give a shit for something that you are the sole proprietor of it's a whole different kind of you know kettle and fish but yeah i mean you know but how does it end for you at now like is it just that is it as simple as oh you're not paying me anymore so i can't afford to work for you well okay so i guess to continue the chronology by that point we did have a contract uh in 2022 right for the 15 percent less yeah and you know we agreed to that so we're sort of like we know that this is our salary like so you just took your salary and yeah okay but you're already doing

that for a couple years anyway because you had agreed to do that previously i guess so but i mean the the yeah so because but but the hope was then that it was temporary now it's basically like saying like okay this is now permanent yeah unless the company becomes profitable again right uh and then we're we'll get you know our full salaries again um so yeah then sometime in 2022 the the paycheck started coming late uh you know at first it was by let's say a day or two and we'd ask you know we'd have an email chain and say hey is our pay coming and coming? And they'd be like, oh, yeah, sorry, we're just moving around a few things. It'll come soon, like it's been sent to the account. Always scary, though.

No, I've worked for software companies in my life where it was tough. Like there was not easy to necessarily have periods where it wasn't easy to make payroll. And it's nerve-wracking when you're expecting that money in your account on a Thursday morning or whatever, and it's not there. It's scary, right? You got to pay rent, right? We got to pay rent. There have been people who were there for 20 years, 30 years with kids, with mortgages. I think now for a really long time, like in the Michael Hollad era, he had talked about how every time a now worker would would buy a house they would celebrate they'd

be happy you know um and now now that's impossible yeah i mean yeah unless mom and dad are putting down the down payment right i yeah i who knows if i'll ever be able to buy a house but um that's actually i mean that's actually another conversation because uh you know you mentioned you're millennial but i got gen gen zed kids and i know you said gen z but i refuse because gen zed but uh i don't know call him jay's ad as well that's different that's like zed zed top i'll call it zz top because that's different but i don't know how my 20 year old buys property. And I don't even know if my 20 year old cares, but when I was 20, that was the goal.

No joke. And this, I'm a little, I'm older than you. Okay. I'm Gen X. But when I was 20, I thought I can own something by the time I'm 30,

because I can buy something for $200,000. Right. Think about that for a minute. What do you get now for $200,000? You don't even get a parking spot for $200,000. Yeah, there's not much of that. But yeah, so the paycheck started coming late and then it started coming later and later.

And, you know, we had these big town hall meetings to say, hey, what's happening? Right. And, you know... And it's still Media Central? Is it still Media Central that's supposed to be paying you at first? Yes. Um,

and then, um, again, I'm, I'm finding this out, like reading it elsewhere a lot of the time, but you're reading it in reputable sources, right?

Like the Toronto star. Well, that was later, but there was no, but sometimes it was press releases being issued by media central. Gotcha. Um, because they have to,

they're a publicly traded company. Right. they have to be uh transparent transparent to the especially to their shareholders yeah shareholders right um you know and they're saying you know we've lost however million we're however many million in debt um and uh i don't know exactly how it worked but there was a guy named Wei Lin who I guess held the debenture. Again, I'm speaking about all this business stuff that I'm only- I'm impressed.

I'm fuzzy on how it works. Your mom can help you with some of this. Yeah, my mom probably could. And he, so he basically foreclosed, I don't know what the word is, on that debt. He called it in? He called it in.

Yeah, he wanted, I don't know what the term is either but basically he time you got to pay up now and so uh somehow what they were able to do is they bankrupted media central media central goes bankrupt it doesn't exist anymore right but now in the georgia strait which they owned did not go bankrupt they they were separated off from media central and basically are now i think controlled by this guy waylon i think uh don't quote me on any of this okay it's funny because you start we started with you at chart attack channel zero and mark hebbshire has told the great story of basically uh we are bankrupt now we can't pay you severance but oh my god we just started a new company,

like a numbered Ontario company that now... I remember that whole thing. Does the same thing. I was in the office when all that went down. So you guys are gone. Peace, no severance. And you guys can have your old jobs back

at like a 30% reduction or something. Well, that was... They were accused of union busting at that point. It never smelled right to me. So like these... I was never in the union at chart attack we were sort of a separate thing um but i was i was there they

had a whole speaking of town hall meetings they gathered everybody to say because there was a day where uh you know everyone was hearing about layoffs i think they mostly happened in hamilton well they had again the day in hamilton where it was like you had to you were going to a certain room because hebsey went to the wrong room. So he went to the room where you're going to be offered back your own job. You can now accept your own job at a reduced rate. But he was supposed to be in the other room, which was basically, you're fired, no severance, peace.

I remember there was a lot of people just whispering, are we still going to have jobs at the end of this? But I don't think anyone in the Toronto office was laid off. i don't think um but anyway this is neither here okay but back to now i know it's way back in time well not that far back but yeah yeah it's going back um yeah so uh you know our pay was coming later and later uh at this point we couldn't strike because we had our our contract and you can only strike at certain periods um so you know if anyone raised it i think with uniform the answer was if there's any work stoppage that's going to be considered a wildcat strike uh and that's illegal so just work the hours and we'll fight for them later wow essentially um and we kept working and

uh you know like i said we saw um we've seen this you know labor movement happening in digital media especially in the states you see a lot of it i've seen a lot of like um you know like buzzfeed media um or buzzfeed union twitter account will form right. And that'll be the mouthpiece of the union. Right. We never did that. We kept pretty quiet about the whole thing. And again, part of it was just we wanted to see this thing succeed. Right.

We didn't want the paper to close. Because you gave a shit. Yeah, we gave a shit. It all comes up. There's your great flaw. You gave a shit. And it's hard because your identity is tied up in it. And so it's not just that you're not getting the money, which hurts, right?

Like financially it hurts. But it's also like you feel like this thing that you're giving such a shit about is also not valuable. And that takes like a hit to your ego, I think, as well. And, you know, I see it for so long. You mentioned Sean earlier. I gave him his first review in Now and he was so happy about it. Sean William Clark. Sean William Clark.

You know, the Alt Weekly, actually, the musician Cadence Weapon, the rapper, Rolly Pemberton, wrote a book. I blurbed his book, but he wrote a book called Bed, Rolly Pemberton wrote a book. I, I, I blurbed his book, but he wrote a book called Bedroom Rapper. Yeah. Uh, really good book. I recommend it to anyone reading. Um, and he had a chapter, so it's like a memoir, but every chapter is kind of a little essay. Uh, and he had a chapter about music criticism and music journalism because he, for a long time, he wrote for, he wrote reviews for Pitch for pitchfork and he was uh sort of the hip-hop reviewer for pitchfork right and then later he worked in in edmonton for edmonton both of edmonton they had two competing alt weekly similar to toronto called

view and see um and he worked for both of them at one time or another um but he he wrote about it in that paper about just sort of like you know he says he was writing all these things it was weirdos working at the alt weeklies he'd come in and it would be sort of this weird ecosystem he felt like he was part of the ecosystem of the music scene by writing about it even if no one's reading it necessarily right um you know there's all this weird stuff happening at you know in rooms for maybe a hundred people and if no one's writing about it, it's not going to be remembered. And so, you know, this is kind of the problem, I think now with digital media is you're so beholden to the page view. And so, you know, you're looking at a lot of your coverage is going to be dictated by what's going to do traffic numbers.

Well, so you got to keep writing about Drake in the weekend. You're right. Yeah. And that's always going to get your numbers. Well, so you got to keep writing about Drake in the weekend. You're right. Yeah, and that's always going to get your numbers. And, you know, to an extent, I don't want to write off writing about Drake in the weekend. First of all, I like both those artists. Well, that wasn't meant to slant them, but basically they get the clicks. So you're not going to discover the up-and-coming

or the interesting artist who's not, you know, the weekend. Yeah, you got to have both. You got to have both. But, you know, it's sort of like if you're covering uh we're talking about this thing that's happening in whatever the silver dollar room and 100 people are there right that means 100 people are going to read the story um and you're going to look at that uh you know that page view number and say oh it's not worth covering a show at the Silver Dollar. I think that's what's happened at a lot of music publications.

It's sports too. It's happening everywhere. That was sort of part of the challenge, I think, with me as music editor. We didn't want to abandon that. We still want to be the people covering those up-and-coming artists before they're Drake. Someone's got to cover that police show at the horseshoe. And there were nine people there that the Gary's put on. There you go. There you go. Gary top used to call me at my desk and,

and you know, talk for a really long time. He's amazing. Yeah. I mean, both Gary's are amazing, but Gary top, uh,

I get notes from him too. Uh, even today he's, he's quite, quite, uh, the specimen. Good,

good man. Okay. Yeah. So how does it end for Richard Chepunsky at now magazine? Um, I stuck it out's quite the specimen. Good man. Okay. So how does it end for Richard Trapunsky at NOW Magazine? I stuck it out for quite a while, longer than some other people. But essentially, they weren't paying us on time. And it was a question of, what do we do? Do we want to keep working? Some people said it'll be better to just be able to collect EI

and then at least there's some money coming in. And so the company, to their credit, did allow anyone who wanted to to ask for a layoff and then be able to go on EI and be laid off for lack of work right um and that's what i eventually did um but and we're only going back like a few months now right like when when are we talking here like march 2022 when are we yeah my my last day was the very end of april end of april okay may june j You're only, uh, you're not even three months. Yeah. Post. Okay. Okay. So I still haven't gotten any, any EI yet, but that's, that's not about.

That's another problem. We can discuss another episode. Okay. So firstly, I want to just make sure, you know, Richard, that I'm sorry this happened to you because you're a passionate guy who's good at his job and you gave a shit which by the way i realize as i get older that i'm i'm just desperately seeking for people to have passion for something like it's passion is what i'm looking for i love that you have passion for what you do and you were going to do it for 15 less and you were going to work your 50 60 hours for that smaller payroll and then even you know you stuck it out as long as you could until eventually you needed to get paid to work. Because you're not, correct me if I'm wrong, you're not independently wealthy.

Right. You're not sitting on some huge trust fund that might make it so you can goof around without having to get properly compensated. Yeah, I mean, I stuck it out for as long as I felt like I could. And it was sort of like... But did you go to your mom for advice? Now, I'm not trying to bring the great Ellen Roseman into this, but she's a savvy person when it comes to consumer affairs and business like this.

Would you go to her and ask for advice? What do I do? They're late on the payroll. We're doing it for 15% less. I kept my parents abreast of what was happening. And you don't have to. This could be right um and you don't have to this could be a private you don't have to answer but i'm wondering was your mom like saying you know richard you you've got to move on and do something else it's over at now i don't know if she ever said that necessarily but that was the decision that i came to right

they approved of that decision i think or they blessed that uh that thought it was you know it was for a very long time it was I was waiting I was waiting to find out if it seemed like we were gonna this the situation was gonna be solved and I wanted to wait to see if we would be able to you know if things would right the ship right themselves and I think that you know, if things would right themselves. And I think that, you know. And the pandemic was a huge curveball clusterfuck that the timing couldn't have been worse for everything that we're describing. Because then right there, you know, the live venue shut down. Yeah, exactly.

Like you need ads to support the content. And of course, I'm guessing the ads took a massive hit due to the pandemic. Absolutely. And there was only one salesperson there selling. And that was the only revenue that was coming in. And it was the only client was probably the government telling people how they can get CERB. Well, yeah, I mean, at this time where we were...

Or get your backs. Where the paycheck is coming late, it was sort of like, you know, we're going to pay you when we have the money in our account to pay you. And the money that's coming in is coming from ad sales. And I think the big swing is that they're trying to sell. Oh, yeah. So I was going to say, we could find out tomorrow that now has changed hands again. This is the rumor out there.

It's possible it could happen. It could happen right now. Check your Twitter feed. Technically, I think I'm on temporary layoff. So if everything came back tomorrow they could call me back and say do you want to come back to work okay um so it's not a clean cut here okay gotcha so i but in the meantime you know you still need to pay your rent and you probably need to eat i can give you this lasagna but it's you know it's gonna be good for a few meals that'll be nice i'm working on a a project right now a freelance thing for um fodor's guidebook you know the travel guide yes basically like i'm editing a couple of chapters and updating them because they put out a new

edition every few years and the last one was before the pandemic um and so a lot of it is just like seeing what's closed and what hasn't and then um you know sure but you'd be good at this and it's been fun it's been kind of been like um being able to be a tourist in toronto they pay more than 100 bucks yes they do but it's a freelance thing sure it's freelance i mean right right uh which will suck i suppose, when you need dental work or something like this is where I get. Now I'm married. OK. Are you single? No, I'm engaged. OK. Does is it to a man, woman?

Yeah. My partner, Marie, she. OK. Well, does Marie have health care? Well, it's funny. She actually benefits. I mean, she was working for Bell Media for a long time and I was actually on her benefit plan because it was better than ours this is the move right um and not long before all this went down she changed jobs and she's now working for an american company fully remote um and she doesn't currently have benefits so she got on my benefit package oh no um but But you're, okay. So bottom line is, as a freelancer, this is the tough part

because I don't have benefits with my job because it's a sole proprietorship. I own TMDS. But my wife has benefits and I jump on hers. Right. So if I go get, I don't know, I get my teeth cleaned, I only have to pay 20%. Sure, and your kids too.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. the two kids i have with her are fine and then the two kids i have of my first wife have to go on her plan but anyway this is all the nitty-gritty here but bottom line is you were like in the toronto star like super recently like we should shout out that you wrote about Toronto's uh golf scene the borderline plus yeah that was a fun story um yeah I'd say I was a little bit worried I held off for so long saying it now sort of like what's going to come next because you know it's hard to leave a job you always hear you don't want to leave a job until you have another job. Well, that's ideal, but not always practical. Yeah, I didn't have another job lined up. But I did, after I left, I had a lot of people reach out to me,

which was nice. You know, some with potential opportunities, some with freelance things. That's how I got this photos thing. It was actually one of my old co-workers. Oh, good. And yeah, so the star, the editor of the Together section, I see you were in the together section you have it framed right here that's right reached out and said hey we're looking for writers uh your name came up are you interested in writing so it's essentially

like there's a lot of photos with that right like i had four color photos in that like two-page spread that was in the together section uh and the great gilles leblanc wrote that article so you wrote an article on uh i want to get the name of the store right because i'm not as familiar borderline borderline plus which is like i guess the goth stores on queen west have disappeared but borderline plus remains yeah border yeah so in the 80s and 90s queen west was like goth central and there were a ton of goth stores right uh when i was in high school that was the early 2000s but i i had a goth friend who would always want to go down to queen yeah right and and go to all the goth stores and i would tag along and um you know i'm i live in that area now and i see it the queen is obviously totally different right um but you

know walking by borderline i'm like oh it's still there and I walked in and I kind of talked to them a little bit and I was like you know and I think there's a story here so I pitched it so you just pitch it to the star and then they buy it as a freelance and they they hopefully pay more than a hundred bucks so they pay more than a hundred bucks yeah but you know what as a freelancer I mean that's the next frontier right uh we're talking about labor stuff um is freelance and and contract workers and gig workers um you know not just me but like the uber eats driver or uh whatever else is you know those are the people with the least labor protections well but there's no sick thing i always think of my business like

like i have knock on i don't even believe in knocking on wood so it doesn't matter but covid okay like if i get knocked down with covid like i won't make money for like i need to like i don't have sick days this and you know we talked about i'm lucky that i'm married to somebody with some benefits like and i don't have to pay a hundred percent for like a teeth cleaning or uh or if i if i get sick for antibiotics or if my eyes go to shit because they're getting worse every year richard i'm an old man but then i don't have to pay like through the nose for uh there are probably some packages you can buy into um i think that there are some freelance writers have group packages that they've

just like they buy well that's that that's okay because i got my wife's plan so that's okay but uh you're right you're absolutely right. Very fragile part. And more and more people doing the gig economy here and piecing it all together. With freelance writing, it tends to be whatever amount you've negotiated for, it comes usually 30 days after publication. is after publication so you know if you write a story and it involves a whole lot of editing um you know and it drags on for months and months and months you're not getting paid during that whole time right um but um yeah so uh i think it has a lot of benefits too like there's so much freedom and um you know you set your own hours you set your own hours you can write about what you want and where you want as long as an editor will take it we'll buy it and if you have if you

have multiple like channels and outlets and bosses you can't you don't give all the power to one to like just dislike you and fire your ass yeah i mean technically you're your own boss uh you're the owner of a small business a freelancing company now Richard before we say goodbye you probably hear voices in the background you're like what the hell is Mike doing here so let me bring this up while I talk about it do you know what this is? maybe we should give it a moment

do you know the song open the door Richard I think I've heard it before Do you know the song Open the Door, Richard? I think I've heard it before. Okay. This is like an old standard. We're going way back of this jam. But this is your song, buddy. Open the Door, Richard.

Who's this version by? Great question. This version is by Dusty Fletcher. Open the Door, Richard. So Dusty Fletcher. Open the door, Richard. So Dusty Fletcher. I actually wanted to see what was the most popular version on YouTube, and it was Dusty Fletcher. So I said, I'm going with good old Dusty.

You can't go wrong. Richard, before we say goodbye, because you took a long bus ride to get here, is there anything you haven't shared with us that you were thinking on the bus? I've got to make sure I say this. Not really. I didn't come with any agenda or anything. To put the bow on this though, now could be, the rumor is now is going to change hands any minute now

and then that will determine your like, that'll bring you the closure right? Because you're kind of in a weird spot where you're laid off. Is that the term? You're laid off and you're freelancing because you're kind of in a weird spot where you're you're laid off is that the term you're laid off and you're uh freelancing and your ei you have to figure that out who knows what's going on there but you gotta figure that out the freelancing is what held up the ei but anyway okay so yeah you made you made money that was a big mistake we don't incent that don't make money come on rigid but okay so we're gonna find out happens, but needless to say, Now is a shadow of its former self.

Can I say that? I know you'll be hesitant to say that, but you're gone, Norm Wilner's gone, most of these great writers at Now are gone, right? And Glenn and Rad are still there, and they're doing good work. They're good editors, but they're pretty much... And there's a handful of other people who are also working there,

but that handful of like five or so people are the people keeping it afloat. And Wiseblood keeps his eagle eye out for boxes of printed now magazine, and he doesn't believe what Rad says when Rad says we're printing. All that said, like, I really hope that they can figure this out. And, you know know if now continues on and they find a way out of this like i'll be

reading every single week i love the passion richard honestly i love it and i wish you nothing but success with the freelance and then i know freelance is a pain like you know somebody should step up and bring you on full time because you're a talented, young, passionate man. And that's what we want in our media. Thank you. You're welcome, man. Okay, and share some of this lasagna with your mom. Invite her over and share some of the lasagna with her. Is that cool?

I need it, man. I haven't got this EI. And I got Great Lakes beer for you, too. And if you ever need to measure something and you got an ashtray, you came to the right place, Richard. Nice to meet you, man. And that was a great con measure something and you got an ashtray, you came to the right place, Richard. Nice to meet you, man. And that was a great convo. We covered a lot of ground, a lot of the details. I've been curious about it now. You've scratched that itch.

So thank you so much. Thank you. This was fun. And that that brings us to the end of our 1077th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike.

Now, Richard Trapunsky is at Trapunsky and it's spelled like you think, but with an I at the end, not a Y it's Trapunsky. You can't even screw that up. Stick an I at the end of that. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta.

Sticker U is at Sticker U. Dewar are at Dewar Performance. Remember, you can save 15% with the promo code Toronto Mike. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And Canna Cabana, they're at Canna Cabana underscore. See you all tomorrow when my guest is the aforementioned Mark Weisblot. See you all then. Rosie and Gray Yeah the wind is cold

But the smell of snow Wants me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosie and Gray Well I've been told

That there's a sucker born every day But I wonder who Yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true Yes, I do