Stand at Queen and Soho on a Saturday afternoon and you're looking at two centuries of the same patio. The building is nearly 200 years old. The bar inside it is not. For most of that span, the address belonged to the Black Bull Tavern, a name locals used as a landmark before street numbers meant much of anything downtown. Bobby Taylor, a former CFL and NHL player, bought the place in 1975 and ran it until his death in August 2023. His family closed the doors for good on April 3, 2024, and within weeks the property had a new owner: Score Pub Group, the operator behind King West's Score on King and, before that, the original Score on Davie in Vancouver. Score on Queen opened at 298 Queen Street West on September 30, 2024, as the company's third Canadian location.
The team kept the facade. General manager Cameron Sokalski told blogTO the team wanted to "keep a lot of the facade... but make it our own," and the street-facing patio that made the Black Bull a summer institution is still there, now serving $16 Caesars topped with cheeseburgers instead of pints of draft. It's the same sightline, the same corner, a different ledger.
Two blocks away, the Queen West Art Crawl returns this fall.
The weekend that costs nothing
The Queen West Art Crawl turns 23 this year, and the festival takes over Trinity Bellwoods Park on September 19 and 20, running from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days. It is free, as it has been since it started, and it opens Saturday with a ceremony led by a two-spirit First Nations Elder, followed by a drum circle and Jingle Dance. From there the weekend splits into an outdoor art exhibition with more than 100 artists and artisans, a Kids' Zone with live painting and drag storytime, and a main stage carrying local acts Poor Man's High, Earlybird and versaCello alongside Colombian dancers, comedians, and drag performers including Sofonda Cox, Sanjina Da Bish Queen and Jada Shada Hudson, who has appeared on Canada's Drag Race.
The festival partners with organizations like Workman Arts and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, and its programming includes artists with lived mental health experience and local Indigenous artists. If you live within walking distance, here's what that weekend actually looks like on the ground:
- When: Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Where: Trinity Bellwoods Park
- Cost: Free, including the outdoor art exhibition, Kids' Zone and main stage
- On stage: Poor Man's High, Earlybird, versaCello, Colombian dancers, and a drag lineup led by Sofonda Cox, Sanjina Da Bish Queen and Jada Shada Hudson
- Food and drink: Food stalls and a beer tent set up inside the park for both days
That's a full weekend of programming from an organization that has been doing this for 23 years.
New coffee spots on Queen West
Walk the stretch of Queen Street West between Trinity Bellwoods and Ossington this year and you'll pass at least four new places to get a coffee, and they didn't all arrive the same way. Cafe Gigi opened as a Queen West cafe built around European-inspired pastries and brunch, with a menu that quickly earned a reputation for being genuinely celiac-friendly, and its connected bar, The Dirty Laundry, takes over the same room after dark for cocktails. Both are independent, both are new, both are staying put on the strip they opened on.
KAFE 002 is a different kind of arrival. It's the first Toronto shop from a Los Angeles brew-and-collab coffee brand, and it landed at 1024 Queen Street West near Ossington, marking the brand's first Canadian location. A few blocks east, in Trinity-Bellwoods proper, Botanic Coffee & Caphe opened as a Vietnamese cafe serving espresso and Vietnamese coffee alongside pastries and light fare, a smaller, independently rooted addition to a strip that's absorbing both kinds of growth at once.
Queen West's 2026 coffee additions include independent cafes and a brand that has opened its first Toronto shop.
The parade that runs on volunteers, every single year
The Pumpkin Parade is another annual community event. On November 1, residents bring carved jack-o-lanterns to the east-west footpath in Trinity Bellwoods Park, near the intersection of Crawford and Lobb Streets, and drop them off any time after 4 p.m. with a tea light inside. Volunteers place and light each one as it gets dark, usually around 6 p.m., and the display stays up until roughly 9:15 or 9:30 that night, when the same volunteers toss the pumpkins into composting bins the city provides.
The whole thing is organized by Friends of Trinity Bellwoods Park, a volunteer group that's been the city-recognized voice for community consultation on the park since 2001. Neighbors carry pumpkins to the park each year, and the group has kept the tradition alive for a quarter century.
A mix of community events and new storefronts
Put the four threads next to each other and they show a mix of community events and storefronts in Queen West. The Art Crawl and the Pumpkin Parade are both free, long-running events, while nearby storefronts include a multi-city pub group at the former Black Bull Tavern and a Los Angeles coffee brand's first Canadian location.
Queen West includes businesses of different sizes and histories. The Black Bull's patio remains at the heritage-designated building, and Score Pub Group kept the facade intact. KAFE 002 adds a Los Angeles coffee brand to Queen West. Both are signs of a neighborhood that's still worth showing up in, whether you're a volunteer or a company with three Canadian locations.
Queen West brings together long-running community events and newer businesses. The Art Crawl, which partners with Workman Arts and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, and Score on Queen, the pub group's third Canadian location in a building that predates Confederation, are part of the same local scene.
If you're the kind of person who already has Trinity Bellwoods on your regular walking route, that mix is worth noticing this fall. The free weekend on September 19 and 20 is a good place to start, and November 1 gives you a second one before the year's out.
Queen West's rhythm, whether it's a festival stage or a storefront lease, tends to say something about what the street values before the street itself puts it into words. Penthouse Queen spends its time paying attention to exactly that kind of detail across Toronto's core neighborhoods. If a season like this one ever gets you thinking about what your own address in the city could look like, request private access and let's talk.
