The New York Times nails The Drake and The Gladstone
The New York Times‘s style magazine, T, pays homage to West Queen West with a high-praise profile of the Drake and Gladstone hotels. Unlike the paper’s last Hogtown treatment, which got more than a few locals scoffing and giggling, Jody Rosen’s piece presents an accurate and intimate view of the colourful characters that have turned these two former flophouses into Toronto’s cultural headquarters.
While the article pays tribute to both boutique hotels, it also mentions the unspoken rivalry between the two. The Drake’s more sexed-up party atmosphere contrasts with the Gladstone’s community-focused initiatives. The moral of the story may be this: visitors, beware an embarrassment of choice, but Torontonians don’t have to choose. Two hotbeds are always better than one.
• The Inn Crowd: Two indie hotels have turned Toronto into a capital of cool [T]
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/food/the-new-york-times-nails-the-drake-and-the-gladstone/&title=The New York Times nails The Drake and The Gladstone&picture=https://cdn.torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/drakegladstone.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_4623" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Queen West's two cultural HQs (Photo by Gabriel Mansour)"][/caption]
The New York Times's style magazine, T, pays homage to West Queen West with a high-praise profile of the Drake and Gladstone hotels. Unlike the paper’s last Hogtown treatment, which got more than a few locals scoffing and giggling, Jody Rosen’s piece presents an accurate and intimate view of the colourful characters that have turned these two former flophouses into Toronto’s cultural headquarters.
While the article pays tribute to both boutique hotels, it also mentions the unspoken rivalry between the two. The Drake’s more sexed-up party atmosphere contrasts with the Gladstone’s community-focused initiatives. The moral of the story may be this: visitors, beware an embarrassment of choice, but Torontonians don’t have to choose. Two hotbeds are always better than one.
• The Inn Crowd: Two indie hotels have turned Toronto into a capital of cool [T]){kind=link}
It is a sad town that mistakes homage-paying puffery for accuracy, and believes a selection of two constitutes “an embarrassment of choice” (let alone a “capital of cool”). And it is a town with a deep, and perhaps richly deserved, inferiority complex that revels in such self-evident nonsense merely because it comes from some big city abroad. Congratulations Toronto — a new pair of “cultural headquarters”, and yet you haven’t changed at all.