I'm going to miss The Stem.

It was cheap and unpretentious. On a cold day, you warm up at the bar, soaking heat from the open kitchen stove top. I loved watching the cook make five dishes at once relying on perfect muscle memory - cracking eggs and flipping flap jacks blind while opening a can baked beans and taking the next round of orders by ear. It was a portal to Queen Street's old world earnestness.

This is a zinc plate etching from an edition of 25. I printed this about twelve years ago in Ed Bartram's Introduction to Intaglio class. The headlines on the newspaper are: Gretzky's Hat Trick Burns leafs and Kosovo Air Strikes Begin. You can see people smoking in the background. I don't miss that.

In the letter, it is written: "Dear Melanie, what is new with youin France? Things are going very well here in Toronto. Lindsay and I are recovering from a crazy night of drinking and dancing. We went to a place called Fat City."

Note: I think the short-lived club Fat City is now Hero Burger at Queen and Palmerston.

High res scan here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12779108@N05/3176266013/sizes/o/