Stomping Grounds 3: Pop Soda’s - The New Kid In Town.

Part café, part library, part art gallery, part venue – Pop Soda’s Coffeehouse and Gallery has got everything for everybody. It’s literally an artistic fun house where you can easily waste a day.

Owned by former Tomato-pie Chef Pelligrino Santorelli, his artist wife Christine Boss and business partner/master carpenter Céyril Chapot, the venue has already stirred quite the hype-storm among the art-punks, hippies and hipsters that inhabit the west-end area.

The décor is what you want it to be. That means they’re open to any artist who wants to add to it. Do you want to put the crappy collage you made from comic books while listening to Nine Inch Nails in the 8th grade beside works from Diana Thorneycroft and Michael Boss? Well, they’ll let ya.

Or would you rather chill out on the many antique sofas and chairs while laughing yourself silly at the ridiculously out-of-this-world, new age, self-help, books from their library.

You can play rare board games from a bygone era, take a nap in a hammock, check your email on Wi-Fi, and their food is ridiculously good too.

Then there are the gigs. With 7,000-square-feet to play around in, the shows have been nothing but solid. On Halloween weekend, one-man band Mark Sultan rocked the socks off the many dancing zombies, goblins and asshole jocks (not a costume). There are a lot more great shows to come including acclaimed roots-act One Hundred Dollars playing at Pops November 15.

I’ll admit the best thing about Pop Soda’s is it’s location at 625 Portage Ave at Furby. There are some great places to hang out in the west end area: The Standard, Cousins, Bella Vista (all of which I hope to feature) but it’s nice when something this big – this awesome opens up on the street you live on.