Broke Magazine is for Toronto – a city that is alive with the energy of possibility.

In 1997, Vanity Fair ran a "Cool Britannia" issue declaring that London had become the Zeitgeist -- the "spirit of the age." While everyone was talking about Brooklyn and San Francisco, London had grown like a mushroom in the dark. Then Berlin took over. Miami, Tokyo and São Paulo have all had it. And while the rest of the world tries to decide which city to anoint next, Toronto has continued to create and consume. It's a unique case: always belittled as the uninspired sibling of the artistic Montréal and the negligible neighbour to New York City, Toronto has been free from the anxiety to create in public. It has honed its craft and sharpened its tools, preparing all along for its deserving debut.

The same writer who pitched the original Vanity Fair story wrote in his memoir, "when it comes to the precise whereabouts of the Zeitgeist at any particular moment... the facts alone can't speak for themselves. It's more a matter of gut feeling."

Well here's the gut feeling. Toronto is it.

And it's largely due to Toronto's burgeoning young creative class. They're thriving purely out of the desire to do so. By creating art for themselves, they've also created a collaborative identity. They've willed themselves into existence. And while they've been free to develop themselves in private for the past decade, they're ready to move into the spotlight. With the recession slowly receding, the light is seeping in. If light is where genius is distinguished, darkness was the space necessary to breed it.

It's time Toronto starts to not only acknowledge their homegrown geniuses, but also applaud them. 

And that's where Broke comes in.