Maybe there was something in the air up there because I was in bed before ten almost every night! *yawner*

Maybe it was the journey there. Bo-o-o-ring.

Thank goodness for the tinted windows inside the car. It made the unsightly earth bulges a bit more bearable.

Maybe what did me in was the trip I took with a gentleman who I think has the capacity to create death rays or teleporters in his spare time, my brother-in-law’s brother. The brobro. Very interesting individual. It’s a rare treat that one gets to discuss the impending attack of zombies and how one might protect oneself from said attack. He has excellent theories, and because they’re so excellent, I’m not sharing.

I must also say that his idea for this year’s Halloween costume is probably one of the best ones I’ve heard of in years. He really thought outside the box on this one. Well, he’s ordering it online, but what a great find! I sure hope I get a few snaps of it but until the day it’s revealed, it’s another top-secret project.

Basically, it was a genuine pleasure to hike and chat with him.

When we could talk, that is. Nature saw to it that that sole pleasure was interrupted as often as possible.

The trail had some warmup rock climbing and then hours of trudging through the goddam forest:

The narrow footpath wasn’t always well-marked, so it was easy to wander into some ghetto hoods:

What is that, moss? Isn’t that a fungus? Gross.

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I’m going north to visit the folks for the Thanksgiving weekend (Canada has it in the correct month). When I say north, I mean black bears and moose in the backyard kinda north. Logging trucks on logging roads kinda north.

I’m hitching a ride with my younger sister in her familymobile; two boys and the “fun” uncle (me). Yay!

To compound matters, I also decided to volunteer my services in the dessert department. Pumpkin pie and crème brûlée. Something healthy, I thought.

Here’s the stash, ready for packing:

Oh no! A perfectly good pie shell ruined! Guess I’ll Have to make a pie right now :)

The part I hate is the killing of the pumpkin. Gruesome business, no matter how it’s done.

I admit, sometimes I feel a little remorse.

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Well now I’ve gone and done it. I’ve brazenly ripped off yet another set of photos from the Toronto Archives.

That’s what happens when I’m knackered and I’ve spent most of the night swooping around the financial district in Street View instead of posting! Oh well, if you’ll forgive a few sentences that don’t quite seem to make sense, we’ll be able get through this.

Man, I wish Google never came out with Street View. Between every few words … I manage to travel another couple of blocks.

It’s been thirty minutes since my last sentence!

Back in the olden days they wouldn’t have had these frivolous time wasters. The men with their genitals exposed to the raw atmosphere had enough to occupy their time.

The Royal Alex isn’t one of those locations that’s changed much. Guys are still freezing their nuts off out there.

The next random location — just because it happens to be a few steps down the street doesn’t mean it’s not random! — the next random location I decided on for comparison was the Elephant and Castle across the street from Roy Thomson Hall. In this case, there was a world of difference between then and now.

I figured I’d include something in the picture that I could match to something in the archives. Luckily, I was right. It’s the black building in the above photo that stands in the spot where the building below stood.

Hahaha! What the hell was that?! No one’s getting drunk in that podunk town!

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Oh … my … freakin’ … God.

It’s here. Street View is here.

The loss of productivity in Toronto this morning must’ve been staggering; into the billions I bet. Once you start flying around the city, it’s kinda hard to stop. I know I was on a tour of my neighbourhood for hours.

Addictive, packed to the rafters with photos, and backed by Google; TCL’s so screwed. How the hell am I supposed to compete with that?!

As a minor consolation, it took the Google car a really long time to capture the whole city, so maybe I can produce something more up-to-date. Well, eventually.

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You tried the Street View thing, didn’t you?

See? It’s hard to resist. But until Google figures out how to incorporate street festivals or higher resolution dead musicians, at least there’s some hope.

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I’m also glad that the Google car seems to have avoided alleys and sidewalks. It saved the lives of thousands of pedestrians, but more importantly, it left a small window of opportunity for something unique.

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*sigh*

Why do they always have to pick on the little guy? Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this blogging thing, along come Larry and Sergey and kick me in the painful bits.

What did I ever do to them?!

I was having a chat with a colleague this afternoon about living in the city. He shook his head in rejection of it. He liked the burbs, he said. Didn’t like the hustle and bustle of the grit. I can honestly say that the entire time I’ve lived here I’ve not once been hustled, and bustled only on a handful of occasions.

I think what he was referring to were the sometimes congested sidewalks, and usually congested roads downtown. The driving part can’t be helped much. Owning a car in the city is frivolous, if you ask me. Walking for half an hour to just about anything you need isn’t gonna kill either you or your kids — just look both ways. And the congested sidewalks are entirely avoidable — just walk over to the next parallel street. Or, if you don’t mind getting a bit more risqué, the next parallel alley.

Hang on to your hat, you’re never gonna believe what this place is called…

Graffiti Alley

Yeah, I know. I’m gonna go with Graffalley to try to salvage something from it. Maybe it should be District Graff, since it’s really crawling up each of the adjacent alleys too. And it’s on everything:

Okay, that’s kind of a crummy example. But you just have to turn around and travel backwards in time to see a slightly livelier one:

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Nuit Blanche was one of those rare nights when the “Bohemian” artist set get to … no, are encouraged to get their lazy asses out of bed extra late. Getting there at half past six in the evening is actually arriving early, ten at night is when things are just starting to get going, and two in the morning is about right to avoid the big crowds and still get a good walk in. I chose the third option and managed, with the assistance of my favourite energy drink, to stay up until closing time. I couldn’t think of any other night to do this than Saturday.

The event was both hoote and anny. It’s hard to know where to begin; so many strange things on the street that night.

First, there were the kids on acid who stumbled onto mindblowing, totally fucked up shit … oh man, this is too much man! it’s too much!

I made that part up. The imaginatively named “Rabbit Balloon” at the Eaton Centre only had a few tired-looking security guards around it.  The kids on acid (and E, and K, and all the other letters too), were freaking out on the edge of Grange Park behind a truck blasting out what sounded suspiciously like happy hardcore. I wasn’t partial to it back in my youth, I’m not partial to it today, whatever it’s being called now. Just a bit too spazzed out for me. I like my music a bit mellower these days.

Hmmm. Except not this mellow. This was called “Dirge for Dead Slang” and I guess it was supposed to be some sort of lamentation for outmoded language. It had this monotonous soundtrack playing over loudspeakers that was a tad too loud, so no one could really hear what the ghosts were listing off. Intended?

Just down the street at City Hall, was this:

This had the unfulfilled title “Beautiful Light: 4 LETTER WORD MACHINE”. I stood around for a few patterns; not letters. As I was leaving, some words … French? I thought this was supposed to be the “4-letter word” machine. I can think of a few to try maintenant, and they’re in English. For an English audience. I was imagining they would at least flash “bull” and “shit” in alternating sequences; isn’t that why it’s in front of City Hall?

My next stop was at this performance, the “Dead Philosophers’ Limbo”:

Radios were alternately brought out into the crowd (I kinda wasn’t paying attention to what was being read on them), and then brought into the center and piled onto one of the girls in the middle. Then, in slow-mo, the dancers came back and removed them. The middle girl jerked around a while, now surrounded by the other dancers, each holding a pose. They alternated between each other, taking turns to move in interesting ways.

I didn’t get it…

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