*bomben* has added a photo to the pool:

…continued from previous part.

Okay, it’s now been well over two weeks and I’m just about ready to put this puppy to bed.

But before I do, let me round out the G20 weekend for you, dear reader. Let’s start with the Black Bloc, the attention whores of the summit.  While I was trying to figure out who they are and where they came from, a few glaringly obvious pieces of evidence jumped out at me with a, “zut alors!”

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…continued from previous part.

As I sat down to write the conclusion to this series, I popped a couple of Jamaican beef patties into the toaster oven and pulled a bottle of Sunrite True Jamaican Scotch Bonnet Pepper sauce out of the fridge. I thought it would help me relive the experience of the day I’d bought it (how long ago?) It’s been, like, a week since I was at Kensington Market so I was trying to find creative ways to inspire my memory. I thought, well, I have a photo, and I have the hot sauce from the store in that photo, maybe something’ll connect.

In fact, it did not.

The sauce had an unusually sharp and tangy smell to it, but I attributed that to the Luciferous peppers. I wasn’t too worried because I didn’t think I’d had the bottle for that long (since the summer?). Still, I searched and searched and searched but the expiry date was nowhere to be found. Later I realized why; because it was directly in the middle of the bottle, basically in the most obvious spot one could imagine anywhere on the surface. Wow, I surprised even myself with that one.

And when later I did discover the date, after more than a few casual bites, I was even more surprised. December 31, 2008. Mui picante!

I was seriously concerned that this might lead to another type of grit, the kind that begins with rotten and spicy being ingested and ends up with runny rotten and spicy in the pants. At the worst possible time, if not planned correctly.

I have it on good authority that police won’t accept diarrhea as an excuse for speeding, so you probably wouldn’t be able to justify injuring any fellow pedestrians during a desperate toilet hunt either. That can make things challenging, even if the hot sauce isn’t potentially lethal.

However, I’m pleased to report that, as yet, I feel no ill effects. Tomorrow may be another matter entirely, but I’ll face that prospect when it comes.

And this is also the perfect opportunity to explain why I like spicy food so much: it’s cleansing. As long as I ensure that I’m familiar with the locations of all the burden-relief stations in the immediate area, I’m fine. (The one under the TD Canada Trust Centre is 100% class!) With my indiscriminately delicious diet, sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered.

I’m not gonna leave that as the last thing I say about Kensington Market, though. That wouldn’t be fair. The hot sauce was entirely my own fault and, really, so is every self-imposed “emergency”. And most of the facilities there are cramped but usable without a hover.

And for any healthy-bowelled person, that’s not really an issue anyway. It’s all about the food there, fresh, good, and mostly stuff you can’t get at the supermarket. If I could leave you with just one image to take away from this, just one image that can’t be misread as having anything to do with the previous discussion, it would be: toasty buns.

…continued from previous part.

I believe in certain English dialects the word “grit” denotes a certain kind of integrity, an ability to stand up in the face of opposition and challenge. In ancient Greek it also means “plastered with all manner of crap”. That’s the literal translation, but I think the gist comes across okay.

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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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