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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.

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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.

Certainly the word “gritty”, then, would apply to Kensington Market. I think the most visible evidence of this is in the minor decorative embellishments that secretive artists leave on storefronts and buildings. When combined with the collected remnants of a fair day’s commerce, the results can be a feast for the senses.

To me the most enjoyable part of the neighbourhood is the fact that the local bon vivants are keen to leave their calling cards on every establishment of note; a sort of how-do-you-do to visitors to the area. Just a really nice touch, I find.

I have some hazy memories of shopping here on the weekends with the folks sometimes. The butchers are pretty famous and the cheese shops insist that you taste before you buy. I recommend going early in the morning on a Saturday and buying a fresh roll, coffee, and walking around to the cheese shops and having yourself a snooty breakfast. Haha! I’d never buy that much cheese, and certainly not for that much!

But I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that there aren’t good deals to be had or crannies worth exploring. This is also a spot worth perambulating if you’re into that whole graffiti taggery business.

I’m not. But to each his own; ain’t my ‘hood. And I can sympathize with those who would liken “grit”, in this context, to something like used sandpaper. I can see that too, but I’d rather not. Besides, if I didn’t come here for the grit then I might as well have hung around in my local 24-hour Loblaw, at my leisure. But entirely cheeseless. So you see the dilemma. You take your kicks with your licks, as they say. Whoever they are, because I just made them up.

Continued in the next part…

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Before I start, and in case you’re wondering, I keep making these in series simply because I end up with a molehilly mountain of photos that I can’t deliver all in one go (a further bunch sits unused in my “keepers” folder). I would not subject you to a twenty megabyte download, dear reader. That’s rude. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, let me just say I’m concerned about not abusing your hard-earned time. Especially not with lengthy and, ultimately, completely unnecessary spiels about how I wouldn’t abuse your time. I mean, wouldn’t I be wasting your time by alerting you, in a wastefully lengthy manner, to the fact that I’m trying not to waste your time? Aren’t I doing that right now through the use of excessively wordy questions? And any apology I could offer would now be adding insult to injury because I’m just stretching it out even more? And why am I still going on knowing all of this?

Recursive introspection, it’s not just for breakfast anymore. :D

But the trip to the market did have a bit of a serious note to it though. At least for a little while.

Of course, if you see something like this on the street, it is incumbent on you to stop and gape. So I did.

Dead? Mugged? No, just plain old alkeehol. One reclining woman and one reposed man doing his thing on the warm vent grate. The thing being him being passed out.

Momentarily, a somewhat dishevelled gentleman propped himself up against the wall I was against. He pulled his open coat behind his back with his right hand, his left making a boozily odd angle with the wall, and he leaned in slowly saying, “that’s my woman over there.” “Oh, yeah?”, I replied, partially expecting him to commence the pummeling he was holding at the ready back there for the offense I had just committed (I don’t think the details matter that much when you’re drunk).

Instead, he continued, “yeah, I can’t go over there cuz I’m drunk.” Well now there’s a pickle, isn’t it? What does one do with a statement like that? “Oh yeah?”, I replied.

“Yeah, I’m drunk, and that’s my woman. I can’t go over there right now. Oh shit, they’re not taking her?”

I guess he’d been expecting the emergency crew to gurney her up along with the snoozing dude and get her to a warm place, but she made that one classic mistake that all amateur streetfolk do: sitting up making slurringly idle chatter with the paramedics. Not really an emergency at that point, so no hospital bed.

“Well, at least she’s alright”, I tried to console him. “That’s my woman over there”, he insisted. “Right, I got that”, I nodded back.

The conversation didn’t pick up much after that. But, thankfully, the ambulance packed up and left, so the man was free to lumber back across the street to his woman where, I’m sure, he reminded her that she was his woman. Probably also informed her that he was drunk.

That was my cue and I double-timed it toward Chinatown (and Kensington Market).

Chinatown is also gritty. And I don’t mean the trash, that’s kinda normal. You have the trash, the grimy streets, the graffiti; even the most illustrious establishments are tagged up like it’s going outta style.

Oh but please don’t let me mislead you, dear reader, I think gritty’s great. I may not be able to read MC Snuhrb’s tag on yonder wall, but it certainly adds to the ambiance. The ramshackle nature of the whole area makes me think that it could all be torn down in a matter of hours and replaced with something of equally wonky construction. So much stuff … so precariously perched. Exciting!

But that’s Chinatown. Let’s see how all those European immigrants do it, shall we? On to the market!

Continued in next part…

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So where did I leave off yesterday? Oh yes, the zombies had me surrounded and I’d run out of people to toss in their path. The situation was getting really ugly:

The great discovery happened when I pulled out my camera and started to take photos. I figured I could record my final few moments for TCL; become the first post-mortem blogger — I believe that would make for interesting content. But it wasn’t to be.

You see, it seems that zombies actually like to have their photos taken. Anyone in the crowd who happened to be brandishing a camera was given a wide berth and, often, cooperative smiles (or menacing grimaces – whatever the scene called for):

And I feel that branding them all as brain-hungry murderers really isn’t representative of the zombie population. Being undead, apparently, isn’t enough to stave off the requirements of the workaday world, but the zombies seemed to take it all in stride. If it wasn’t for the homicidal tendency of ingesting live human brains, they’d probably make decent citizens.

Haha! *insert social commentary here*

Speaking of commentary, who’s tailing the wag here?

That’s a little slice of a-okay, isn’t it? :D

Basically, there was a very good chance that most of the non-zombie participants in the walk would have made it out had I not panicked. But like the army used to say, “gullibility costs lives”, which would’ve been especially poignant had I actually said it to someone before pushing them into the flesh-eating crowd. Or if that were a real army slogan. Or if it applied in any way.

“Hmmm. No, you may not hide behind me and my camera. Go buy your own protective gear, cheap-ass!” *shove*

I did what I had to do to survive.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that unprovoked, the zombies really just want to walk around complaining loudly about a lack of dietary cerebellum. That’s pretty much it. Only if you shove people into the throng will you get a reaction.

But, you know, I did what I had to do to survive. I’m not saying I’m proud of it.

Haha! Watching people turn into zombies is awesome though! The first symptom of zombiedom is a total loss of memory. Well, yeah. No brain!

“That’s right, fella, you’re with the rest of them! Yeah, good brains to you too!”

*yoink!*

And now I move in style :D

And sometimes you just need to direct the zombie’s attention away just because it’s kinda gross. Take the next gal (“that’s a girl in there?!”, someone exclaimed), for example:

Yeah, the “hands” are pretty creepy, and then there’s the chicken on the head. No thanks. Shove a sacrifice thataway and the zombie follows. It’s all about keeping it simple, effective, to the point. And grabbing the wallet before she gets her highly impractical “hands” on him.

Anyhow, the denouement of this story is a bit of a snooze so I won’t bore you with it. Needless to say, camera and hapless strangers helped to ease the journey until I eventually found myself outside the pack, and stumbled wearily back home.

But I don’t want to leave you with a totally bad impression; the undead population includes some interesting personalities so at least one of them was bound to show up at some point:

There you have it, a Halloween tale to scare the pants off your friends. The attractive ones. And for that extra depantsing kick, you can tell them that most of it really happened! And for a small fee, I can even corroborate your presence in this tightly-woven, explosive narrative. That’s guaranteed pantlessness!

You know how to get a hold of me.

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Every year they keep demanding brains (like that’s gonna happen!) and better severance.

One of the things that shocked me about the whole thing was how punctual the zombies were. These days I’ve come to expect events starting thirty minutes to an hour late. But on Saturday, the undead were off and moving at 3:30 sharp.

Also shocking is the size of the demonstration, not to mention the aggressiveness of the group:

I only escaped unharmed because of one amazing fact. That I will share with you tomorrow. You see, the march was so prolific, I simply have no choice but to milk it for two whole posts. Besides, some of the zombies put so much effort into the event, I feel it’s only fair to give them a little air time:

One guess as to what this fellow was demonstrating for. Yup, brains. I don’t get it, are they that tasty?

They probably have no idea what they really want. I mean, they pick their leader based on who’s got an extra appendage:

What I found particularly interesting was that while zombies don’t have the wherewithal or the sense to eat infants in a civilized manner, they nonetheless possess the forethought to pack an umbrella for the impending rain:

You may be thinking that I escaped this terrible occasion because of the security forces attending the route. Haha! Wow, you’re so wrong. The security forces were useless. When they managed to hit their targets, it wasn’t in the head, so the zombies just got back up and kept on going. In fact, I don’t think the personnel were shooting anything by the number of zombies they managed to kill: zero!

Perched snipers seemed to have the same problem, and many of the security weren’t even armed. And the posts they gave them to guard … who thought of that?!

This guy managed to stand his ground for a little while. He beat down the first zombie that managed to climb up and then, wisely, decided to ditch his post:

He jumped into a nearby dumpster which proved to be even less effective in protecting against zombies. And they want his brains?

In the end he managed to rip free from their clutches and beat a hasty retreat around the corner of the building yelling, “28 days later!”

And then, the few civvies left were alone in a sea of zombies. We pushed through the crowd with whatever we could. Just when I thought I’d run out of compatriots to shove into the straining arms of the hordes, I discovered something incredible.

Tomorrow, the amazing tale of how I managed to preserve my voluminous brain; the secret to keeping zombies off you. You’re not gonna wanna miss it!

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