Once a thriftapenny always a sober jerk
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 – 6 CommentsWednesday mornings are always a bit tenuous, aren’t they? Technically they’re at the foot of the hump, but you still have a few hours just to get there. Only then you can start the countdown, and the drinking really can’t even properly start until much later. Wednesday mornings are the stale farts of the week.
Luckily, there are always a few interesting things that I pass on my way to the next eight hours of numbing anguish – things that punctuate the doom as if to suggest that, maybe, there is hope. There’s the very real possibility that I’m simply reading too much into them, but I need all the straws I can grasp onto these days. Especially on Wednesday mornings.
On this particular mid-week sulk I trudged up behind Cam Woolley who, along with his CP24 cameraman, were making googly eyes at Maple Leaf Gardens across the street:
They were there to do a report on the deal that the Loblaw supermarket chain and Ryerson University made to finally do something with the Gardens. The place has been on ice for years, and aside from a TV show that was shot there, it really only served as cover for a late-night whiz. With a shot of cash from the feds, Ryerson’s going to make the place into an athletics building (the campus is made up mostly of acquired buildings downtown), and Loblaw’s going to stick a supermarket in there. Big shock on that one.
Despite being an atypically traitorous Canuck who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about hockey, I will once again go on record as saying that this is a travesty. As a Ryerson sports hall, the Gardens building is fine, but as a supermarket … jeez, eh? The thing was built in the style of a Depression era nuclear war bunker. It’s designed for large, rowdy crowds with boozy cognition. The building even had a bowling alley somewhere on the upper level when it was first built – during those days people loved to roll their great big balls around while watching the boys work their sticks below. Ahh, the thirties. So the building can withstand a beating, but it ain’t pretty:
That feeling of being entombed in concrete will certainly give the grocery store an ambiance. And the urine, the beery urine, that’s still embedded in the crevices of every darkened corner of the building. I wouldn’t like to have that nearby as I test melons.
But hey, maybe they’ll make it work somehow; beer carts and such. A tipple for the little ones and shopping’s a-okay again. And perhaps, once a thriftapenny always a sober jerk, as the old saying goes, so I think the idea has some merit. Why would they make up a saying like that if it was wrong or meaningless?
I kept mulling over the possibilities as I walked past the Gardens and down into Carlton Station. There was a notice bearing some bad news in the vicinity but this, dear reader, I’ll have to share another time because Wednesday’s just a little too incongruous already to toss that into the mix. There are better coping days.
I simply continued on to the ticket booth.
“Ten tokens please.”
“All out.”
“Really? I could buy less, I just need a few.”
“Really, all out. We have tickets though.”
“Paper tickets?”
“Paper tickets.”
Holy shit :D I hadn’t held a paper TTC ticket in my sweaty hand since I was in high school. They were smaller then and had a different motif, but the obvious ease with which they could be reproduced made them targets for amateur counterfeiters. Or aspiring amateur counterfeiters. And then I discovered these things’ll be valid until the beginning of next year — all the makings of a scheme! :)
Okay, Wednesday, it’s a good start. But we gotta do something about that hump, it’s just unsightly.
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