Oh, right, I’d stuck the gloves and hat under my desk at work in a clever fashion. Too clever.  Now I was walking home with a fortunately planned hoodie pulled over my head and a scarf that managed to protect my delicate features, but still not one of the brightest Tuesdays on record.

And I don’t know about you but when I pull stunts like that, I end up staring longingly into the warm interiors of passing cars. Crossing the road also provides me with an opportunity to hang a forlorn expression on my face for the benefit of the people behind the glass. Usually it’s just frozen that way so it’s not as if I’m doing it on purpose, but still indicative of my feelings.

On winter evenings like this, I remember my golden automotive era behind the wheel of a candy-apple-red Volkswagen Golf. It was a standard with copious electrical problems, balding tires, and an increasing number of bumps and dings as a result of those balding tires. But that moment when the heater kicked in (after I’d been struggling for half an hour to squeeze through a half-open trunk because the doors were frozen shut), that was something truly sweet.

In one bumpy incident, both my VW and the car in front glided into the middle of an intersection on some slick on the road. Not being able to stop either (so maybe the tires weren’t involved), the lady behind the wheel was very understanding after we’d made contact. We were already moving pretty slowly when we lost control; I don’t believe I even scratched her bumper. Afterward, we both admitted to being lucky not to have been t-boned by oncoming traffic, and we parted ways with smiles and a “have a great day”.

In another dingy incident, I slid very slowly through a sharp turn on a rural road in north Pickering. When I say very slowly, I mean that I had time to try the hand brake – to no avail, pump the foot brake — in futility, steer in a few different directions — to no effect, make sure my seatbelt was secured — for naught, turn off the spontaneous wipers (among the cornucopia of electrical problems) — with no success, and even utter a gentle “oh crap” (also pointless), before coming to rest on a ditch post. I managed to crush the bumper but, again, drove away with just another piece of character. Soon-to-rust character.

Guess there was that one time I wrecked the front axle on a curb; I remember sliding into that one too, on a wet road. The tires were turned left, the car kept going forward. *thump* *wobble wobble* I didn’t even end up on the curb, just bent the the whole rod thing down there all up. Not as chortley then as it sounds now.

Besides that, I’ve gotten one speeding ticket (fifteen over), and one for driving with an expired plate sticker. In both cases, the issuing officers suggested that I should fight the injustices in court ( “judge’ll probably throw it out” – translation: “I won’t show for court.” ) So I don’t feel like they saw my infractions as terribly terrible.

I’m not a perfect driver, but that’s my whole history over the years. Sure, traffic sucked all sorts of gonads, but at least I had warmth. No radio – that literally fell apart one day as I hit the ON button – but having an hour and a half with a good conversationalist was a good way to pass the time. Sometimes I’d also give people a ride.

The reason I bring all of this up (except for that last part, that’s just a rosy sentimentality), is because I need a moral mound from which to fire my judgmental salvos.

People, you need to get a grip. (Not you, dear reader, I know you’re a careful driver.)

I mean, that 83-year-old who ran down the mom with her baby surviving only by some miracle, that old woman shouldn’t have been on the road. Have you seen how old people cross the road?! WITHOUT A VEHICLE?! NOW IMAGINE THEM IN A VEHICLE!!

Never mind 83, I’ve been in a car with someone twenty years younger as she steered her wide vehicle aloft over an alarmingly tall concrete divider between the arrivals / departures lanes at the airport. Have you ever been in a fat luxury automobile as it takes flight? It’s quite an experience.

And about that thing with the doctor who was caught speeding en route to a bona fide emergency, I think the solution’s a simple one. Okay, I think there’s good cause for a doctor to be able to speed when necessary (burden of proof being on Doc Drift) – here is one such example. But if the doctor is to speed then he should adhere to current etiquette and stick a flashing doohickey on the top of his car. He should also take the same driver training as cops do. Basically, he should be operating an identifiable emergency vehicle and be trained to do so. I guess he could use his own Benz so long as the thing was loud and bright and obnoxious.

But for everyone else, slowing down’s the ticket. That and keeping the old folks off the road. For practicality, I’d suggest some sort of herding vehicle to convey their beastly frames from hither to dither. Then farther.

My driving days are are in a shoebox somewhere in the back of my closet. My current credit won’t get me anything enclosed to ride in and I’m not sure if I’d want to anyway. The walking scene is hip. And if I’m involved in any sort of mishap, I instantly become a litigious money hole. Everyone wins!

Wikkidi wikkidi wikkidi wack.

I’ma be blunt, if I may. Ashley and Madison are assholes. Nope, no link, and this is the only time I use their wretched name – from now on it’s AM, with spit on it. There, I’ve said it, it’s out in the open. The way it should be.

You know what this company does? They are a service that promotes marital infidelity. Cheating. No, not a dating service that happens to have a lot of married people, they exist specifically to help people cheat. Their slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.”

And they’re assholes.

My idea of a relationship is pretty free-wheeling. Gay? Fine by me. Bi? A-okay. Swinger? Keep on swingin’! Miscellaneous? Please use my contact form. But an affair, that’s just simple lying. It’s deceptive, cowardly, and a big middle finger to the one you’re with. If you wanna fuck around, have the balls to say it. It won’t get easier with time, and you’re wasting the rest of your life if that’s what you really want. Maybe it’s just time to saddle up and ride off into the sunset, you know? ;)

And AM, they’re the assholes helping people to be cowardly liars. It don’ git no plainer ‘n that.

Okay, but I really wouldn’t give a shit about them except that lately they’ve been pushing the TTC to decal two of their streetcars with AM ads (the whole things – a full wrap), even getting cocky enough to begin offering discounted fares to anyone taking their streetcars — before the ad was even approved. The Commission wasn’t too sure about it (as well they shouldn’t), and turned it over to a committee who finally gave it the thumbs down. *applause*

Unfortunately, AM decided to kick back with threat of court saying that this is impinging on their freedom of speech. Cockswaddle. An affair is grounds for divorce – in the eyes of the law, it’s wrong. Therefore, to condone an affair (directly) is to condone something that the law states is wrong. Hence, if the TTC were to allow this, they would be challenging this rather embedded legal precedent. What, for getting to whore out two streetcars? Bitch, puh-leeze!

I’d slap AM’s ass to the curb faster than you can say Q.E.D. Where do they get off, pushing the Commission around? You know, I’m not always a fan of transit, and even though there’s a tonne wrong with it, I’d rather it showed some integrity and backbone rather than put it’s ass in the air and grease up. Once again, *applause*.

Joe Mihevc, second in command to the TTC chairman — who is ideally the most impartial and level-headed person in the room — responded to AM’s threat with “We’re ready to defend our right to determine what ads go onto our brand as the TTC.” Oh yeah – I almost forgot; the TTC is a business and they have a brand image to protect. Ding ding … and in this corner … the TTC’s gonna kick your ass!

Wow, our little Red Rocket’s balls grew two sizes today! I can’t tell you how proud I am.

And as regards lying, well, I do it all the time. Lots of different ways and, sometimes, quite enjoy it. But generally not at someone’s expense, and especially not at my own. Words of wisdom, biatch!

PEACE!!

I’m out.

Did you ever see Purple Rain? You know, the one with Prince — or the more endearing TAFKAP, as he’s now known? I didn’t either. Well, kind of … I vaguely remember a scene in which Prince was on stage, dolefully strumming out some sort of thin-moustached melodrama, and in the foreground were a couple of people talking about him, and to dissuade the one from approaching Prince the other said, ”He’s in one of his moods again.” Maybe I’m thinking of the Princess Bride. That was a good movie :)

Anyhow, I believe I’m in one of those moods today. It was one of those lurching days in which clarity decides to rear its ugly head – a light was cast on a vexing situation that’s been festering on my mind for a few months and – to be blunt – both shocked and pissed me right off. I probably shouldn’t go into detail because I have a feeling I’ll be wielding the business end of legal prosecution pretty soon; I can think of no other word than fraud, or something very close to it. Certainly some very odd dealings that I just can’t explain. You know? Stuff just doesn’t add up, like 1 and 1 is supposed to equal FF in hexadecimal. Yeah, that’s not even the same numbering system.

There are lots of fiddly little details that, hopefully, I’ll be able to share once it’s all done with. I think they’d make good reading if you have a few minutes on the shitter (get a netbook—best investment ever ;)). However, droning on about some vague misdoing is boring my tits off and I know the details, so let’s let’er rest a while there.

Besides, some things don’t need to be discussed because they kinda stare you in the face, you know?

Take the story about a young mother who was murdered in her car while tending to her two-year-old daughter. Yep, no way to put a frilly ribbon on that story; shot right in front of her little girl. The story is tragic no matter how you spin it; that kid’s just been handed a life sentence. Who’d argue with that?

But just beneath the surface there are things that aren’t quite right.

To begin with, Detective Sergeant Pauline Gray is quoted as saying, “I think the careful thing is not to look for a reason, because as far as I’m concerned, there is no reason.”

Did I read that right? The careful thing is not to investigate the motive because there isn’t one? Okay, well, for an officer to be making extrajudicial pronouncements at a press conference probably isn’t a great idea, but it also shows that the good Detective has been compromised. Clearly am emotional basket case. Hey, can’t blame her, but don’t we owe the mother and kid a proper, thorough, and unbiased investigation? The careful thing to do is to look for a reason, because as far as I’m concerned, there’s always a reason. I believe that’s the difference between first and second-degree murder — planning requires a purpose, or a reason, as they call it out west.

I also subscribe to Occam’s Razor which bluntly states that the simplest and most direct explanation is usually the correct one. Don’t over-complicate shit, I believe, is the original expression. If she had a jilted ex-husband, my odds are on him. But there’s another possibility; please allow me to connect a few dots…

She’s from Columbia where her parents still live. Upon moving to Toronto, she started a successful container shipping company. Initially she was sending a container or two a year (was that enough to live on?), but recently business had picked up to the sum of one or two per month. To and from South American countries. Do we need the white connecting lines here?

Okay, that’s just rampant coke-fuelled speculation, but any investigator worth their salt should be knee-deep in blow by now. To dismiss some possibilities because they may harm the reputation of the deceased person does them a disservice. And the little girl too. Even if some dark details are revealed, who knows what the circumstances were around those details?

If you’re a keener and read the story, you’ll note that I took most of the drug runner scenario from the Star piece. Almost verbatim, except that I took out a bunch of expletives. I still don’t know why The Star swears so much, it’s really off-putting. But the facts remain about the same. Possibly manufactured for my benefit. However, I still stand by my argument that a thorough and unbiased lookseeinto is the way to go.

It’s the same with the McCormack case. That’s the former police chief’s son (and also a cop), accused of pulling money from club and bar owners in exchange for favours. Hehe, no, not sexual ones. Although, you know, I shouldn’t judge … who knows? Definitely the accusation of money exchanging hands for services of some sort (no, no jokes about hand services, that’d be crude and never proven in a court of law). Impropriety on the one side, corruption on the other, but either way it was looking meaty.

I guess we’ll never know for sure how meaty because the case was thrown out of court for taking too long. If proceedings extend for five years, I believe, the court is obliged to remove them from before its just gaze. “And don’t let the door hit you on the way outtay”, in Latin.

Wow, my head’s really gone over to the lawyer side of the force. Maybe I’ve been spending my time in that headspace for too long and now I just zero in on any little litigious thing I see. I probably just need a good sleep – I mean, who knows, maybe I’ll dream up an out of court settlement. Or maybe cast a dark habeas corpus upon them from my slumber — the sleeping subconscious mind has mysterious powers, possibly even occult. I guess that path will be determined by my mood. Prince or Princess Bride?

but I said so.

I’m talking, of course, about the Union Station Revitalization project that’s been floating around City Hall since at least last year. There were all sorts of crazy projections floating around about how long it would take to complete the thing, but most of them seemed awfully unrealistic. With no real information or experience of any kind in these matters, I came up with an arbitrary start date of 2011 with completion set for some nebulous time after that. Now, with the project winding its way through the last dusky corridors of City Hall, I’m a little troubled that the number I pulled out of my ass is probably closer to reality than anything the experts were paid exorbitantly for.

Part of the problem is that, along with my far-flung dates, I also had visions of a Hindenburg-like execution that, on top of stretching the project out to a future when the apes have taken over, includes cost overruns that are certain to result in another new tax.

The Star article that finally broke ground on reality mentioned that the construction company that will be doing most of the work will try to be accommodating and will try to “make the hoardings (crowd barriers) as attractive as possible”. I hadn’t been to Union Station for a while so I popped by again to see these attractive new hoardings for myself.

So, okay, this is pretty subjective, but I’m not feeling any aesthetic love here. I only bother to mention it because it seems to be an indicator of what is stated versus what is reality, something that, not being realized on this initial small scale, will probably translate to larger misses when the project really gets going. In other words, if this is Vanbot’s version of attractive, their other definitions/time lines/estimates are also likely to be a bit off.

I would be pleased as punch to be proven wrong on this. But really, should we care about temporary barriers? Isn’t what will ultimately be underneath be more important? I’d like to say yes, but if these things will be hanging around for a minimum of 5 years, I don’t think that the word temporary really applies; they will effectively be Union Station for the next half-decade.

The Star article also mentions that part of the move to a new Union Station is to try to make it more of a destination. Two problems with that:

• Do we really need another place to spend money we don’t have? Having restaurants near to the Rogers Centre makes sense, but how many people are eager to run for the train laden with impulse purchases?
• The GO concourse is already a destination! People arrive at the station to wait for trains and buses, maybe buy a coffee and a bagel. If not, they’re on their way to work or on their way back home. Chances are that if they’d wanted to do something elsewhere — to shop, for example — they would’ve done so on their way to the station; there’s plenty of opportunity.

Finally, and this is really more me wondering out loud, what types of new retail they could introduce that they don’t already have? Morning caffeine, newspapers, and a bite to eat are all well-represented. There’s currently a liquor store for carry-on entertainment, a bar for the less patient, and a dry cleaner for those on the vomitous tail end of either one. I can’t imagine what could be missing.

You may want to savour these images, it’s unlikely that the station will look like this much longer. Even if, as I suspect, they don’t start work for another couple of years, upkeep on something that is scheduled to be demolished isn’t likely to be a priority. It’s exactly the same reason I have for not cleaning my flat. And I don’t even sell anything (legal) from there!

Bill Carroll implored me not to rush to judgement about the Toronto Humane Society scandal as I was throwing my clothes on this morning. I silently promised I would, but I have to be honest, my happy side disappears pretty readily when I hear about people abusing animals. It’s like beating up on kids or midgets; I don’t need to explain why that’s wrong. And I’m pretty sure most people would agree with me.

The scandal centers mostly around allegations of abuse and mistreatment of the animals in the King Street shelter:

You know, all the sad-eyed kitties and puppies that make me wanna punch whoever hurts them in the friggin’ face!! How does that feel, huh?! HUH?!

*breathe deep*

*exhale slowly*

…

Everything’s good! :D

So yeah, I really don’t approve of that kind of behaviour. But Bill brought up a good point, many of these animals are brought to the shelter in this state. Of course some of them will look abused, that’s why they’re here. And yes, sadly, some of them die or have to be put down because their injuries are too serious. The shelter makes no secret of this:

However, three things have come together that make me look at the situation with a whole lotta suspicion.

First is my own, albeit single, interaction with the Humane Society in Durham. The facilities were nice, the animals healthy and clean, so nothing bothered me on that end. But the staff, I dunno, didn’t really seem to care a whole lot about animals. And I thought it was odd that they seemed to be dissuading me from taking home a cat: “that one’s not very friendly, that one’s very sick, she’s blind and tends to break stuff, he’s had the most vile diarrhea for months…” In some cases, the conditions for adopting a pet seemed a bit steep: no going outside, no interactions with other animals going outside, no other animals altogether, no flats, no rural homes, no children, no balconies, and a few other things.

… Continue Reading

Okay, I can honestly say I gave him a chance, but I’m not really enjoying waking up to John Moore. The the thing about Bill Carroll (the former radio timeslot), I think, is that he’s a lot angrier. Bill’s got that righteous indignation thing down. John goes on a lot about stuff in a way that makes me not care about it. It’s blood-curdling rage emanating from the radio that helps me get up in the morning. Without it, I’m just too warm and snuggly in my bed.

Take the Toronto City Centre Airport story, for example. I’m not sure many people would care about the tussle going on there. It’s a three-way shoving match between the city, the Port Authority which controls the airport and I believe has it’s own squad of shadowy assassins, and Porter Airlines which managed to pull in record profits pretty much every year since it started flying. Oh, and the island residents who basically bitch 24-7, 365 about everything (“The city’s too loud! The lights are too bright! The planes are too scary! Wah! Wah!”)

(big!)

Bill would gnaw at this, getting angrier and angrier right up until the commercial break. I don’t remember his stance on the issue, but I clearly recall the outraged timbre of his voice. The current topic of contention is the proposed tunnel to the airport which no level of government wants to pay for.  It’s intended to replace the current ferry service which, at a full 20-second trip (maybe 30) from shore to shore, seems kind of inefficient:

But whatever. I’m sure Porter contributes to this inefficiency from its growing wallet so who cares? Bill does. Passionately. Desperately. I bet the fact that Toronto got the 2015 Pan Am Games probably caused his head to just explode. They probably had to drag his headless, blood-soaked corpse out of the studio live on the air. That would’ve been some show. If only it was still on at a time when I could listen.

I can just imagine his reaction at the $2.4 billion cost. He either would have been rejoicing that his beloved Etobicoke was getting a pool make-over, or cheesed that the athletes’ village will be in what is currently a large mud pit bisecting the east edge of town (ON TAXPAYERS’ MONEY, AND DOWNTOWN GETS ALL THE BENEFITS!!), or both.

He doesn’t care that he sometimes contradicts himself. Bill shoots from the hip and asks questions later. If there’s time. I don’t think John Moore even owns a gun.

Now I have at least three more days of waking up to do. Quite possibly a few decades on top of that. With Bill gone, I’m left sleeping in almost every day, but I don’t know where else to turn. The radio dial to. And with it staying dark outside later and later now, the problem is becoming more urgent. “Nature Sounds I” just won’t cut it, but what’s the alternative … the buzzer?!

With everyone and their dog belly-aching about a lack of money, the global recession, etc., I guess it’s not surprising that the Toronto Transit Commission should be next at the public trough with hat in hand. Too bad they didn’t realize how poorly matched those two metaphors are; like all bleeding-from-every-orifice municipal group these days, they got the hand in the face.

And they kinda did it to themselves.

I know that I spend a good chunk of my time despairing over the future of transit, especially now that I’ve contracted a rather nasty strain of lazy and the cold outside has settled in for the season. But I had a chance to ride the regional rails during a visit with my financial guy, and all those awful, tearful memories of the daily GO train commute came flooding back.

I’m not referring to the actual trains themselves; those are fairly modern, quiet, comfortable, and if you can get a seat, a nice way to travel. Each car has a toilet for when your business just can’t wait, electrical outlets for when the feature-length porn flick starts to eat into your laptop’s battery, and getting carted around in a heated space is also very nice when the snow starts to fall.

The problem I’m talking about is one of simple math. For GO people, the cost of a monthly pass to one of the regional stops (the only real reason to take GO), can actually be more expensive than driving a car. For example, my pass used to set me back around $230. That didn’t include the follow-up hop onto the TTC at Union Station, so even at a few extra trips per week it would soon add up. For most commuters, the TTC’s a must to continue into the city since the GO train line is right up against the lake. So that’s an extra $100 for the TTC monthly pass. $109, whatever.

All together, a $300 monthly public transit travel budget is not uncommon.

… Continue Reading

At first I thought I was just being a little too sensitive to the sight of construction cranes. After all, they’re not unlike beaky, disciplinarian public school teachers with their exaggerated snoot in every page of last night’s incomplete homework. Then the reading glasses come off and that evil scowl emerges. “Can you explain this, Patrick?” *shudder*

But that’s not it. There really is a lot of construction going on. In just about every direction you turn, there’s a cross educator:

Okay, well, the big ones are more like a cross. And angrier. For example:

That’s is the TIFF / Bell Lightbox, kitty-corner from where this year’s TIFFery took place. I think it’s designed to loom ominously like that.  It certainly doesn’t yet scream “film festival!!” to me.

Not all construction hangs over the city like the cold face of death, though. Take Trump Tower, for example:

Nice lid, right? And what does The Donald have to say about his new erection?

“The thing that excites me most is the architecture. Secondly, I believe that the location of this building by itself will make it very successful. So you have a combination of great location and great architecture—and that’s going to be something very special.”

Sure is, Donald. It’s a winning formula: Donald Trump™ Excitement ® + location = oodles of cash

Secondly, I hope that’s what he means by “special”.

Anyhow, these are just a couple of the more interesting taller buildings. There are many more, including ones that aren’t so tall:

I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that between any two main intersections, you’d find at least two large construction sites.

I was going to stop the post here without any real point, as I am wont to do. But as I was flipping through the news over an especially messy lunch today (I must omit the details), I found a Toronto Star article about office vacancies and how they’re linked to unemployment. It deftly reveals how all this new office space is opening downtown — I can attest to that! — followed up with unemployment statistics. Get it? Those buildings are stealing our jobs!

I knew it — now it’s cranes and immigrant buildings. And Trump’s mixed in with all this too.

(Sorry about that last link. Have to keep it up as a bleak reminder never to drink and blog again.)

Darn. I was so hoping that one of the local dailies would run something about the TTC, specifically about the subway. There was only more complaining from St. Clair West (the concrete streetcar barriers are built, people! It’s done! Get over it!), something about Robert Prichard who’s supposed to be getting the Metrolinx program underway (trying to bring the TTC and all the regional transit systems under one roof), and some goof who got busted driving his riding mower drunk on one of the rural roads north-east of Toronto.

Haha! I know, that last one’s not transit. But I had to share. I spent enough time around that area to have seen inebriated lawnmower drivers, and let me tell you, it’s hi-freakin-larious. Under normal circumstances, these gentlemen wouldn’t think to drive an unbalanced buggy with sharp, high-velocity, metal blades underneath, up a very steep hill. But then they partake of a few. :D

I guess there was one thing kinda related to the subway, the Toronto Sun’s lament about the state of our highways. Mostly, they were talking about this:

This is the picturesque Don Valley Parkway. It’s picturesque because it’s late in the afternoon on Sunday. At almost any other time, it’s bumper to bumper, stop and go. If you’ve been on it, you know what I’m talkin’ about, right? How many years of your life have you lost on that road? And on some sections, you’ve got a foot between you, the concrete barrier, the car on the other side, and the car in front, and the jerk behind is honking his horn for you to get outta the way. That, buddy, is how that dipshit down in the valley down there crashed his car. That’s why we’re moving extra slow. That’s why you can kiss my flatulent ass you …

Gosh, even thinking about it gets me all worked up; that’s one angry road. The attached 401’s not much better, but that’s a whole different kinda rage; high-speed, low-brow, middle-finger. You can’t shout at those speeds once you achieve them.

Torontonians know what I’m talking about, right? Yeah! Grandma’s doing eighty in the fast lane with nothing in front of her, tapping the breaks a few times a meter. What the fuck is her problem?! HONK H-O-N-K *H-O-N-K* GODDAMMITYARR!! *smash smash smash* GAAAARRR!! Then black out. Wake up under a highway overpass somewhere by the airport with blood on your hands and a dead body in the trunk of your car. Evade police for weeks in a massive manhunt through rural southern Ontario. Eh? Yeah. What Torontonian hasn’t been there?

So to avoid that scene, and since there’s no way we’re biking in from the sticks every day, there’s public transit. But not the fru-fru, surface streetcar my spoiled butt takes every day. We’re talking about the city plumbing; the subway.

There’s been a lot of talk about putting new stuff into the city center, which is fine by me, but it seems like a lot of the outlying, underground stuff is being forgotten. Specifically, the Bloor-Danforth subway line. That’s not to say that the Yonge-University line isn’t need of bit of a facelift too:

Vintage. The tiles look nicotine-friendly, don’t you think? But, at least, in good condition.

However, in the stations, if you’re in a hurry, headphones in, reading email, you might not notice how rustic they’re getting.

Often, it’s not straight ahead; that’s just an attractive young blur. Sometimes you have to wait for the crowd to clear (as in Sunday), and then look up:

Or you have to be at the right end of the platform:

Right, not that right. The other right. Your right. Right :) And you’re right, it is unsightly. But I haven’t heard of any plans to take care of it. Has Scabby Row been foresaken? I did my teen years there and it was pretty grungy. I was back recently and Kennedy Station had an even more watch-your-back feel to it than I remembered.

I’m one of those incurably sunny people who think that one of the ways to deal with the problem is to make the place nicer. For being so busy, it’s a grim station. On one side, it’s got a raised road with a raised LRT train track under it (two storeys of concrete, basically) so it’s dark, and on the other the parking lot of a grey-slab of a community centre. Stabbing or shooting someone here doesn’t seem out of context.

So, change the context I say. I’m sure it’s been tried and tested somewhere. And I’m sure I didn’t come up with it; wouldn’t that be a sad world to live in? I’m just too lazy to find a link.

Spruce up the stations. Scrub off some of that water damage. Repair some of those broken chunks. Put a little more life in there.

That probably won’t come out of the downtown streetcar money, which itself is in question. And that  infrastructure funding that was supposed to have paid for things like this turned out to be not so much. But there is the community.

It’s fair to say that most people in Toronto have at this point at least heard of the Michael Bryant thing. If you haven’t, allow me to catch you up.

Basically, Bryant was driving his car down Bloor Street on Monday when something – no one’s quite sure exactly what —  happened between him and a bike courier. Probably a collision of some sort, but obviously not serious because the courier got up. Then he leapt onto Bryant’s Saab convertible. The female passenger (his wife?) called police while Bryant hit the gas.

He swerved into oncoming traffic and drove up on the opposite sidewalk, purposefully running his car up against trees and mailboxes to try to get the courier off, screaming the whole way. Eventually, he succeeded. But the courier got bashed to death in the process. Possibly driven over. Guess all those wonderfully gory details will come out in the trial.

But it gets better!

Michael Bryant was the attorney general for Ontario. I believe that title means pretty much the same in most places; he was the legal bigwig of Ontario.

Also, the courier had been drinking. A lot. In fact, he had had a long history of unhappy addiction, and had about an hour earlier been stopped by police for trying to enter into a former girlfriend’s place wasted. Perhaps to visit with one of his kids?

The biker had been sober for about eight days, but the day of the incident, well, let’s just say he had indulged. The police are taking flak for telling him to go home from his girlfriend’s instead of letting him to stay. He shouldn’t have been sent home by the cops to ride drunk, they’re saying. Yeah, I say; he should’ve been walking his bike home. And in retrospect, the cops had the situation pegged; not a good time for a family visit.

Anyway, the whole thing quickly turned into a two-ring circus with all sorts of people sticking their causes to the event:

This morning, bikers got together in the spot where the courier died and staged a demonstration. Or protest. Or something. Some of them shouted out “murderer”, referring to Bryant, but made some strange remarks in a quieter voice (I was within earshot), “Yeah, if murderer means crusher of dreams, you back-peddling son of a bitch.” And so forth.

How come that kind of thing never makes the evening news? Ah, but that’s okay. I don’t think we should give the gathering too much credence. Most of the messages of condolence stuck to the spot mentioned, in one form or another, how this death was a just another demonstration of Toronto’s anti-bike streets. There was also plenty of promotion for United Messengers‘ Bloor bike lanes campaign. Guess they figured, if that bandwagon’s coming, might as well hang off the back:

So if the purpose of the gathering was to remind us about bike safety, I’d say absolutely! We could probably start by educating some of the bikers, huh?

I did an impromptu tally of helmets on cyclists for about six walking city blocks (major intersections). I counted only cyclists who were riding and on the road. Out of a total of 263 bikers, only about 45% were wearing helmets. I would like to do a follow-up study on how many also have earphones stuck in/on their ears. And coast through intersections on reds without a peek to either side.

I wouldn’t go so far as to totally let drivers off the hook either, but their infractions haven’t been as audacious as some of the stunts I’ve seen bikers pull. The only attempt at an explanation I’ve heard so far is, “We’re more vulnerable.” Umm … is that it? That’s why you don’t have to obey the rules of the road? Because you’re more vulnerable? Okay. Yeah.

I’ve been known to go out without my helmet now and again. Sometimes I also leave behind my lunch and name tag, the one that people can use to help me find my home again. But I usually get back from my walk okay because I always look both ways before I cross the street. There still seem to be so many bikers out there on whom this lesson is lost.

Oh, and the lesson about not getting pissed out of your gourd and picking a fight with a moving vehicle. Also an important lesson.