At this time of year you can’t help but stumble upon those “signs of spring” stories - you know, the crocuses peeping out, tulips in bloom, lovers going for strolls in the sunshine.
Let me tell you, there are precious few crocuses in downtown Toronto, and the lovers don’t stroll until it gets dark on Jarvis. So I did an informal poll of my colleagues, and here’s our tentative Urban Signs of Spring list. See if you agree, or if you can add any to the list:
- A winter’s worth of dog turds and cigarette butts resurfaces from beneath the snow.
- The good mangos reappear in the stalls in Chinatown.
- Don Juan’s chip truck parks across the road for the first time. Don’s back (from Greece to grease.)
- Jays home opener. Reporters say, once again, that this year they have a chance.
- All the women on Queen St. suddenly wearing giant sunglasses.
- Beer drinkers on sidewalk patios, wearing parkas.
- Male pigeons start acting… twitterpated.
- Rickshaws rides available. New runners, same ads for hot oil body massages.
- The guy that delivers the water is already wearing shorts.
- Building management discusses removing bike carcasses from around the perimeter.
- News outlets run their annual pothole stories.
- Building management turns on air conditioning.
What did I miss? Let me know!
I have a few vacation days to use up, so last week I took a couple of “Paulidays” - a day off for me to do… whatever it is I do when I’m not doing it for work.
This time around, it was nothing fun, per se, unless you define “fun” as replacing your faucets. And getting your carpets cleaned, your locks changed, etc. I’m still wrapping my head around this grown-up thing… blowing a thousand bucks on your vacation used to be way more fun than this.
Anyhow, a couple more items on Paul’s List of Chores were taking some new pants in to get altered, and some shirts to get dry cleaned. Believe it or not that was actually a tiny bit of fun, if only because normally the only attention I pay to clothes is to wash them and frown at the wrinkles. What really made the trip, though, was that I got to wander down my stretch of Queen Street East and visit some genuine old school mom & pop stores.
Leslieville is a neighbourhood with a history. Hell, when they shot key scenes from Cinderella Man here, they didn’t have to do anything to half the stores - and some of the others kept the movie fascades afterward - they were considered a marked improvement. (See my previous entry on that, plus my fleeting encounter with Russell Crowe.)
Anyhow, visits to both the tailor and the dry cleaners were like stepping into a time machine. Hand-painted signs, hand-tailored clothes. Linoleum floors. And yes, for what it’s worth, the cleaners were Chinese and the tailor was Italian.
But the thing I had to take a picture of - and in a more modern store, would be discouraged from doing so - was the cash register in each place. Both were huge metal machines, painted in a faux woodgrain. Big, clanking buttons, and no hint of electricity (or much cash, actually.) Both had been in use in those locations for an estimated 40 years, and both had stories to go with them.
Above is the one from the cleaner - and notice that the fee for one dress shirt and one wool sweater was a rather reasonable $4.90. The family that runs the business bought it second-hand in the mid-1960s, but estimate that it’s probably twice that old.
Here’s the one from the tailor - with buttons for $1, $10, $20 and so on, and rectangular cards that pop up to display your purchase. The tailor did upgrade to a small electronic register - small enough to be stolen a few years later. So they went back to this model, which a thief would have a hell of a time tucking under his arm.
The tailoring was a little more expensive than the cleaning, but perhaps the two stores are in cahoots - the pants smell faintly of the Italian cigarettes the tailor no doubt smoked while he worked his magic. Yet another throwback. Still, smoke ‘em while you got ‘em - after generations in Leslieville, the tailor is closing down for good in a few months.
I wonder what will fill the gap in Queen St. E., and what they’ll do with his register.
I’m on a roll with the signage thing - more here - though it would appear my summer reading comes in a much shorter format than other CBC bloggers. I’ve been focusing on CBC signs for the past week, but let’s branch out to some signs just outside Fort Dork.
You may recall that there’s a giant pit just to the east of the CBC’s Toronto HQ. It’s part of the construction of the new Ritz-Carlton hotel and RBC Centre office tower at Wellington and Simcoe streets. (I’ve been snapping some photos along the way and putting them in a Flickr folder - maybe in two years I can create a time-lapse animated .gif, or something.)
Construction is apparently moving apace, despite a strike that nobody noticed from the Laborers’ International Union of North America (L.I.U.N.A. Local 506). That strike consisted of a chain across the entrance way for a few days - no picketers, no website, no concerts by the Barenaked Ladies.
Anyhow, what interests me about this site at the moment is the “branding” on the construction hoarding that surrounds the east end of the site. The RBC Centre is being branded not as “the first new Toronto office tower in a decade”, or “a really tall, expensive container for bankers to roll around in your money”, but something more homey - and ridiculous.
Apparently this is not a building. It’s your new best friend.
It claims to be:
- A building with a work/life balance
- A building that pays its way
- A building comfortable in its own skin
- A building with a conscience
- A building that works for employees
- A building that is breaking ground
- A building that makes an impression
WTF? Is this building actually alive, with blood and emotions and some sort of benign Hal 9000 brain? Are they building it not with jackhammers and concrete and steel, but with spoonfuls of love, group hugs and fluffy bunnies?
Yeah, I get the idea. Personalize the space, appeal to our softer instincts, make it sound as different as possible from the cold, cash-driven sort of banking towers they fly planes into. But come on - it’s an office tower, not a loft, or mom’s house, or a hippy commune.
This sort of cloying anthropomorphism really burns my britches. Anyone who has kids knows what I’m talking about - it’s cute for a while, when little Sally says “that car is happy” or “the sky is crying.” But last week my daughter asked me, “why does the toilet like to eat poo and drink pee?” Yeargh!
If the RBC Centre wants to pretend it’s your cousin, fine. Here are my suggestions for construction hoarding slogans:
- A building that will take out your garbage
- A building that loves long walks on the beach
- A building that would open its windows if they weren’t sealed shut
- A building with an extensive shoe collection
- A building that is a little afraid of lightning
- A building with a degree from Yale
- A building that once had a tryout for the Ti-Cats
- A building with erectile dysfunction
- A building that served three years in the National Guard
- A building that feels guilty when birds hit it
- A building that thinks your weight is just fine
- A building that took a year off to “find itself”
- A building that promises not to shed large pieces of marble
So, what human trait describes the building you work in? (Mine likes to eat poo.)
So, I finally found some answers on the east end stink problem, and the news is not good. It would seem that the smell in Leslieville is indeed sewage, and it’s not accidental - it’s institutional, and it’s here to stay, for a while.
The issue came up at a meeting of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre last night, where the problem was on the agenda and discussed. Here’s what they had to say:
Item 4. Sewage Odours MOE
We have had many complaints starting on Friday and through the weekend about sewage smells. The City has $220 million allocated for odour controls over the next 10 years. They have a plan but it will take time. The problem seems to be that they can’t get rid of the sludge fast enough. Historically it went to farms and landfill. Michigan is now closed and fall is better for spreading on farms. Then there were consecutive Canadian and American holidays where trucks weren’t operating. We are looking at issuing an order to get the city to deal with the sludge. They know there’s a problem.
The good news is that the City no longer burns the sludge and the new pelletizer should be operating for the first time ever this week to replace some of the trucking. It is a facility that dewaters and dries the sludge for use as fertilizer pellets. Comment: The City need to get its act together, they produce 10 trucks and ship 6. They should belooking at mine tailings and tree plantations not just agricultural land application.
Great… so now we’re going from stockpiling sewage sludge to stockpiling sewage pellets. And no answer to why it suddenly smells here but not in the Beach.
It’s just what this up-and-coming neighbourhood needs, you know. Every week I read articles in the major papers about the great new shops and coffee shops and restaurants opening up in Leslieville, such as neighbourhood cornerstone Joy Bistro’s new B-side outdoor patio/lounge. Nothing brings in the customers like the smell of dried sewage sludge pellets.
And of course I was speaking to a colleague about how we had both finally made an effort to go green, opening windows instead of using the air conditioning (she, again with more gumption, went so far as to buy a bunch of window fans for the purpose.) Now it’s back to shut windows and AC for the forseeable future. Again, just what Toronto needs.
For the past few days, my Leslieville neighbourhood in Toronto’s east end has been stinking to high heaven.
It’s a familiar sewage smell that until recently was sometimes associated with the otherwise posh Beach area. The culprit: the Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant, said to be the largest secondary wastewater treatment plant in Canada. It has an odour problem, and (unlike a few guys I know) it admits it.
Now, Beach residents pay too much property tax to put up with nasty odours, so there’s been a plan in place for several years to contain and scrub away the stink. I’m not sure how you scrub stink away - bathe it in tomato juice? - and I’m not sure I want to know. (Read this .pdf or this one if you really care.)
Anyhow, I’m not sure what the status of that work is - the plan was completed five years ago, and presented (again) two years ago, but there’s no update on the City’s website since then. However, my family was down in the neighbourhood yesterday (letting our lowlife children play on the expensive playground equipment while nobody was looking) and it smelled just fine.
But now OUR neighbourhood smells - and we’re a few miles further away from the treatment plant!
My wife, seldom one for conspiracy theories, is convinced that the “treatment” plan consists of just piping the stench to less well-to-do neighbourhoods to the west.
Now, none of the neighbours had mentioned it, and there’s nothing in the papers or on the internet - not even the blogosphere. At first I thought we were going crazy, but then I got an e-mail from a CBC colleague who lives near us:
Have you noticed the vile sewage smell wafting off the (I assume) treatement plant? I’ve lived here for eight years and have NEVER noticed it this bad. The other day I could smell it clear to Broadview.
She has more gumption than I do, and took the initiative of calling our local city councillor, Paula Fletcher.
And no, we’re not crazy: her office said that have received about a dozen calls today and they are looking into the matter and have already contacted the ministry of environment.
So, we’re not imagining things. Something’s broken, and it stinks.
Beaches, come get your odour. Not in our backyard! We have bad smells of our own!
(There’s quite an olfactory battle going on in my block already… we’re equidistant between the lovely wafts coming from Weston bread factory, and the place the City parks its garbage trucks.)
So, what does your neighbourhood smell like?
Back in February I started a semi-regular feature called Commuting by Numbers. From time to time, on those rides to work where I can’t read (busy streetcar, or on my bike) I’ll count things of interest to see what patterns emerge. My tallies, and those of some other bloggers I strongarmed into playing along, can be found in my Commuting category.
The other day, my otherwise brilliant friend Chris admitted to counting groundhogs on his way to work, and I pointed him to my blog. He had an interesting comment:
It occurred to me that you are engaged in Mass Observation, which was a movement that existed in the 30s and 40s that encouraged as many people as possible to observe and record the minutiae of a particular place and time. The organizers were actually hired by the U.S. and British governments to record war-time activity.
Myself, I just figured I was borderline autistic or something. Anyhow, there’s a fabulous New Yorker article on the Mass Observation here. Chris went on to say how this sort of analysis is the opposite of most blogging:
Reading the article, I was thinking that what blogs represent today is a “Mass Introspection” movement - but yours actually runs counter to that and closer to Mass Observation. Now that you also have me counting animals during a commute, that is.
The phenomenon was more about human behaviour than groundhogs, but you can certainly deduce certain behaviours from physical objects. Which brings me to the dataset below. I’m tempted to draw certain conclusions from the results that surprised me: the ratio of newspapers to iPods, the prevalence of smoking, the fact that I should probably stop carrying a backpack, etc. But I’ll let you decide for yourself.
Later this week I’ll have two more editions: Transportation, and Animals. Observe well!
Commuting by Numbers: People Edition
Commuter: Paul Gorbould
Location: Downtown Toronto
Commuting time: 45 minutes
Route: Queen/King Streets, via streetcar
People carrying a coffee cup: 52
People carrying a reusable mug: 6
People smoking: 37
People smoking AND carrying a coffee: 4
Men using dainty cigarette holders: 1
People carrying shoulder bags (not incl. purses): 202
People wearing backpacks: 143
Goth kids: 7
People with dreadlocks: 6
Homeless men dressed like Santa: 2 (!)
People wearing baseball hats: 30
People wearing Castro hats (tee hee): 8
People wearing peaked caps: 3
People wearing fedoras: 1
Men on cell phones: 23
Women on cell phones: 26
People wearing iPods: 41
People wearing all other music players: 23
People using a Blackberry: 5
People carrying a newspaper: 4
People using cameras: 3
People wearing ties: 16
People wearing “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirts: 1
As I’ve said before, I’d really be delighted if anyone out there wants to count something and let me know about it - I’ll link to it or publish it here. And if you have suggestions for me to count, I’m all ears. Well, 2 ears.
Last week I warned you that stuff was falling from the skies all over town and that, proof positive that gravity is increasing, it’s time to invest in hard hats.
But would the people who make Toronto tick listen? Noooooo. Instead, they are proceeding to put even more stuff up in the sky, foolishly hoping it’ll stay there.
At lunchtime yesterday, I looked up (bravely) to see several platforms dangling from the top of the World’s Dangliest Dang-doodle – the CN tower.
These appear to be platforms for fixing the tower, or maybe scrubbing off the bird poop, lightning scorches, or graffiti (double dog dare you, Poster Child!)
You couldn’t pay me enough to go up there, though I bet if they could reel ‘em out quickly it’d make a ride that would put the Demon Drop to shame. Anyhow, while I was eating lunch I read that there are big plans for the venerable Pointy Thing – they’re going to light it up like a Christmas tree.
“Like the Shanghai Tower, Empire State Building and London Eye, the CN Tower will also be ablaze at night with light and colour.
“Toronto’s internationally known landmark and the world’s tallest freestanding tower is to be outfitted with 1,330 brilliant LED lights that will shoot up the elevator shaft, over the “bubble” and straight to the mast.”
And you thought the tower’s phallic imagery was in your head.
I guess there’s no harm in adding a little Vegas-on-Front-Street, and officials are quick to point out that the LEDs are more efficient than the washing-machine sized lights they used when the lit it up 10 years ago. Plus, they promise to turn them off during bird migratory season, so nothing gets impaled on the huge pulsing shaft (oh, man…)
Still, does our city really suffer from a lack of light pollution? We’ve got 16,000 streetlights (which are being replaced.) Our skyscrapers blaze through the night, the Air Canada Centre paints the sky with its giant klieg lights, as do those portable kliegs used every time there’s a high school prom or a Winner’s opening. Never mind Symphony of Fire, police helicopters and the Blade Runner monstrosity at Dundas Square.
Once upon a time, I saw a supposedly-funny postcard, all black with the subtitle “Toronto at night.” It was way off the mark then, but now it’s just ridiculous.
It’s been said before that the Toronto skyline has already been turned into a giant screen saver, obliterating the stars and frightening dogs for miles around. I’m not sure that turning the CN Tower into the World’s Largest Thermometer is going to help (though maybe the United Way can put it to use in their next campaign.)
The Star article says the whole thing is going to be controlled by a desktop computer. I really, really hope that guy who hijacked the Go Train pixelboards to make them say “Stephen Harper eats babies” gets his hands on it.
I can look directly up at the tip of the CN Tower from my desk across the road at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre (fun during a lightning storm, unsettling on September 11.) But it’s getting harder to see – the CBC windows are filthy. And now, in another lesson of things going up and falling down, we know why.
Here’s part of a message e-mailed to staff yesterday:
Replacement of Roof Anchors
In recent months, we’ve had regular requests to wash the outside windows of the Broadcasting Centre. We have been unable to do so because the original roof anchors on this building no longer meet approved safety standards, making it legally impossible for window washers to operate here.
After several unexpected delays (including the first strike in 20 years by the union of roof anchor installers), we can now begin the process of removing the existing anchors and installing more than 270 new, government-approved replacements over the next three months. Our goal is to be able to wash the outside of the building in September.
First, did you know there was a union of roof anchor installers, or that they went on strike?
Second, I’ve seen the guys who dangle from the 10th-floor roof to wash our windows, and they are like fearless squeegee gods. Even though the construction site next door has coated the TBC in grime, I can’t begrudge them something safe to tie on to.
And third, I’ve told my wife it’s my goal to wash our home windows by September too.
Daydreaming again today…
(I think that little platform on the top of Roy Thompson Hall is there for window cleaning, but it sure looks like a diving board to me. On a scorcher like today, it’s fun to imagine the whole building full of water… Splash!)
Cute alert!
This is what my brother-in-law Rob found under a pile of leaves in his Markham backyard. Actually, when he first found them they looked like little pink balls - eyes shut, ears pinned back - but a week later, they are full on, cute-as-a-bunny bunnies.
Rob was worried that he’d disturbed their nest, which was up against his townhouse wall beside the garden hose. But it turns out that mother rabbits only return once or twice a day to quickly nurse and then scoot off so as not to call attention to them. She’s doing a good job - two weeks later, Rob’s bearded collie Hoover has yet to notice the nest right outside his door. I don’t know what’s funnier - the idea of a great big dog taking a whiz five feet from the nest, or his great big master scouring the internet for bunny care tips.
I don’t think of Markham as much of a wild kingdom, but you can catch the birds and bees doing their thing right downtown at this time of year. My perennial favourite is at this pond outside Roy Thompson Hall:
If you pass through the walkway seen at bottom right, you’ll see a family of ducklings learning to swim right beside the glass.
They’ve been returning here for seven years now, despite efforts to discourage them - at various points, staff have fenced in the pillars where they built their nests, removed the pillars entirely, and asked wildlife experts to relocate them to more appropriate grounds - all without luck. So now, they’ve put out a ramp and a bowl of food, and you can watch them do their ducky thing any business day.
Even more fun is watching the business people watching the ducks, and cooing and making those “Awwwww! Nature!” faces so out of place in the city’s business hub. Like Rob, they sometimes go back to their office computers to look up duck nesting habits.
I know this because I’ve encouraged it in the past. In June 2000, my sister Alison wrote a feature on these very ducks for the CBC4Kids website. You can still find it online via Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. It included a Duck Journal on how the little ducklings grew, and a feature on duck nesting habits.
Those of you reading from rural locations will likely - and should - scoff at the urban fascination with any remnant of the natural world. But I still think it’s a tiny miracle, and how many of those do you see at work?
Tim Neesam, a CBC.ca colleague of mine, takes photographs that are off the charts in terms of what Flickr calls “interestingness”.
Tim’s specialty is decaying buildings. He gains access to crumbling industrial facilities - Toronto’s brickworks, the old Inglis factory - and takes stunning pictures of their eerie beauty.
It’s a tricky business. The low light levels mean extraordinarily long exposures (20-30 seconds, in some cases) Then there are the more practical issues: crazy vagrants, tresspassing laws…
I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff on Flickr, but Tim’s work is nothing short of spectacular.
Be sure to check out Tim’s Flickr site, and his variations on the theme - his Twins series (double self-portraits amid the decay) and HDR photography, a new technique of merging over- and underexposed images of the same scene.
For those of you in Toronto, Tim is participating in Reconstructed, a group show that closes on Sunday at Gallery 1313 (1313 Queen Street West.) He’ll be there all afternoon on Saturday, itching to hear what you think.
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