Category: Toronto

The clone wars

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Attention Toronto douchebags: you need a new wardrobe.

In the short time it took me to run three miles today, I saw four of you walk by wearing exactly the same thing: camouflage cargo shorts, pastel polo shirt w/ popped collar (this is crucial; the popped collar elevates one beyond the level of plain old wannabe and into the douch-y heavens), flip flops and aviator sunglasses. You also all had the same spiky hair.

While I admire your willingness to beat down any niggling scrap of individuality or free thinking you might’ve once been infected with, you may have taken it too far. I don’t think that even your mother could pick you out in a crowd anymore.

Baaaaaaa.

[tags]douchebag, popped collar[/tags]

Cry havoc…

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

…and let slip the dogs of my brain dump:

  • Tonight we dined at Lobby with T-Bone for Summerlicious. Meh. Not great, and the service was a little sketchy. Plus…$80 for a bottle of wine that tasted like water? Alrighty then.
  • I bought tickets for 50 TIFF films today. I look forward to being able to use them some day. We had to buy a weird combo…30 pack plus two packages of 10 rather than the 50 pack.
  • I hope the rumours about Apple punishing Rogers are true. It’s rare to see condemnation so universal as what Rogers has been enjoying the last couple of weeks. I’ll be curious to see the uptake of the iPhone this weekend; I’m pulling for New Coke-like sales figures.
  • Someone’s affixing stickers to Toronto Sun newspaper boxes describing the contents therein. Where can I donate labels & toner?
  • I’m with Michael Arrington: voicemail should die. Until every voicemail system in the world is converted to unified messaging (like my home phone, which emails me with the wav file when I get a voicemail), I will continue to ignore my voicemail messages until people stop leaving them for me.
  • I can’t wait for the new David Simon (writer of Homicide and The Wire) HBO series Generation Kill. Check out the trailer yonder. [language NSFW]

[tags]summerlicious, lobby, tiff, apple, rogers, toronto sun, voicemail, generation kill[/tags]

I can has watterfrunt plz? Kthxbai.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

After a big breakfast downstairs at the hotel, Nellie and I went down to the marinaside and rented some bikes from Reckless. For $30 we got two bikes for 2 hours (though we only stayed out for about 75 minutes) and cruised around the waterfront. We went all the way down past English Bay (where I stayed during my first visit to the city) to the entrance of Stanley Park, all the way back around False Creek past BC Place and GM Place and Science World, then back to Yaletown to drop off the bikes.

There were tons of cyclists, roller bladers, walkers, strollers…everyone was out. It doesn’t hurt that it’s another beautiful day. David Miller should force every Toronto city councilor to come do this.

Just about to jump in the shower and head off to the pub to watch the Euro Cup final.

[tags]vancouver, yaletown, reckless bike stores, toronto waterfront, david miller[/tags]

"What seems normal now will have become unthinkable."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Christopher Hume has an excellent column in today’s Toronto Star. Ostensibly about the fate of the Gardiner Expressway, which runs scar-like across the city’s waterfront, it’s really about politics and “civic cowardice,” as Hume calls it.

Last week, the board of Waterfront Toronto voted to launch an environmental assessment to study dismantling the east end of the Gardiner. Mayor David Miller, a board member, declared that this was the first proposal he’d seen that was doable. He was talking about the politics of demolition, not the reality.

It seems that Miller, not known for vision or boldness, won’t be the mayor who leads Toronto into the 21st century. With leaders such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, he will be remembered as one who tried to prolong a period of history fast winding down. It will turn out to have been a blip, a mere two generations whose lives were based on utterly implausible assumptions about endless cheap energy and land.

It really is sad, what’s become of David Miller. There was such optimism when he took the mayor’s office, and it’s been slowly beaten down by the bureaucracy of city hall, despite the hopes that he might climb out of the quagmire.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw

Time for David Miller to get unreasonable.

[tags]toronto, gardiner expressway, christopher hume, david miller, george bernard shaw[/tags]

Do you WANT me to move to Montreal? Because I will.

Dan Dickinson

Reading the phrase “Rob Ford’s mayoral candidacy” just caused me to do that weird thing you see in movies, where someone starts out laughing and ends up crying, all in one breath. You know? You know that thing? ‘Cause I just did that.

The [road tolls] issue undoubtedly gives a big boost to Ford’s mayoral prospects, as it rolls his two pet peeves into a single, politically explosive package: taxes and the persecution of drivers. The unthinkable campaign—Rob Ford for Mayor!—has taken a giant leap toward reality.

From Toronto Life’s City State blog

[tags]rob ford, toronto, toronto life, city state, philip preville[/tags]

In which my vocabulary returns to the 80s. Rad.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Awesome: Stephen Colbert’s plundering of the Hockey Night In Canada theme song.

Awesome: Bigger sidewalks on Bloor. (Less awesome: lack of bike lanes)

Awesome: watching Portugal play football. Since I cheer for no particular team I just like watching skill, so the game today was like watching a group of painters at work.

Awesome: the weather. Perfect. An ideal June day.

Awesome: being 95% done.

[tags]stephen colbert, bloor street, portugal, euro 2008, toronto weather[/tags]

A double rainbow at sunset

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Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Unfortunately I only had time to grab the little point-and-shoot, which didn’t handle the lighting well. By the time Nellie got to her SLR the rainbows were pretty much gone.

[tags]toronto, rainbow, sunset[/tags]

I realized two minutes later that it was "balcon"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The warm (and by warm I mean screaming hot) weather has made for a very fun 18 hours. After leaving work yesterday I arrived home to a barbeque in progress with Nellie and CBGB. We made veggie burgers and drank (among others) Bavarian Weissbier and took solace in the cool breeze on our balcony. Sometimes that breeze was almost too much; at one point it blew some Tostitos out of the bowl and sent them skittering across the balcony. After our guests left we cleaned up (barely) and watched Battlestar Galactica. Getting! So! Good!

Nellie had to get up early for a hair appointment, so I used the morning to clean up (read: recycle the beer bottles), catch up on my news addiction, run some errands, buy more of that weissbier and take some pictures of all the puppies down the street at Woofstock.

Playing with dogs is good for the soul, even if my cats did look at me askance when I got home. Now I’ve finished off the list of little things that I need to get done before settling in for a long afternoon of MBA and Euro. Life could certainly be worse.

[tags]weihenstephaner hefeweissbier, battlestar galactica, woofstock, euro 2008[/tags]

Hey cool, they're doin' it ag…oh, no, wait, that's kosher

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I looked out my window this morning and noticed two things about the Gardiner Expressway: 1) there were no cars on it; 2) there were bicycles on it.

My first thought, following Friday’s guerrilla action was, “Another protest? Already?” But then I noticed the number of bikes and lack of police (and honking motorists) and figured it must be on the level. In fact, it is the annual Ride for Heart.

There’s something refreshing and absurd about seeing all those bikes meander down that paved monstrosity. It should be like this every Sunday.

[tags]gardiner expressway, ride for heart[/tags]