Back to Toronto. Back to work. Back to the MBA*. Back to (more) humidity**. Back to cats instead of kids & dogs.
* but not for long!
** but with air conditioning!
[tags]toronto[/tags]
Category: Toronto
The Life and Death of a Great Toronto Neighbourhood
In an article (bearing the same title as this blog post) on the Dooney’s website today, Max Fawcett describes the slow decline of The Annex, my old neighbourhood.
It might be time for Toronto’s urban geographers and city planners to add the term un-gentrification to their lexicon, because that’s precisely what’s happening in the Annex, one of their city’s oldest and most famous neighbourhoods. Unlike other neighbourhoods in the city that are being bought out and up by neo-yuppies, who spark the transformation of old carpet stores and empty storefronts being into painfully hip clothing stores, espresso bars, and of-the-moment restaurants, the Annex is sliding in the other direction. Where the neighbourhood was once a bohemian haven defined by a decidedly middle-class ethic it now is rapidly becoming nothing more than an upscale student ghetto defined by fast-food restaurants, ten dollar martinis, a dwindling clutch of futon stores, and a startling increase in the number of vacant storefronts and the homeless people that populate them.
Fawcett seems to be speaking specifically about the commercial strip of Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst. I agree that it’s always seemed a confounding stretch — never as annoyingly cool as Little Italy but never as annoyingly boho as Queen West either. It always just seemed rather bland and utilitarian. If anything, since we moved away and the changes seem more stark on each occasional visit, it’s gotten more bland, and I think that’s Fawcett’s point. When the night life of the neighbourhood (provided there’s no one good playing at Lee’s Palace) is the awful Brunswick House, that’s not a good sign. And he’s right: for every bakery or BMV that goes in, there’s another place selling schwarma or wings or cheap Korean barbecue.
Really, what’s happened to that piece of Bloor is studentification (admittedly, that’s not a word, but it’s as valid as “un-gentrification”) which had been fairly constrained to the Madison in years past. Like it or not, U of T is getting a retail ghetto, and Bloor Street from the JCC to Honest Ed’s is it. I don’t have a particular problem with this — neighbourhoods change all the time, and every time the people lived there before turn up their noses at the interlopers — except that blandness should never be something for a neighbourhood to aspire to.
[tags]dooney’s, max fawcett, bloor street, annex neighbourhood, university of toronto[/tags]
Metrocide
This week Torontoist is running a great series of posts about murder statistics in Toronto. Much needed, in my opinion, given the attention-starved headline on the latest issue of Toronto Life with a cover story light on data. The Torontoist series (researched and written by David Topping) has featured simple but helpful stats, much more helpful in identifying an actual trend than listing victim stories.
On Tuesday the data showed number of homicides, homicide rate and homicides versus traffic fatalities. Side note: what happened after 2002 to cut traffic fatalities nearly in half over five years?
On Wednesday the focus was central Toronto, as well as the downtown core, showing just how few homicides occur here — despite what media reports might suggest — compared to the rest of the city and the GTA.
On Thursday Toronto was lined up against other Canadian cities (Toronto has a lower homicide rate than Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Trois-Rivieres, Regina, Sudbury and Vancouver; its rate is the same rate as Saint John and just higher than Halifax) and North American cities, against which it barely registers:
Toronto’s numbers absolutely pale in comparison to American cities. Its metropolitan homicide rate in 2006 was lower than every American city with a population above 500,000 (charted above). And of the seventy-two American cities with populations over 250,000, Toronto’s 2006 metropolitan homicide rate (1.8 per 100,000) was lower than every other city except for Plano, Texas—the wealthiest city in the United States—which had a homicide rate of 1.6 per 100,000.
There’s far more information, nuance and source reference in the full articles, so I urge you to check them out. The commenters registered the the usual complaints — why all this analysis? more than zero is too many — with which Topping agrees, but data and information like this is crucial in addressing problems accurately in a rational way, rather than emotionally. Don’t get me wrong, emotion has a place in fighting violence, but it has to be tempered with reason. Topping and Torontoist have done a great job of that this week.
[tags]torontoist, david topping, toronto life, gun violence, toronto, homicide rate[/tags]
This is our house.
Today we went to our first Toronto FC game down at BMO Field. The weather called for showers and possibly even thunder & lightning, so we fully expected to get wet. I also expected to see a win, since FC were playing the expansion San Jose Earthquakes.
We took a streetcar packed with red-clad fans down to the exhibition grounds and found our seats; good view of the field, right in the middle, good sightlines. Last time I was there (for a non-FC game) I was on the other side, so it was good to get the other angle. We were in one of the calmer sections, far from the likes of the Red Patch Boys, U-Sector and North End Elite.
The game itself ended in a 0-0 draw, a disappointing result for Toronto. San Jose (more often than not described as “lowly”) mustered only a few moments of offense, so the game was Toronto’s for the taking…they just couldn’t find any scoring touch. Several failed runs, lots of crosses sailing right through the box with no one to put a head to it, even a missed penalty…nothing went right. The crowd was pretty vocal about their disappointment. It’s hard to watch your team struggle like that. They were also pretty vocal about the officiating, which was…questionable.
We lucked out with the weather. It never did rain, beyond a few sprinkles here and there…not enough to really get wet. And it didn’t get too hot either; when the sun finally broke through, the breeze from the lake kept it tolerable. A few minutes after we got home it really started to pour…glad it held off.
Pretty fun time, all in all. We have tickets for one more game in September, after the MBA is done and the film festival is over. I look forward to not having any pressing deadline on a Saturday afternoon other than getting to the soccer pitch on before the first goal.
[tags]toronto fc, san jose earthquakes[/tags]
Well, there goes the neighbourhood
Torontoist is reporting that an Ikea (of sorts) is opening on King Street East, just around the corner. Actually, I can see it from here. Seriously, right from where I’m sitting.
King Street East is known for its high-end furniture retailers like Roche Bobois and UpCountry, so it’s a bit of a surprise to see the logo for everyone’s guilty pleasure, IKEA, on a classy King Street storefront.
Torontoist reader Sofi Papamarko asked us to investigate this mysterious downtown presence of the eco-conscious Swedish giant, suggesting that it could be an office furniture location or a boutique IKEA (similar to the Leon’s planned for the Roundhouse or the downscaled Brick store at College Park). The windows at 143 King Street tease a date of July 31, 2008—which curiously is the same day that IKEA releases their annual catalogue.
“It’s not a store,” a rep for the company told Torontoist, “but it is a place where customers can check out products from the 2009 catalogue.”
But will they have the cheap breakfasts?
Also up for betting: Sam Javanrouh bikes past there every day; how long before he posts a picture on Daily Dose of Imagery?
[tags]ikea, king street, sam javanrouh, daily dose of imagery[/tags]
The clone wars
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…
…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]
Homecoming: do not want!!1!
We got home about an hour ago. Lots of cat hair (et cetera) to clean up, but it’s kind of good to be home anyway. Even if there are no mountains here.
Or oceanfront promenades.
Or alpine lakes.
Or clean air.
…
Dammit.
[tags]toronto[/tags]
I can has watterfrunt plz? Kthxbai.
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."
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]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 