And we’re off. See you in a few weeks.
And if Rob Ford is still mayor when we get back, I’m going to be pissed.
.:.
Photo by Roland Urbanek, used under Creative Commons license
Category: Toronto
Nuit Blanche 2013
Yesterday we altered our sleep patterns so that we were able to take part in Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s version of the all-night art thing. We left our place at 11 and it started out pretty rough — I forget each year how annoying massive, mostly-drunk crowds of people can be — but we stuck it out until 2am. Here’s what we saw (or tried to see):
- Before we even went out an enormous traveling dance party drove along Adelaide right under our balcony. I can only assume it was part of Nuit Blanche.
- 36km: Toronto Alleyway Exploration Project
- Garden Tower in Toronto, which we only saw from the outside since the line to walk inside was too long
- Diaspora Dialogues, which we abandoned shortly after walking in since the crowds were too big and lines too long…we couldn’t tell what was going on at the front of the church
- Smoke House, which we again decided to abandon because of the length of the line to ride the bikes. We could see everything though.
- Howl, which I think saved Nuit Blanche for me. Up to this point I was so frustrated with the overcrowded exhibits, and exhibits whose entrances were marked incorrectly on the website, and the impenetrable crowds, that I was just seconds from packing it in. But Howl was terrific. Howl made me want to keep going.
- Campfire, which we couldn’t really appreciate because of the crowds and how loud it was…the dialogue was totally drowned out
- The Anthropocene
- Night Shift, which we walked past in between their dances, so they were just cleaning up piles of golden paper. We didn’t stick around for more dancing.
- Arctic Trilogy, which we watched for about ten minutes
- Take A Penny
- Shrine, for which we didn’t line up but could see just fine from the outside, including the disappointment on the faces of those exiting the inside
- Mariner 9, another favourite
- We walked past a screen showing WATERMARK Cubed in the distance, but didn’t really observe it…but that’s fine, we just saw the documentary itself
- It wasn’t an exhibit, but a drum troupe outside of First Canadian Place was one of my favourite moments of the night
- The Soniferous Æther of The Land Beyond The Land Beyond was also trippy and excellent. I wish we’d stayed a little longer — some people had actually laid down and gone to sleep in front of the exhibit, so clearly it was soothing or mesmerizing or something — but we’ve learned that you have to keep moving on Nuit Blanche
- Pink Punch
- We were lucky enough to walk past the extremely strange Burrman on his travels, on York around Richmond
- Queen Of The Parade
- Music Box
- After a long roundabout route we walked past Toaster Work Wagon and arrived in the top half of Nathan Phillips Square to see Ai Weiwei’s Forever Bicycles, which was pretty cool. However, the crowds on the Queen Street side were so daunting that we couldn’t even get near Crash Cars. Luckily you could read the lit-up poetry of The rose is without why from anywhere in the square.
- Clothesline Canopy http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/project.html?project_id=1297 was actually undergoing repairs so we couldn’t walk underneath it, but we did see it from the side.
- We have no idea what was happening at Agit P.O.V.
- The Big Crunch
- We got in line for L’Air Du Temps but when we saw the line that said it would be a 45-minute wait we bailed
- We interacted with Take A Load Off as the artist intended: but sitting on the discarded furniture…but then we remembered that this was discarded furniture, and were kind of grossed out
And so, that was it for our Nuit Blanche 2013. The weather more or less cooperated…cool and breezy beats cold and rainy any day. The crowds were close to unbearable, and not just for me…they created enough friction between patrons for two people to be stabbed during the course of the night, and I’m sure there were dozens of fights. And how at least one pedestrian isn’t killed every Nuit Blanche I’ll never understand.
For the monks
Clearly last weekend’s Garrison tour and last month’s Session Toronto festival didn’t provide us enough opportunities to try interesting beer, so — after an Ontario-craft-brew evening at the Rebel House with MLK — we walked over to the Steam Whistle Craft Beer Fest in Roundhouse Park. It promised to be a more laid-back festival, and the weather seemed far more tolerable than the sauna that was Session. The crowds weren’t big at all when we arrived, probably because the entry lines were very slow.
Once we got inside we could tell this was indeed a more laid-back festival. There was room to move, there was shade (not enough, though, as it turned out), and plenty of people were sitting or lying on the grass. Some people even had their kids with them, and the kids seemed cool with it all.
We knew all fifteen breweries, and were familiar enough with most of their offerings that we skipped half. Here’s what I drank:
- Grand River “Tabbey Abbey” ale
- Great Lakes “Chill Winston” Grisette
- Nickel Brook Berliner Weisse
- Wellington “County Dark” Ale
- Lake of Bays “River Walker” summer ale
- Hogsback “Alohog” coconut pale ale
- Leftfield “Maris*” pale ale
- King Kellerbier
The Chill Winston and Alohog were fantastic light summer drinks, but the Maris* might have been my favourite on the day. I badly confused the Great Lakes employee when I insisted on ordering the “Chill Winston” in the same accent as Willie from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
I also put down a killer pulled pork sandwich from one of the six food trucks in attendance, Hogtown Smoke. Nellie had pulled pork tacos from the DIrty South truck. We eventually had to escape the park when we realized that we’d been sunburned into oblivion — the cool lake breeze had lured us into a trap, it seemed. Not quite done tasting, though, we decided to walk up to Bar Hop for a few samples. I had:
- Oast House Heritage Wheat
- a Indie Alehouse / Kensington / Bar Hop collaboration Patersbier called “Who’s Your Daddy?”…and no, I didn’t know what a Patersbier was either until I read this
- Shacklands Pale Ale
- Dieu Du Ciel! Aphrodesiac
All in all it was a pretty beer-happy 24 hours…so much so that Untappd, not knowing I was drinking samples, awarded me the “Take It Easy!” badge. Success!
Here’s your future
A week ago tonight Toronto was hit by rains of historic proportions. We got pounded. We got soaked. We learned to convert metric to cubits.
The story of the storm and the aftermath has been well-covered in the usual places. Torontoist had lots of great pictures, including of the overnight extraction of passengers from a hot, stranded, snake-ridden GO train.
Nellie had a bit of an ordeal getting home, but for the most part we got off easy. I know people who lost their basement or lost their car, or both. Half the people in the GTA had brutal commutes home, often abandoning their cars after they ran out of gas.
For my part I was lucky, with maybe a little farmer’s son’s weather instincts thrown in there too. I was working away at my office when, around 4:40PM, I turned and looked out my window. It just looked…wrong outside. It was too dark, and the sky was an odd colour. My window faces south, so I couldn’t see the huge cloud coming south toward us from the north. Still, my gut was telling me this wasn’t going to be just another rain storm, and I didn’t have an umbrella — the weather forecast hadn’t called for anything other than sprinkles at noon. I brought up my favourite weather site, and it said there would be no rain for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is just enough time for me to get home, so I went for it. I put my computer to sleep, grabbed my bag, and took off. I wouldn’t normally do that. I’d normally wait it out, or borrow an umbrella from someone, or just be okay with getting wet. But this seemed different.
Once I got outside I was even more sure that it was going to be heavy-duty. Growing up on the farm we could always tell when it was going to rain, but yesterday I felt that sensation much stronger than I remember feeling it before. I looked north when crossing Yonge Street, giving me a clear look all the way to the top of the GTA. I saw the biggest, blackest cloud I’ve ever seen. It actually looked like the cloud-covered UFOs from Independence Day. I hurried up.
Luckily a subway train came quickly, and a few stops later I got off. This picture was taken from the 70th floor at Scotia Plaza, probably around the time I was getting off the subway. I got to our building, feeling only a few tiny drops as I entered the lobby. 30 seconds later, by the time I’d taken the elevator up to the condo and looked outside, I saw this:
So yeah…I was pretty lucky. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, what we experienced was minor compared to the flooding in Alberta or especially the train explosion in Lac-Megantic. But I’m still glad I didn’t get caught in it.
.:.
Photo by Graeme & Sara Bunton & Peel, used under Creative Commons license
I couldn’t decide whether to call this post “the risin’ of Weizen” or “the Porter new order”
A few weeks ago I was chatting with a former colleague, an ex-Torontonian who now lives in England. He knows I’m a beer fan, and mentioned that a few night before, at some bar not necessarily known for the their beer selection, he’d been able to try a Le Trou Du Diable Shawinigan Handshake. Over his week-long visit he’d noticed a much more extensive penetration of craft beer around Toronto than when he’d left four or five years ago.
I’d slowly started to recognize the same thing of late, but hearing my friend’s observations just cemented it. Places like Smokeless Joe, C’est What, and Rebel House had been carrying the torch for craft beer, especially Ontario craft beer for ages, but I’d noticed a shift in the clientele of such serious beer places, especially Volo. It wasn’t the same faces, the same beer geeks, every time. We’d see people trying new beers, searching out new releases, willing to be educated. Beerbistro was probably at the front of that tide, with places like Bar Hop, Wvrst, Bellwoods, and Indie Alehouse forming the second wave.
The size and makeup of the crowd at this year’s Session Toronto was a huge indication of how craft is quickly becoming the expectation. Another is the fact that Spotlight Toronto has run a ’30 days of Ontario beer’ feature the last few years, and Mike DiCaro’s series wrap-up post does a far better job of exploring and summarizing this shift than I’ve managed here:
“Sure there was the rare brewery making weissbier and seasonals like an imperial stout, but the vast majority of what you encountered were pale ales with an amber ale or IPA being exotic. Even though it was only ten years earlier that time feels like eons ago. It has evolved into a completely new environment for craft beer lovers today. The bold, flavourful and hop-forward American-style IPA has become de rigueur and you can find a local craft example of just about every style imaginable […] .”
My favourite example of the shift might be Triple A, for all intents and purposes our new local. Make no mistake, it was the food that drew us here, and the food that’s kept us coming back. The beer selection for the first few months was basic; the most adventurous beer on tap was Mill Street Tankhouse. For the past several months, though, while the menu still contains the PBRs you’d expect in such a lo-fi place, they also carry Kensington FishEYE-PA, Flying Monkeys Stereo Vision, and Amsterdam Big Wheel — none of them exemplary beers, but a definite step-up from their original mass offerings, and a nod to the demand out there for decent, interesting, local beer.
I, for one, welcome our delicious new overlords.
.:.
Photo by Adam Fagen, used under Creative Commons license
Happy Pride & Canada Day Weekend!
A wise man once said, “The best weekends are spent with good friends and family, but are measured in good wine and beer.” Actually, no one’s ever said that. No one famous anyhow, just me. Like, just now. That wise man was me. So yeah, we drank a lot this weekend, is what I’m saying. But we drank well, and with a narrative in mind.
On Friday we escaped work a little early and prepared dinner for our friends Kaylea & Matt. That it was #cdnwine day on Twitter (apparently?) was just a bonus. We grilled steaks from Cumbrae’s and drank lots of Canadian wine (with a few others thrown in for international flavour) and beer (courtesy of K&M) and welcomed three of their friends and actually made use of our balcony for pretty much the first time this year. It’s possible that we ate too much and drank too much and didn’t get enough sleep, but it was worth it. Here’s what went down (our gullets):
Wine
- 13th Street 2011 Pinot Gris
- Malivoire 2007 ‘Moira’ Pinot Noir
- Nyarai 2011 Viognier
- Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
- Shypoke 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
- Versado 2010 Malbec
- Featherstone 2011 Cabernet Franc (thanks Steph!)
Beer
- Beer Academy Hopaweizen
- Beau’s Festivale Plus Sticke Alt
- Goose Island Sofie
- Parallel 49 Gypsy Tears Ruby Ale
The next morning was basically an exercise in how fast we could get a peameal bacon sandwich and giant-ass Fahrenheit coffee into each of us, before sending Matt & Kaylea on their way. Then Nellie and I plopped ourselves on the couch, inexplicably watched the wretched Movie 43 (imdb | rotten tomatoes), and eventually Uber’d up to our friend MLK’s, where CBGBLB were visiting. We enjoyed their backyard while GB made some amazing barbecued ribs. We took along a few more treats for dinner too:
- Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
- 13th Street 2011 ‘Arome’ Essence White
- Tawse 2009 ‘Laidlaw’ Pinot Noir
- Tawse 2010 Wine Club Syrah
It wasn’t a late night, obviously, given the yesterevening’s festivities. We took a quick stroll through the Pride-related mayhem on Church Street on our way home, and were reminded that it’s totally legit for ladies to go topless in Toronto. Bless.
Sunday, much like Saturday evening, was sunnier and warmer than expected, so we found our way to a patio. The Bier Markt patio, to be exact, wherein I drank two ice cold Erdinger weissbeers and earned myself a sunburn. North of us, the Pride Parade snaked its’ way around central Toronto. We could see the tail from our balcony as it formed, even that far north. In honour of the day, we drank a bottle of Daniel Lenko 2008 ‘Chardonngay’ Chardonnay with dinner.
And then what better way to spend Monday — Canada Day — than watching the White House get trashed, a la how the British/Canadian troops did it in 1814, in the risible Die Hard rip-off White House Down (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? Well, I guess we did come up with a better way: Nellie made a meal of shrimp and scallops and corn paired with a Southbrook 2004 ‘Poetica’ Chardonnay (the label for which featured a poem by Martin Tielli, one of my favourite Canadian musicians) and lamb paired with a Stratus 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. Canadian food, Canadian wine, Canadian talent. Delicious patriotism!
.:.
Image by Jen Riehle for Smashing Magazine
Session 101
Okay, it wasn’t actually called that, but I’ve been thinking of it as the third annual Session 99 beer festival…hence 101. Officially, though, it’s just called Session Toronto now.
Since the festival had moved from 99 Sudbury up to Wychwood Barns, taking Uber there and back — especially on such a stinking hot day — was a worthwhile splurge. And when I say stinking hot, I mean hot enough that pretty much everyone was sweaty and various degrees of stinky. I was stupid enough to wear jeans, and spent the whole afternoon yelling, Nick Miller-like, at the sun. Going inside didn’t help as the humidity in there was worse…especially when it came time to make my one and only bathroom stop. It must have been over 50° in there with the humidity, and by 7pm the situation had become something less than sanitary. I vowed never to go back in, no matter how dire the bladder situation became.
Right, with all that out of the way, let’s get to the beer…so much of which was outstanding this year.
- Oast House ‘Hef’ hefeweizen
- Sawdust City ‘Red Rocket’ coffee stout
- Left Field ‘6-4-3’ double IPA
- Great Lakes ‘Thyme Lord’ saison
- Beau’s ‘The Tom Green Beer’ milk stout
- Spearhead ‘Jamaican Fire’ ale
- Wellington SPA
- Lake Of Bays ‘River Walker’ summer ale
- Highlander Brew Co. ‘Lion Grass’ summer ale
- Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel
- Indie Alehouse ‘High Maintenance’ Belgian strong ale
- Central City ‘Red Racer’ IPA
- Flying Monkeys ‘Machete’ oatmeal stout
- Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel (again)
- Left Field 6-4-3 double IPA (again) as we stopped in to buy me a shirt
- Black Oak saison
Also: a killer pulled pork sandwich from Hogtown Smoke, and cupcakes (Spearhead Moroccan brown ale teacupcake, Canadian mancake) from The Sassy Lamb.
We left shortly before closing, and walked around the corner to The Stockyards to pick up dinner. Sadly, it seemed like all the other Session-goers had the same idea, and when we heard the chef yell that it would take at least thirty minutes for any fried chicken orders, we bailed. We picked up some wings on the way home, and ate them with an ice-cold Shawinigan Handshake from Trou du Diable. Beer day for the win.
The key word here is control.
Oh, right. The LCBO might go on strike. Yawn.
Seriously, I don’t see this as a problem at all. Which is probably not what the LCBO wants to hear, since they’re counting on using the threat of a strike on the eve of May 2-4 weekend — Think of all the poor cottagers! And where are frat boys supposed to buy their Laker?! — for leverage. But, living where I live, it’s a minor inconvenience at worst.
I assume that resourceful establishments such as Volo, Beerbistro, Bar Hop, and Wvrst will still have a healthy supply of beer coming in. If I want to bring excellent beer home I can always just pop by Bellwoods or Beer Academy.
And I get that I’m lucky (though I prefer to think of it as being well-prepared) to have >100 bottles of wine at home just waiting to be opened, but — like the rest of Toronto — I’m an hour away from Beamsville and Vineland, where we can buy stellar wine from the likes of Thirty Bench, Rosewood, Hidden Bench, Fielding, Daniel Lenko, Tawse, Kacaba, Megalomaniac, Foreign Affair, and Vineland Estates. People at the east end of the GTA or Ottawa are 2-3 hours from Prince Edward County, where they could enjoy the scenery and stock up on more than enough outstanding wine to get them through an LCBO blackout.
Remember: nature abhors a monopoly. It also drinks local.
.:.
Photo by images_of_money, used under Creative Commons license
“Friends, relations, tribe, nation, common people.”
I spent most of last week at a conference just outside of Phoenix. This was my view each morning:
Not bad, right? But with this trip coming right on the heels of the previous week’s trip to Boston, I was ready to come back to Toronto and have a couple of quiet weekends. Fortunately while I was away the long Toronto winter finally breathed its last. I arrived home Thursday to find runners and cyclists swarming the waterfront, leaves finally breaking out on trees, and the Canadiens playing their first playoff game.
As sure as those are signs of spring, so too is Hot Docs. My travel schedule kept us from seeing our usual five screenings this year, but we did manage to squeak in a few. First, after a bite and a beer at The Oxley followed by a few spectacular glasses of wine (my ’99 Peter Lehmann Shiraz really stood out) at Opus we took in a late screening of Blackfish. I get emotional every time I think about Tilikum or Dawn Brancheau or pretty much any other part of that film so I’m not going to describe it much more here. I’m just going to say this: SeaWorld can go fuck itself. So can MarineLand. So can anyone who goes there.
After our customary pre-Hot Docs stop on the patio at the Victory Café…
…we hit our second screening: Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: The Life And Time Of Tim Hetherington. It was directed by the author Sebastien Junger, with whom Hetherington had shadowed an army platoon to create a book called War and a documentary called Restrepo. Not long after the documentary was nominated for an Oscar Hetherington was killed in Libya covering yet another war zone. Junger made the documentary to explain who Tim was, why he was so possessed with telling stories this way, and sharing more of his brilliance than we were likely to ever see otherwise.
After that we needed another drink. We made our way (slowly, happily) down to Bellwoods Brewery, which we’d shamefully not yet tried despite it being named the 3rd-best new brewery in the world last year. We had several tasty pints and ate bread and salumi and rosemary fries, and sat in the perfect inside-but-almost-outside weather.
Spring!
Is it spelled Thirphy? Or Thurphy?
Well, that was quite a weekend.
(Again.)
For Nellie’s birthday weekend I had decided to surprise her by flying two of her best friends — the Murphy girls — in from Halifax. My plan was well-thought-out and probably would have come off cleanly but for two things: a massive snowstorm wreaked havoc with flights into Toronto on Friday, and Nellie started drinking at Bryden’s with co-workers at noon. So now I was dealing with two forces of nature messing with the plan.
Fortunately I steered Nellie (along with half a dozen of her co-workers) to AAA and enlisted their help with the surprise. It wasn’t easy, but we kept her under control and oblivious while, after an epic travel ordeal, the girls arrived. There was an long, amusing moment when Nellie didn’t recognize one lifelong friend but did recognize the older sister, but that was soon overcome. And then the crying started. And lasted for about ten minutes. We finally got ourselves out of there and trudged through the snow back to our place, where we opened wine and listened to music and watched Nellie run and up and down the hallway yelling “Best! Birthday! Ever!” (vraiment?) The co-workers retired shortly after 1AM and we finally let the weary travellers get some sleep.
We dragged our asses up the next morning, not feeling our best but determined to maximize our day together. Some Fahrenheit coffee helped wake us up, and peameal bacon sandwiches from Carousel settled our tummies. We spent the afternoon catching up, napping, watching The Hunger Games, and scratching cat bellies. Eventually Nellie needed a little more nap action, so the Murphy girls and I walked through the quiet downtown to one of their favourites: Chipotle. After eating one of their near-football-sized burritos we were all worried about our ability to take on our big dinner planned for that night at Richmond Station.
We’d been meaning to try this place since it opened — it’s so close to us, and had been getting great reviews. The four of us met up with two more friends, MLK, and decided on the chef’s menu + wine pairings for the table. And manomanoman, were we glad we did. In retrospect it would have been a grand idea to write down the courses, but I was too busy eating. I skipped the oysters but loved the lobster puffs, paired with an Organized Crime Fumé Blanc. There was a great honking pile of a few different salads, replete with fried head cheese, paired with a fantastic Chablis. Then the main course: an enormous platter of pork…pork in all various forms, including kielbasa flowers (which is what I’m naming my band someday) and wild boar loin…it was epic. It was also paired with a truly stellar Rosewood Riesling. We were all about to pop, so luckily the next course was a small but tasty sampling of cheeses, paired with a Gamay. Finally, dessert: and while we didn’t let the kitchen know it was Nellie’s birthday, it was as if they’d customized it to her. De-constructed carrot cake, de-constructed apple pie, and a lemon mousse-ish thing with a crispy camomile foam. We each ordered a glass of Lailey late harvest Vidal. And then we were well and truly done. It was an outstanding meal, and I see us going back a lot from now on.
This morning was a little easier to face, but we were still full from the night before. Finally, around 10:30, hunger drove us down to Hank’s for breakfast. Then it was time for the Murphy girls to return home, thankfully with clearer skies than those which welcomed them here. We were said to see them go, but the whole weekend’s effort might have been worth it just for this moment.
Happy birthday, Nellie.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 