Urban Foibles: Ghost World

Just as I started a campaign of virulent hatred against the pigeons of Nathan Philip Square, I saw these two having a moment in the setting sun.

I hate doing or saying anything about this, and hate even more what this might say about our baser instincts, but hating on something as a collective act of solidarity often bring people closer together than anything else might.

I was on the crowded west bound platform of Bloor Station today, standing really close to a stock type of downtown westend -- black blazer, ironic cap, girl-jeans-worn-by-a-guy, the works -- as uncomfortably as I do when I have to stand that close to anyone, let alone a walking cliche of a human being. The train arrived, doors popped open; we rushed in and settled across from each other, which was when I caught a whif of library musk. I turned around, and saw an elderly man with a beret, reading, or rather liberally sniffing, a yellowing pocket-sized romance, his porous nose forcing its way into the binding.

Bizarre things seem to happen a lot around me, and in any case I'm often the only one who finds it funny. I jerked my head the other way, came face to face to a stern woman in her 50s, and played contortionist gymnastics with my facial muscles as I tried really hard to pretend that nothing was happening and I was not crazy. Then I noticed the westender with a smirk on his face, gazing through his aviators (pretty atrocious eh?) at the old man; then glancing in my direction, his faint suggestion of a smile broke into something altogether more tangible.

Thus is how we bonded for a moment, two people unlikely to have liked each other and to like each other in the future, accomplices in hatred and contempt; I was Thora Birch to his ScarJo. Meanwhile the old man sniffed on, unaware of his role in this meaningful moment.

Urban Foibles: Cannibalism Next Door

Toronto, you've given me more and more reasons to love you.

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Those who think that Toronto is merely a more vanilla New York City--a 110% correct assessment--should nevertheless heed this human interest story from the Star, the sheer grotesqueness of which earned it the top spot on the website's GTA page. Wincing and feigning disgust aside, more than a few of us are secretly elated that Toronto is finally breeding its own crop of passive-agressive psychos par excellence, instead of the much more mundane variety that haunts Spadina and Bloor in search of people willing to buy his dreamcatchers. It's a rite of passage for this young city of ours, no?

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This story also confirms my long-held suspicion that cannibalistic pigeons are a greater threat to North American civilization than Iranian nukes or governmental ineptitude. The Mad Pigeon Disease shall no longer be the bane of the Land of Horse Manure, but will instead strike the heart of civilization, Eaton Centre.

Urban Foibles: the Heartbreak Club

I really ought to have something more intelligent to say than this, after almost two months of saying anything at all. But one of the most fascinating things that happened in the life of the city in the past month is--no, not 48 Abell (who has the energy any more)--this.

The launching of kizmeet is an all-too-predictable step towards the coming of the great internet-reality interface, when everyone (and I mean every single cellphone-camera-using, facebook-whoring human being) gets to live out his/her own Truman Show.

This leaves the "missed connections" page of Craigslist kinda dejected looking: a place past its prime, the internet equivalent of that tired-looking Chinese restaurant with stern waitors and dead lobsters in the water tank. And appropriately enough, I found this post(paraphrased):

"W4M--I saw you at Wong's Buffet in Brampton. You were the guy in khaki pants and white sneakers eating alone in the corner. We shared a few laughs at the steam table waiting for the fried rice. I was with family & couldn't ask for your number."

Steam tables, formica countertop, bad chinese food, Chervolet in the windswept parking lot--if Brampton was the antebellum South then Bloor St. might as well be my own Mason-Dixie line. But reading it still felt kind of cute. What do you call this? The universality of experience? Awkward girl gazes longingly at the awkward guy, fried rice in hand--aww, the tantalizing tactility of the moment.

Urban Foibles (1)

While waiting for the lights to turn at College and Spadina today I all of a sudden became aware of the heady smell of burning weed wafting up my nostrils. Normally this wouldn't even warrant a turn of the head, but the smell was so strong that it smelt like someone was smoking up right under my nose--no--it smelt like I was the one smoking up.

Upwind was a curious-looking trio: 60-something 6' giantess with tied-back essex-girl hairdo in a dirty-biege puff jacket, and shrunken-faced 5'5'' hubby with walking cane, happily puffing away, glassy-eyed and dreaming of hippiedom past. Under their noses was a 8-year-old kid, semi-neatly dressed, busy as all 8-year-olds are with Biff or Tommy or whoever their imaginary friend happens to be.

I felt bad for the kid; really I did. I kinda wished for his sake that the old couple had been hippies who sold out as opposed to hippies who never did and ended up having to smoke up at College and Spadina in those dreadful clothes of theirs.

At least the kid will turn out to be interesting, I hope.