To Riverdale: A Photo Tour

Today's weather was a ruthless reminder of the trappings of urban living. Downtown was engulfed in a sceptic mix of hot exhaust fumes, white noise, and the body odour of the living multitudes. I picked my way through Chinatown in the mid-day sun, dodging the chive ladies and street hawkers, trying in vain not to get irritated by the seemingly more-gruesome-by-the-day Falun Gong displays. Garbage cooked in the garbage bins along the street, giving off that familiar sickly sweetness; I was convinced my own legs were slowly cooking too in my jeans.

I ended up in Riverdale Park East, the piece of land east of the Don Valley that was once Toronto's own mini-penal colony. Now as the whole wide universe knows (or Torontonians tend to think), it is a piece of prime park land bordering one of Toronto's most prettified upper-middle class bastions, whose ethos is but a faint echo of its working class past. Didn't Paul Martin buy into neighbourhood in the early 2000's? Or so I thought I had read from Toronto Life a couple of years ago. In any case, the popularity of North Riverdale (north of Gerrard) was such that poor cousin South Riverdale (Toronto's other Chinatown) was able to cash in on the good press. I'm sure more than a few eyebrows were raised this side of Gerrard.

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Riverdale (and the whole East End in general) to me has always had this sort of tangibility to it . I remember way back one year in September when my mother and I went to the Taste of Danforth. A few minor mishaps and a couple of wrong turns later we found ourselves there at the very end of the festivities (and food), stared at the few remaining bereft-looking corn cobs, and decided to just walk around. The walk took us to Broadview Ave. just when the lights were coming on--white, cold, furtive lights beckoning from the million windows of downtown skyscrapers acorss the valley, and on our side, fuzzy yellow beams streaming out of solid, squat-looking Victorians and Edwardians, more grimey-looking than I (a suburbanite then) was used to.

When Toronto takes a momentary respite from its mad dash towards being the ideal place of post-industrial cool, and re-appraises its working-class roots and mythology, this is the place it will turn to. In West Queen West and Little Italy there are hipsters galore and the latest drama in the rise and fall of indie bands, but in Riverdale there are weathered but solid two-storey houses, streetcars clunking by, and tall maple trees instead; nothing but decent lives, quiet industry and Anglo-Saxon rectitude, which, willy-nilly, pervades our history.

Stop, breathe, take stock--we can't and shouldn't walk away from history--and that's why I'm here.

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Not suprisingly, few were out in this hot and muggy day. Riverdale Park East to many downtownites is a forgotten place, and happily so. On my admittedly few trips there I'd never seen more than 10 people on the gigantic grassy slope, though many families did walk by on their way to the pool, a sudden flurry of sandals on concrete, garish swimwear, bronze flesh, white teeth, and childish giggles lingering in the distance.

Tanning on a muggy day like this definitely sounded better on paper. I fidgeted uncomfortably as the farawy cityscape simmered in the toxic brew.


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At five o'clock I packed up my stuff and headed down Broadview, intent on crossing the DVP on Gerrard. Chinatown East at Broadview and Gerrard had the same autumnal air that every dying neighbourhood seems to be infected with; not particularly interested in witnessing squalor and decay, I quickly turned on Gerrard towards the west, across that sad parody of a highway, the Don Valley Parking lot.

At Gerrard and Broadview was the Riverdale Public Library, whose front steps many able-bodied yet unproductive men had for some inexplicable reason taken a liking to. A few Chinese men in their 40s squatted on the garden terrace and gawked at me as I walked by.

Also at that intersection was the Don Jail. While taking this picture an elderly east end-type (read: forlorn-looking) named Floyd approached me. We were very happy to share with each other our views on Walkerton, world religions, and the relative merit of Toronto-area senior homes.

And I did walk past the infamous Regent Park. Beer bottles littered across the lawn was a in-your-face reminder of poverty and the abject failure of 1950s social engineering. The vast expanses of trees did look enticing enough, and vaguely recalled sylvan Stuyvesant Town. But alas, the mis-matched curtains in the windows pulled me back into reality, and reminded me that being poor was not quaint afterall.

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Half an hour of trekking landed me in the heart of hip Cabbagetown. I checked into Jet Fuel, reputedly the best coffee shop in the city. The barista smiled at me until I asked for a drinks menu--"Do we look uncool enough to carry menus?" she seemed to ask. A curt look, and an espresso landed angrily on the counter; we are back in the familiar playground of the young and the hip.

All this Riverdale expedition has managed to do was to deepen my appreciation for my expensive, albeit heavenly, espresso fixes.

THE END

When Culture Jamming Goes Wrong

Oh-so-crude, and oh-so-funny:

fuckthiswebsite.com

Oh the Trappings of Online Identity

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The Trashy Side of Me Couldn't Resist

But I felt like I had to post this entry from urbandictionary.com

azn

-Asians (mainly from California) who shame their race by bleaching their hair blonde and trying to develop the personality of a 'ghetto' negro. Ironically, these azn's do nerdy things such as hang out in arcades playing Tekken and DDR, but they still uphold their 'ghetto' personna online in chat rooms and blogs/xanga accounts.

azn: look, my hair is blonde
white guy: you're not white

azn: yO nIgUh?
black guy: you ain't black

azn: got rice?
asian guy: you're not asian

The Chronicle of a Shitty Day

I woke up at ten in the morning, noticing the conspicuous absence of the hot fuzzy sunlight that usually pours into my east-facing bedroom window by this time in the morning. There were funny cloud formations in the sky: yet another leaden day. I grunted, flipped listlessly through a few pages of the slightly trashy Foreign Babes in Beijing, and went back to sleep, only to wake up at one in the afternoon, head throbbing, nauseaus and hung-over with sleep.

The flip side of sweet languor is obtuseness.

I stared unseeingly out of the window while lying on my back, clouds inching across the sky and rain drops rattling the window. There was (a lot of) work to be done and no motivation to do it; I felt really lonely; by my pillow was Foreign Babes in Beijing and its ludicrous cover--I couldn't even get up, let alone face the day.

I finally dragged myself out of bed at three in the afternoon and arranged a coffee date with a friend, at no place other than the Chinatown Starbucks. Sad how this unspectacular event was the highlight of my day. We people-watched, chatted about how Jude Law and Sienna Miller made an appearance at the humble store my friend worked at; I was informed that I tend to unconsciously make inappropriate jokes in the presence of girls.

The rain had let up by the time I was walking back. A weird diffused light descended upon the streets of downtown Toronto, investing the scene with a ugly luridity--the wet, gritty alleys, the overgrown, weedy gardens, and the chain-link fences--stuff I've walked by a million times but only somehow choose to see on occassions like this. I chuckled at myself.

Well, everyone gets to be ridiculous once in a while. Might as well get it over with on a Sunday.

I suddenly want a facebook account.

Noteworthy, or Just Worthy of My Note: A Review of 6 Movies

I caved into Match Point just about when everybody around me had seen it. That I would be so willing to bypass a Woody Allen movie was due in part to the disappointment I had with his later films, and also in no small part to the good folks at NOW magazine, who panned the film.

Points off for NOW, because actually watching the film was a small delight. Moving from his familiar milieu of Upper Westside Jewish intelligensia to the refinement of London's high society gave fresh impetus to the film's theme of luck and questioning of the notion of justice. The story is familiar enough: poor Irish boy from the province (Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys Myer) accidentally broke into Waspy high society and stole the heart of rich heiress Chloe Hewett(a rather insipid performance by Emily Mortimer); everybody fell in love with the young, hardworking, upwardly mobile Chris, but he himself couldn't stay settled but accidentally knocked up a drifting American actress Nola Rice(Scarlett, who else?), who, alas, was once due to marry into the Hewett family herself.

As the film itself was not shy to point out, the story had a lot to say about luck contrary to society's prevalent teachings about hard work. Luck saw to it that Chris Wilton would achieve the kind of lifestyle that, had he relied on hard work alone, he would have never attained; luck also set colliding trajectories for Nola and Chris.

The extent to which the plot stretched luck required a small suspension of belief (some are understandably unhappy about it); another charge levelled against this film--and I agree with it--is that most of the supporting characters were mere caricatures. The rich Hewett family seemed like an assembly of rich people stereotypes: the insipid, good-natured daughter Chloe, the slightly irreverrent and langourous son Tom, the measured and reserved father, and the anal-retentive bitchy snob of a mother. Well, it hardly needs to be said, but not all rich Waspy matrons have to a bitch and have names like Eleanor.

Where the film truly gets points though is Chris Wilton's character and the palpable chemistry between him and Scarlett's Nola Rice. Chris Wilton is a poser: in an early scene he was filmed reading Crime and Punishment (for self-enrichment), but gave up midway and started reading the Oxford Companion to Crime and Punishment instead. His purported love of culture was his passport into high society, which he met with a latent inferiority complex and a faint sulkiness. All this was readily understood by Nola, herself an outsider, whose attitude towards Chris's attempt was in equal measure sympathetic, amused, and slightly disdainful.

This nuanced chemistry was most evident when Chris and Nola sat in a bar after a chance meeting, bonding over their mutual outsider status. Then all of a sudden Nola lost her nuanced touch and became this psychotic and possessive bitch. Why this was the case I can't say, but I suspect it was bad acting on Scarlett Johanssan's part (gasp!!) But Chris's rags-to-riches story was sufficient to drive the story along, his evolving relationship with money, power, and his own desires closely paralleled by our identification with him, lending plausibility to his climactic actions.

It may be an old story, but it surely worked. I found myself much more satisfied in the end than at the end of Crime and Misdemeanor, a similar story but more contrived in comparison to Match Point.

I can't say much about the much-hyped London setting; that "touch" Woody Allen has with New York is conspicuously missing in this movie. Also gone are the quips and witty one-liners. I miss these two things: that spectacular opening sequence to Manhattan and his famous witticism and dissection of neurosis in Annie Hall. Match Point can't match the height of those two movies, and I find the philosophy of it a bit trite. But if only for telling a good story, Match Point still marks a sort of return to form for Woody Allen.

And finally, Scarlett Johanssan was a disappointment. Loud and annoying, she was hardly the femme fatale she was supposed to be. Seduction works when it is (or at least appears) effortless, not when she struts around wearing too much make up and uttering lines like "you are playing a very aggressive game".

And while on that subject, Woody Allen needs to go back to film school to study directing more convincing sex scenes.

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I went into A Scanner Darkly with a free ticket, which probably explains why I liked it more than I otherwise would--instead of caving to my urge to yell "Shut the fuck up" when the characters talked too much, I just sat back and reminded myself that I wasn't paying for this.

And plenty of that I did. This Linklater film was, in the same vein as Waking Life and Before Sunset, talky, and a lot of the conversations were no more than exchanges between stoners, one of them played by Keanu Reeves, an undercover agent investigating a brain-damaging superdrug called substance D as the drug flooded the country in a functioning but dystopic near-future. As he was forced to take the drug and the damage began to take effect, he found himself gradually assuming the identity of the very person he was investigating.

This was the founding premise of the main theme of identity. It was further complicated by the availability of "scramble suits"--protective clothing that completely disguises one's identity. Agents were required to wear them for security, and of course, secrets lurked beneath these sinister looking contraptions.

The scramble suits nicely reflected the air of paranoia in the Orange County of near-future: the film's greatest success was creating muted fear within the decaying world at large and the quiet horror of one man's private hell as he was eaten away by brain damage and drug-induced hallucinations.

But the film's attempt at being thought-provoking never really took off from there but was instead undercut by its persistent attempt at not-so-subtle current commentary. The government appeared so sinister with all of its survallence activities, that you almost expected a conspiracy from the outset; and when the conspiracy was revealed, all it got from me was an indifferent shrug.

The use of rotoscope animation was useful for a) creating the kind of hallucination-ridden world seen through the eyes of drug addicts ("are those sofas moving or is it just me?") and b) disguising Keanu Reeves's bad acting skills.

Too self-conscious and bent on becoming an instant cult-classic, a Scanner Darkly is bound to become an instant cult-classic among high school art majors.

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I've been getting my fill of CGI-ladden films lately: Superman Returns, X-men, and Pirates of the Caribean. All three were surprisingly entertaining, although regrettably none of them had enough things being blown up. I mean, that's what they are for, right? And what's with Brandon Routh's face?

Also saw Devil Wears Prada; trivial frivolous fun.

A Healthy Dose of Sentimentality

Visiting these forlorn and stagnant pages of my blog has been a difficult exercise lately. My sincerest apologies to my loyal readership, for whom logging into these pages is probably just as difficult.

I hate to come across as a poser--although this will most definitely make me one--but the impetus for committing anything on this blog really only presents itself in one of my contemplative moments, when vague notions and half-formed jokes begin to take a more concrete forms; these "moments", among others, include:

a) me taking a long contemplative walk late at night, staring vacantly at the streetscape while looking pretty;

b) me taking my breakfast at an empty diner early in the morning, staring vacantly out of the window while looking pretty;

c) me taking the streetcar, staring vacantly out of the streetcar window while looking pretty.

And the sad thing about my summer so far is that there haven't been enough of these moments that lend themselves to poetry; hence the sparse update.

Well, at least you can't accuse me of not living introspectively.

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So the long and short of my life's story at this moment is that I'm working an un-inspring job (although the title elicits a few "wows" before they find out my exact job description), taking an art class, and just getting generally comfortable with my routines. Terribly unexciting, and a far cry from my grandiose plans at the beginning of the summer.

I did get to indulge in my cinephilia, and actually meet some pretty splendid people. Soloman deserves a special mention if only for the truly bizzarre story of how we met and the hilarity that ensued.

And I threw a dinner party last night on a whim: curry, creamy leek and potato stew, and various grilled goodies, washed down with cheap wine; a small but happy and lively gathering.

I suspect this is what life would be like in ten years' time: routines after routines, and the occasional (literal and figurative) dinner parties; truth be told, I don't exactly mind it. (ha, yesterday I just gave a speech on how I hate people who lead white-bread, unintrospective lives, but under the influence of alcohol of course) There is a satisfying sense of down-to-earth everyday-ness to it, and frankly, what beats having good friends to take care of and be generous to?

Wow, that was totally a Life Network moment.