Click the photo to see a larger version.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Check out the article at Global Nerdy for more details.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: July 4, 1776 - 2008

When in the course of human events the government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the Right of the People to alter it and demand restoration of those Constitutional Principles that have so long assured their Liberty, Safety, and Happiness. Therefore, on the anniversary of our Independence, we offer this new declaration for our times.

The history of this president is one of arbitrary usurpations of power, the effect of which is to establish tyranny through false promises of greater security.

He has created a multitude of secret programs and sent swarms of petty officers to spy on Americans in a misguided effort to combat foreign terrorism. He has invested these agents with sweeping new powers to monitor our conversations and ransack our personal papers and effects without judicial supervision or any reason to believe — as the Constitution requires — that a crime has been committed.

He has further claimed the power to disregard legislation that Congress has passed.

He has suspended the laws and treaties against torture, authorized the kidnapping of mere suspects, and transported hundreds of prisoners beyond seas so that no independent judiciary could question the legality of their mistreatment.

He and his supporters in Congress have granted amnesty to the officials who unleashed torture and humiliation upon helpless prisoners, to the disgrace of our nation.

He has denied these prisoners access to attorneys, family, and friends and has claimed the right to try them before military tribunals specifically designed to disregard the most basic principles of law.

He has imprisoned thousands of lawful immigrants for months without charges, under brutal conditions, until his agents, rather than independent courts, decide that they posed no threat.

He has wrapped his usurpations of power and his deprivations of liberty in thick cloaks of secrecy, thereby showing contempt for the rule of law and the proper functions of Congress, the courts, and the press.

At every stage of these oppressions we have sought redress, but our petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

We, therefore, resolve to resist these usurpations by all lawful means at our disposal. We insist that the powers of our national government be shared by all branches of that government and not concentrated in one alone. And we call upon Congress, the courts, and the press to reassert their constitutional functions and restore the promise that is America.

To these ends, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

In honour of the day as well as one of the best things about America, the First Amendment, here’s a great feature off one of the American Dad DVDs — the featurette on the show’s political humour:

There’ve been three articles in the series so far:

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel
3. Boozin’ in Accordion City

When I visit a city that’s new to me, I try to get a sense of “the lay of the land”. What sort of areas are around where I’m staying? Which zones come alive at what times of the day? If I started walking in this direction, what sort of neighbourhood would I end up in? Where can I see some interesting stuff, and where will I end up running into something I could easily get at home? These are the sorts of questions that I’ll try to answer for Toronto in these “Lay of the Land” articles. In this article, I’ll look at what’s within a couple of blocks of the conference hotel.

What’s Near the Conference Hotel?

The map below covers the area that’s within about a ten-minute walk of RubyFringe’s conference hotel, the Metropolitan Toronto. The Metropolitan is represented by the red marker with the letter “A” (it’s very Hester Prynne, isnt it?). I’ve added some annotations to give you a general idea of the sorts of neighbourhoods that surround the Metropolitan.

A City of Neighbourhoods, A Pocket of Boring

Accordion City can best be described as a city of neighbourhoods put together like a patchwork quilt, each patch having its own character and offerings. This is good news: it makes life pretty interesting for the locals, and it should be doubly so if you’re visiting.

There’s bad news, I’m afraid: the neighbourhood in which the Metropolitan is located is a pocket of boring. How boring? So boring that this is the most interesting view on the street where the hotel is located:

The curved backside of New City Hall, as seen from a few paces south of the hotel.

Yup, the immediate area is that boring.

It’s a zone of nondescript office and hospital buildings surrounding Dundas Street, which used to be downtown Chinatown’s main drag back in the 1970s when I was a slip of a lad.

(I say downtown Chinatown because we’ve got three Chinatowns here. I’ll elaborate in a later article.)

Downtown Chinatown moved west towards Spadina Avenue, and the offices rushed in to fill the void. There are still remnants of the old Chinatown that still dot this part of Dundas, but for the real Chinatown action — the restaurants, the shops, the lively street stalls that will gladly sell you a big-ass, smelly-as-ass durian, the “holy crap, Blade Runner came true” Chinatown, you’ll have to walk about ten minutes westward.

The Metropolitan Hotel and Chinese Food

Lai Wah Heen Restaurant.

The Metropolitan Hotel is the biggest testament to the fact that the area was once the heart of downtown Chinatown. Most hotels in North America have a primary restaurant that serves your generic “North American” cuisine; the Metropolitan’s all about the Chinese food. Their main dining room, Lai Wah Heen, is a Chinese restaurant that serves some very good food — so good that it’s one of the few hotel restaurants where you’ll see at least as many locals as guests. I’ve been to a Chinese wedding reception in this hotel and it was some of the best wedding reception food I’ve tasted. I’m looking forward to the dim sum conference lunch scheduled for Sunday, July 20th.

Across the street from the Metropolitan is a building that looks like a hotel, but missing the hotel markings. That’s because it used to be the Colonnade Hotel, which used to be the Chinese hotel until the Metropolitan took over (it’s deVilla family tradition to have Chinese food for our wedding rehearsal dinners, and my sister’s was there). It’s now a University of Toronto student residence.

Just East of the Hotel - Yonge and Dundas: The Seething Pit of the Main Drag

Yonge Street, looking north towards the corner of Yonge and Dundas.

Yonge Street (pronounced “young”) is the city’s main north-south street; it divides Accordion City into its east and west halves. The corner of Yonge and Dundas — a very short walk east of the Metropolitan — is pretty much in the geographic centre of the downtown core. You should think of it as the local equivalent of New York City’s Times Square: major retail shopping, “grey market” electronics stores, billboards and lights, bored teenagers, tourists and pizza, pizza, pizza.

The Eaton Centre, as seen from across the street.

I’ve been to nerd conferences where I’ve wished that there was a computer store handy because I needed something like a cable or a USB key. That’s not going to be a problem at RubyFringe, as there’s both a Best Buy on the southwest corner of Yonge and Dundas and a Future Shop (a Canadian electronics/computer big-box store) on the northeast corner.

(There’s a far more interesting electronics store — Active Surplus — not too far from the hotel. I’ll cover it in a later article.)

If you go south on Yonge, you’ll hit the Eaton Centre, the major downtown shopping mall. It’s got the sort of shops you’d expect at a mall; the only surprise for American visitors is that Sears in Canada isn’t as ghetto as it is in the U.S. (that’s because Sears in Canada took over the Eaton’s chain of department stores after they went under).

Interior of the Eaton Centre.

It’s tempting to dismiss the Eaton Centre as just another shopping mall, but for a lot of Torontonians, it’s also one of the most-used and useful pedestrian routes in town. Spanning the distance between two subway stations on Toronto’s busiest line, the mall remains open even after its stores are closed (it closes when the subway closes), making it effectively a covered sidewalk for Yonge Street between Dundas and Queen Streets. (Urban planning nerds should see this article for more.)

Just South of the Hotel: Nathan Phillips Square: Wasn’t it Blown Up in Resident Evil 2?

Toronto’s City Hall.

You may have seen Toronto’s City Hall in Resident Evil 2, or perhaps you caught a glimpse of it in either the original series or Next Generation version of Star Trek. It’s architect Viljo Revell’s modernist masterpiece and one of the more distinctive features of our city. It’s worth the short walk over from the hotel, and if you’re into taking pictures, it makes a pretty good subject.

If you walk into City Hall’s lobby and turn to the right, you’ll see this:

It’s a wall mural made of thousands of nails. There’s a local tradition: take a penny and drop it into the mural, among the larger nails on the left or right side of the mural. It’s descend, pachinko-like, making a musical noise along the way. Here’s a video:

Just North of the Hotel: Nothing, Really

Well, I wouldn’t say nothing — there are a number of hospital buildings, including some world-class institutions of healing like “Sick Kids” (a.k.a. the Hospital for Sick Children, where Pablum was invented) and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre.

The atrium at Sick Kids.

If you’re an architecture nerd, you might find a visit to the atrium of Sick Kids worth a visit — it’s so bright and airy that it’s easy to forget that you’re in a hospital. Having said that, my guess is that the last place you want to end up during your visit to Toronto is a hospital.

Toronto Bus Terminal.

The other place just north of the hotel is the Toronto Bus Terminal. It’s nowhere near as scuzzy as a lot of other big city bus terminals, but the usual parade of off-their-rockers and off-their-meds are often milling about.

Just this evening, while the Ginger Ninja and I were walking past the station, a large woman in a motorized wheelchair started a conversation with us.

“I gotta go to the hospital tomorrow,” she said, as she took a sip from her large frappucino. “I got the diabetes.”

“Sorry to hear that,” we said.

“It’s not funny! I’m goin’ fuckin’ blind from the goddamn diabetes!” She took another sip and poured on the speed, disappearing down the street to stew in her own juices, which I assume are made of high-fructose corn syrup and bad life choices.

There are a couple of conveniences to the north: a Starbucks and a convenience store, both at the corner of Dundas and Elizabeth, a block away from the hotel.

Next Time…

I’ll cover what’s west of the hotel, which is where things get interesting. For starters, there’s this:

OCAD’s Sharp Centre Building.

The “Gummi Lighthouses” post is still getting a lot of pageviews for this blog, and from all sorts of places I’d never expect to link to me. This current influx of readers is coming from, of all places, talk radio host Neal “Mouth of the South” Boortz’ site.

I am only familiar with Mr. Boortz in passing. Here’s a quick summary of Boortz from Wikipedia:

A registered member of the Libertarian Party, Boortz touches on many controversial topics. He supports eliminating the war on drugs, lowering taxes, and shrinking the size of government, while disagreeing with the Libertarian Party platform by supporting incremental tax reform, the war in Iraq, and opposing unrestricted immigration, although he opposes illegal immigration. Like most libertarians, Boortz has sided with liberals on some social issues, with limitations, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and civil liberties, while siding with fiscal conservatives on advocating less government spending and decreasing corporate regulation. On The Neal Boortz Show, he has criticized politicians, Muslim extremism, the homeless, government schools, liberals, smokers, the obese, welfare recipients, and people who drive at or below the speed limit. On air, Boortz refers to himself an “equal opportunity offender”.

Well, I’m glad that the Accordion Guy blog has something for everyone, no matter where you might be on the political spectrum. Welcome, Boortz fans!

Last weekend, the Ginger Ninja and I went to Cincinnati to attend a wedding. Cincinnati was her home for just under a year when she took her first job there; for me, its state, Ohio, is my ancestral home state (I have blond-haired, blue-eyed blood relatives in Dayton).

Mustang!

The wedding was in an area outside the city, so a car rental was necessary. We’d booked a mid-sized car at Avis, and when we arrived at their rental lot, they offered some upgrades.

“You’re booked for a mid-size,” said the rep behind the counter. “Would you like an upgrade? Maybe an SUV?”

“No thanks,” we said.

“For four dollars extra per day, we can put you in a Mustang…”

I hit Wendy with my best “puppy-dog eyes” look.

“What the hell, let’s take the Mustang!” she said.

Upon entering the car, I dialed up a classic rock station, said “Let’s hit the fuckin’ road!” in my best Dennis Hopper voice and punched it onto the Kentucky roads (while Cincinnati is in Ohio, its airport is in Kentucky.)

The ‘Stang is a pretty sweet ride with solid handling and plenty of power on tap. My muscle car driving has been relegated to Grand Theft Auto IV; it was pretty nice to be behind the wheel of the real thing. Now if I had an SMG and some chumps who needed some perforating…

The only way the experience could’ve been improved would be if I’d had a CD of Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hotrod to put into the player.

Why Couldn’t They Just Have Called It “Fifteenth Bank”?

Actually, it has that name because it’s the result of merging the Third National Bank and the Fifth National Bank. They didn’t go with “Third Fifth Bank” because of the reference to alcohol, which wouldn’t have been popular at the time — prohibitionist ideas were taking hold back then. (The Straight Dope has more about the bank’s name.)

Good Hygiene Advice

This is a sign in the bathroom at the Potbelly Sandwich Works near Fountain Square. They make a tasty sandwich, and provided us with the last real vegetables we had until the wedding.

The Montgomery Inn

Wendy’s parents, who were also there for the wedding, took us out to dinner at the Montgomery Inn, and we all ate the restaurant specialty: ribs. I had the ribs and pork chop combo, which was pig-licious!

American Grocery Stores are Infinitely Fascinating

We had to stop at a grocery store to pick up some distilled water (grumble grumble CPAP grumble). Luckily, we had a GPS, and it led us to Kroger.

While there are grocery stores all over the world with great selections, there is nothing quite like an American grocery store. We may have choices, but when it comes to processed food, our neighbour to the south has mega-choices. For starters, who knew that there were so many types of cheese crackers? Who knew that there were so many types of Cheez-It brand crackers?

Old Yeller…Dog Food?

Here’s something else I found at Kroger:

Really? Old Yeller brand dog food? Old Yeller chunk style dog food?

A little Googling led me to Kroger’s news release about the stuff:

Inspired by one of the most beloved movie classics of all time, The Kroger Co. today introduced Disney’s Old Yeller, a chunk style dog food now available at more than 2,500 stores around the country.
…
Released in 1957, Walt Disney’s Old Yeller was the quintessential tale of a boy’s love for his dog. Set amid the landscape of 1860s Texas, a young boy named Travis wants nothing to do with the lop-eared stray. But Old Yeller quickly proves himself a loyal friend, protecting the family and saving Travis’ life. They soon become inseparable pals, sharing joyous experiences and learning valuable lessons about growing up.

I’m a dog lover and had two dogs as a teenager, but when it comes to Old Yeller, it’s not the “boy and his dog” bonding that sticks out in my mind. It’s the ending, where Travis has to shoot his beloved dog because he gets rabies (or, as they say in the movie, “hydrophoby”).

When most people think of Old Yeller, it’s something like this clip, titled Old Yeller in Five Seconds:

It’s a cultural meme that’s found its way into a lot of comedy routines, including this one by the Kids in the Hall:

…and this follow-up sketch:

I’ll leave the final word on Old Yeller Dog Food to James Norton at Flak Magazine.

Fast Food Heaven

Ooh! White Castle! The holiest of holies!

Cincinnati is supposedly famous for chili, but I have yet to meet anyone who likes it:

“Three-way” in Cincinnati does not means the same thing as “three-way” does here in Accordion City [safe for work], believe you me, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more…

Waffle House! Whoo!

After all these years, I finally got eat at Waffle House!

I had the All-Star Breakfast: two eggs, two sausage patties, toast, biscuits smothered in sausage gravy, all washed down with a chocolate milk. I’d better go hit the gym.

Cracker Barrel! Double Whoo!

Cracker Barrel is a great place for down-home cookin’. You have to respect a place that lists macaroni and cheese as a vegetable (Mama Dip’s in Chapel Hill does the same thing).

They’ve got lots of rocking chairs on their porch:

Here’s a photo of what I had for dinner:

From left to right, that’s: hash brown casserole, biscuits, chicken and dumplings, deep-fried breaded okra and turnip greens. Wendy had meat loaf with mac and cheese as one of her vegetables. The meal should come with a free defibrillator.

One Last Mustang Picture

Here I am with the ‘Stang after the wedding, wearing my barong (in fact, it’s the barong I wore at my wedding). No, it wasn’t a Filipino wedding — it was a Jewish one, in fact — but it’s light and cool, making it perfect formal wear for hot, muggy weather.

Compare these actual photos with the doctored photos shown on FOX News:

Here’s the clip in which the doctored photos were used:

It’s an election year, so expect more desperate and childish stunts like this from FOX News over the next few months.

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I don’t think that there’s a variant in which the groom pushes the bride off the cake to her bloody demise, as such a cake would at the very least be limiting to one’s future social life.

b5media, where I hold the position of Nerd Wrangler, has the #5 position on TechVibes’ Start-Up Index Canada for July 2008.

Here are the top ten entries in the Index:

Greg Andrews has been compiling Start-Up Index lists at the tech news site TechVibes for the past half year for nine cities and regions in Canada, including Accordion City. They rank companies not on profit or market share, but on much easier to collect data: web traffic to their sites, based on data from Alexa and Compete. It’s not the best measure of the performance of a company, but it might be a decent indicator of mindshare. The Start-Up Index Canada for July 2008 is his first such index compiled for Canada as a whole.

To qualify for inclusion on the list, a company has to meet the following criteria:

• Located in Canada
• Less than 5 years old
• Not a public company
• Is a tech company; either hardware, software, web app/service, or mobile

Congrats to my fellow coworkers and b5 bloggers!

Bonus Useless Data

If you were to treat The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century as a startup, its average score, based on its Alexa ranking of 54,924 and Compete ranking of 48770, would put it in 21st place on the Start-Up Canada Index.

From January 1st, 2008 to June 30th, 2008, this blog has had:

• 1.4 million page loads
• 1.2 million unique page views
• 1 million first-time readers
• Over 63,000 returning readers

My thanks to all of you! I’ll keep blogging if you keep reading.

Meghan Warby, who blogs at 2nd Floor Living Without a Yard and who works for PR firm Hill and Knowlton, invited some Toronto bloggers to the Air Canada Centre last Thursday to take part in Brew 2.0. It was an event hosted by Molson where they would showcase their beers and introduce a new brew in their lineup. I was among those Toronto bloggers invited, and not being the type of person to turn down an invitation for free beer, I accepted the invitation and brought the Ginger Ninja along as a fellow beer aficionado and my guest.

Among the other bloggers invited were Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan, Alexa Clark, Eden “Bargainista” Spodek and my coworker Rachel “Drinks After Dark” Segal (be sure to catch Rachel’s review of the event, titled A Lesson In Beer: Brew 2.0).

Introductions

We were introduced to:

• Brewmeisters Ian Douglass and Bryan Eagan
• Draught Prophets‘ beer-pouring expert Steve Reilly
• Adam Moffat, Manager of Marketing and Brand Public Relations for Molson

We were also introduced to some of the ingredients that went into Molson’s beers, such as the hops, which we were invited to smell and taste:

This was followed by quick a primer on beer, which included this family tree:

I was eager to sample Rickard’s White, which I’d never tried before. It’s a pretty nice white beer in the same vein as Hoegaarden’s. It has a creamier mouth feel than Hoegaarden, which I like, but Hoegaarden edges it out slightly in taste. Still, it’s probably easier to come by, and by following the recommendation of tossing in a slice of orange puts its flavour back in Hoegaarden’s league. I put away a couple of pints of the stuff before the tasting began.

Beer-Food Pairings

Once the introductions were complete, it was time for the main event, the beer-food pairings. While a lot of people are now familiar with the idea of pairing wines with foods whose flavours complement them, the idea of pairing food with complementary foods is still a new one to many. In this session, we were presented with a number of dishes matched with cocktail tumblers filled with matching beers. Since it was around dinnertime, I was really looking forward to this part of the evening.

Pairing 1: Molson Canadian and Chicken Skewers

The first food the waiters brought from the kitchen were these chicken skewers:

They were paired with Molson’s flagship beer, Molson Canadian.

(American readers who started drinking in the 1980s may think of Molson Golden as the flagship beer, since that’s what Molson promoted most in the U.S. for a long time. These days, they seem to be promoting Canadian as their primary beer in the U.S. as well.)

Canadian is a pretty standard “macro” beer, the sort of thing that just about every bar will carry. If you’re American, it’s about as common and findable in Canada as Bud or Miller Genuine Draft in the U.S.. I’d definitely pick Canadian over Bud and most U.S. “macro” beers any day.

Canadian is a pretty straightforward beer that I normally associate with burgers, wings and fries in sports bars that only carry macros. It works pretty well with a nice simple dish like the chicken skewers.

Pairing 2: Coors Light and Sliders

“Sliders” isn’t a term that’s in popular use here in Canada. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s used to refer to mini-hamburgers. The White Castle chain uses the term a lot.

These sliders are what we Canadians call “banquet burgers” — for my American readers, that’s just shorthand for burgers with bacon and cheese. They were quite tasty, but alas, they were paired with…Coors Light!

The only positive thing I can say about Coors Light is that it’s inoffensive — it at least doesn’t have that “off” taste that pervades Labatt’s Blue. Coors Light is, to borrow the Monty Python line, like making love in a canoe: it’s fucking close to water.

Still, Coors Light managed not to detract from the flavour of the delicious sliders. I switched to the extra tumbler of Canadian that one of the waiters had left on the table and the classic burger-and-beer pairing improved dramatically. A Creemore would’ve been my preferred pairing.

Pairing 3: Heineken and Sweet and Sour Fried Oysters

These were really tasty. I lucked out and got a double serving of these because the waiter left an extra dish of these at our table:

Heineken is my choice when I’m at a bar where only domestic macro beers are available. It’s got a little bit of “bite” and worked surprisingly well with the sweet and sour friend oysters.

Tis was one of my favourite combos. I wonder if The Clam Box carries Heineken…

Pairing 4: Veggie Tacos and Corona

Next up: veggie tacos. For the first time ever, I think I ate something that had too much sour cream! These might as well have been nachos and salsa.

Still, I couldn’t resist posing with the nachos…er, tacos:

Because tacos are Mexican, they were paired with a Mexican beer. Unfortunately, that Mexican beer was Corona, the Mexican answer to Labatt Blue. The only thing I can say in its favour is that it’s marginally better than Coors Light.

This was my least favourite of the pairings, but things were looking up.

Pairing 5: Rickard’s Red and Steak Skewers

Rickard’s Red, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, can be classified as a “red ale” (hence the name) or an “amber ale”. It’s a little richer than your typical macro beer, with a flavour that can be described as “bready” or “nutty”. It worked quite well with its paired food, steak skewers:

I think that Rickard’s Red would work well with ribs as well.

Pairing 6: Rickards White and Citrus Shrimp

Next on the menu were these tasty lime-infused grilled shrimp. I liked these a lot, and was quite thankful that the waiter left an extra dish of these at the table:

The citrus shrimp paired perfectly with Rickard’s White, especially when it had a slice of orange added. I can see the White going well with a lot of grilled seafood.

Pairing 7: Creemore Springs and Bratwurst

They saved the best for last! My favourite of all the beers made by Molson is Creemore Springs Premium Lager, known simply as “Creemore”. Creemore was created by the Creemore Springs microbrewery located in — naturally enough — Creemore Springs, Ontario, and it gained popularity through word of mouth rather than by advertising. Unlike most macro beers, it earned its popularity, one beer lover at a time. There was some concern when Molson bought out Creemore Springs Brewery in 2005, but as far as I can tell, the only result has been increased availability. They don’t seem to have messed with the recipe.

Creemore is an all-malt lager with a deep amber colouring and rich, malty, rye-bready flavour with a little bit of a citrus bite. It’s a lager for people who think of lagers a being a bit lame.

They paired it with the brats in the picture shown above, and it was a perfect match. This was another one of my favourite combos of the evening and ended the tasting session on a high note.

All in all, it was a great session. I had fun, and even learned a little bit about matching beer and food flavours. By way of saying thanks, I provided a little entertainment with you-know-what:

Pouring a Better Draught

After the tasting session, we were broken into two groups: one that toured Air Canada Centre’s mini brewery and one that saw a presentation on pouring the perfect draught. Afterwards, the groups would switch places. I was in the group that saw the presentation first.

Steve Reilly from Draught Prophets, a company that helps bars and places that serve draught beer serve it properly, made the presentation. He started with a slide of this guy:

…and went on explain ways to serve the best possible draught beer. He explained the difference in shelf life between pasteurized and unpasteurized draught beer:

(It doesn’t last as long, but the unpasteurized stuff tastes a little better, since it wasn’t heated.)

He talked about conditions that made draught beer better:

…and showed us this slide, which showed good vs. bad beer glasses:

In the photos above, the beer glasses on the left are the good ones; they’re clean. A clean glass gives a better head because it doesn’t have oils that interfere with its formation. The foam in a clean glass also creates “lacing” or stripes, as seen in the good glass in the pair of photos in the lower right-hand corner of the slide.

One way to keep your glasses clean and oil-free is not to touch their insides, which a lot of people do when carrying empty ones in threes or fours.

A Tour of the Brewery

After Steve’s presentation, we were taken on a tour of the brewery. That’s right, the Air Canada Centre has its own brewery, which produces some of the beer served at the adjacent bar, Lord Stanley’s Mug. It’s an impressive room, lined with steel and copper tanks:

It’s probably the best-smelling room in the building. Maybe that’s not so impressive considering that it’s a sports arena, but still, there’s nothing quite like the beautiful bready smell of beer brewing.

We were shown the path that ingredients take, from the ingredients storage area shown in the photo below, all the way to the tanks:

In addition to producing beer for Lord Stanley’s Mug, the mini-brewery is also a test kitchen for new beer recipes.

Introducing Kasteel Cru

The final part of the evening was devoted to showing some new Molson products. One was the Heineken mini-keg, while the other was that new label for Coors Light that turns blue when the beer is cold enough.

What interested me was Kasteel Cru, a new beer that was developed in the U.K. and soon to hit stores here. It’s made with champagne yeast, which as the name implies, is used to give champagne its bubbles. Kasteel Cru’s carbonation is more like champagne’s than beer’s, and its colouring is quite similar.

Taste fatigue — not to mention the fact that I’d helped myself to a few extra pints of Creemore — meant that I’m going to have to give Kasteel Cru another taste before passing judgement on it.

A Little Disclosure…

In addition to free beer and food, I was also given a coupon good for 12 free bottles of Molson beer and a Molson-branded USB key (1 GB capacity).

Finally…

I’d like to thank organizers Meghan Warby and Tonia Hammer for putting together this event, as well as Ian Douglass, Bryan Eagan, Steve Reilly for doing the presenting. It was also good chatting with Adam Moffat about beer and “park parties” in Sherwood Forest Park, an important element of any delightfully misspent youth in Toronto. I had a blast, and even learned a little something. Please feel free to invite me to more of these events!

Related reading

A Lesson in Beer: Brew 2.0: My co-worker at b5media, Rachel Segal, wrote about Brew 2.0 in the blog Drinks After Dark.

How About Some Brew 2.0? An article about Brew 2.0 at Molson’s own community blog, Molson in the Community.

Tip of the Day - Serving Beer the Right Way: Eden Spodek writes about Brew 2.0 in her blog, Bargainista.

BeerAdvocate’s review of Creemore. Their verdict is like mine: it’s the good stuff.

Ren and Stimpy: The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen Theme

South Park: Blame Canada

Robin Williams’ Version of Blame Canada at the Oscars

There’ve been two articles in the series so far:

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel

In this article, I’ll cover the social lubricant that helps keep a good tech conference going: booze!

The Legal Drinking Age in Ontario: 19

If you look at Wikipedia’s Legal Drinking Age page, there are generally two places with a drinking age of 21 and some regions which ban the sale (and sometimes consumption) of alcohol:

• A handful of Muslim countries that allow alcohol: Indonesia (except Bali), Oman, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates, and
• the United States of America

Here in Ontario, as with most of Canada, the legal age drinking age is 19. Underage drinking is permitted at home under adult supervision. No, underage RubyFringers, you cannot come to my house to drink. A number of RubyFringe after-conference events will be taking place in or near licensed establishments, so be sure to bring some government ID with you — a driver’s licence or passport will do.

Where Do You Buy Liquor and Beer in Ontario?

If Ontario has a more civilized legal drinking age, we pay for it in terms of where we can buy it. The sale of beer and liquor is limited — with a few exceptions — to two types of stores:

The first type: the LCBO (short for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario), a set of stores run by the Ontario government that carries, spirits, wines and beers.

The second type: The Beer Store. Its official name is Brewers Retail, but since everyone calls it “The Beer Store”, that’s what they typically display on their storefronts. They sell beer and beer paraphernalia.

Okay, Enough Preamble. Where’s the Alcohol Store Closest to the Hotel?

Of the two types of store, the closest one to the Metropolitan Hotel Toronto is the LCBO at the Atrium on Bay, a shopping centre located a mere two blocks away. If you walk out of the hotel, take a left until you hit Dundas Street, then turn right and walk two blocks. The LCBO is on the lower level, about half a block into the shopping centre. Here’s a map:

This LCBO keeps these hours:

• Monday - Wednesday: 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
• Thursday - Saturday: 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
• Sunday: 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

The Beer Hunter is Your Friend!

The Beer Hunter is a Google Maps mash-up that shows you the locations and hours of alcohol retail outlets in Ontario, aswell as which stores are open right now. It’s a creation of local web development shop Bad Math, and was recently featured in at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit, Design and the Elastic Mind.

I’m Crashing at a Friend’s House. Can I Get Booze Delivered There?

Yes, you can! For a CDN$8.00 delivery charge, The Beer Guy lets you order alcohol online for home delivery in one hour.

Okay, Enough About Stores. What About Bars? Any Good Ones Near the Hotel?

There are a number of bars within walking distance of the hotel. Here are three decent ones that I used to frequent when I lived in the neighbourhood. They’re not cookie-cutter drinking establishments that you can find anywhere, but places with some character and local vibe.

The Village Idiot Pub (126 McCaul Street, about 6 minutes’ walk from the hotel). This one’s a hangout for locals as well as art students from the Ontario College of Art and Design or visitors to the Art Gallery of Ontario, both of which are just across the street. The bar has about two dozen higher-end beers on tap, from imports like Guinness, Leffe Brune and Kronenberg 1664 to local microbrews like Waterloo Dark (a favourite of mine) and Brick Honey Brown. The outer walls of the bar are garage doors which are rolled up in the summer to let the air in.

I made some decent coin (and a lot of beer!) busking here during the great blackout of 2003.

The Rex Hotel Jazz and Blues Bar (194 Queen Street West, about 10 minutes’ walk from the hotel). A jazz and blues institution since I was in high school, The Rex is a retro, just-divey-enough place that has a decent selection of beer and live blues and jazz. I’ve seen some pretty good acts here and have stumbled home tipsy many a night from this joint.

Smokeless Joe (125 John Street, about 12 minutes’ walk from the hotel). This is a place for the serious beer enthusiast. With a half-dozen taps and a couple hundred bottled beers, this tiny, friendly place was my preferred watering hole when I lived in the neighbourhood. If you want some food to go with your beer, they have delicious sandwiches and some pretty good oysters.

I’ve been there on some pretty good dates, such as this one as well as my first date with The Ginger Ninja.

When is Last Call in Ontario?

Bars and pubs have to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m..

Is There Any Way to Get Served Booze After 2 a.m.?

I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the urban legend of “cold tea”, only that the urban legend exists. It does, after all, exist as an entry in Urban Dictionary.

There are speakeasies in town; the local term for them is “booze cans”. Their locations change over time, and the ones from my days as a single guy probably no longer exist. The best way to locate these places is to ask anyone who works in the entertainment/service industry such as a bartender or waiter; they’re where they go when their shifts end.

Be advised that you’ll get more out of the conference if you get some decent sleep and aren’t hung over…

[My thanks to Chad Nolan for the heads-up!]

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

These look staged, but this remote control Hummer exists and the mishap actually happened when a butterfingered journo for a British tabloid took it for a test drive (here’s the resulting article).

So far, I’ve published one article: Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?, in which I explained to visiting smokers that you can buy cigarettes in stores here; they’re just hidden in large, featureless cabinets behind the counter.

In this article, I’m going to cover the cheapest way to get to the conference hotel, the Metropolitan, from the airport.

There are Two Metropolitan Hotels!

This may be a source of confusion, so make sure you’re aware of this: there are two Metropolitan Hotels in town. Both are owned by the same hotel chain, and they’re a fifteen-minute walk from each other!

RubyFringe is taking place at the Metropolitan Hotel Toronto, located at 108 Chestnut Street, which is behind City Hall and on the edge of Chinatown. If the front of the hotel looks like the photo below, you’re in the right place:

The other hotel is the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel on 318 Wellington Street West and is a hop, skip and a jump away from Toronto’s domed stadium, The Rogers Centre. If the front of the hotel looks like the photo below, you’re in the wrong place!

(There’s nothing wrong with the Soho Met: it’s a nice place and swankier than the Metropolitan Toronto; it’s just that the conference isn’t taking place there.)

For this article and any other in this series, when I refer to the Metropolitan Hotel, I’m referring to the Metropolitan Toronto, the conference venue.

The Distance

Lester B. Pearson International Airport (airport code YYZ, which is where Rush got the name for their song with Neil Peart’s legendary drum solo) is a bit of a hike from downtown Accordion City. It’s 27 kilometres (about 17 miles) from the airport to the Metropolitan Hotel, a span on par with the distances between Los Angeles International Airport and its downtown core, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and the Chicago Loop and Newark’s Liberty Airport and midtown Manhattan.

The Most Expensive Way: Renting a Car and Driving (Round trip: $lots)

If you were to drive from the airport to the hotel, you’d get on Highway 427 and go south to the Gardiner Expressway and follow it east. Google Maps says to exit at Spadina, I say take the Bay/York Street exit and follow York Street to where it forks and take the University Avenue fork (Spadina has fewer lanes and is downtown Chinatown’s main drag, which makes it slower going). Either way, you go north to Dundas, at which point you turn east and go a short way to Chestnut Street, where the hotel is.

Google Map showing directions from Pearson Airport to the Metropolitan.
Click the map to see it on its Google Maps page.

The Second Most Expensive Way: Taking a Cab or Airport Limo (Round trip: $90 - 100)

If you were take a cab or airport limo from the airport to the hotel today, it would cost around $40. However, cab fares are going up in July because of skyrocketing gas prices, so a cab ride will probably cost more by the time RubyFringe takes place. The trip should take about 35 - 40 minutes if traffic isn’t too bad. It’s probably the fastest, lowest-hassle way to get to the hotel from the airport.

The Cheapest Way: The TTC (Round trip: $5.50)

The cheapest way to get to the hotel is via public transit — the TTC. It will cost you a grand total of $2.75 and take about 45 minutes to an hour. It involves a bus trip, followed by a ride on the subway.

The first leg of the trip is to take the 192 Airport Rocket bus. It stops at both Terminal 1 and Terminal 3.

(Don’t worry about it not stopping at Terminal 2: it’s being renovated and not being used for anything!)

I know that going to a strange town and not knowing what things look like can throw you off, so I’ve gathered some photos to help orient you. TTC bus stops are marked by signs that look like this:

Here’s what the airport bus stop looks like:

And here’s what a TTC bus looks like:

Make sure that you board only the 192 Airport Rocket bus; it’s an express bus that goes straight to the subway station. The others will eventually take you to a subway station, but they’re regular bus routes and take much longer.

In case you were wondering, the $2.75 fare you pay on the bus will cover the whole trip to the hotel.

Here’s the schedule for the Airport Rocket. The trip to Kipling subway station should take about 20 minutes.

Once you’re at Kipling station, take the train east to St. George station. At St. George station, you’ll go up one floor, which takes you to the north-south-running trains on the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Take the train south to St. Patrick station.

Click the map to see it at full size.

Exit St. Patrick station, and you’ll be a mere two blocks away from the hotel:

The Middle-of-the-Road Way: Airport Express Bus (Round trip: $29.95)

The Airport Express bus stops at both Terminals 1 and 3, involves less lugging stuff around than taking the subway and takes slightly longer than a cab would. It stops at a number of hotels in the downtown core, including the Metropolitan.

They advertise that their buses are WiFi equipped, which might come in handy if you really feel the need to check your email or IM everyone that you’ve arrived.

* I am not responsible for mall security pepper-spraying you or for any injuries resulting from your attempts at escalator spinning.

The comedy troupe Public Service Administration have put together a high-larious video that pokes fun at John McCain’s outburst in which he flipped out and used the “c-word” on Wife 2.0 in 1992.

John’s outburst — “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c***!” was in response to Cindy’s remark about his balding. She was stealing drugs from her own charity around that time, so if John had said “At least I don’t steal drugs from my own charity, you junkie!” it would’ve been a considerably more appropriate comeback.

Then again, she was using the drugs to cope with the stress of the Keating Five scandal, so she can be excused. Hey, nobody’s perfect.

But enough history. It’s comedy time!

Here’s the uncensored, so terribly not-safe-for-work version of the comedy piece, in which the c-word is unbleeped:

And here’s the only-slightly-safer-for-work version in which the c-word is bleeped out, which turns into a bleepfest:

[Thanks to Kelly Seagram for the heads-up!]

• Leonard Nimoy on “religion and dirty movies”,
• Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, back when they were still married,
• William Shatner and his “month-at-a-time” marriage,
• Frank Sinatra (aren’t you wondering why Ol’ Blue Eyes needed to find the youth pill?) and Mia Farrow (then “Mia Sinatra“, which places this magazine sometime between 1966 and 1968)
• and my favourite one: Davy Jones from the Monkees, making a desperate bid for rock authenticity by claiming that he had “pills twice as strong as those that got the Rolling Stones in trouble”.

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Here’s the opening paragraph for The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, an essay published in The American Scholar and written by an English professor who taught at Yale for the past ten years:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

Immediately after reading that first paragraph, my first thought was “Isn’t that like an Ivy Leaguer? He realizes that he can’t communicate with working-class people and what does he do? He agonizes about it in a magazine written for Ivy League professors and people who make large donations to their alma mater.” I’m not the only one who made that observation.

(The American Scholar describes itself as “the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932.” People magazine, it ain’t.)

That quibble aside, there’s a lot of interesting material in the article, not the least of which is its discussion of “entitled mediocrity”, another byproduct of Ivy League schooling and one I saw first-hand at Crazy Go Nuts University: the security offered by a “don’t worry about failing, we’ll take care of you because you’re one of us” environment.

“If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education,” says the article in reference to their inability to communicate with “the common people”, “George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale.” Entitled mediocrity is everywhere in the worlds of business and government, from “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” to the big salaries and bonuses paid to C-level executives at failing companies.

There’s some discussion about the article here, and you’re always free to put in your two cents in the comments.

Comedian George Carlin — first Saturday Night Live guest host, creator of the classic “Seven Dirty Words” routine [Warning: language not safe for work*] that started the F.C.C. vs. Pacifica Foundation case and comedic cataloguer of American excess, passed away last night from heart failure. He was 71 years old.

Requiescat in pace, funny guy.

* It’s safe for where I work, but it might not be safe for where you work.

In less than a month, the RubyFringe conference will be taking place here in Accordion City (it takes place from July 18th through 20th). RubyFringe is an offbeat conference organized by the offbeat people at Unspace, an offbeat software development shop, with offbeat speakers and MCs (I’m one of them) making some offbeat presentations, which will be followed by offbeat evening events. It stands to reason that it should come with an offbeat guide to its host city, and who better than Yours Truly, one of the city’s most notorious bloggers and a long-time resident, to write one?

From now until RubyFringe, I’ll be writing a series of articles posted under the banner of Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, which will cover interesting things to do and see here in Accordion City. It’ll mostly be dedicated to the areas in which RubyFringe and associated events will be taking place and provide useful information about Toronto for people who’ve never been here (or even Canada) before. I’ll also try to cover some interesting stuff that the tourist books and sites don’t. If you’re coming up here — for RubyFringe or some other reason — I hope you’ll find this guide useful.

I thought I’d start the series by covering a topic with which I have almost no familiarity: smoking. It’s a safe bet that at least a few smokers will be coming to the conference from outside Ontario: if you’re one of these people, this article’s for you.

The Rules for Smoking in Ontario

If you really feel like poring over a legal document, you can read the Smoke-Free Ontario Act. If you’d rather not slog through the legalese, they can be boiled down to these two rules:

• You have to be at least 19 years old to purchase cigrarettes.
• No smoking indoors in public places.

Canadian Cigarette Brands

You’re going to have to ask someone else about which Canadian brands to smoke. Beyond “quit now,” I can’t really make any recommendations. What I know about Canadian cigarettes versus American ones isn’t much:

• I am told that American cigarettes are “raunchier” than Canadian cigarettes. Can any cross-border smokers comment on this?
• If you’re really homesick for Marlboros,