Continuing on the idea mentioned in my previous post, here’s another promo for “Toronto the Naughty”:
Original photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Year: 2008
While we might disagree on specifics, I think that Kevin Bracken is on the right track about promoting Toronto’s naughtier side, something which he proposed in the Torontoist article titled Toronto the Naughty and to which I quickly linked in an article titled Kevin Bracken: “You say ‘ecstasy-fueled sex tourist hellhole’ like it’s a bad thing.”.
Naturally, we’re going to have different perspectives, but that’s to be expected: Kevin’s a twenty-something single guy who seems to go clubbing every week, while I’m a married 40-year-old whose regular clubbing days are behind him (although I had a pretty good run; plus, I was a paid go-go dancer, something which I’ll bet Kevin never was). But I think we’d both agree that any good tourist burg can — actually, make that should — have a “fast and loose” side peacefully co-existing with a prim and proper one. New York, London, Paris, Prague, Tokyo and many other must-go places have mastered this yin-yang balance quite well, and there’s no reason that Accordion City couldn’t do the same.
The real problem is that the promotion of Toronto’s naughty side is something that can’t be done by the folks at City Hall or the people they commission to promote tourism. Anything they’d produce would simply be a reflection of themselves: a melange of Mayor David Miller’s Doris Day-esque leadership (by the bye, Mr. Mayor, that’s not a compliment) and councillor Rob Ford’s special brand of dickishness (which I must admit does have the silver lining of his reputed frugality with public funds). The sort of promotion is better done by the people who actually go out and enjoy Toronto’s nightlife: people like Kevin, and to a lesser extent, me.
With that said, here’s my first attempt at contributing to the promotion of Toronto the Naughty:
To the north of High Park station, it’s practically all houses, apartments and condos, while to the south, there’s its namesake, Accordion City’s largest park. On weekday mornings, it’s only really busy between 7:30 and 8:45, after which it receives a trickle of passengers (relative to the downtown or major suburban stations) until the evening rush.
As a result, High Park station doesn’t seem as heavily staffed, which means that the ticket collector is often alone, with no one to relieve him or her when it’s time for a bathroom run (or to use the increasing popular office culture term, a “bio break”). When nature calls, the collector answers, and this sign goes up:
Photo taken by Yours Truly this morning at 9:03 a.m.
While it would’ve been as easy as pie to glide through the turnstile without paying, I and four other people who showed up at the same time dutifully deposited our fares into the collection box. I’m pretty pleased that the honour system still works in my little corner of the city, and seeing this little example of civilization in action made my morning.
Categories
Licence Plate of the Day
Seen in Mississauga last week:
Categories
Complainy
The folks at Unspace, one of Accordion City’s fine software development shops (and the people behind the upcoming RubyFringe conference), have come up with a site called Complainy, where you can anonymously write a short complaint about anything. Using it is as simple as entering two pieces of info: the thing you’re complaining about, and the details:
Really, it does.
Click the “Say.” button and your complaint will get added to the list. The latest complaints appear on Complainy’s main page:
And clicking on any complaint shows you all the complaints for that complaint’s subject:
(I’ll admit it. Those are all mine.)
If you really must keep track of any complaint, Complainy provides RSS feeds for all the complaints it stores. Other Complainy features include “Gossip”, which lists the top recent and all-time complaints, and if you can’t think of anything to complain about, there’s “Lightning Round”.
[Thanks to Hampton Catlin for telling me about Complainy!]
Categories
Dear God, No!
Seen earlier today during a run to Costco:
Categories
FOX News on Steve Ballmer’s Egging
Only through the distorted lens of FOX News could you witness the egging of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a presentation in Budapest and then conclude that Europeans hate prosperity. In the clip below, sock puppets Neil Cavuto and his guest Monica Crowley fail to understand that it’s a hatred for Microsoft’s playing dirty pool in the tech industry all these years to prop its products (which many techies feel run the gamut from sub-par to passable) not prosperity:
Crowley’s quotes are standard-issue FOX talking points: that European think that American capitalism is “rampant, unenlightened” and have an “enormous sense of envy towards the United States” because they “can’t compete economically”, “envy our prosperity” and are “jealous of it.” However, the it’s Cavuto who provides this clip’s gem, a bootlicker classic: “And look — this is one of the world’s richest men, and no one is coming to his aid!”