Category: In the News

My career has been shaped by what I like to call “hobbies that have spiralled out of control”. The first was computer programming, which I took up in the eighties. Accordion playing came in the nineties. In the “naughties”, after submitting suggestion after suggestion to Cory Doctorow to post in Boing Boing, he said “Joey, why don’t you start your own blog?”

I opened an account at Blogger and, when prompted for a name, I went with the stupidest thing I could think of — The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century. “I’ll give it a real name later,” I thought.

Nearly seven years later, this blog has become my third hobby to spiral out of control. It’s paid off in ways I would never have imagined, and it’s gained a readership I wouldn’t have imagined either. StatCounter says that this year alone, it’s amassed 1.98 million pageviews. At the current rate, I’ll hit 2 million sometime next week:

While nowhere near as popular as Accordion Guy, my tech blog, Global Nerdy, isn’t doing too badly either. It should hit half a million pageviews by the end of the year:

I’d like to say “thank you!” to all of you readers, whether you’re a long-time reader or if this is your first visit either of these blogs. These numbers don’t happen without you.

I’d also like to say “watch these blogs!” because things look like they’re going to get really interesting.

“I’m a PC, and I’ve been turned into a stereotype,” says the John Hodgman lookalike at the start of Microsoft’s new Seinfeld-free commercials. Then they jump to all sorts of people saying “I’m a PC”.

The message is simple: PC users aren’t all nerdy puffy white guys in tweed suits — many different people use PCs and they leading interesting lives and do cool things with them. If the goal of Microsoft’s new ad campaign is to counter Apple’s “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads and rehabilitate Microsoft’s and Windows’ sagging image, these ads are doing a much better job than the Seinfeld/Gates” ads (here’s the first ad, here’s the longer follow-up) about nothing.

Take a look:

What do you think?

It’s not going to be anywhere as interesting as the election our neighbours to the south are having, but it also won’t be as long and drawn-out. A federal election has been declared here in Canada today, and the vote will take place the day after Canadian Thanksgiving, October 14th. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party has been running his technically-not-election-ads TV spots for about a week now, so this doesn’t come as a surprise.

Here’s a marquee at the movie theatre in Wasilla, Alaska:

Found at the Alaskan politics blog Mudflats.

You can find more scenes of the town where Sarah Palin served as mayor in the Alaskan politics blog Mudflats, in their article A Photo Safari of Wasilla, Alaska, Home of Sarah Palin.

Some pictures in the set include Wasilla City Hall:

This is “experience”? My dry cleaner is less ghetto than this place.

Here’s the local fireworks store:

Given the entertainment options here, teen pregnancy sounds like a reasonable alternative.

The local cuisine:

What, no polar bear jerky?

And like any bustling metropolis, they have their own Russell Oliver:

“We buy gold!”

Welcome to the fourth installment in Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, a series of offbeat articles to acquaint attendees of the upcoming RubyFringe conference with Accordion City.

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.

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.

Here’s an event for the Accordion City tech community and non-techies interested about network neutrality:

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada’s Open Internet

An open forum for Toronto’s tech/web/media communities hosted by:

• Matt Thompson, SavetheInternet.com and SaveOurNet.ca
• Steve Anderson, SaveOurNet.ca and The Campaign for Democratic Media
• Mark Kuznicki, Remarkk.com, Open Community Evangelist, TorCamp

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24th, 6:00pm
Location: Fionn MacCool’s, 181 University Avenue @ Adelaide, Toronto
Snacks will be provided, cash bar

If you want to attend this event, please visit the registration page. If you can’t attend the event, you can still make a donation using the registration page.

Canada’s digital future is at a crossroads, and our community has an historic opportunity to help protect and shape that future for the next generation.

Bell Canada’s bandwidth throttling of third party ISPs has thrust the political battle over Net Neutrality and related issues, which have raged for some time in the United States, onto the front-page in Canada. The stakes are high. Canada’s digital future must be shaped by citizens, entrepreneurs, Internet innovators and the free market. We will work together to prevent that future from being negotiated by a handful of lobbyists for monopolist carriers and major media conglomerates behind closed doors.

This forum will be introduced by Matt Thompson, campaign strategist for SavetheInternet.com and co-founder of the new Canadian coalition SaveOurNet.ca. Matt will sketch out the two opposing visions and plans for the future of Canada’s Internet and innovation economy. He’ll report back on his meeting last week with MP Charlie Angus on Parliament Hill, who just launched a private member’s bill to protect the open Internet and guarantee more competition, transparency and choice in Canada’s broadband space. He’ll also brief us on recent victories for the U.S. Net Neutrality campaign, and what they may mean for Canada.

Also on hand will be SaveOurNet.ca co-founder Steve Anderson, to report on the trajectory of Saving Our Net in Canada, his recent meetings with industry and public interest groups and highlight the newest additions to the SaveOurNet.ca Coalition.

Mark Kuznicki will serve as moderator and facilitate a town hall-style conversation on a number of key questions afterward, including:

1. What are the Toronto tech/web/media communities’ values, interests and principles regarding the future of the Open Internet?
2. How can we tap these shared values, interests and principles to protect openness, the common carrier principle and advocate for an improved broadband infrastructure for Canadians?
3. Who are the strategic partners we can bring together to move this agenda forward? How can we work together?
4. What does an effective made-in-Canada awareness and advocacy campaign look like? What resources are needed for it to be effective?
5. What actions can Toronto’s web/tech/media communities take to help? How do we mobilize similar communities across Canada?

Once again, if you’d like to attend, please use the registration page!