Part 8 of the I-485 is called General Eligibility and Inadmissibility Grounds, and is made up of 67 questions, one of which asks you if you somehow were involved with the Nazis:
Here’s the text of the question:
During the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945, did you ever order, incite, assist, or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, in association with either the Nazi government of Germany or any organization or government associated or allied with the Nazi government of Germany?
That’s right: In the process that determined whether I was allowed to call this place home, I had to disavow any connection with the Nazis. And I did so easily, gladly and proudly.
So why can’t the President?
He was uncharacteristically silent for the first part of Saturday, when stories about the torch gathering the night before and neo-Nazis on the street that morning were already circulating:
The slow, faint response wasn’t lost on former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and high-profile white nationalist David Duke, who took it as implicit support…
Here’s the text from that screenshot (because there’s no way in Hell that I’m linking to the Daily Stormer):
3:46 p.m.: Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.
He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate…on both sides!
So he implied the antifa were haters.
There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.
He said he loves us all.
Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him.
No condemnation at all.
When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.
Really, really good.
God bless him.
I’ll say it again:
I easily, gladly, and proudly disavowed the Nazis in front of witnesses, including my wife, my lawyer, and a U.S. government official.
Why can’t the President do the same in front of the American people?
Also…
It’s a shame that the I-485’s “Nazi question” is limited to the time period from March 1933 through May 1945. Even a kid who turned the minimum qualifying age — 10 — for the junior division of the Hitler Youth on V-E day would be 82 years old at the time of this writing. I think that it should be phrased more like question 56, the “Communist question”, which asks if you’ve ever, during any point in time, in any country, been part of or tied to the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party:
Celebrating my green card status the American way at Burger 21.
Last Thursday — January 26, 2017 — I acquired permanent resident status in the United States, colloquially known as “getting my green card”. The process took about nine months and a little over US$4,000 in processing and lawyer fees, but it’s done, and from a cursory reading of recent news headlines and from what I heard at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices, not a moment too soon.
In case you’ve forgotten or don’t know me that well, there’s a reason why I moved from Toronto to Tampa…
A great day: March 7, 2015, St. Pete Beach.
…and she’s why I started the green card process last April.
With the help of our lawyer, Gerry Seipp, we started the process with me filling out an I-485 form (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status) and Anitra filling out an I-130 (the interestingly named “Petition for Alien Relative” document). Using a lawyer wasn’t strictly necessary, but I found that it was well worth the $2,500 to have some professional assistance in navigating through the myriad forms, byzantine processes, and potential pitfalls.
Nine months of paperwork, payments, processes (including a medical exam), and a lot of waiting in between culminated in last Thursday’s appointment at the Tampa U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. The appointment is an in-person interview, and its purpose is to confirm that ours was a genuine marriage and not just one of convenience for the purpose of securing a green card.
Gerry told us that in some of these sessions, they separate the spouses and interview them separately, asking questions intended to reveal whether or not they are truly a couple. “Don’t worry about that part,” our lawyer said, “you’re a real couple, and it’ll be just like being on that old game show, The Newlywed Game.”
The problem with that reassurance is that when I think of The Newlywed Game, I always think of the infamous moment on the show, often referred to (somewhat incorrectly) as the “That would be the butt, Bob” moment:
Great, I thought. Now that’s all I’ll be able to think of during the interview.
I was planning on wearing a blazer, dress shirt, and dress pants, but asked if I should wear a tie. Since this is Florida, and since not all of Gerry’s clients are professionals, he told us that he’s seen people show up for the interview in shorts and flip-flops.
“You know what?” I said. “I’m going to wear a tie.”
The sign outside the USCIS field office in Tampa.
Our appointment at the Tampa U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office was scheduled for 12:15 p.m.. We met up with Gerry a half hour prior in order to have some time to talk and go through the airport-style security line, complete with metal detector and baggage x-ray machine.
The local immigration lawyers seem to know each other. While we waited for our interview, a number of other lawyers came up to Gerry to say hi. He introduced us to all of them, and we had some brief — and very interesting — conversations with them:
One lawyer whose clients had just completed the interview said that the questioning had become more extensive. “My couple got nearly a hundred questions,” he said.
The next lawyer shared his observation that the interviewers were becoming increasingly hard on less articulate candidates. “That shouldn’t be a problem for me,” I said, to which he replied “Radio voice. That’ll help.”
Another lawyer, who was waiting with his clients for their interview, said “Things are different with you-know-who in charge,” saying “you-know-who” using the same tone of voice that Harry Potter characters use to say “Voldemort”.
The most interesting comment came from a lawyer who remarked “If your last name begins with ‘Al’ and ends with ‘i’, let’s just say that you’re not gonna have a good time in that room.”
Kateryna and Arshameh Taidi’s green card interview in Tampa, 2010. Click the photo to read about their interview.
Our turn came, and interviewer was a friendly guy with an easygoing demeanor. In another life, he could’ve easily been in sales or marketing. After the usual introductions and handshakes, he walked us to his office, where Anitra and I took seats in front of his desk, and Gerry took a seat behind us. The seating arrangement wasn’t all that different from the one pictured above.
After a brief swearing-in where we affirmed that everything we would say in the interview was the truth, it began. First came a review of the forms we’d filled out months ago to ensure that all the information they contained was accurate. Then came our turn to provide supporting documentation:
The actual folders I used in the interview. I got to keep the folders, but their contents are now in a file somewhere in the USCIS office.
The guidance on how much supporting documentation to bring to a green card interview is pretty vague — the general rule seems to be “more is better”. I tried to strike a balance between having enough material to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our relationship was genuine and not spending an inordinate amount of time and printer ink on preparing it. In the end, I believe I printed out about 60 pages’ worth of material, including:
Proof that Anitra and I were both professionals with good prospects and jobs that paid well,
statements that showed that we had joint bank accounts, insurance policies, and other jointly-owned assets,
photos, photos, photos: from our wedding, as well as from life before and after we got married, including our trips to places both near (Disney World, Charleston, Savannah, Bahamas, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and most recently, New York) and (Manila and London, both of which we visited in 2016), and
flight itineraries showing that we saw each other monthly before I moved to Tampa in March 2014.
We also provided a sealed envelope containing the results of a medical exam performed specifically for my green card application. The exam took place in August, and a couple of weeks later, I was given in the results in a brown envelope marked “USCIS only — DO NOT OPEN”. Our interviewer opened it, saw that I’d been given a clean bill of health, and then noticed that whoever filled out the paperwork within forgot to specify the clinic where I’d been examined.
“The doctor signed it, which is the important part,” the interviewer said, “but I need to enter a name for the clinic into the system.”
“Mind if I check my phone?” I asked, and a moment later, I had the name and address of the clinic.
The current sample green card.
We must’ve presented well, because the interview wrapped up shortly after that. Aside from being asked if we lived in the same house and if I’ve ever been convicted of a crime or been denied entry into the United States, I don’t recall being asked any of the questionstypicallyasked in a green card interview. We spent most of the interview reviewing the contents of the folders that I brought.
A half-hour after the interview began, it concluded with our interviewer saying “Congratulations. You are now a legal permanent resident of the United States.” He said I should expect the actual green card in the mail in a couple of weeks.
Since my status was gained through marriage and since Anitra and I have been married less than two years, my permanent residence status is conditional and temporary. Two years from now, we’ll have to file an I-751 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence) form to seal the deal.
In case you were wondering how I’ve been working in the U.S. since 2014 without a green card: From March 2014 until last summer, I’ve been here under TN-1 (NAFTA Professional) status, and in the process for applying for a green card, acquired I-512 “Advance Parole”.
My plan for these soon-to-be interesting times is simple: carry on, watch my back (this year, two people in red caps have yelled at me to “go back to China” — wrong country, guys), speak truth to power and fight the good fight when needed (and oh wow, will it be needed), play the accordion, and follow the wisdom of Canadian poet Dennis Leigh:
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”.
Sleep apnea is caused by the upper airway being closed off when the muscles relax during sleep. This cutting off the of the airway leads to a loss of oxygen, which triggers an automatic fight-or-flight response from the cardiovascular system and brain, which causes a waking response. This sort of thing, repeated over and over again, messes with your sleep and puts undue strain on the heart.
The difference between my pre- and post-CPAP life, if you’ll forgive the expression, is like night and day. I feel completely refreshed when I wake up, and I no longer have that mid-afternoon lull where I’m useless and just want a nap. I now use my CPAP every night, and I take it with me when traveling.
I’m wrapping up a week-long business trip to the corporate HQ of my workplace, GSG, in Concord, Massachusetts. When I unpacked my bag on Sunday night, I realized that I’d somehow left behind the straps for my CPAP mask. They’re a key part of the system, as they hold the mask to your face as shown in the picture below:
Luckily for me, I always carry a roll of duct tape in my laptop knapsack. Here’s what my quick-and-dirty test run looked like:
Version 2.0 incorporates a hotel face towel on the back of my head so I’m won’t rip out my hair when I remove the mask in the morning. As for the bacon images, it’s my belief that life’s too short for plain duct tape.
Update: Tom from the story reminded me that there’s an epilogue, so I included it.
It’s been ages since I’ve posted a dating-gone-wrong story on this blog, but I try to keep my disastrous dating experiences down to once a decade.
In the nineties, there was Worst Date Ever, and in the first decade of the 2000s, there’s The Girl Who Cried Webmaster. I do have one from this decade that I alluded to in a 2011 post titled February — Blog Later. I think enough time has passed that I can tell this tale and we can all have a good laugh. It’s about the first date-like opportunity I had after my separation, and yes, hilarity did ensue.
In the interest of shaming no one other than myself, I’ve changed a few details (primarily names and places) to protect the innocent. If there is any blame to be handed out in this story, it’s all on me; I’m the one who messed up.
With that little detail out of the way, grab a drink or snack — this entry’s a little longer — and enjoy!
Consolation Fries
Me in 2011.
Of course they’d hold a week-long geek event starting on Valentine’s Day, I thought.Lucky for me, my schedule’s wide open this year.
This was a couple of years back — a warm Friday night in San Francisco, early February 2011. I was there for a number of reasons:
To attend a big technology conference, where I’d be doing a presentation on the technology I was evangelizing at the time,
To catch up with friends and family in the Bay Area, and
To put some distance between me and home for a little while.
Work wasn’t helping either: while my immediate manager was one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of reporting to and my teammates were all great people to work with, upper management seemed to be doing their damnedest to turn the environment into one more backstabby than Borgia-era Italy. I’d been made aware that one particularly douchey manager was actively undermining my work, sending poison emails to other people within the organization. It seemed that management’s mantra was “Influence if you can, scare if you must”, which the most dedicated career strivers seemed to interpret as “Scare! Intimidate! Make them crap their pants!”
Of course, once you’ve struggled for breath alone in a darkened emergency room, wondering why no one will answer the emergency call button you’re furiously pressing, asking yourself all the while if this is what it feels like to die, neither the prospect of being single again nor any stuffed-shirt pointless popinjay of a middle manager can ever put The Fear into you.
As the only (newly) single member of my team, it was easy to convince my manager to give me all the travel assignments that the others — for marriage-, family-, and even sanity-preserving reasons — couldn’t take. For the next couple of months, I would spend three weeks out of every month on the road, and on the company’s dime. I’d keep myself busy with work and use whatever downtime I got to sort things out in my head and starting putting together the answer to the questions that had been plaguing me since the breakup:
Should I move to a new place, or stay?
Should I quit and look for a new job?
Should I set up a dating profile?
How do I explain the CPAP to a girl who “sleeps over”?
Or, to summarize: What now?
I normally don’t drink alone, but I decided that if the double-whammy of divorce and near-death wasn’t good a excuse for it, what was?
The sun hadn’t completely sunk behind the skyline on that evening as I pondered the “what now?” question over a slightly spotty tumbler of Maker’s Mark in a bar in that sketchy transitional area that’s not quite Union Square, not quite the notorious Tenderloin. The barkeep had thrown in a large glob of ice, which I scooped out with my hand and chucked into a glass that had been abandoned by a guy in a Threadless T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair of cheap sunglasses with saucer-like lenses, which looked ridiculous in the dimly-lit dive.
My original plan was to hang out in my hotel room until Tom, a local friend who’d invited me to an evening outing with his pals, called with the details. However, I’d decided that I’d spent more than enough time cooped up in various rooms, so I threw my accordion on my back and set out to wander the streets of San Francisco for a while. I ended up at the bar after about an hour of being a flâneur.
When I walked into Butter, Tom saw me immediately and waved me over to join his group. They were about ten people in total, and an even mix of guys and girls. After some introductions and a starting round of drinks, I ended up spending most of my time chatting with Lindsey, a very San Francisco-looking girl in a summer dress, scarf and short blonde locks. Over bourbon and tater tots (Butter specializes in the finest microwave cuisine), we talked about what seemed to be every topic under the sun. I distinctly remember the topic of pets, Burning Man, the Toronto scene, and — of course — the accordion. I was enjoying myself, only once or twice feeling a bit strange about chatting up a woman who wasn’t my wife. Or ex-wife. Or eventual-ex-wife. Whatever the term was.
I am single, I told myself. I am flush with cash. I am reasonably good-looking, well-dressed and can chat up strangers. And I have an accordion.
A couple of hours later, we made our way to the DNA Lounge, which was filling up with people to see Bootie:
“PBRs all ’round!” commanded Tom, and moments later, we were on the dance floor with ice-cold cans in hand. I shook my tailfeathers like a tipsy, newly-freed Nelson Mandela with an accordion on his back.
When the DJs started playing a tune that used the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams as its bed track, I started playing along on the squeezebox. The DJs took notice and pulled me on stage, planting a microphone on the accordion’s sound holes. I know a rock star opportunity when it presents itself, so I squeezed hard and started jamming along, which brought great applause from the crowd.
Best mid-life crisis ever, I thought.
My next few days were taken up by the conference. I did a presentation, attended a lot of sessions, did some hands-on labs, went to usual mixers — all the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do at a geek get-together.
The conference ran from Monday to Friday, with the big conference party taking place Thursday night. It wasn’t going to be all that exciting, so I’d arranged to meet Tom later that night in Soma. I hung out at the conference party for an hour or so, joined the band in the jam room to do a couple of classic rock numbers, and grabbed a couple of canapes. I was thinking about getting something more substantial to eat when I got a text message from Tom. He was in his car at the conference hotel’s front entrance.
When I stepped out of the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised to see Lindsey in the passenger seat.
“I hope I’m not interfering in your male bonding,” she said with a smile.
“And here I was, planning to get all Brokeback Mountain with Joey,” Tom said.
“I call outside spoon,” I replied.
The plan was to drop Tom’s car off at home, give him a few minutes to walk his dog, and then make our way to a nearby night spot for drinks. Lindsey and I sat around and chatted while Tom walked the dog. That’s when we noticed the orange sports car. We decided to give it a closer look.
“Lotus,” I said, trying to get a look at the dashboard. “Niiiiice.”
“Look at it!” said Lindsey, who seemed greatly amused by the arrangement of its headlights and grille. “It looks like it’s smiling.”
“You really should pose with it,” I said. “It’s the sort of car that demands poses.”
Lindsey obliged and struck some Maxim-esque poses by the car’s front grill while I took pictures.
“Oh yeah, this is HOT!” I said, snapping away.
A portion of the actual photo I took.
Tom walked in on our photo shoot, shook his head and said “I don’t even want to know.”
We made our way to a nearby tavern — I forget its name — took three stools by the bar and ordered a round of drinks. We conversed for a while, but it soon became clear that Tom was fading.
“Look, guys,” Tom said as he took the last swig of his Old Fashioned, “I’m dead tired. It’s been a long week, and as much as I’d love to stay, I really need to get some sack time. You guys okay if I bail and leave you two alone?”
“We’re having a great time. We’ll be all right,” replied Lindsey.
“Not a problem,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Get some sleep, and I’ll ping you tomorrow.”
Tom fist-bumped me, hugged Lindsey and made his way towards the door. I moved over to the stool beside Lindsey, and waved the bartender over.
“Two sazeracs, please,” I said, rather pleased with the way things had turned out.
Lindsey and I started talking about music. We both came of age in the eighties, so the conversation naturally drifted to that era’s music. She told me that she liked going to local clubs with eighties nights or catching Bootie shows, since their mash-up source material was often eighties hits.
“Do you know any eighties stuff on the accordion?” she asked.
“That’s how I got started,” I replied.
“Could you pleeeease play some? I’ll sing along.”
Lindsey looked so cute and asked so sweetly, and let’s face it, this sort of thing is precisely why I started carrying the accordion around in the first place. I played, and we sang Duran Duran’s Rio, The Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary, Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough and The Violent Femmes’ Kiss Off, all in the far corner of the bar, which we had all to ourselves.
An actual part of a photo from this story.
“You’re a really cool guy,” Lindsey said. “Remember last Friday night, when we were out at DNA with my friends? They absolutely loved you! You’re awesome. You should hang out with us when you’re in town.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
At one point in the evening, the bartender saw fit to walk up to us and say “You two are by far the cutest people in the room tinight” with a big grin. “Come back any time.”
Most of the credit would have to go to Lindsey. She was wonderful company: adorable, funny and just so easy to talk to.
This, I thought, is exactly what the doctor ordered.
“Do you want to go get something to eat?” Lindsey asked. “I’ve had mostly nothing but drinks tonight.”
“Yeah, I could eat,” I said. “I mostly grazed at the conference and could use a late dinner. Is there anything around here? I’ll buy.”
“I know a place close by,” she said.
She took my hand in hers, putting her fingers between mine and led me downstairs and to the street outside. We walked at a slow-ish pace, hand in hand down the street, with her leaning up close against me. I took in a deep breath and caught the scent from her hair. Ever since I was a teenager, I have believed that “girly shampoo on actual girl” is one of the best smells in the world, surpassing even freshly-cooked bacon or a new just-out-of-the-box Macbook.
The evening had just been elevated to…a date? Okay, maybe a non-date.
The place she picked out was only a couple of blocks away, and perfect. It was a little cafe-bistro with alt-rock playing on the sound system (when we arrived, The Clash were on), not too dark, not too bright, and cozy-looking. We took a table for two, with her sitting on the banquette and me sitting opposite her on a chair. She insisted that I put the accordion on the banquette beside her. She started to pet and stroke it. I was looking forward to my turn.
“It’s so pretty!” she said, running her fingers over the keys and buttons.
We ordered a bottle of wine, a croque madame, onion soup and frites. The wine arrived first, and she downed her first two glasses pretty quickly. Lindsey asked if I could play another number on the accordion, and after checking with the waitress, I played Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole. The kids a couple of tables over from us shot video of the whole thing on their phones, and gave me some generous applause when I was done. The loudest cheering came from Lindsey.
I put my accordion back beside her and when I sat down, I placed my hand on the table. She placed her hand on mine.
This was going well.
We continued talking as a guy pulled a laptop out of a bag, ordered a coffee and started tapping away. Under slightly different circumstances, that might’ve been my evening, I thought.
“This evening has been so. Much. Fun,” Lindsey said, leaning up close. I’m having a great time.”
“So am I,” I said. For a first date — er, non-date — after getting separated, this was a pretty good start. There’s also something special about doing this while travelling.
If I had any worries, it wasn’t about how things were progressing, but about how much wine Lindsey was putting away. She was getting a little wobbly.
“So much fun, that we should spread it around!” she declared.
She turned to her right and looked at the guy at the table beside us, who was working away on his laptop.
“You…” she said, “should join us!” She pulled his table right up to ours, nearly knocking his laptop off in the process. “Come! Have some fun!”
He closed his laptop and slid himself on the banquette to Lindsey’s side. “I’m Dave,” he said, shaking both our hands.
Things had been going so well so far, so I figured that I could handle this little interruption. After all, this hadn’t started out as a date, and simply saying “No, Lindsey, you are not turning this into a party of three” would probably just making things worse. Besides, she and I had been connecting all night. This was just some random guy who I could hustle away after a couple of minutes.
Dave joined in our conversation easily, and Lindsey had more wine. The last two glasses brought her past the tipping point, and her wobbliness increased. She was also getting more boozy touchy-feely, and since she and Dave were sitting side by side on the banquette, Dave was getting all that action. I started formulating ways to get rid of Dave. I did not survive getting dumped and near-death in a hospital to get outplayed by some random chump.
I was starting on some suggestions to leave and go somewhere else when the topic of birthdays came up. “Mine’s June 6th,” said Lindsey.
“So is mine!” said Dave, with an amazed look that I was sure was fake.
“Bullshit,” I retorted.
He produced a driver’s licence. The date of birth read June 6. The discovery of this coincidence only endeared Dave to Lindsey even more, at which point she gave him a big hug and he slid right up beside her.
This is not happening, I thought. This. Is. Not. Happening.
It might have been the booze, or the surprising turn of events, or perhaps the fact that it had been seven or eight years since I’d last gone on a date, but I had lost control of the situation.
What followed was a bit of a blur; I remember still being part of the conversation, but I’d been turned into the fifth wheel. They were holding hands, Lindsey was wobbling more and more, and getting louder by the minute. Having lost my appetite, I left my croque madame half-eaten.
I began to contemplate just making an exit and leave with at least a little pride intact when the waitress came up to our table.
“We’re closing soon,” she said to all of us. Then she turned to Lindsey and said, “ma’am, we’re going to have to take away your wine. You’ve had more than enough.”
She took the bottle and said “Sorry…state law.” She took Lindsey’s glass and offered to package the remaining wine for me.
“No,” I said, still wondering if there was a way to get rid of Dave, even though I knew that this non-date was beyond salvageable. “That’s all right”. I made a mental note to never let this happen again.
“Oh…and sir?” continued the waitress. “We’re having a little trouble with your credit card. Could you come over to the cash register with me?”
“Um, okay,” I replied. This couldn’t be, I thought. I was nowhere near the limit — in fact, my balance should’ve been close to zero.
The perfect end to the perfect evening, I thought.
When we arrived at the register, the waitress took a quick look at our table, checking to see that the other two were occupied and out of earshot.
“Sorry,” she said in a low, nearly stage-whisper voice. “I just wanted to get you away for a moment. I’ve been waiting tables for seven years since junior high, and in all that time, I’ve never seen a date do a complete one-eighty like that.”
Taken by surprise, it took me moment to respond. “Well, it didn’t start as a date, so if it doesn’t end like one, no loss, right?”
“Well, you seem like a decent guy, you play a mean accordion, and you’ll make a nice catch for some lucky girl. You know what? I’m going to comp you on the frites.“
Stunned by this kind gesture — consolation fries — all I could say was “Uh, that’s really sweet. Wow. Thank you.”
Although I paid with my credit card, I left her a twenty-dollar bill in addition to a generous tip. This was the nicest, sweetest and most memorable thing that I can recall a server at a restaurant doing for me. If there was only going to be just one thing remaining to go right this evening, let it be this, I thought.
We all stepped outside.
“Need a lift, bro?” Dave offered as we approached his jeep. Before I could refuse, Lindsey took my hand and motioned for me to take “shotgun”. She hopped into the back and popped her head between the driver and front passenger seat, anchoring herself by putting her left arm around Dave. Dave turned on his stereo, which started playing some terrible Jack Johnson tune, heaping insult upon injury.
It was a mercifully short ride back to my hotel. With Jack Johnson providing an appropriately saccharine ironic soundtrack to the proceedings, Lindsey squeezed herself into the spot between the two front seats to give me a hug and peck on both cheeks. As I stepped out of the Jeep, she clambered into the front passenger seat and closed the door.
“Hey, Joey,” said Lindsey, sticking her head out the window. “I had a great time! Let’s do this again!”
I watched as Dave’s rear lights — along with Lindsey — vanished downhill into the San Francisco night.
Epilogue
I stayed in San Francisco for a couple more days and flew home Sunday morning.
Just after noon, on Monday, a little red indicator appeared above the “Friends” icon on Facebook. It was Lindsey, requesting to be my friend.
Ah, what the hell, it’ll be amusing, I thought and clicked “Accept”.
Moments later, a message from Lindsey in my Facebook inbox:
It’s always fun when you join us out on the town! Let me know when you come to SFO again!
By the way: the guy who drove us home, what was his name?
I wasn’t in front of a mirror at the time, by I suspect my response looked something like this:
I’ve had a couple of meetings in Kensington Market over the past couple of weeks to talk to people about working on some mobile development projects. It gave me a little time to wander through its streets and snap some photos. Even though I had time off this summer, I was away for much of it and didn’t get much of a chance to poke around Kensington, one of my oldest haunts.
Exile was around when I was in high school. (That was back in the 1980s, kids.)
If you’re petite and thinking about going as one of the members of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, you might want to grab the jacket above from Exile.
Courage My Love (pictured above) and Dancing Days (below) were also around in the ’80s, and both were great places to pick up a vintage blazer.
I’m not sure I’ve ever need these guys’ services, but I’ll know that if I ever do, I’ll just need to go a little bit south of Kensington:
Ubisoft’s “Captured in T.O.” Party
I was at Ubisoft’s “Captured in T.O.” party, which was a celebration of the game development company’s new location in Toronto’s seemingly unlikely Bloor/Lansdowne (a.k.a. “Blansdowne”) neighbourhood. This new office is a “performance capture” studio, where human face and body motions are recorded to make more realistic videogames.
The food was great, thanks to a number of local chefs, who set up a row of stations featuring a particular dish.
The place had a rather club-like atmosphere. A lot of OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ, and at least three different dance-y remixes of Gotye’s Someone That I Used to Know, a.k.a. “Song we used to like”.
I couldn’t get enough of the chocolatey, creamy polenta pudding and had to move away from this station before I ate their entire supply:
Another one of my favourites was the “Fracesinha” pork sandwiches, created by the pork geniuses at Pork Ninjas:
Snow Crash
I’ve read Neal Stephenson’s “cyberthriller” novel Snow Crash, but had never experience an actual snow crash — where your computer crashes and shows a display full of static “snow” until recently. As a precaution, I made sure not to look directly at the “snow”.
Ukrainian Fest
The Toronto Ukrainian Festival took place on Bloor Street between Jane and Runnymede from Friday, September 14th through Sunday, September 16th. I was pretty busy with work that day — a startup can be a harsh taskmistress — but I managed to catch a couple of hours of it on the Saturday.
My youngest nephew wanted one of the giant stuffed animals on display at the carnie booths set up near Bloor and Runnymede, so I thought I’d give one of the games a try.
As with all carnie games, this one seemed simple. Given five circular plates, you had to completely cover a red circle.
My motto is “If you’re going to get swindled, you might as well smile!”
I was pretty close to getting it right. I watched the guy demonstrate how easy it supposedly was and got a pretty good idea of how to lay down my circular plates. If I didn’t get so cocky with the fourth plate, my nephew would’ve gotten a big poorly-stitched-together stuffed animal which would’ve been mulch by now. Ah well.
Birthday Party, Bridal Party, Sausage Party
With an accordion, you can turn a humdrum Saturday night into something like this:
On one particular Saturday night, my friend and former housemate Paul celebrated his birthday. It started at his house with drinks and conversation, but as the evening an drinks wore on, we switched to dancing.
The girls wanted to go clubbing, and well, we weren’t going to say “no”, were we? Luckily, we were a short hop away from the club zone on King Street West. A half hour later, we were in Cheval.
The girls were quite happy to have a real dance floor:
…and, as the odds would have it, I encountered a bachelorette party. There’s something about a bride-to-be and her bridesmaids having a night on the town that makes them a little more brazen and willing to approach a complete stranger and ask him to play a song on his accordion. Luckily, I have experience in such matters.
I was wearing my accordion on my back, backpack-style, when I noticed one of the bridesmaids tapping on a key, wondering why it wouldn’t make a sound.
“It doesn’t work if you’re not squeezing the bellows,” I told her.
“Could you play something for me and the bride-to-be?” she asked.
“Sure!” I said, and she took my arm and led me to her table where the bride-to-be and the rest of the bridesmaids were gathered.
The table was packed with glasses, carafes of mixer and a Mad Men-worthy amount of booze. I’d just lucked my way into partaking in some bottle service!
I spent a good chunk of the evening chatting, dancing and posing for pictures with the bachelorettes, and letting them try the accordion on. After all these years, I’m still pleased with the good fortune that walking around with the ol’ squeezebox brings.
I had some work to do the next day, so I bade the birthday and bachelorette parties farewell at about 2 a.m. and started making my way home. I wanted to get a pop before making my way home, so I got into line at the hot dog stand at King and Portland. Since it was a warm Saturday night in mid-September, clubland was busy, and so were the places serving food to hungry club-goers.
While waiting in line, I became aware of an argument that was getting louder as it went along. One of the voices was a guy’s voice — a frustrated guy’s voice, in fact.
It was this sort of frustration:
The people he was yelling at sounded familiar. No wonder — they were two of the girls from the bachelorette party.
“Look, all I want to do is talk to you!” said the guy. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
“We just want to get a hot dog in peace, is that all right with you?” one of them said.
“What is wrong with you bitches these days?!” he said, his face turning a little more flushed.
Looks-wise, there was nothing wrong with the guy. He was reasonably handsome, had a nice shirt and slacks on, and could’ve gotten someone’s phone number had he not been so unhinged. It was obvious that he was having a bad night and had had enough. The girls were unfortunate to be around when he decided that this was his hour of retribution.
There’s a little trick I use when I have the accordion in these situations. I unstrapped the bellows and expanded them as I stepped in to intervene. It’s not unlike a cat raising the fur on its back to look bigger or a puffer fish ballooning.
In my best “radio voice”, I asked “Is there a problem?”
Angry Guy looked at me for a moment and then said to the girls “Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re going to talk to…to…PSY over here and not me.”
“That’s Accordion PSY to you, buddy,” I said, before realizing that an “Accordion Guy” pun would be lost on him. He didn’t know me from Adam.
“We hung out with all night, and he’s cool,” one of the girls said, and that didn’t please him one bit. He looked me up and down with an unhappy grimace, noted that I had a couple of inches an twenty pounds over him, and walked off in a huff.
With the situation resolved, I said “Well, that’s done. Ladies, can I buy you a hot dog?”
Later that afternoon, I caught a set of presentations put on by Rogers, Wavefront and their partners about M2M — that is, machine to machine — solutions for business. I prefer to call it “hot machine-on-machine action”, but not in front of customers:
Lovely Drinking Establishments
Even though I live a reasonable walk away from The Bar With No Name, I hadn’t set foot in it until recently. More’s the pity, because it’s like a strange fusion of neighbourhood pub and the Bovine Sex Club, one of my old Queen Street West hangouts. The staff are great, the beer and food are nice, and the crowd is freaks and geeks (seriously — they hold Magic: The Gathering tournaments there!) who just happen to live on Bloor West. I’m going to have to make this a more regular destination.
My friend Hillary has decided that her regular will be The Queen and Beaver, which is the very model of what a British Pub should be — except that the food is much, much better. I recently caught up with her there to have their cottage pie and top it off with their excellent sticky toffee pudding. We didn’t want the drinking to end, so we made our way to Annex to see if we could get into Guu, but it was packed. Luckily, we had plan B…
…Victory Cafe, which has been a reliable Mirvish village destination for some time. Cute waitstaff, too.
Being in a startup means that you sometimes have to take Saturday meetings. Luckily, you can do them in places like Crema Coffee Co., one of the handful of excellent indie cafes within striking distance of my place.
Toronto Underground Market
This past Sunday marked the first anniversary of Toronto Underground Market, a monthly “night market” for local foodies where they can sample dishes made by Toronto’s upcoming and indie chefs, caterers and food trucks. Even a year after it first opened, this gathering still sells out its advance tickets in a matter of hours.
Since it was their first anniversary, they celebrated by inviting the “all stars” to return. I’d never had a chance to try Bistro Filipino’s food, and after checking out their menu:
Click the photo to see the menu in a larger size.
…I decided to get in line for some Kwek Kwek, which are battered, deep-fried quail eggs with dipping sauce.
The batter was nice and crispy, and the eggs were soft-boiled with a nice creamy yolk, which made this dish my favourite of the evening.
In the late summer of 1998, I was chatting with my friend Rob in my apartment, which was then smack in the middle of downtown Toronto, at the corner of Yonge and College Streets. The living room windows looked south on Yonge along the wide part between College and Gerrard, where the sidewalks are wide and busy with people making their way towards the livelier part near the Eaton Centre. Not far away and six storeys down, a guy with a guitar was playing to passers-by. A number of women were gathered around him.
“Look at that,” I said after taking a swig of beer. “Now there’s something I could probably do. Too bad I can’t play guitar. Never had the talent for anything that doesn’t have a piano keyboard. I’ve been thinking about heading down to the Church Street pawn shops and looking at some accordions.”
“You know, I’ve got an accordion in my parents’ basement,” Rob answered. “It’s been there since the end of high school, and I sure as hell don’t play it. You want it?”
“Sure,” I replied. “It could be fun.”
Late 1998 – Early 1999: A Few Trial Runs
A few days later, Rob met me downtown and brought a brown suitcase. Inside it was a barely-used accordion: a black Titano student model, with 120 bass buttons, covered in lots of chrome and “mother-of-toilet-seat” (my nickname for fake mother-of-pearl) keys.
Karl Mohr and me (with one of Erik Mohr’s paintings in the background), early 1999.
Over the next few months, I would play the accordion only a couple of times. I played my synthesizers considerably more often. The photo above shows ome of those rare moments: me with my friend Karl Mohr, playing accordion at his brother Erik Mohr’s art show at a gallery downtown. Even then, I was still more of a synth guy — we were providing background noise at Erik’s show, with Karl spending more time playing my accordion and me on a Roland MC-303 Groovebox dance music machine.
I didn’t start playing the accordion seriously until May 1, 1999.
Saturday, May 1, 1999
A couple of days before May 1st, I got a phone call from Karl inviting me to an event at Queen’s Park.
“It’s a protest thing,” he said. “Against hospital cuts. It’s a good cause, they’re looking for musicians to come and play and it sounds like fun. I just got my own accordion and thought maybe we could do something together. What d’you think?”
I didn’t give it much thought and said “Sounds like fun. I’m in.”
Karl and me, out on the town on the first day out with our accordions.
That year, the first of May was one of the first truly warm days of that year. It was the kind of day when you’d feel guilty for staying inside when you just had to be outside: bright and cloudless, with the streets filling with people who’d switched to their summer clothes. There couldn’t have been a more perfect day for the both of us to take our accordions out on the street for the first time.
At Queen’s Park, Toronto.
Karl and I had jammed together before, on synths, so we were pretty used to improvising instrumental pieces together. For the first little while, we did just that.
“What songs do you guys know?” someone asked.
“I don’t really follow pop tunes,” Karl said to me. “You know any?”
It hadn’t occurred to us to come up with a list of songs or to rehearse them, and we hadn’t rehearsed. We’d simply gone out on the street with our accordions to see what would happen.
At Queen’s Park, Toronto.
“Let’s do some standards,” I said. “I – IV – Vm in A,” I said to Karl and started playing Wild Thing by The Troggs.
“I can play along, but I don’t know the words,” yelled Karl over the chords. “You have to sing!”
It was my first time as a lead vocalist, and I’d never really sung and played an instrument at the same time, especially a relatively unfamiliar instrument. In spite of this, it wasn’t difficult. It just felt right.
Most of the musicians there had guitars and various flavours of African drum. We were the only accordion players present, and for many of the people there, it was the first time that they’d ever seen an accordion up close. A number of people were surprised to see rock and pop music being played on accordion, as if they couldn’t possibly play the same notes that the other more common instruments play.
In an alley, on our way towards Queen West.
We hung around Queen’s Park for a short while, after which we decided to wander about downtown. Wherever we went, we were stopped by people who were curious about a couple of guys walking around with accordions. A lot of people had come out that gorgeous day, and we stopped at nearly every block to play a number for a new audience.
In an alley, on our way towards Queen West.
We ended up on Queen Street, heading westward from University Avenue. This was when the stretch of Queen between University and Bathurst was a little edgier than it is now, back before Parkdale was what it is now, when the Drake and Gladstone were still run-down fleabag hotels, before there was a Loblaws, back when Igor was still a master bike thief who was considered by some to be an urban legend. It was also a time when Toronto’s best-known goth night club, the Sanctuary Vampire Sex Bar, was still operating. (If you’re wondering what became of it, it’s now the Starbucks on the north side of Queen Street, just east of Trinity Bellwoods Park.)
Tales from the Sanctuary, the Vampire Sex Bar is an actual book you can buy!
It was still the middle of the afternoon when we walked by Sanctuary, which meant that its doors should’ve been shut and the place should’ve been quiet. However, its doors were open and there was music playing. Between the weather and the accordions, the whole afternoon had an “anything can happen” kind of feel to it, and that’s probably why we walked through those doors to see what was going on.
It turned out that the staff were mopping the floors and the doors had been opened to helped them dry more quickly. DJ Todd was in his booth, trying out some new music that he’d just bought. A couple of the bouncers, Darren and Mark, were helping out and were greatly amused by the sight of a couple of guys with accordions wandering into a goth bar. Mark decided that he had to pose for a picture with us and we were only too happy to oblige:
Me, “Marky Mark”, and Karl at the Sanctuary Vampire Sex Bar.
Darren said “Hey, it’s Mark’s birthday. Why don’t you play Happy Birthday for Marky Mark?”
“Let’s goth it up,” said Karl, with a glance in my direction.
“Minor key, maybe? G minor,” I said, and then we took Happy Birthday in a decidedly Marilyn Manson direction, ending it with the line “Don’t like the cake, but the cake likes me”, a reference to this goth hit.
Mark was quite happy with his little birthday gift and asked for one more: a chance for both him and Darren to pose with our accordions. Once again, we were only too happy to oblige:
The bouncers pose with our accordions.
Let’s get a closer look!
After we took the photos above, DJ Todd emerged from the DJ booth. “I have a weird idea. Wanna play in front of an audience?”
“Sure,” I said. “Who else is here?”
“No,” replied Todd. “I’m talking about tonight, when we’re open. What if we put you on stage, in front of everyone on the dance floor? We’ll mic you, you play.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said, and Karl nodded.
“Okay. Come back tonight. Play something that the crowd can get into, and if they like you, if you get any applause at all, I will set you up at the bar with all the beer you can drink.”
“You’re on.”
A Night to Remember
We went back to my apartment to pick up a change of clothes for me, as well as figure out what we were going to play that night. As I pulled out some appropriately black clothing, Karl was going through my CD collection.
“Godlike would work, but it’s just not the same without that guitar riff,” he said, holding up a KMFDM CD.
“Virus might be doable,” I said. “And hey, someday I’d love to do an accordion version of Stray Bullet, but I can’t imagine doing that without being backed by a sequencer or maybe the Groovebox. We’ve got only a couple of hours, so I think we need to pick something simple. Something we already know by heart.”
Bow down before the box you squeeze / You’re going some beer for free
A little more searching through the CDs led us to Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine. As soon as we saw it, we said “Head Like a Hole!“ nearly simultaneously. It was fitting: I met Karl at Crazy Go Nuts University at an event where I was the DJ; he heard me play Head Like a Hole and came to the DJ booth to compliment me on my taste in music.
It didn’t take us long to work out an arrangement, after which we went to Karl’s place to get him a change of clothes and grab a bite to eat before returning to Sanctuary.
Karl and me, before our performance.
We arrived at Sanctuary a little before 10 p.m., clad in head-to-toe black, with our accordions at the ready. The club’s owner, a big guy who went by the name “Lance Goth”, saw us coming, shook his head and cradled his face in his hand. “Now this…” he said, “this is a sign of the Apocalypse.”
We were escorted in and put onstage, and DJ Todd introduced us. “You’re not truly hardcore unless you have…an accordion!” he said, and we immediately broke into Head Like a Hole.
At first, the crowd looked at us with great disbelief, but by the final chorus of “Bow down before the one you serve / You’re going to get what you deserve”, we’d won them over. When we finished, they erupted into applause, and we climbed down from the stage, accepting handshakes and high-fives from all directions.
Todd put on a song and led us to the bar. “Give these guys all the beer they can drink,” he told the bartender, who grabbed a pitcher and asked “What’ll you have?”
Karl and me, after our performance.
Our new-found goth celebrity status made it easy for us to get a place to sit at the crowded club. People were only too willing to let us join them, and we shared the contents of our bottomless pitchers with the fans we’d made.
“This is insane!” I told Karl. “I’ve been playing synths for years and was always second fiddle to the guys on guitars and drums. I’m on the accordion a single day and all this has happened.”
“I know! The accordion is so uncool that it’s cool.”
“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m thinking of carrying it around more often. It’s like a big good luck charm.“
Some of my audience outside Amato’s pizza on that first night.
When last call came about, Karl headed home to make his appointment with his girlfriend. Having no one with whom to make a similar booking, I went to what was then Amato’s, a pizza place that stayed open late and was popular with the club crowd. I got a slice when I got another “Hey, do you know how to play that thing?”
“I sure hope so,” I said. “Otherwise I’m just walking around with twenty-ish pounds of fashion accessory”.
I started playing whatever songs came to mind and whose lyrics I could remember and whose chords I could fake. Luckily for me, the dirty secret of rock and roll songs is that most of them boil down to one of six or seven patterns, and it’s a matter of knowing the words. I played, and somehow pulled it off. In return, someone took up a collection for me in an empty pizza plate and put it at my feet, and when I counted the money, it had turned out to be around fifty bucks — not bad for a half hour’s playing. Walter, Amato’s manager, brought me a slice of pollo basilico pizza.
“Here you go…” Walter said. Not knowing my name, he finished his sentence by calling me “Accordion Guy”. The others heard, and they started calling me that, and the name stuck.
At the end of the night — about three-thirty a.m. or so — I made my way home, tired but exhilarated from a very full day.
Aftermath
Still one of the best accordion pictures ever.
Since that day, I’ve often taken the accordion with me whenever I’ve gone out socially. It’s paid off in all sorts of ways, from making new friends to landing my last few jobs to discovering opportunities that would’ve otherwise passed me by to things like the photo above. It’s brought me through good times and some of the roughertimes I’ve had to face over the past couple of years. It’s practically part of me.
Happy anniversary, accordion. Thanks for everything!
That’s me on the right, on Thursday, January 26, 2017, celebrating the acquisition of my permanent resident status in the United States. It means that I am in possession of what’s colloquially known as a “green card”.
In the late summer of 1998, I was chatting with my friend Rob in my apartment, which was then smack in the middle of downtown Toronto, at the 
