The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Last night, I got this message from RT Lechow via Facebook:

“I no tech lunch” over the past few months was because I decided to go on summer vacation. Now that summer vacation’s over and I’m back at work making mobile software, it’s time to revive the monthly tech lunch. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the return of…

…the Toronto Techie Dim Sum! Here are the details:

• Where:Sky Dragon restaurant, on the top floor of Dragon City mall (southwest corner of Dundas and Spadina).
• When: Wednesday, September 19th, from noon until about 1:30 p.m.. Sometimes we get really deep into a conversational topic.
• How much: We split the bill evenly, and no matter how much we’ve managed to gorge ourselves, I’ve never seen it go higher that $12 a person.
• Why: Because I love doing the community-building thing and want to catch up with all of you.

As always, this is just a lunch gathering of Toronto-area people who either work in tech, hang out with people who work in tech, or who just simply like tech and techies. There’s no agenda, no set topics, no presentations – just good people, good conversation and good (and inexpensive) food.

Once again, you don’t have to be a developer to attend! If you take part in the activity of writing software, building web sites or cobbling together technologies, or if you just like hanging out with the very nice people who comprise Toronto’s active and vibrant tech scene, you’re more than welcome to join us for lunch!

If you’re on Facebook and want to join us for lunch, please visit the event’s Facebook page and RSVP.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

The trip to Montreal and Quebec was the first real vacation that The Lady Friend and I had ever taken together. Prior to that, any visit that she or I made to each other’s home towns were “working vacations”, where one or both of us spent the weekdays at work. As our first real vacation, it was mostly about being together. Still, I wanted to see a couple of friends while in Montreal, and I was lucky enough to catch up with my old Microsoft coworker Frédéric Harper and his fiancée Émilie on our final Saturday afternoon, just before our dinner at Au Pied de Cochon.

We met up at Else’s, one of my favourite watering holes in Montreal. Else’s has a restaurant licence, not a bar licence, so they can’t serve you drinks unless you order at least a little food to go along with it. Luckily, they offer a number of small dishes that allow you to obey the letter of the law without causing you to “waste” your money on something other than alcohol. The crowd at Else’s is a friendly one, the staff are pretty cool, and the music is always great. The Lady Friend absolutely loved the blues selection they had on their sound system that afternoon.

The Lady Friend and I started to make our way to Au Pied de Cochon later that afternoon, so I invited Fred and Émilie to join us on the walk there. Fred had told me that Émilie had always wanted to take up the accordion, so I let her take it out for a spin. Fred took this photo of her, and he also wrote about it on his blog, Out of Comfort Zone:

I then took over and played as we walked the streets of Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood. Fred shot a couple of videos, the first of which is below:

I love this video. It’s not the playing or the singing or the fact that it’s me doing what I love — it’s the fact that the lady whom I love is grinning from ear to ear through it all. I live for her smile.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and many people were out making the most of the end of August. As we walked and I played, we got an assortment of curious looks, smiles and waves.

Suddenly, we heard a voice that came from above. “Joey? Is that you?”

I looked up and saw this guy sticking his head out of a second-storey window:

“Holy crap, CT! I didn’t know you lived in this neighbourhood!” I’d met CT Moore a couple of years back from doing developer evangelism stuff in Montreal for Microsoft.

“I’m moving in today!” he said. “I was unpacking when I heard an accordion and this guy singing and had to check.”

After a little more conversation and saying goodbye, we pressed on towards Au Pied de Cochon.

“I swear, I didn’t set that up just to impress you,” I told The Lady Friend, who replied with a “Yeah, right.”

Once again, be sure to check out Fred’s blog for his take on the whole thing.

No trip to Montreal is truly complete without a visit to Schwartz’s. Since this was The Lady Friend’s first trip ever to Montreal and La belle province, it was my patriotic duty to bring her to everyone’s favourite charcuterie Hebraique for their legendary smoked meat.

The trick was to pick the right time to go. The Saturday of the Labour Day weekend would’ve been a particularly bad time, even during times when you’d think there’d be a lull. I took the photo below that Saturday at about 2:45 p.m., and the line to get into Schwartz’s went to the end of the block and around the corner.

The trick is to go when Montrealers aren’t up. “Between ten and ten-thirty on Sunday morning ought to do it,” I told The Lady Friend.

“Ten and ten-thirty? Won’t lots of people be up already?” she asked.

“In Tampa [where she lives], sure. But these are Montrealers. They go to bed late, like civilized people.”

She shot me a dirty look, but it had the opposite effect on me. I live for those dirty looks she gives me when it’s my intention to misbehave.

We arrived on Sunday morning at 10:30 and half the tables were still empty. However, by 10:45, well after we’d landed our seats, it began to fill up:

It was great to see the place again. I’ve been going here since 1986, and it really hasn’t changed all that much, at least as far as I can tell.

The placemats haven’t changed all that much, either:

Click the photo to see a larger version.

And the sandwich remains a feast for both eyes and palate. We ordered mediums, but I think The Lady Friend might’ve preferred a lean. Next time, we’ll order that for her, and I’ll go for the platter with the full-fat meat and skip the bread.

I’m always in my happy place at Schwartz’s!

With our meal done, it was time to start making our way back to Accordion City. We made out way to the exit:

I promised my sister that I’d pick up some take-home pre-packaged smoked meat from their shop next door and some proper Montreal bagels. The latter required a quick detour north to St-Viateur Bagel to pick up their legendary toroidal carbohydrate modules:

Like Schwartz’s, they haven’t changed much through the years, and I’m glad for that.

I suppose this means that Korean pop star Park Jae-Sang (better known as PSY) is now mainstream: he recently made a surprise appearance on Ellen, in response to a tweet by Britney Spears in which she said she loved the Gangnam Style video and was wondering if anyone wanted to teach her how to do the dance. As you can see in the video above, he seems rather fluent in English, remarking that his performance philosophy is “Dress classy, dance cheesy”. I can get behind that.

PSY led Britney and Ellen through a quick Gangnam Style dance tutorial. Ellen, as always, appeared to have fun. As for Britney? Well…

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.