The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Never let it be said that Accordion City’s nerd, media and PR community can’t throw a good party and raise a lot of money for a good cause! Last night, the HoHoTO party (T.O. is local shorthand for “Toronto, Ontario”) took place at the Mod Club in Accordion City’s funky College West neighbourhood. Although the party was put together in a matter of days and relied largely on Twitter for promotion, the event was run as if it had been planned months in advance, sold out in a week (over 600 tickets!) and raised over CAD$20,000 for the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank.

Here’s what the dance floor looked like when the event was at its peak. Not bad for a Monday night during the Christmas season:

 

Being nerds, they couldn’t resist setting up a program that displayed Twitter messages about the event on the club’s giant screens. A good number of people used their mobile phones to post to Twitter, and we also got a number of greetings from people who couldn’t make it but wanted to send us their best:

The organizers even managed to get some custom-made vinyl tops for all the club’s tables that showed the HoHoTO logo and the names of all the sponsors:

Everybody dressed up for the event, but Pete Forde gets bonus points for breaking out the white suit, sassy T-shirt and old-school Polaroid camera:

We got a special video greeting from Mayor David Miller, who thanked the organizers for their efforts and their ability to get the whole thing together so quickly, and the rest of us for raising so much money that the event was one of the food bank’s most successful fundraisers this year.

 

The music was excellent, and we have DJs Duarte Da Silva and Ryan Taylor to thank. They took requests the old-fashioned way, but they were also monitoring Twitter for requests – you could send them a request by posting a message tagged #hohotodj. You’ve got to love the 21st century!

 

In addition to the attendees who were generous not only with their admission money but also their raffle ticket purchases, credit has to go to the sponsors and for their generous (and swift!) support:

• White Label Sponsors:
  • Agoracom
  • Fused Network
  • Grupo Unaio na Capoeira
  • MaRS
  • Microsoft
  • teehan+lax
  • up time software
  • RedFlagDeals
  • The Death of Alice Blue
• Red Label Sponsors
  • Hyndman Law
  • idee Inc.
  • MCC Planners Inc.
  • mesh Conference
  • Molson
  • Sequentia Environics
  • viigo
• Green Label Sponsors
  • apolitic
  • Bar Skins
  • brainpark
  • Cello Products Inc.
  • CommandN
  • CommunityLend
  • echo communications
  • echo consultants
  • EmbarkOnIt
  • eventbrite
  • Facebook Cookbook
  • Freshbooks
  • Fair Trade Jewellery Co.
  • Microsoft Advertising
  • Mindjet
  • Mischief Media
  • nexj media
  • Rypple
  • StartupNorth
  • Say Yeah!
  • The Blog Studio
  • Unspace
  • Varicent
  • VizThink

  

The event wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the volunteer squad, who counted my wife, The Ginger Ninja, among their number. Thanks for your time and effort!

I had a blast, and I suspect that most of the crowd did as well. My thanks to everyone who took part in HoHoTO, from the organizers to the attendees, for a job well done, a party well thrown and all the funds raised for those less fortunate than us.

Shall we do this again next year? I certainly hope so.

Links

• The HoHoTO official site
• News Release: GTA Geeks Gather to Give Generously
• The Globe and Mail: Twitter and “Flash Crowds” For Good
• Masthead Online: The Power of Twitter in Toronto
• Twitter posts tagged “HoHoTO”
• The HoHoTO Flickr photo pool
• Flickr photos tagged “HoHoTO”

Two versions of Igor Kenk: The Manson-like scruffy man we often saw, and the cleaned-up-for-court version we became acquainted with.

Igor Kenk – Accordion City’s most notorious bike thief, possessor of a name worthy of a James Bond villain and all-round human colostomy bag – just doesn’t know when to quit. Yesterday afternoon, he had three charges added to his already impressive collection, but instead of bike theft or drug charges, these newest ones are for assault.

For well over a decade, Igor was the principal figure in Toronto cyclist demonology. His shady bicycle shop at the corner of Queen and Strachan was the first place you’d visit immediately after discovering that your bike was stolen. The odds were good that you’d find your missing bike sitting in his inventory, a hodgepodge rat’s-nest collection of bikes that he somehow managed jam into the small confines of his store.

After years of managing to somehow keep charges from sticking to his slimy hide, Igor’s activities were finally curtailed this summer when a “sting” operation successfully caught him in the act. The ensuing investigation turned up almost 3,000 bikes stored in a dozen locations across the city – in his shop as well as in a number of rented garages – as well as some drugs. As a result, he amassed 58 charges.

The Toronto Star explains how he got three new ones yesterday:

A 50-year-old Toronto man faces three charges after he swung a metal pipe at two people this afternoon.

The suspect was trying to remove property from a home on Dufferin St. and Wallace Ave. when the homeowners tried to stop him.

"He says it was his (property), and the owners are saying it was theirs," said Det. Hoffmeyer of Toronto police.

The suspect swung a metal pipe at the homeowners. No injuries were reported. The suspect drove away after the confrontation.

Police say the victims and suspect are not related.

An hour later, Igor Kenk was arrested and charged with assault with a weapon and two counts of assault.

According to the article, Igor’s supposed to be under house arrest and isn’t allowed to step outside unless he’s accompanied by one of his three sureties, who’d collectively posted CAD$15,000 in bail for him. Those three people may have been Igor’s last friends in the city, and after this stunt, he might not have them to lean on.

There’s been a lot of talk about the film Toronto Stories, which opened for a one-week run on College West’s Royal Theatre on Friday. After years of seeing Accordion City play the part of New York, Chicago and other cities in so many films, it’s nice to see it finally play itself. Here’s a quick summary of the movie:

An engaging tale in the tradition of New York Stories, Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, and Paris, Je t’Aime, Toronto Stories is a feature film in four chapters bound together by one interwoven narrative and set in Toronto. The four-part screenplay is written and directed by Aaron Woodley (Rhinoceros Eyes, Tennessee), Sook-Yin Lee (Shortbus, Unlocked), Sudz Sutherland (Doomstown, Love, Sex and Eating the Bones), and David Weaver (Siblings, Century Hotel).

Opening on the chaos and confusion of Pearson International Airport’s arrivals lounge, a young immigrant boy arrives in Toronto, alone and not speaking a word of English. Before the authorities have a chance to figure out where he’s from, he disappears and an amber alert is issued that reverberates through the city. Meanwhile, the boy finds his way into the centre of town, where he bears accidental witness to a covert mission of two kids to find the infamous Cabbagetown Monster, a budding romance, and an escaped ex-con reconnecting with an old friend – all the while managing to remain undiscovered despite the widespread search for him.  Finally, a once established man fallen from grace and now inhabiting the streets and alleys around Union Station spots the lost boy, but when he approaches the authorities his mental illness causes the credibility of his discovery to be questioned.

If you’re looking for a break from gift shopping and the hubbub of this time of year, go check out this movie and support the local film industry, the arts scene and good ol’ Accordion City!

Links

For more about Toronto Stories, check out these links:

• The Toronto Stories site
• Toronto Stories: Worthy Quartet of Tales (Toronto Star)
• Toronto Stories Challenges Our Inferiority Complex (BlogTO)
• Toronto Stories: The Film (Spacing Toronto)
• Toronto Stories: The CN Tower in the background is actually supposed to be there (National Post)
• Toronto Stories (Popjournalism)
• Toronto the Muddled (The Globe and Mail)

Here are just a few of the 30 creepily Teutonic pictures from the book Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern (“Electrical Protection in 132 Pictures”). If you want to see the whole disturbing lot, go check out Bre Pettis’ Flickr photostream titled 30 Ways to Die of Electrocution.

I think the illustration below is supposed to warn us of the dangers of letting the baby get too close to the Nintendo Wii:

The lesson I’m going to take from the illustration below is “Never attempt to repair an Enigma Machine with scissors while consumed with rage”:

Maybe it wasn’t obvious to 1930s people that water and changing lightbulbs don’t mix:

I had no idea that there were emo kids in the 1930s. How can we be sure that the electrocution depicted below isn’t intentional?

And finally, there’s this one. I think this kid’s doing it to get his jollies:

Reason #1: Some Employees Use the Kitchen Sink as a Hot Tub

From the Northern California news site Redding.com:

A trio of Anderson girls are in hot water with their fast-food employer for dipping themselves into the sink used to clean dishes.

One of the girls bathing in the sink at the Anderson Kentucky Fried Chicken posted the photos on the Internet and after management learned of them, all three were suspended today, said Cheri, assistant manager at the restaurant. She declined to give her last name.

“The girls are being reprimanded for it,” Cheri said.

She said she learned of the photos, which had been posted publicly on the girl’s MySpace.com social Web site, during the dinner rush today.

Reason #2: Chuck E. Cheese Has to Call in the Cops Quite Often

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal:

Chuck E. Cheese’s bills itself as a place "where a kid can be a kid." But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.

…

Fights among guests are an issue for all restaurants, but security experts say they pose a particular problem for Chuck E. Cheese’s, since it is designed to be a haven for children. Law-enforcement officials say alcohol, loud noise, thick crowds and the high emotions of children’s birthday parties make the restaurants more prone to disputes than other family entertainment venues.

The environment also brings out what security experts call the "mama-bear instinct." A Chuck E. Cheese’s can take on some of the dynamics of the animal kingdom, where beasts rush to protect their young when they sense a threat.

Click the photo to see it at full size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

[This article was also posted on my tech blog, Global Nerdy.]

I haven’t been posting much this week because I’ve been pouring heart, soul and brain cells into my first presentation at a Microsoft conference – TechDays 2008 in Calgary — which happens at 1 p.m. Mountain Time today. My regular posting should resume tomorrow or Friday at the latest.

The Empire’s still got some money to throw around, so every speaker gets two official button-down dress shirts with logos, one for each day of the conference. I have to admit I never thought I’d seen the day when I’d be wearing one of these:

My friend and co-worker John Bristowe keeps singing the “Damien” choir music from the The Omen every time I run into him with this shirt on.