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The Unofficial FutureRuby Guide to Toronto, Part 2: The FutureRuby Venues

The Unofficial FutureRuby Guide to TorontoWelcome to the second installment of The Unofficial FutureRuby Guide to Toronto! This is a series of articles aimed at showing out-of-town attendees of the upcoming FutureRuby conference around our fine city. (It’s useful even if you’re not planning on attending the conference).

In case you missed the previous installment, it’s here:

You might find last year’s Toronto guide for RubyFringe attendees useful as well:

  • Where did all the cigarettes go?
  • Getting from the airport to the hotel
  • Boozin’ in Accordion City
  • The lay of the land – part 1
  • Best damn cookie in town
  • Active Surplus aka Hardware Nirvana
  • The lay of the land – part 2
  • The unofficial IRC back-channel

      This article will give you a quick run-down of all the conference and party venues: where they are, what they’re like and how to get there.

      Conference Hotel: The Metropolitan Downtown

       Metropolitan Hotel Toronto

      FutureRuby will take place at the Metropolitan Toronto Hotel, where RubyFringe took place last year. If you attended RubyFringe, it’ll be a happy homecoming. If this is your first conference at the Metropolitan, you’re in for a treat.

      As I wrote in last year’s article series on RubyFringe, Toronto has two Metropolitan Hotels, and they’re a short distance from each other. FutureRuby’s venue is the Metropolitan Toronto, whose address is 108 Chestnut Street, which is behind City Hall, on the edge of Chinatown. If the hotel entrance looks like the photo above, you’re in the right place.

      Soho Metropolitan Hotel EntranceThe other Metropolitan Hotel is the Metropolitan Soho, located at 318 Wellington Street West. If the hotel looks like the photo to the right (click to see a larger version), you’re in the wrong place. Both are owned by the same hotel chain. The Soho is the hip, swanky one near the club district and the Toronto one looks more like a traditional hotel and caters to both business and Chinese clienteles.

      (In this article series, whenever I refer to “The Metropolitan”, I mean the Metropolitan Toronto.)

      The conference setup at the Metropolitan is pretty nice. The conference hall is in the basement, fits the conference’s numbers nicely, and the entryway to the hall is stocked with water, coffee and ice tea throughout the day. There’s a continental breakfast just outside the hall before the conference starts, and the lunch food is excellent – it’s the best conference lunch I’ve seen at a developer conference, with the notable exception of the Fall 2006 Ajax Experience’s venue, the Westin Boston Waterfront, and that conference cost over twice as much. Of particular note was the Chinese lunch, which wasn’t a surprise – the hotel’s main restaurant is Lai Wah Heen, a Chinese restaurant, and it’s a popular venue for Chinese weddings (I’ve been to a couple here, and the food was great).

      The hotel is situated right in the middle of town, which puts it a stone’s throw from a number of places. I’ll write more about these places in a later article.

      You might also want to see my article from last year, Getting from the Airport to the Hotel.

      FailCamp: Queen City Yacht Club

      Aerial view of Queen City Yacht Club

      FailCamp will take place at Queen City Yacht Club on Algonquin Island, one of the Toronto Islands. The Toronto Islands weren’t always islands – once upon a time, they were a peninsula jutting out from the mainland from east of downtown, but a big storm in the mid-1800s separated them from the rest of the city. Most people get to the islands via ferry or water taxi.

      The current strike by city employees means that there is no ferry service to the island, but that’s not going to be a problem. Queen City Yacht Club has its own launch – they call it a “tender” – that can carry just under fifty people at a time.

      Queen's Quay TerminalThe launch typically picks people up from the dock just east of Queen’s Quay Terminal (207 Queen’s Quay West, the building pictured to the right). If you’re facing the front of this building, the dock is just to its left. I don’t know the exact details, but if you’re going to FailCamp, I suggest arriving at Queen’s Quay Terminal early, going to the dock to the left of the building and looking around for FutureRuby people or signs; I’m sure they’re going to take care to make sure that they’re really obvious.

      I believe that the launch will be running continually throughout the night to shuttle people between Queen City Yacht Club and the mainland, but there’s a water taxi nearby, just in case.

      Queen City Yacht Club clubhouse, as seen from across the lagoon

      The venue will be Queen City Yacht Club’s house clubhouse (pictured above), a large place with a nice large outdoor deck overlooking the water and the city. It offers some great vantage points for taking photos of Toronto. There’s a large barge permanently moored to a nearby dock; it’s also a good place from which to shoot photos or just stare at the lake.

      Unlike the other FutureRuby events, you should bring some money for drinks and get a bite to eat before FailCamp (your FutureRuby registration fees cover the food and booze at the other events). The Yacht Club’s bar will be open during the event; I recall that they generally have pretty good beer on tap. As for getting food prior to FailCamp, there are lots of places near the Metropolitan Hotel and in the Queen’s Quay Terminal building.

      Friday Night’s Party: Unspace HQ

      Unspace’s offices are the venue for FutureRuby’s official opening night party. It’s located above the Lululemon store, which functions as both a store for sportswear and a temple for whatever religion is practiced by skinny blonde women in yoga pants. Apparently the store also sells clothes for men, but I reckon that a guy wearing a Lululemon logo is asking to have his manhood challenged, A Boy Named Sue-style. Unspace’s door is just to the right of Lululemon and leads to a steep set of stairs leading up to the third floor. I’m sure that there will be FutureRuby officials outside to make sure people find the place.

      Unspace is located on Queen Street West (342 Queen Street West, to be precise), a long-time destination for people looking for someplace cool to go. Mike Myer’s character “Dieter” from his recurring Sprockets skits on Saturday Night Live was based on a real guy named Dieter who waited tables at The Rivoli (“Your order is boring me. I shall dance now”), a popular bar on Queen West. Perez Hilton needled Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas and got (justifiably) clocked here. I’ve had many busking adventures on this street. It’s a fun, lively place.

      Lululemon store on Queen Street West

      Unspace has a gorgeous office, with exposed brick walls, a vintage pinball machine, Pete Forde’s “I am a villain in a classic James Bond movie” office and a large rooftop deck that’s been the venue for a number of excellent parties.

      Saturday Night’s Party: Pravda Vodka Bar

      View of lower room and staircase at Pravda Vodka Bar

      Saturday night’s festivities will happen at Pravda Vodka Bar (44 Wellington Street East). This is the one party venue for which my first-hand knowledge is lacking owing to these factors:

      • I’ve been there only once
      • It was fairly late in the evening, the bar was packed, and I was already quite crispy from drinks at Biff’s, a nearby French restaurant with a lovely bar of its own.

      Upper floor bar at Pravda Vodka Bar

      I do remember a pretty good selection of vodkas. That’s to be expected; it is a vodka bar, after all. I had a couple of fingers of the Polish stuff straight up – the kind with a blade of grass in the bottle – and a pretty dirty Dirty Martini (a Martini seasoned with not just an olive, but olive juice).

      I have vague memories of the room: lot of red velvet, gold trim and pre-Glasnost kitsch, a contradictory mash-up of imagery of from the Russian Revolution and a set designer’s ideas for a stage adaptation of Anna Karenina. It made a nice backdrop for the crowd, who were by and large ranged from twenty-somethings in clubwear to forty-something well-dressed professionals. I remember dancing and playing the accordion along to the DJ, who was playing Deee-Lite’s Groove is in the Heart (a song which turns twenty this year!).

      "Sitting room" area in Pravda Vodka Bar

      The Saturday night party is the “dress-up night” of FutureRuby. Bring something nice and nightclub-appropriate!

      Sunday’s Party: The Boat/Hotshot Gallery/Augusta Street, Kensington Market

      Montage of photos of Kensington Market

      Kensington Market is where the closing party will take place. It’s a lovely mishmash of secondhand clothing stores, fresh food markets, quirky shops and restaurants, patios and people’s homes. Here’s a slideshow of shots I took in Kensington Market last year; it should give you a “feel” for the place:


      Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

      It’s the home of a couple of great nerdy places, too:

      • Function 13, a funky store catering to arty nerds, with lots of books on design and design-oriented technologies such as Processing and Flash (maybe I should see if they stock Silverlight books, and help them if they don’t). It’s also where a lot of people take lessons on multimedia programming.
      • HacklabTO, Toronto’s very own hackerspace, where local nerds work on both software and hardware hobby projects, and where I sometimes work. It’s the home of the famous laser that does etching, cutting and even music playing.

      Hotshot Gallery

      The final party of FutureRuby will take place on a stretch of Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market. Augusta Avenue. Known venues for this street party will include:

      • The Boat (158 Augusta Avenue), a Portuguese restaurant that also doubles as one of Toronto’s best “secret” party spots.
      • Hotshot (181 Augusta Avenue) a gallery owned and run by my friend Karlen Chang, a spot that serves both excellent coffee and visual art.

    • Categories
      Geek Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

      The Unofficial FutureRuby Guide to Toronto , Part 1: What’s That Smell?

      The Unofficial FutureRuby Guideo to Toronto

      Last year, for RubyFringe – the offbeat conference for Ruby programmers hosted by the local Ruby heroes at Unspace – I wrote a series of articles about Toronto for people who were coming to the conference from out of town. In the series, I pointed out places of interest near the conference hotel (the Metropolitan downtown) and little tidbits of information that might be useful to an out-of-towner.

      This year, Unspace is holding another conference for Ruby programmers. This time, it’s going by the name FutureRuby and once again, I’m posting a series of articles that collectively will make a quick little Baedeker about Toronto for the non-locals attending the conference. My hope is that even people who’ve live in this city all their lives will find it useful and entertaining.

      Upon arriving in Toronto, you may notice a certain funk hanging in the air. The strength of said funk will vary from block to block and will come from one of two probable sources.

      Probable Source Number One: Gene Simmons’ Man-Musk

      gene_simmons

      The first probable source of the smell lingering around town is Gene Simmons. Yes, that Gene Simmons. Gene has bedded many women:

      • His current long-term partner, Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed
      • The woman with whom he cheated on Shannon in that video that popped up on the internet last year
      • Former live-in partners Cher and Diana Ross
      • “Over a thousand women”, if his interview on NPR is to be believed

      While his Rock God status helped him land the ladies, I believe that what really draws them in his the musky aroma he exudes.

      Gene will be in town on the FutureRuby weekend in his capacity as Grand Marshall for the Honda Indy, which will take place around the Canadian National Exhibition, a short drive west of the conference hotel. An event featuring fast-moving, big, throbbing machines needs a grand marshall to match, and who could fill the role better than he?

      The Honda Indy will run from Friday, July 10th through Sunday July 12th, and it might affect you in the following ways:

      • You may be exposed to Gene Simmons’ man-musk.
      • It may take longer than usual for you to get downtown if you’re flying in from Toronto’s main airport, Pearson International Airport, on Friday. Lakeshore Boulevard, one of the major roads leading into town from the west, will be used as part of the Indy track and will be closed.
      • You will hear the echoes of race car engines all weekend. It’ll be a constant hum in the background during the day – not too annoying, but I thought you might want to know what that sound was.

      Probable Source Number Two: The Garbage Strike!

      wrapped_trash

      The even more probable source of the smell is the garbage. As of today, Friday, July 3rd, the strike by Toronto’s municipal workers is in its 11th day. It affects a number of services, including Parks and Recreation, services at City Hall and garbage collection. There little to no smell downtown, but as you go to neighbourhoods where food makes the lion’s share of the trash, such as Kensington Market (where Sunday’s post-FutureRuby party is taking place), it sometimes gets a little ripe.

      If the strike goes on for another week and into FutureRuby:

      • Consider yourself warned about some potential stink.
      • If you’re from out of town, walking around the city and have some trash, please don’t litter or stuff it into our Saran-wrapped garbage cans; hang onto it and dispose of it at your hotel.

      How Will I Get to FailCamp if the Ferries aren’t Running?

      FailCamp, one of the events associated with FutureRuby, takes place on the Toronto Islands (Queen City Yacht Club on Algonquin Island, to be precise). The problem is that the island ferries are run by the striking city workers and are out of commission.

      Worry not – Queen City Yacht Club has provided the use of the Algonquin II, a launch that can shuttle almost 50 people back and forth between Toronto Harbour and FailCamp.

      Categories
      Geek It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

      FailCamp: One Week Away!

      FailCamp poster, featuring Sean Connery in his role as "Zed" from "Zardoz"

      If you were at last year’s FailCamp, you might remember the best story of FAIL of the evening, which involved warming up some “body lube” in the microwave oven for a little too long, after which hilarity ensued.

      Here’s how Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, the originators of FailCamp, describe their vision of the event:

      We believe that it’s time to give our personal fail some tough love and talk it out over beer!

      Join us for a brief, rousing introduction followed by camaraderie, beer, and show-and-tell. We’ll present a little about failure through the ages, mining your personal suck, maybe some science, pithy quotes from people you may or may not respect, and share some failure stories of our own.

      Then it’ll be your turn. If all goes to plan, you may even win in our friendly “race to the bottom” for the most public, most expensive, or most ridiculous Story of Fail.

      FailCamp returns next Thursday, July 9th and once again, it’s the warm-up act for Unspace’s Ruby programmer conference (going by the name “FutureRuby” this year), which takes place on the weekend of July 10th through 12th. Just like last year, FailCamp will once again provide a forum for you to share your greatest and most pathetic stories of FAIL, and hopefully how that failure taught you some important lessons and made you a better, wiser, more-careful-with-the-lube person.

      joey_presenting_at_failcamp_1Me, presenting at last year’s FailCamp.

      Once again, I will be hosting FailCamp. I’ll start the evening with a couple of stories of failure, including a couple of Keyboard Cat-worthy ones of my own, after which I’ll open up the floor to you, the audience, to share your own stories of FAIL. Once we’re all thoroughly embarrassed, DJ Barbi will spin the wheels of steel and we’ll dance our shame away.

      There are some tickets left as of this writing:

      • For FutureRuby attendees, there are 4 free tickets to FailCamp remaining.
      • For those of you who are not attending FutureRuby but would like to catch FailCamp, there are 19 “Pay What You Can” tickets left.

      If you want ‘em, go to the FailCamp registration page and get them before they disappear!

      joey_presenting_at_failcamp_2My one-slide summary of how things went terribly wrong in the movie Deliverance
      (The link leads to the “Squeal like a pig” scene from the movie – you might not want to watch at work).

      FailCamp will take place at the Queen City Yacht Club on the Toronto Islands (Algonquin Island, to be precise). Your printed ticket stub is good for a free ferry ride from the Toronto docks to the Yacht Club, where we’ll have some finger food, the Yacht club’s kitchen and cash bar will be open, and the evening should be full of surprises.

      What better way to close an article about FailCamp than the Keyboard Cat video starring “Pinky, Pet of the Week”?