paved :: marc weisblott

The latest stunt from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), who protested the opening night of the Stratford Festival might’ve “created quite a stir” in the Perth County media, but visiting city slickers weren’t buying. The Toronto Star dispatch from Richard Ouzounian mentioned the heavy police presence outside the production of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, “an exploration of what happens to a country when an impoverished mob sets out to overthrow the well-fed establishment” along with artistic director Richard Monette pointing out how this “annual playpen for the rich” was actually devised to keep local residents from going hungry. The threat of a 400-member mob – including a chartered bus from Toronto aspiring to throw tomatoes at The Who’s Who of the Rich and Vile – turned out to be more like 40, who found themselves being stared down by 200 officers on the other side of a security fence. The local Beacon Herald procured quotes from the rich and vile likes of Karen Kain, who explained how the average wage for a dancer is $17K per year, without benefits. A more sympathetic account of OCAP antics could be found last month in NOW, when activists did one of their romps through Rosedale: “If you’re rich, you got there by keeping all your money for yourself”, wrote Mike Smith. “But if you build your neighbourhood like a mid-millennial citadel, aren’t you kind of asking for a mob every now and then? It’s the genuine medieval experience. Residents should probably consider themselves lucky no one brought a battering ram.” Just like OCAP should consider themselves lucky to garner ink after their antics in October 2004, when they claimed to steal $3,500 in groceries from Loblaws in order to stage a gourmet picnic. But blaming the shortcomings of the welfare system on artists would’ve been a harder case to make in the GTA. No one seems to be getting rich from the deluge of springtime multimedia events in Toronto (CONTACT, Deep Wireless, digifest, Images, and this year’s awkward concoction, Humanitas). Yet, the participants might have a greater chance of being famous if those organizers did a better job of reaching out to a broader audience by building websites that detailed what was happening before, during and after each festival through words and visuals – instead of waiting around for a reporter to show up. Besides, if they work freelance, they’re likely feeling just as impoverished; the latest study from the Professional Writers Association of Canada has calculated that the net earnings for the typical Toronto-based hack haven’t budged in the past 30 years.

“When it comes down to it, I personally think that the strike was a bad idea, but the people screaming and pulling out their hair and calling TTC employees ‘terrorists’ should at least remember that they’re not the only ones in this city with worries, and they should at least consider the possibility that TTC workers might have had some legitimate cause for being frustrated with management, whether the strike itself was justified or not. Alas, the art of putting oneself into the shoes of another is not one that is widely practiced.” [torontology] … “One thing that makes me laugh and cry at the same time while reading comments across the web: the number of people using this as an excuse to blast the ‘left-wingers’ in City Hall and in general. That style of blame-gaming fills me with disgust, where political platitudes outweigh the issues at hand.” [JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium] … “Or maybe we can force the union leaders to take a round-trip walk from Yonge and Finch down to Bloor and Kipling … their wills would be broken in a matter of blocks.” [Patrick Byck] … “So from the Firm’s perspective, yesterday was like any other day. Tasks delayed: none. Projects delayed: none. Deadlines missed: none. Industry humming along as usual, in other words. … Congratulations, Bob Kinnear and Local 113. … Keep on fighting 21st century commerce with 19th century tactics; while you were out on picket lines, I was in air-conditioned comfort at home.” [Taylor & Company] … “They have wasted an opportunity to raise important issues about security not just for staff but for the travelling public as well. They have alienated riders against the very TTC staff who will now have to put up with more abuse thanks to a strike they, the operators, didn’t call. They have missed the chance to present a clear bill of complaints about TTC labour management practices, assuming they have a coherent list to present.” [Steve Munro] … “Some eavesdropping confirmed that the transit workers striked (struck? stroke? stricken?) without warning yesterday. Clearly they heard I was coming, and this was their final payback for my anagram map.” [RobotJohnny] [Pic of shuttered St. Andrew via Naked KnitGirl]

PREVIOUSLY: Long discussion thread following live strike mash-up.

“Would we have so many TTC strikes if the majority – that is, the relatively decent, albeit overpaid, workers – kicked out the bullies and strike-hunters at the first sign of crap like this? Would our society not work better if we stopped supporting the bad apples and started kicking them out? Then the whole basket would no longer rot.” [talk talk talk] … “This guy, Adam [Giambrone, TTC vice-chair], has a passive, calm manner. I actually want to listen to him and hear what he has to say. He states the facts, and doesn’t interject his personal opinion or stupid comments into his dialogue.” [The Transit Rider] … “I am reminded of the blue-collar job ads in the local newspaper for my hometown where, more often than not, minimum wage jobs are advertised with the caveat ‘must have own car.’ Strikes like this provide more ammunition for that attitude, which I personally feel is as discriminatory as ‘whites only’ or ‘no Irish need apply’.” [a puke green world] … “You know how in the old WW2 movies, the evil prison camp leader would capture someone escaping and so to deter others from doing it he would line up everyone and randomly count off people and have them shot?” [nonessential.org] … “You see Susie, that man was born with a genetic defect where he sweats much more than any normal person. That’s the reason he’s soaking wet and smelling.” [The Blog That Ruined Everything For Everyone] … “I guess today no one can get off at ‘Caring Street’ or ‘Kindness’ Station, let alone any other stop.” [freddie.ca] … “If this was Bangladesh people would be calling in the army, grabbing a hockey stick and beating up the striking workers.” [mezba's blog] … [Sign pic comes via a soundtrack for everyone]

With the hearty City Hall endorsement of the 2015 World Expo, the lack of criticism for the idea seems peculiarly un-Toronto – although the tax revolt duo of Rob Ford and Michael Walker kept the vote from being a unanimous one. With the claim that just nine of over 10,000 visitors to the consultation website left a negative comment, the National Post goes trawling for those two-time Olympic bid opponents at Bread Not Circuses, only to find them taking a nap. Toronto Sun antagonist Rob Granatstein admits to being unable to find an expert to lash out at the World’s Fair idea – besides the majority of unscientific respondents to their online poll – except council candidate Adam Vaughan, who figures these projects are now more of a European thing. The past month of rah-rah coverage from the Toronto Star, including a column by Councillor Brian Ashton detailing how the port lands will be rehabilitated through these plans, was countered by a letter from one Jurgen H. Racherbaumer, arguing that mass tourism and the internet has rendered the disposition of Expos 67 and 86 a relic of another era, leaving “the risk of Toronto being left with obsolete fairgrounds and other world exhibition ruins”. Furthermore, a comment dropped on Spacing Wire by John Spragge of environmental equity group Air/Fair Toronto points out the hope of seven million international visitors would mean 30,000 extra take-offs or landings during the summer months – so, isn’t it ironic how downtown waterfront promoters don’t decry the collateral damage when it’s not making noise in their own backyard. Yet, the benefits are generally being regarded as irresistible, so long as the province is willing to commit $700 million in shortfall coverage. The other city venturing to host the fair, Izmir, Turkey, hasn’t made much noise in English – their formal announcement declared the theme as “New Routes to a Better World/Health for All”. While the U.S.A. withdrew from the International Exhibitions Bureau five years ago, websites have been set up by those striving to see the event in both Atlanta and San Francisco. And a group in NYC, wanting to bring the concept back to Flushing Meadows on the 50th and 75th anniversaries of its legendary fairs, were swiftly shrugged off by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who didn’t know they were holding these things anymore.

Given how reminiscences of Yonge and Dundas are the most intriguing element of The Humanitas Festival, the window between the end of an era and nostalgia for how it used to be has been narrowed to three-quarters of a decade – less time than its taken for the reinvention of the area to be complete. The ambient electronica heard on the new website for the Metropolis complex even boasts a late-’90s retro sound – as an NYC-based communications company is actively seeking advertisers for a plum spot on the exterior, whose gaudy rendering was the subject of a few days of online debate back in the dead of winter. Those brand logos will be mounted by next spring, at least six months before an AMC megaplex, Canadian Music Hall of Fame and Wolfgang Puck’s Café fill the space formerly occupied by a dismal flea market that deigned to call itself a shopping mall. But the ghosts of Dundas Square have provided the latest fixation for the [murmur] project, whose latest historical stories audible via cellphone will focus on a block curiously recalled more for selling jeans, books and burgers than records, hash pipes and pornography. This undertaking is part of The Networked City, a five-pronged outdoor art installation bridging the lower Yonge strip with the waterfront – other elements include the opportunity to transmit Morse code to the flashing beacon in the alcove at One King West, a recreation of the CNE’s lamented Bulova Tower capable of blowing bubbles, and a pigeon feeding sanctuary amidst the condo construction. Billed as “a month-long festival of what was, is and could be”, a whack of locally-minded events are grouped beneath the Humanitas banner, although a week-long forum series at the Cooler By the Lake Tent at the foot of Yonge acts as headquarters for the first week. There’s also an Airstream trailer set to crawl around the city, recording conversations about the experience of local neighbourhoods and landmarks. (Reserve a time and place here.) And the website MemoryArchive is concurrently collecting Toronto fodder. But the seediest era of Yonge St. is also being promoted as part of the festival, as OMNI 1 rebroadcasts their doc The Shoeshine Boy on June 3 (9 p.m.) and June 4 (8 p.m.), which dusts off 1977 footage related to the murder of 12-year-old Emanuel Jaques – providing a rare opportunity to see Yonge and Dundas in the initial throes of its late 20th century squalour. But that’s because nobody at Global has unearthed tapes of their nocturnal time-fillers, a test pattern alternative which consisted of a camera maneuvering through the streets to a sombre jazz soundtrack, a premise which wouldn’t be as soothing when confronted with billboards flashing neon at 4 a.m.

The Humanitas Festival [official website]

The popular topic of springtime 2006 patio debate in the GTA is Nelly Furtado’s song “Promiscuous” if a feature from The Times of London is to be believed. Their visiting pop reporter conveniently overheard three fashionistas upsetting their indie chick compadre with praise for a bossa nova songstress compensating for lacklustre sales with a dialogue-based ditty containing a chorus that’s perfect for a ringtone. First discovered at a Lee’s Palace talent showcase, after flocking here from Victoria, B.C., Furtado debuted with Woah Nelly!. Packaged as a complex counterpoint to pop starlets in skimpier outfits, she complained after FHM gave her a digitially-generated navel. The relative lack of enthusiasm for the ethnomusicological approach to the follow-up album Folklore jinxed any chance of her becoming the next Joni Mitchell, especially when Nelly had a daughter out of wedlock and didn’t put her up for adoption. Yet, those female troubadours of yesteryear didn’t have the option of trading in their image for hip-hop tracks about the craving to fornicate, nor the media platform to boast of taking lessons in “how to shake my booty properly”. Grilling her about this contrived attempt to fill the spotlight during Gwen Stefani’s maternity leave, Sunday Times scribe Dan Cairns tries getting Furtado off-message before it spreads: “Push her on this and she tries the la-di-dah rictus grinning, the it’s-a-breeze nonchalance about the star-making machinery,” he writes. “And she punctuates these inquiries with a curious staccato laugh that hasn’t even a semitone of humour in it; it sounds, instead, defensive and calculating.” Those insecurities must have been reflected in her Saturday Night Live performance, too: “She needs to get deloused if she’s got that many bugs in her hair,” offered a comment on Stereogum. Furtado’s mortage payments on that $4 million Forest Hill home aren’t entirely dependent on the hoochie posturing of “Promiscuous”, though – leading up to the June 20 release of Loose, European ears are being fed her single “Maneater”, which impersonates Sri Lankan rapping demagogue M.I.A. So, if her career proves to be a model of consistency in no other way, at least Nelly Furtado can boast of three different LP covers featuring her name spelled in the identical font.

News that Canada’s Wonderland will have the “Paramount” prefix removed from its name now that five CBS-owned theme parks have been pawned off to Cedar Fair – the folksy proprietor of a dozen existing American carnivals and water parks – confirms that Hollywood action flicks are no longer driving the thrill ride industry. Besides, what good is a stunt track named for the chase scene at the end of The Italian Job if few relate to that reference? But when Wonderland opened in 1981, its attractions bore names like the Mighty Canadian Minebuster and the Zumba Flume, plus Flinstones iconography that capitalized on two decades of lunchtime reruns on Channel 9. The park’s Wikipedia entry provides a reminder of how many were dreading the construction of Wonderland – from the Canadian National Exhibition anticipating the loss of momentum for their three-week midway, to Vaughan residents fearing a daily influx of undesirables. Yet, the development sprouting around the park was the result of corporate interests changing the province’s mind about keeping the area agricultural; left unfulfilled was original owner Taft Broadcasting’s claim they would devote part of the park to Canadian history to counter fears of the town of Maple becoming a place for kiddies to get brainwashed by American junk. Later, the existence of Wonder Mountain provided a fortuitous opportunity to plant the Paramount flag after their parent company bought the park in the mid-1990s – serving those raised on Ritalin with a multi-sensory overload of Top Gun, Drop Zone and Tomb Raider rides, new mascot costumes serving the SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer generation, and marketing that downplayed the rustic surroundings. A grown-up demographic disappeared, however, once The Molson Ampitheatre took away their concrete shed concert business, and The Ex has miraculously retained enough real estate to continue its kitsch assault – even if Wonderland remains more conducive to an annual Gay Day. Paramount’s exit from the theme park industry is being met with enthusiasm, since new owners Cedar Fair are renowned for better roller coasters, and more sophisticated image represented by Snoopy. A final remnant of amusement park as CBS convergence platform just opened at Paramount’s Great America in Santa Clara, Calif., where Survivor: The Ride demands its passengers engage in tribal chants and ritual dances to avoid getting sprayed with water.

Considering how easy it is for any smallish local business boasting emotional ties to their neighbourhood to seek out mass media sympathy when the cash register doesn’t ring like it used to, the sudden announcement by Festival Cinemas that The Kingsway (3030 Bloor St. W.), The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Ave.) and The Royal (608 College St.) screens will go dark after June 30 seems uncommonly blunt. A report in the Toronto Star cited the exasperation of the offspring of cinema entrepreneur Peter McQuillan, who died in October 2004, what with limited interest in catching the latest Hollywood dreck for $3 less during the three-week window between the multiplex run and DVD debut – even though the remaining theatres in the formerly sprawling local chain, The Fox (2236 Queen St. E.) and The Paradise (1006 Bloor St. W.), will presumably continue to offer that service not unlike how the old-fashioned bijou experience has remained intact in two independent places along Mt. Pleasant. A picture show aesthetic built on the recycled rotation of Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show couldn’t sustain forever, so it’s remarkable enough that the sentimentality surrounding these movie houses endured for three generations – and beyond, if the right buyers are found. A 2001 picture book by John Sebert, The Nabes: Toronto’s Wonderful Neighbourhood Movie Houses, shows a city that once seemed to boast a glorious neon marquee on every other retail strip, in spaces since taken over by some of the fugliest exteriors in town, prior to more recent preservation-minded efforts like the retrofit of The Runnymede (2225 Bloor St. W.) into a Chapters store. And after a melodramatic change of proprietorship in the late 1990s, the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.) has done a pretty astute job of serving a wide range of distinct sensibilities, something which might’ve gotten lost when the Festival Cinemas perfected the formula of sending gently-used blockbuster reels on a tour of the city, alongside the occasional art house smash deemed too dangerous for Cineplex. Nonetheless, the idea of these three surviving old-school projectors switching off on the exact same day is melodramatic enough for the movies: The Royal’s beacon status in Little Italy is contemplated in comments on Torontoist; the disappearance of The Revue is noted on the North Ronces Blog in contrast to a Starbucks invasion a few steps away; and journal-keeper Dave Collins, who was taking tickets at the opening of the reincarnated Kingsway, mourns the closing with photos, including two old theatre seats now planted in his garden.

UPDATE: Paradise is also no more; Fox is up for lease. [BlogTO]

The official kick-off for David Miller’s effort to remain mayor featured a video message of support from environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Which was perfectly appropriate considering how much the campaign packaging owes to the second term of Bill Clinton, who successfully ignored whatever passed for dissent, while being too charismatic to allow accusations of incompetency to stick. But with the limp launch of Jane Pitfield’s effort to unseat Miller – with shrill remarks about criminals, condos and cadgers – the real competition may yet emerge. “Same Great Mayor. Same Great Hair.” reads one of the posters for the confidently postured candidate, while other tritely acerbic slogans serve to remind us that he’s tall! honest! and nice! The robust crowd at the imitation genuine Steam Whistle Brewery ranged from seasoned veterans of media launch buffet lines to others who appeared to genuinely need the free meal, and drink tickets are always a good motivation to fill out a volunteer form. Miller’s speech provided a soundbite related to every topic he’s dealt with in 30 months on the job: The mayor’s only reference to his opponents came in mentioning how the city was a surprise sliver medalist as Best Employer in the Toronto Sun Readers’ Choice Awards – coming in second to Pizza Pizza, it turns out. Bumper stickers reading i ♥ my mayor reflect his self-assurance in the midst of the urban renaissance that seemed completely unfathomable during the reign of Miller’s predecessor – maybe the 2003 indictment from Mel Lastman, “You’ll never be Mayor of Toronto because you say dumb and stupid things”, deserves a place on the campaign literature, too. Lastman’s recent return from his undisclosed location, which began with his labeling the current batch of councillors “a bunch of duds”, was really just a warm-up for the expansion of Bad Boy appliance stores with a reception at the Lobby bar on Bloor, suggesting a slicker sales pitch since the days of son Blayne perspiring in his prison stripe pajamas, trading lines with a Clinton lookalike. Mercifully, a thorn in the side of City Hall’s post-amalgamation era of slippery lobbyists, Adam Vaughan, has traded his reporter badge for a run at Olivia Chow’s vacated council chair, intriguingly driven by his argument that the recent overload of downtown high-rise residences will reach a crisis point once too many of the current swinging single occupants start to breed, and either bail for the suburbs, or feel lost in the urban jungle – although fears of a steel and glass sequel to St. James Town, as these clusters of condos find their value dwindling with the years, might only be pre-empted by slipping birth control ingredients into bottled water.

PREVIOUSLY: Who wants to save this plain Jane campaign?

What good is a conference dedicated to Web 2.0 if the details aren’t obsessively documented online? Well, based on the scattered recaps, the two-day mesh conference at the MaRS Discovery District reflected the fact that Bay Street is sniffing around the internet again, alongside developers eager to find the secret formula that allows a social networking concept to build an audience via alleged altruism. The best collection of quotes from the event were apparently kept by ProPr blogger Joseph Thornley, with inevitable gloating from successful entrepreneur panelists accompanied by bouts of cynicism. Venture capitalist academic Paul Kedrosky pondered how this current era feels like yet another bubble that’s waiting to burst: “It takes a lot of dead bodies to fill a swamp.” Micropersuasion blogger Steve Rubel evidently stirred things up just by railing against companies who jumped on the personal website trend by creating sites written in the voice of their mascot, like Captain Morgan: “If Mickey Mouse were really blogging, he’d be telling us how much he’s sweating in the costume and how long it has been since he went to the bathroom.” A panel dedicated to the influence of blogs on politics had Maclean’s pontificator Paul Wells summing up his user experience: “We are being flooded by commentary by people who don’t know jack, can’t write the English language, and give it away for free.” Questions about whether these topics are relevant to the technological side of the 2.0 trend were addressed in advance criticism of the mesh conference, and a big-tent mentality suggesting that fickle investors, PR hucksters and media personalities are going to factor in the successful advancement of web-based ideas may have been a bit too ridiculous, given how none of them were of much help the first time around. Jon Arnold, a market researcher, emerged from the mesh event with blurry vision after too many hours staring at the logo: “I didn’t really feel that all the strands connected … At the end of the day, much like Earth at Creation, I’d like to see this humming mass of energy and chaos sort itself out and unravel nicely like a ball of yarn.”