Food
August 20th, 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JJ7vv3QCfs[/youtube]
On my way home after work last Saturday night, I walked by the corner of Brunswick and Bloor where a three-man rock combo was playing out of a U-Haul parked in front of By The Way Cafe. Named the Dildoniks, they’d outfitted their U-Haul with flood lights, a drum kit and amps running through their rented truck’s battery with a banner on both sides announcing their band’s name. They drew a pretty substantial crowd, with the audience spilling off the sidewalk and onto the road (without, however, blocking traffic on either Brunswick or Bloor).
A relatively new band, Dildoniks member Kire Paputts told me in an email that part of what led them to do the half-hour show in a U-Haul was that it would be entirely “on our terms,” as Kire put it. Now obviously the idea of an impromptu concert amplified from inside a rented truck at eleven on a Saturday night provokes a lot of questions. Add this to the fact that they played at the Brunswick/Bloor intersection, the case in point of recent debates both locally and in the press on how the neighbourhood is changing. With the closing of Dooney’s Cafe and Mel’s Montreal Delicatessen, and the two freak shootings that have taken place in the last two summers, many have been quick to conclude that the Annex is in a steep decline, where beligerant and occasionally violent partiers are setting the terms rather than long-time residents and middle-aged community members.
There’s no denying that with Mel’s and Dooney’s Cafe gone, the old character of the Annex has suffered a significant blow. Yet rather than seeing their departure as the canary in the coalmine, much still remains of the old Annex, but more importantly, much has changed and will continue to change as the neighbourhood evolves with the times and the people who inhabit its spaces.
Take the bookstores, for example. On Bloor St. between Spadina and Bathurst plus one block south on either side, there are a total of eight book stores currently open (not to mention the man often seen selling used books on the sidewalk at Madison or Brunswick), making the Annex still the most concentrated hub of independent booksellers in the city. Book City and the BMV are flanked by three used book stores who’ve been open since who knows when; Ten Editions Bookstore on Spadina, Seekers Books at Borden St., and Willow Books over at Bathurst. As more alternative literature goes, there’s A Different Booklist also on Bathurst, plus the Labyrinth Comic Book store across from the BMV. With at least five more on nearby Harbord St, for booklovers, the Annex is alive and well.
The Annex Billiards Club, Sonic Boom and Lee’s Palace also remain as active as ever. Meanwhile, despite declining attendance, the Bloor Cinema still puts on a wide variety of films, for better or for worse. As food goes, George’s BBQ and Country Style still remain to represent the old guard, while tasty new places like One Love Vegetarian on Bathurst and Burrito Banditos on Walmer definitely inject some well-needed diversity into the neighbourhood’s sushi-saturated array of restuarants.
May 18th, 2009
Street Chicken Biryani. That was my lunch today, bought from Seemab Ahmad’s shiny new Central Asian/Persian food stall in front of City Hall. One of several pilot projects launched today by the City’s Toronto a …
Categories Food
February 18th, 2009
EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing contributing editor Christopher DeWolf is now based in Hong Kong and will make occasional posts about his unique public space experiences abroad. Chris was also the driving force …
January 5th, 2009
Stuffed from the holidays? Never want to eat chocolate and brie again? Got the “muffin-top begone” mentality?
Great! Then it’s the right time for you to visit “Local Flavour: Eating in Toronto, 1830-1955,” an exhibit …
November 12th, 2008
Teams of Toronto university students joined professional architecture, engineering, and design firms on Tuesday night at the annual event CANstruction to work towards a common goal: ending the need for food banks within the Greater Toronto Area. Firms across the GTA were allowed only the use of cans (and puns) as design materials to construct what resemble giant pictures from a children’s storybook. All canned goods will be donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
Toronto’s KPMB in partnership with Halsall Associates Ltd., took the prize for juror’s choice with their creation of YES BEE CAN, a natural setting involving, what else, a bee and creatively designed flowers using rice paper. U of T’s ArtSci OT9 left with the prize for best student team for their creation, LEGO Man, whom they artistically cut in half due to height restrictions. Other prize categories ranged from Best Use of Labels (Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc. won for their design Rub-a-Dub-Dub) to Best Meal (won by Stantec for CANmunity Garden). Kendra Schank Smith, Chair of Architecture at Ryerson University, and Robert Ouellette of the National Post, among others, were at hand to present the awards to the winners.
Now in its 10th year, CanStruction is helping to feed the 80,000 people who use the Daily Bread Food Bank every month, and the competition continues to grow. This year, the event attracted 24 teams from across the city. Check out the CanSculptures for yourself in the lobby of one of the TD Centre towers.
See more photos after the jump.
June 3rd, 2008
As Pug Award fever reaches its apex tomorrow night, I thought it might be time to shine a light on smaller-scale design issues.
The area where I live, on the Danforth between Coxwell and Woodbine, doesn’t win a lot of prizes for streetscape design. Though there’s a few trees in concrete planters—and the promise of more from the newly formed BIA—as well as a real gem in East Lynn Park, the general combination of empty/“aroma massage†storefronts with four lanes of speedy traffic make the main street stroll, well, a little bare and unpadded at times.
However, there are some small businesses that do a lot to beautify the stretch, the most prominent of which are the fruit and flower shops that turn their sidewalks into veritable gardens of vegetation and colour during their open hours.
The corner of Glebemount and Danforth has two of these right across the street from each other, with Prince of Wales Market to the west and Natural Florist to the east:
As you can see, they really brighten up the sidewalk:
Natural Florist is open year-round, which is much appreciated visually during the dank, grey winter months, even if the flowers are behind glass. (For this, I presume we can think the O’Connor funeral home, which sits right across the street. Other close-by funeral homes are also likely part of the reason flower shops seem quite popular along the strip, even in the non-yard-work months.)
May 29th, 2008
Street food is in the news again, and it’s annoying. It’s annoying because it has been so bungled up and delayed that it has invited ridicule and scorn from the usual shrill and right-wing-populist corners of …
April 18th, 2008
In this week’s Eye Weekly, I wrote about a new organization starting this summer called Not Far From the Tree. The brainchild of fruit tree enthusiast Laura Reinsborough (who says she got the idea …
April 5th, 2008
“Sidewalk Psychiatry” is a public-art sidewalk project that plays with the fact that people often think about personal issues while they walk. The …
February 19th, 2008
Every Tuesday, Todd Irvine of LEAF posts a stop from the Toronto Tree Tours, a collaborative project of LEAF and the Toronto Public Space Committee. The Toronto Tree Tours offers walking tours in …
