Indescribable

Welcome, friends. Once again here at Channel-9, we set out to bring you the stories that matter. The stories that you don't get anywhere else. The stories that are almost entirely not made up.

Tonight, we'll meet a young (Cut to couple: "yes we're still young. Write down young!") couple in East York ("No, say Toronto. East York is so passé. Is that Case Ootes over there? Duck!") who recently moved to the city, and wanted a way to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon.

First, they rode the streetcar to Little Italy, only to find that almost everything was closed. Not just normal closed, but kind of The Quiet Earth closed. There was a church with a SOLD sign on it, and a notice on the door about the city cutting the power to the entire neighbourhood for most of the day.

Next, lunch at a little bakery that was in fact Portuguese. Really European too, in that "interesting approach to the concept of customer service" kind of way. Yummy cakes.

Next, a walk to Bloor and Bathurst to work off perhaps 3% of the cakes. Why Bloor and Bathurst? What can be found on this fascinating corner? Why, Honest Ed's of course!  Honest Ed's is a Toronto ... ummm... the normal word here would be institution, but that should maybe be used in the mental institution sense.  Perhaps landmark. That's safe and neutral. It hardly begins to convey this, though:

No, this is not Las Vegas.  This is also not the whole thing. This is perhaps 25% of the place. No seriously. It's so big we got dehydrated, and not just because of the really-dry, "leftovers bin at Zellers" atmosphere. It made Vinny's knees hurt. I ended up buying a fun t-shirt for $6 which you may see in a later photo.

 

Ed Mirvish, owner of Honest Ed's, is someone I rapidly learned about in his store today. It seems he pretty much owned Toronto for much of the last 59 years. I found a newspaper ad for a new restaurant he opened like 20 years ago, and it listed five other restaurants -- plus the Royal Alexandria Theatre of course -- that he'd opened previously. Wikipedia doesn't mention them, so they may be all gone now. Maybe I'll research them on a day off sometime.

His theatre experience led him to meet many actors, famous and non. The store is wallpapered with framed, signed photos from the many many names, big and small. There were dozens and dozens I didn't recognize, and many that I did. Frank Schuster was stuck in the basement, so god knows how the ranking was determined.

I'm not really sure what my point was in all of this. Clearly it was in fact describable, but I'm done now. Hope all are well.

Travel Meme

OK, here's the deal. List one place you've been for each letter of the alphabet. Rules: Countries are worth 100 points, but you can only claim a country if you traveled to multiple places in it. Provinces and states are worth 10 points, but again you can only claim them if you traveled to multiple places within. Cities, towns, villages, malls, rivers, etc are worth one point. If you've been into space (even low-Earth orbit) you get 1000 points. Maximum score, therefore, is 3500. What's your score?

Alberta (10)
British Columbia (10)
Canada (I've traveled to or through nine provinces so far!) (100)
Durban, South Africa (1)
Eaton's Department Store (1)
France (100)
Gauteng Province, South Africa (10)
Hawai'i (10)
Idaho (10)
Johannesburg, South Africa (1)
Kwazulu-Natal Province, South Africa (10)
London, England (1)
Maine (10)
Nevada (10)
Ontario (10)
Prince Edward Island (10)
Quebec (10)
Rome (1)
South Africa (100)
Toronto (1)
United States (100)
Vermont Edit: Vatican City (100)
Washington State (10)
Xerox toner supplier (Staples) (yes, I cheated. X is hard.) (1)
York Regional Municipality (1)
Zurich, Switzerland (1)

Cam's score: 629

I thought of a few places I wanted to use, but they would have lowered my score: Athens Airport, Gateway Village PEI, and Walla-Walla Washington. :-)

Edit: nihilicious reminds me of the Vatican. Literally.