Month: June 2004

Update: I mistakenly reported the party as being on Friday, but Jeff Kahl points out that June 10th is a Thursday. I just assumed that one throws street parties on Friday.

The neighbourhood in which Tucows is located [PDF
link] is called Liberty Village, named after the east-west Liberty
Street, which runs right through it. It is an industrial area that’s
largely been turned into an office area for the high-tech, design and
entertainment industries, some offbeat places to go (The Academy of Spherical Arts, Joe Rockhead’s, Liberty Cafe, and home to a number of Toronto’s quirkier citizens (including Cory Doctorow,
who used to live in a large
Disney-meets-tiki-lounge-meets-bookworm-themed warehouse
space near the bottom of Fraser Street).

This Thursday, the L:iberty Village BIA (Business Improvement
Association) is hosting a street party called Give Me Liberty. There
are posters for this event all over the neighbourhood promising three
of the things I like most: “Cold Beer. Hot Food. Cool Music.” The fun
starts at 3:00 p.m. and runs until 9:00.

Here’s what the poster looks like — click it to see their site:

I’ll see if I can’t find out more — I’ll bet that Matt and Brenda from down the street know something about this.

I have a couple of questions that are at least tangentially related
to issues being brought up during this, the federal election season
here in Canada:

• Education: Could somebody please tell me why standardized testing
  is supposed to be a bad thing? Keep in mind that I’m not talking about
  any specific standardized tests, but the actual concept itself, which
  seems to get a number of people’s knickers in a knot. I’m actually
  having trouble seeing why it’s as bad as the it’s-the-end-of-education
  crowd (whose Venn diagram circle has severe overlap with the I-majored-in-underwater-basketweaving crowd) says it is.

• Toronto Island Bridge/Bizjet airport: Could somebody please tell me why the island bridge, if built, would do more harm than good? (I admit that I bounce back and forth on the Island Airport issue from month to month).

Feel free to use the comments; that’s what they’re there for.

My co-worker and friend Scott Murff
— newest member of Tucows’ Research and Innovation group — turns the big three-oh today. In honour of
his birthday, his involvement in videogames and his fondness for Asia,
I dedicate this photo (which I found on HoopaJoop) to him:

Level up, yo! Clearly this is some secret level of Super Mario World that I missed.

Happy birthday, dude!

We’ll be celebrating his birthday tonight at the West Lounge Bar (510 King Street West, on the north side, just west of Bathurst). It’s a bit South Beach-y; this review says to dress up and be nice to the clipboard-carrying gatekeepers (who loved the accordion last time I was there).