I’ve always found information and propaganda from the early days of the Cold War rather fascinating. If you feel the same way, I’ve got some interesting reading for you — a Flickr photoset of scans of fallout shelter literature.
The set is made up of scans from:
Since I mentioned the bar called “Not My Dog” in the previous article, I thought I’d post a couple of reviews. Here’s an excerpt of one from the Martini Boys site, which specializes in bar and restaurant reviews:
Enter Not My Dog and you get the sense of something cool going down. The exposed brick walls, a 1957 Nordheimer honky-tonk piano and a guitar tucked away in the corner, all add to a comfortable, DIY enclosure. A walk further out to the secluded back patio provides more of the same coziness.
The virtues of Not My Dog are considerable. The most immediately obvious is its unceremonious sense of being in a friend’s apartment. There’s a small bar near the back and a smattering of tables and chairs to accommodate a few dozen trendy Parkdale denizens.
“Parkdale,” begins the Toronto Life article on the area, “now trimmed with sweet cafés, bars and vintage boutiques—cleans up good.” Here’s what they have to say about Not My Dog in their review of places in Parkdale:
About the size of a room at the Y, this tiny, glamorously unglamorous hole in the wall is long on pogey chic. Locals, decked out in Value Village’s finest, swill organic brew and couture cocktails (wasabi martinis and cucumber saketinis) to indie folk rock strains. A 1957 Nordheimer honky-tonk piano invites Johnny Cash tributes; local band Makita Hack performs weekly. TIP: Look for the occasional Tuesday-night movie screening on the back patio.
For those of you not familiar with Canadian slang and who were uncertain about the phrase “pogey chic”: pogey means welfare. Depending on where your head’s at, you can read that to mean either “scruffy” or “authentic, duuuuude“, take your pick.
Be sure to check out the rest of the article to see their reviews of other spots in Parkdale, including one of my favourite breakfast spots, Easy.
Carson T. Foster, host of Kickass Karaoke, is hosting a special karaoke night tomorrow (Thursday, August 16th) at Not My Dog (located at 1510 Queen Street West). If you want to sing, you have to make a minimum donation of $1.00 per song; the money will go to Opportunity for Advancement (OFA) who describe themselves as:
Opportunity for Advancement works with women in disadvantaged life situations. While poverty is an issue for almost all of the women with whom we work, other factors create additional barriers to well-being and equal participation in society. These include being a sole-support parent, being an immigrant or woman of colour, being lesbian, being disabled or chronically ill, or having experienced violence. OFA is involved in program delivery and social advocacy with the goal of supporting women to achieve greater economic sufficiency, increased personal well-being and enhanced participation in their communities.
The fun starts at 8:00 p.m. and wraps up at 2. I’m hoping to catch some of it and perform as well.
(If you’re on Facebook, this event has its own Facebook page.)
“To get Mondo Pasta on everyone’s mind,” says the copy that explains this clever bit of sticker work, “we created a bigger than life promotion at the most frequented place in Hamburg: the harbor. Hug stickers of faces turned ships into permanent pasta slurpers.”
Click the photo to see the full version.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Here’s the latest news item I could find on the case of Alexandra Flanagan, who’s been missing for over a month, courtesy of the Barrie Examiner:
Friends and family members of missing Barrie woman Alexandra Flanagan are leaving no stone unturned in their search to find their loved one. Most recently, they set up a booth at Kempenfest to get the word out to a mass audience about the fact she has still not been found.
“Still no activity with her bank accounts,” said long-time friend Darlene Pestill, who helped staff the booth over the weekend. “We’ve been organizing search efforts almost every day. We won’t stop our efforts until we find her.”
Pestill said many people stopped by the booth to ask questions about Flanagan, take an information flyer, or offer their support.
“One good thing is that some people who didn’t know about the fact she is missing, now do. Being here at Kempenfest has helped to get the word out even more,” she said.
Flanagan has been missing a month. She was last spoken to on July 7, and has had no contact with friends or family since.
Wendy Flanagan, the mother of the missing girl, said no solid tips came in at Kempenfest, despite the well-meaning efforts.
“We just want to find out one way or the other. I’m really at a total loss as to what has happened to her. We’ve got posters all over the place – somebody has to have seen her,” she said. “People need to know she has never done this before; it is totally out of character.”
She added that although it has been reported in the news that there were sightings of Flanagan in Toronto, none of the leads have yet panned out and she isn’t confident that the people who called in actually saw her daughter.
“Nobody who knows her personally has seen or heard from her. Absolutely nobody,” she said. “I’m no further ahead about where she is than I was a month ago when she first went missing.”
Police are continuing their investigation into the case.
For more details about what is known about Alex’s disappearance, see:
Amidst the merriment at Pete Forde’s 29th birthday party last night (Happy birthday, Pete!), I got a bit of news that concerned me: someone I know is missing.
“Take a look at this,” said my friend Rochelle as she unfolded a piece of legal-sized paper. It was a flyer with the word “MISSING” in large block letters across the top. What really caught my eye was the photo.
“That’s really weird,” I said, “the photo — she looks just like someone I knew from where I used to get my hair cut. Skater-girl type, really skinny, name’s Alex…”
I was so taken by how much the photo looked like Alex that it took me a moment to look at the missing person’s name: Alexandra Flanagan.
“Oh, shit,” I said, double-checking to make sure I wasn’t misreading the flyer.
I know her.”
The missing person wasn’t someone who looked like Alex; she is Alex, and she’s been missing for over a month.
I met Alex in 1999 at the House of Lords. It’s a cheesy rock-and-roll hair cutting place located on Yonge street’s main drag of head shops, grey market electronics stores and fast food joints. I still went there because one of their hairstylists, Roxy, had been cutting my hair just the way I like it for years.
One day, while waiting for Roxy to finish working on the customer before me, I was working on my laptop in the waiting area. I heard a voice say “Hey, you’re that guy who plays the accordion.”
I looked up from my laptop’s screen to see a skinny skater-girl type in her early twenties looking at me. She wore a raver shirt and baggy skater shorts and held out her hand.
“I’m Alex. I work in the back — I do hair colour. You ever need a colour job, come see me.”
“I’m Joey,” I replied, shaking her hand.
For years afterward, I’d run into Alex on a regular basis. I’d often run into her while grabbing a bite to eat in Chinatown, and a couple of times, I either joined her table or she joined mine. I also ran into her at dance clubs and DJ shows several times — and once, she did me a very big favour when I was on a date from Hell. I owe her one.
Here’s what Xtra, a local paper serving Accordion City’s Gay Village (the neighbourhood centred around Church and Wellesley) ran in a story dated August 2nd:
Posters seeking information about a woman who was last seen in Barrie dotted Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village starting on Jul 20.
A spokesperson for the Barrie Police Service says 33-year-old Alexandra Flanagan has been absent from work and has not contacted her friends or family since Jul 8.
Flanagan, who identifies as a lesbian, spent several years living and working in Toronto’s queer village, including at the House of Lords hair salon on Yonge St at Isabella.
According to Barrie Police, Flanagan was last seen in Barrie on the evening of Jul 8 walking toward her Wellington St apartment with a male friend. The friend told police he left her at Sunnidale Park, but that 30 minutes later when he tried to call her there was no answer. When she didn’t turn up for work the next morning, Flanagan’s family got worried.
Sheffer says Flanagan was wearing khaki capri pants, a black belt and a black tank top with pink flip-flops when she was last seen. She is five-feet, one-inch tall, weighs 100 pounds, has red hair and green eyes, and has piercings in both eyebrows.
For more details about what is known about Alex’s disappearance, see:
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
