Month: August 2013

If you haven’t given Accordion City’s newest, best, FM radio station, Indie88 (CIND-FM, 88.1 on the FM dial, or via its live internet stream), a listen, I’ve got another good reason for you to do so. Eric Alper, all-round knowledgeable guy on the topic music, music correspondent on CTV’s Canada AM, music blogger, and Facebook friend of mine, will control the music on their Throne of Glory show this afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern. Tune in and hear what his picks are!

Ten years ago today, at 4:11 p.m. EDT, the power went out through much of the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada. I was five weeks into my new job as a tech evangelist at Tucows, located in Accordion City’s Liberty Village neighbourhood. I lived at Queen and Spadina at the time, so work was a leisurely twenty-minute bike commute for me. This would come in particularly handy that day.

When the power went out, there was a collective groan let out by Tucows’ hundred and twenty or so employees. Liberty Village’s aging electrical infrastructure was prone to power outages in those days — back then, the condo projects hadn’t yet bloomed in the area — and it was assumed that this was another “brown-out” and that power would be back in ten minutes.

I figured that it would be a good time to get away from the computer, stretch, and perhaps get a nice cold drink from the convenience store. When I stepped out onto King Street West, it became quite clear to me that the power wasn’t just out in our building. The traffic lights were out of commission and the streetcars were stopped dead in their tracks, literally.

A few of my coworkers went to their cars in the parking lot and tuned into news radio. They were already announcing that the power just wasn’t out city-wide, but in several cities. One guy, a Star Wars fan took a line from The Phantom Menace and quipped “A power disruption could mean only one thing: invasion.” Hey, 9/11 was just shy of two years prior.

We were all told to go home. It was an easy trip for me: I lived pretty close by, and on my bike, I whizzed past the stalled traffic. Along the way, I took some photos with my ever-present digital camera. Remember, this was 2003, when cameras were still a new feature on mobile phones, and they were terrible. I kept a funky-looking Nikon Coolpix SQ strapped to my belt most of the time.

Along the way home, biking east on Queen Street West, I passed by a hairstylist, who finished working on their customers outside, where there was enough light:

With the traffic lights out and subways and streetcars disabled, traffic ground to a halt. A couple of hours later, there would be a number of cars ditched on the streets, some because their drivers decided to stay put or walk home, some because they ran out of gas while idling for a really long time on near-empty tanks:

The streets were pretty crowded with people making their way home on foot. A number of convenience stores were giving away their ice cream:

In my neighbourhood, many people took the opportunity to hang out on their porches with flashlights and battery-powered radios tuned to the news, girding themselves for the darkness that would soon follow:

This blog was also around back during the blackout, and I wrote about it in an article titled It’s the Post-Electrical Age!, Part 1. I never got around to Part 2, and perhaps I should.

Leslieville Farmers’ Market’s Bacon Fest is back, and it’s happening this Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Jonathan Ashbridge Park (a block west of Queen and Coxwell)! I had not only the good fortune to be able to catch last year’s Bacon Fest; I also got to be a judge. Here I am with the chef who made the third-place entry, Conrad Reiner from local bacon purveyor This Little Pig:

Bacon Fest is just a part of Leslieville Farmers’ Market, which is in its third year of providing the residents of Leslieville with great, fresh-from-the-farm food in the big green space of Jonathan Ashbridge Park. This year’s season runs every Sunday from May 26th through October 27th in the park with food aplenty and lots of entertainment, too.

 

 

 

Last year’s Bacon Fest, which I wrote up in this entry, featured entries from a number of local restaurants. They were all so bacon-licious that it was hard to pick a winner. We managed to pick one, and it was Le Papillon on the Park’s: a little-bit-of-every-taste buckwheat crepe stuffed with bacon, cheese, apple chunks and apple syrup, topped with mixed berries and powdered sugar:

 

Another favourite entry of mine was the combined work of area restaurants Mr. Spinners and Waffle Bar — a waffle, filled with bacon, topped with a fried egg and melted cheese. Because that wasn’t enough, it’s finished off with crumbled bacon:

 

 

Here’s This Little Pig’s entry — a simple crostini, but it showed off just how good their bacon is:

 

 

And for those of you who don’t eat meat, there’s something for you, too! Ying Ying foods was there, showcasing their soy bacon, and it was pretty good:

 

Bacon Fest 2013 will take place this Sunday, August 18th, along with everything else at Leslieville Farmers’ Market at Jonathan Ashbridge Park (a block west of Queen and Coxwell), from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.. The judges will sample the entries at noon, and the winners will be announced at 1. Not only with the entrants be feeding the judges, they’ll also be selling their dishes so you can get a nice breakfast, brunch, or lunch full of bacon-y goodness.

 

I finally got around to shooting a Vine video, titled Your Moment of Airport Zen, only to discover that it’s been designed so that you hold your smartphone the “wrong” way:

And by “wrong” way, I mean vertically, which leads to Vertical Video Syndrome:

Hey, Vine team! With such a popular app, you’ve got an opportunity to reinforce good habits: tweak your app so users have to holding their phones properly when shooting video, as shown in the photo below:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Photo by Jaime Castillo. Click to see the original.

The annual street fair known as Taste of the Danforth got some extra media attention, thanks to Toronto’s Peter-Griffin-esque mayor and taxpayer-funded constant source of amusement Rob Ford, who got wasted on the Danforth on Friday night. When it comes to the abuse of drink and even more hardcore substances, there are two different pictures of His Worship (the proper honorific for the Mayor of Toronto, even if it’s this assclown):

• The sober, hard-working Rob Ford image painted by his cronies (and bought by Toronto’s increasingly-in-denial “low-information voters”) — including Deputy-Mayor-turned-MPP Doug Holyday, Michael Thompson, Gary Crawford, and Frank DiGiogio — who’ll swear that they’ve never seen him take a drink.
• The Rob Ford image painted by a whole lotta evidence, including:
  • The incident in which he dodged getting charged with possession of marijuana because he was busy being charged with failing to provide a breath sample because he was driving drunk.
  • Getting ejected from a hockey game for drunk and disorderly behaviour, which yelling bizzarro threats at  a man and woman, such as “Do you want your little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?”
  • Buying mickey bottles of cheap-ass vodka in the middle of the day, something you really shouldn’t be doing if you’ve graduated from high school and don’t live in a cardboard box under a bridge
  • February 2013: Being asked to leave an military ball that raised funds for Wounded Warriors Canada because he was too drunk in February
  • Members of his own council have said to the press that he has a drinking problem

A couple of videos of His Worship’s drunk-walk, both taken by “Mala”, a student at George Brown College, have made the YouTube rounds. Here’s the first one, with a very wobbly Ford surrounded by a lot of young people:

Ford seems to be under the impression that they’re throngs of youthful admirers, a delusion probably fuelled by his self-image as the Greatest High School Football Coach Ever. They actually seem to be gathering around him to get some amusing photos and videos at the expense of the city’s most famous clown. You can even hear an off-camera voice at the 0:35 mark sum up what appears to be the general sentiment of the people lining up to get their Instagrams: “He’s an idiot”.

In the second video, he insists, drunk-uncle-style, “I’m not driving! I’m not driving”, despite having been seen having driven in to the street party in his trademark SUV:

Even more worrisome: at the 0:17 mark in this video, he seems to be saying “Give me some blow. You want some blow? I got some blow.”

A friend suggests that perhaps he’s saying “cologne”. Hopefully for wearing and not for drinking.

Being a bit of a bacchanalian myself, I have no objection to the mayor (or anyone else who isn’t driving or operating heavy machinery) tying one on. However, the mayor, as is his insistent habit, likely drove himself to and from Taste of the Danforth. There’s also this matter, which The Atlantic brings up in their article, Maybe Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Enjoyed This Festival Too Much:

This would be acceptable behavior for a politician — hey, we all get a little wet behind the ears sometimes — but Ford’s leash is shorter than most. This is the mayor who has a history of getting loaded and embarrassing in public. Ford was thrown out of a military gala last year allegedly for being intoxicated. He also got into a confrontation of sorts after chewing out a woman at a Maple Leafs hockey game a few years ago. Oh, yeah, and don’t forget the whole (alleged!) fan-fiction inspiring crack video scandal, too.

Ford’s visit to the party to Taste of the Danforth has appeared in a number of media outlets:

• Globe and Mail: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s appearance at Taste of the Danforth gets residents talking
• Canada.com: ‘Let’s go party’: Rob Ford makes bizarre appearance at Toronto street festival
• Toronto Star: Mayor Rob Ford appears to slur words at Taste of the Danforth, videos show
• NOW: “Slurring” Rob Ford causes stir at street festival
• CBC: Rob Ford in spotlight over street festival behaviour

And soon afterwards came the official “pay no attention to the visibly drunk man behind the curtain” explanations:

• Globe and Mail: Rob Ford defends Danforth behaviour
• National Post: ‘Absolutely, I had a couple of beers’: Videos of boisterous Rob Ford Toronto festival ‘blown out of proportion,’ brothers say
• Macleans: Rob Ford: ‘Things are getting blown out of proportion’
• Toronto Star: Mayor Rob Ford weighs in on staggering walk-about: DiManno
• CTV: Toronto mayor had ‘a couple of beers’ night of festival appearance

It’s just another incident to add to the growing Rob Ford file.

I love the look on the model’s face. It looks as though he’s thinking
“Look serious. This is for the kitchen reno…this is for the kitchen reno…”
Click the photo to visit this Sears catalog page.

I’m impressed that Sears carries this kind of stuff. Now I’d like to see the downmarket version that Walmart would carry.

Thanks to Nic Pouliot for the find!