Category: It Happened to Me

“Let’s hug it out, bitch!”

The best-known line from the television series Entourage — “Let’s hug it out, bitch!” — is probably an apt summary of the meeting between a group of some of the most active DemoCamp/BarCamp participants (myself included) and a some of the people from ICT Toronto, the group charged with raising the profile of Toronto as a hub for information and communications technologies.

To say the least, the discussion was animated, with lots of disagreement over whether ICT Toronto adequately represented the smaller players in the Toronto tech community, whether their goals were too vague to actually be achieved and even over the name of the organization, which is perceived by many in the DemoCamp contingent to be a made-up term that never gets used in our line of work. In spite of the heat generated, the meeting was a first step towards understanding between both groups, and as ICT Toronto’s project manager Alicia Bulwyk said after the meeting, compared to some city council meetings, it was a tea party.

Canadian Thanksgiving weekend is keeping me a bit too busy to post a full writeup right now, but there will be one from me this week, and hopefully, from these other attendees as well:

• Leila Boujnane
• David Crow
• Mark Evans
• Jay Goldman
• Malgosia Green
• Estelle Havva
• Rob Hyndman
• Rohan Jayasekera
• Sutha Kamal
• Mark Kuznicki
• Tom Purves

I work in the part of Toronto called “Liberty Village”, an area made up of old warehouses, most of which have been converted into offices and living spaces. It’s where Cory Doctorow last lived before he moved to San Francisco back in 2000, countless television shows and feature films have been shot here (the upcoming Hairspray movie being the latest), a number of high-tech and television and radio facilities are located here, and let’s not forget the “Porn Alley” designation given to the area by a hyped-up Dateline NBC report. It’s rapidly becoming one of those former factory neighbourhoods turning into live/work/place-to-go areas. One parallel that comes to mind is Vancouver’s Yaletown.

This neighbourhood is located a good distance away from Accordion City’s “clubland”, and a dimly-lit railroad underpass and a little-travelled stretch of Dufferin Street bordering on Parkdale (which still is contending with its seedy rep) separates it from the nearest evening destination area, the Drake Hotel/Gladstone Hotel zone. As such, it’s an unlikely place to put a club, but that’s just what happened: there’s a queing-up area, complete with permanently-mounted outdoor heaters, that leads to the entrance of a newly-renovated building at the corner of Liberty and Fraser streets:

The club has no signage just yet, but a laser-printed sheet of paper that read “MARO DELIVERIES HERE” suggests that its name is “Maro”, and a little Googling confirmed the name. Apparently, it had its grand opening last Friday, with the Fifth Annual Booby Ball taking place there.

According to a recent events listing, the people behind Maro were also behind Brasaii, Brant House and West (I’ve only been to West). These are all pretty upscale places, and from the looks of Maro’s front entrance, it’s catering to the same market:

It’s an interesting addition to the neighbourhood. I wonder its being located in this neighbourhood is an attempt to duplicate the “Meat Packing District” club scene in New York. I’ll have to drop by one evening and see what it’s like inside.