Category: Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

If you’re a recent graduate of Crazy Go Nuts University, the name “Alfie’s Pub” doesn’t really mean much to you; perhaps you considered it the “bar of last resort”. From what I’ve seen from recent Homecomings, the bars in town do a much better job of catering to the students than the student-run pubs.

It wasn’t always that way. During my era — that’s September 1987 through December 1994 — town-gown relations were a little dicier. Local businesses seemed to view the students as a necessary evil; although we pumped a lot of money into Kingston’s economy, the locals were rather annoyed with us (sometimes rightfully so), the businesses never quite got the knack of catering to non-locals. What sort of people were the locals? Let’s put it this way — a popular joke at CGNU was “Q: What do you call a townie in a three-piece suit? A: The deceased.” (Or alternately, “the defendant”.)

Back then, the Holy Trinity of student pubs — Alfie’s, the Quiet Pub and Clark Hall Pub — were where most of the students went. The Quiet Pub (I believe it’s the “Queen’s Pub” now) was the “date pub”, with a fireplace, large comfy chairs and as its name implied, wasn’t as noisy as most places where students and alcohol intersected. Clark Hall Pub was run by the engineering students and thanks to the efforts of DJs like Colin Climie, myself, George and Chris “Turner” Turner, became the place you’d go for alt-rock and new music. Alfie’s was the largest student pub; it promoted itself as a dance bar and was the student “meet market” during its heyday.

Alfie’s was located in the basement of the John Deutsch University Centre, which was more often called the JDUC (pronounced “Jay-Duck”). Its main entrance was a large concrete stairwell that looked like the entrance to a subway station. If you were a CGNU student of my era (admittedly, my career there spanned two eras), you’ve likely stood for an hour or so in line in that stairwell at least once. We tolerated the Cold War era Soviet grocery store-like line because of the promise of Alfie’s: our friends would be there, the pitchers of beer, although served at Alfie’s trademark glacial pace, were cheap and plentiful (CDN$5.40 back in 1987) and there was always a chance one would “hook up”. During the latter half of my stay at CGNU, Jerome Poon-Ting, a.k.a. DJ Sugar and DJ Jenn did an excellent job of keeping the tunes going.

Although the pub nearest and dearest to my heart remains Clark Hall Pub, I’ve also got many Alfie’s memories. I’ve only been in two bar fights over a girl; the one I lost was at Alfie’s. One of the funniest stories about DJing I have took place when I got called in as a substitute DJ at Alfie’s (unfortunately, it’s unbloggable). Some of my greatest “rock star” moments have been at Alfie’s, on whose stage I have played keyboards with several different bands. I’ve had hook-ups, break-ups and piss-ups there; I’ve managed to avoid throw-ups there (unlike some pals of mine who shall go unnamed).

I just received some email from the Toronto branch of the CGNU Alumni Association. One of the items it covered was an event called Alfie’s Does Toronto. Apparently, it’s some kind “relive the glory days of Alfie’s” party that takes place on Friday, April 28th at 8 p.m. at the El Mocambo. I may have to round up a posse for this one. Who’s game?

Immediately after my appearance on MTV Live, I’m going to go to the Greater Toronto Area Bloggers’ Get-Together, which starts tonight at 7 p.m. on the second floor of Paupers Pub (539 Bloor Street West, about a block east of Bathurst).

There’ll be a special guest tonight: Matt “Photomatt” Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, who’s here in Accordion City for the iSummit 2006 conference.

This’ll be the first official GTABloggers gathering in a while, and I’m looking forward to having some drinks and convo with my fellow local bloggers. If you can make it, c’mon down! We’ll be the table with the accordion.

As I mentioned in this post from last week, some jackass helped himself (or herself) to my bike seat from the locked bike room in my building. This morning, I walked my bike through Bloor West Village to Brown’s Cycle to get a new seat.

Bloor West Village

Bloor West Village is the stretch of Bloor Street West — one of the main east-west streets of Accordion City, along which one of our subway lines runs — bounded roughly by Runnymede on the east side and Jane Street on the West side. It’s lined with cafes, restaurants, groceries, bakeries, book shops and other yuppie-centric stores. As a single guy in my twenties and early thirties, Queen Street West was more my scene, but as a married man who’s much closer to 40 than 30, I rather like the vibe of this family and dog-friendly neighbourhood and being right next door to one of the largest parks in the city while remaining a bikeable distance (or a short subway ride, or a near-blip of a car trip) from downtown.

Even Vice magazine, whose target audience is club-going urban teens and twenty-somethings and whose staff are aggressively hipster, has trouble faulting the neighbourhood in their Toronto ‘Hood Guide:

[The Bloor West Village / High Park neighbourhood] is a kind of urban utopia for the middle-upper class. You are basically living downtown but you have a mini-Muskoka in High Park. The houses are old and have style and it’s really safe and community-oriented. It’s also expensive. If you hate the leisure classes and their children, stay away. If you hate trees and fresh air, you are not logical.

Personally, I think it’s a strange conceit for a magazine whose image is that their staff don’t wake up/stop coming down until noon on Monday and don’t have kids, a mortgage or a job that requires much in the way of responsibility or even showing up on time to refer to other people as “the lesiure class”, but the rest of the description is right-on.

Living just east of the stretch of shops and working farther east, I don’t get much of a chance to see Bloor West Village during the day on weekdays, which is a shame. It’s a lively neighbourhood with a mix of activites and people, the sort of place that Jane Jacobs praised in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It was a bit of a treat walking through the ‘hood this morning, even if I had to circumnavigate the bike around a number of strollers, walkers and dogs. I even got a “Hey! You’re the Accordion Guy!” from a high-schooler, even though I haven’t yet busked in this neck of the woods. I just wish I’d brought my camera with me this morning.

Introducing: Suspension!

The guy at Brown’s Cycle took a measurement to figure out what size seat post I needed and asked me if I wanted a suspension post.

“Suspension post? You mean they make seat posts with suspensions?” I asked. Clearly I haven’t been paying attention to bike technology.

He took me to a row of suspension seat posts, which are essentially seat posts with a shock absorber built into them. They weren’t terribly expensive, so I added it to a nice cushiony seat that matched my Trek Calpyso cruiser, and the ride is incredible. Riding on my bike is now like having your bum carried aloft by angels. I highly recommend it.