Tag: Toronto

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A Visit to Malabar

We’re planning on attending a couple of Halloween parties, and we didn’t want just any old costume. Luckily, there’s a place I’ve been going to since the 1980s, and it’s also one of our favourite stores in Accordion City:

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Malabar! Located at 14 McCaul Street, just north of Queen and just south of OCAD, it’s where you go when you want costumes, from the cheap and disposable, to something that’s ready for stage or screen.

The room by the main entrance has the stuff for sale, and if you need a quick costume, they’ve got plenty, and they’ve got a bigger variety than you’ll find at your local department store or Walmart.

I had no idea that there were commercially-made Napoleon Dynamite character costumes:

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You’re just a kit away from turning into Jake or Elwood Blues (black jacket not included):

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As the photo on the packaging shown below indicates, even a reject from Jersey Shore can become Aragorn with this sword! You can even use it to keep the “grenades” at bay!

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Want to be “V” from V for Vendetta for Halloween (or take part in an anti-Scientology demonstration)?  No prob – they’ve got the hat, cape and Guy Fawkes mask here, along with Princess Leia hair buns, Batman utility belts, Jason Voorhees’ goalie mask and machete and accessories to turn into into just about any pop culture character.

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They’ve got a nice selection of costume hats. They’re cheaper than the real thing, and while probably not durable enough for everyday wear, they’re perfect for those costume occasions.

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They’ve got wigs aplenty, too!

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And a wide array of glasses, from the ordinary to the way-out:

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Off to the side is the rental room, which has a big assortment of more substantial costumes:

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They come in all sorts of genres, shapes and sizes:

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I rented the steampunk costume that I wore to Cory Doctorow’s wedding here!

They have all sorts of costumes, including animal mascots:

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Have you always dreamed of going as Doctor Zoidberg from Futurama for Halloween? You can – when I was there on Saturday, the lobster head hadn’t been booked yet. Pair it with a lab coat, surgical scrubs and a pair of orange oven mitts and you’re good to go!

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As for the costumes we got? I’ll save that for a later blog entry.

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It Might Have Been

I saw this hand-made poster taped to a parking meter on College Street near Caplansky’s yesterday and had to take a photo:

i wish i had kissed you

As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!"

All too true. The stuff I really regret – thankfully, there’s very little of that — is what I didn’t do.

Thanks to the ambiguity introduced by the word “just”, the author of the message might be expressing regret that the act had escalated beyond kissing and into serious “viewer discretion is advised” territory, which is probably something you shouldn’t be doing in a friend’s kitchen.

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Toronto’s Hot Tech Scene

sarah prevetteSarah Prevette addresses the SproutUp crowd.
Photo by Brett Gundlock for the National Post.

“On almost any given weeknight,” goes the article in today’s National Post, Sprouting a Hotbed, “there is an event in Toronto somewhere where the technology crowd convenes to talk about the smartphone applications they’re building, to offer advice on each other’s business models and share Twitter marketing strategies with an eye to becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg.”

There’s a lot going on in my city’s tech scene, and it’s making splashes worldwide. The article covers some of the names of the people who make Toronto the tech-place-to-be that it is, including friend and former coworker at Microsoft, David Crow:

"If you were to ask me what’s in the water and what makes Toronto special, it’s that it’s one of the most diverse cities in the world," he said. "Much of what we think of as innovation is just the tension between different viewpoints and Toronto is the city of differing viewpoints … the whole point of building the community piece is to help the diversity and these folks come together and get excited about what’s going on."

Read the full article

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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A Bad Sign

Seen earlier today at the corner of Melinda and “I can’t tell where the hell I am, some idiot put a ‘no left turn’ sign in the worst possible place”:

Street signs at the corner of Yonge and Melinda Streets, with a "No Left Turn" sign blocking the Yonge Street sign

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Today’s Subway Ride…

…reminded me of why I tend to bike downtown and inspired me to doctor a classic panel from Batman:

bad transit

(For those of you not from Toronto: the TTC is the Toronto Transit Commission, Accordion City’s public transit system.)

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Strange Things are Afoot in My ‘Hood

meat mischief

Pictured above: a snapshot taken last week of the neighbourhood paper at my local café. Meat mischief? Cat hoarding? What’s going on here?

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Bairrada

bairrada frontPhoto from Road Stories.

I belong to a little club that holds monthly “meatings” where we gather for the purposes of good times, scintillating conversation and the savoury pleasures of meat. Last night, our meating was held at Bairrada, a churrasqueira on College, a block west of Dovercourt (1002 College). They have other locations: one at Keele and St. Clair and one in Mississauga at Highway 10 and Dundas.

People unfamiliar with Portuguese cuisine typically think that it’s just fish. They’re partly correct; being an ocean-facing nation that produced some of the world’s greatest navigators during the age of exploration, they know a thing or two about seafood. However, they’re also a meat-and-potatoes culture as well. In fact, they’re a meat, potatoes and sauce culture.

bairrada patio

Bairrada, as is the custom with many Accordion City restaurants, is like Doctor Who’s TARDIS – bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside. There’s a fair bit of dining space inside the restaurant, but the real room is in its tree-canopied patio past the dining room. A barbecue lover would feel at home here.

One of their appetizers is listed in the menu in English as “flaming sausage”, and the name is truth in advertising:

flaming sausage 1

Take a closer look — the dish used to flame the sausage is shaped like a pig:

flaming sausage 2

We also had some fresh cheese, which had a very clean, baby mozzarella-like taste, which goes well with bread and sausage.

fresh cheese

I had the house steak, which comes served in a pool of sauce with a sunny-side-up perched on top of it and a generous helping of fried potatoes sliced twice as thick as potato chips. I enjoyed it so much that I forgot to snap a photo of it, so you’ll have to use your imagination. I’ll have to snap a photo next time.

Wendy had the chicken, which comes served covered in piri-piri spice and with rice and potatoes to suck up the delicious juices:

chickenPhoto from BlogTO.

You get a lot of bang for your buck at Bairrada: generous portions of delicious food cooked over an open flame, with appetizers typically below $10 and entrees typically $15 or less. If you’re looking for some meat and want to venture beyond the typical North American steakhouse, Bairrada’s a great place to visit.

Word-of-Mouth Reviews of Bairrada