A · Life

Canada is, like, secretly my spiritual home. Really. It's got all the stuff I like and less of the stuff I don't.

A few observations from my weekend:
1) Ontario drivers are fucking nuts. But they're POLITE about it. I'm used to NYC's delicately choreographed dance consisting of drivers and people and bicyclists etc. all narrowly avoiding one another, and it's a surprisingly effective choreography. (Once on Canal St. a crossing guard waved an oncoming car into a crowd of pedestrians. When the driver, window rolled down, protested, the crossing guard said, "Just go. They'll get out of your way." Sure enough, they did.) Imagine my astonishment when, seeing a car turning left through the crosswalk, I entered and paused to wait for the car to pass so that I could walk just behind it, and the car seeing me, STOPPED, although it had been driving like a hundred miles per hour on two of its wheels over the rear bumper of a semi-truck. Apparently their crazy-fuckery is paralyzed in the face of human foot traffic. It blew my tiny mind. Also they STOPPED for yellow lights, which compounded the mind-blowing. These people were the craziest goddamn drivers I'd ever seen, cutting each other off and driving ridiculously fast, and there they were, stopping because the light was turning yellow. What the fuck?
I am glad to say that the streetcars felt none of these constraints, and happily ran over old ladies as they blew red lights. (However, they *would* first sound their gongs, in a brief nod to the traditional politeness of Canadians.)

2) Canadians are indeed extremely polite. Z and I walked through much of downtown Toronto in our pirate costumes (yes! Z wore the puffy pirate shirt! In public! Squee!) enroute to the festival and back again, and got a number of odd looks, which I quickly realized were Torontonians thinking, "What the fuck?!" but having their jaws seize up in politeness before they could say, "What the fuck?!" and so they merely furrowed their brows before looking away. We did have one (1) person ask us why we were dressed like that, but it was a drunk dude hanging out the window of a cab, and I shit you not, this was the actual dialogue:
Drunk Dude: "Excuse me! Excuse me, but would you two happen to be dressed as pirates?"
Me: "Yes."
DD: "Wow! Were you at that pirate thing?"
Me: "Yes."
DD: "We have been driving around all night looking for that! Is it over now?"
Me: "Yes, it just ended."
DD: "Aw darn! Is it happening again tomorrow?"
Me: "Yes it is! Just back that way, at Fort York."
DD: "Great! Thanks very much!"

He was absolutely hammered, too. It was funny.

I think I heard the phrase "Excuse me" more times this weekend alone than I ever had in my entire life up to that point. It was great.

3) Postcards of Toronto seem to have an unwritten law that the CN Tower must appear no less than three times. One had five different views of downtown, and while the CN Tower only appeared in four of them, it was superimposed behind the fifth one just for effect. It made it appear that Toronto is a city entirely made up of weird gleaming spires. In reality, the weather was cloudy enough that for most of the time we were there, the tower itself was only half-visible, which I admit was actually stranger than the postcards. Walking down the street in Chinatown, I listened to a small child breathlessly asking her inattentive mother whether those were really clouds that were hiding the tower. I was sad when her mom didn't answer her, but then, her mom was busily haggling in a language I didn't know over some, like, civet cat or something. Chinatown in Toronto is actually much, much more so than Chinatown in New York. It was nuts. There was shit there that you probably can't even get in China nowadays, but it was on sale on Dundas St.
I joked in a postcard to my baby sister that we'd eaten civet and gotten SARS, but really we just ate squid and got indigestion. (We didn't even really get indigestion, we just ate way too much at the Korea Grill House's All You Can Eat Lunch BBQ. I recommend the beef-- it's the best thing ever. Squid's kinda tasteless and rubbery by comparison.)

4) Toronto was more racially and ethnically diverse in its general makeup than anywhere else I've been. Anywhere you go, it is interesting to observe who the Oppressed Minority is, who cleans the streets and busses the tables and cooks in the kitchens and mans the cash registers. In New York, it is various flavors of south and central Americans. (In Buffalo, unfashionably enough, it is African-Americans, with the occasional Puerto Rican for variety.) In Toronto, it was a spectrum of Asians, from the Indian Subcontinent end on up to the Koreas. About 50-60% of the conversations that flowed past me on the sidewalks were not in English. (At the Ex, as I sat on a bench undoing a failed hairstyle and putting my hair up in a new one, a woman walked by and commented to her friend, "Que lindo pelo!" which was the only time the entire weekend that i was able to identify the non-English language spoken.)

5) I hesitate to jinx myself by saying this, but whatever it is that tells borderguards not to bother, Z and I have it in great quantities. On the way in, for the first time ever, we actually were asked for identification by the [unusually surly Canadian] borderguard, but we'd already handed it to him before he'd completed the question, and that was all he wanted. [Side note: is "Hellobo'jouh" the required Canadian government-official greeting? It seems to be.] On the way back in the US guard asked us our citizenship, didn't listen to our answer, asked why we'd been in Canada ["Tourism"], and waved us through without so much as glancing at the IDs Z was holding out to her. Mind you, both times we'd sat on the Lewiston-Queenston bridge people-watching at <2 mph for like an hour [you see some great shit going the other direction-- kids fighting, passengers drooling on the window, and I exchanged thumbs-ups with an old dude driving a minivan with "Hockey Mom" stenciled in script on the rear window], but still. I guess we just don't look very interesting.
I have theorized that it would be fascinating to conduct experiments, if one had to cross the border frequently, to see what would get you pulled aside for more questioning-- different vehicles, different outfits, different companions-- but it would be sort of difficult to be scientific about it. The only thing I can reliably say is that having absolutely nothing to hide is an excellent way to ensure that they won't look for it-- although that's not always the case. (My first time in Buffalo we got pulled over and searched intensively on the way into Canada, but that was back when we drove a big red SUV and the back was full of all my luggage and crap, including a computer.)

6) Toronto is strange in that it is a massively ginormous metropolitan area, having annexed all its suburbs not long ago, but is actually a tiny city. The city proper is perfectly walkable. Our hotel, the Sheraton Centre, was right in the middle of it, and in fact featured in most of the cityscapes on the postcards I bought (I circled the tower and wrote "we were here!" on most of them), but even still. We walked to St-Lawrence Market, we walked to Ft. York (a 1790s military installation, and host of the Pirate Festival), we walked through Chinatown (actually it was about a block from our hotel, so, I mean...) we walked through the financial district by accident, we walked everywhere except to the Ex because Z's feet and my hips hurt. (I don't ever have trouble with my feet nowadays, but my hips and spine, ugh.) We walked to Union Station and took the streetcar down to the Ex, which was neat. I like streetcars, except when I'm trying to cross the street. I happened to notice that on the grounds of City Hall, under one of the trees, there was a pile of horse droppings. ? Why not. Maybe it was a rogue escapee from the Ex, probably a mile distant. (ok, 4 km.)

7) Canada is marked, for me at least, by a constant sense of dislocation. It is not foreign enough to be foreign, and in fact for the majority of the time I am not aware of being in a foreign country. I feel at home there as much as I do in New York. But there are just enough moments of "huh?" that it is always interesting. I mean, there's the usual everything-being-adorned-in-maple-leaves thing, but other stuff as well. Like, at the Ex, the inevitable Army recruitment booth. Their uniforms look just like the US Army's new digital camoflage, and they also wear the stupid retarded black berets!!! But the shoulders have little maple leaves on them. They did have a pretty awesome booth, though, with all kinds of neato equipment opened up for small children to crawl through. A pair of five-year-olds were engrossed in spinning the elevation wheel on the heavy cavalry's cannon to aim the thing at the Food And Fun building. The planes and tanks and such were all adorned with banners that visitors could write inspirational messages on for the troops, and many had yellow ribbons painted on them as well.
In general things there are much the same as in the US, but occasionally things pop up. Like the ads downtown promoting tourism: "Cuba Si!" Oh right, y'all are allowed to go there! Hm.

8) The exchange rate sucks. The US dollar is basically at par with the Canadian one. Prices in Canada are slightly expensive, and in Toronto, still higher. It's always been a bargain for Americans to come to Canada, because something that at home costs you $5 USD will cost $5.75 CND, which used to mean a huge saving. Now it was just sort of grim-- $9 for an omelet, $5 for a beer, and of course freakin' $35 for parking... but, it was rather like visiting Manhattan, and if one viewed it as such, it really wasn't so bad. I mean, at least the math is easy, right? But, if any of you reading this are Canadian, now is so totally the time for you to come here. At the Pirate Festival the woman across the table was discussing tourism and travel, and mentioned New York's wine country. I told her that now now now would be an excellent time to visit Central New York: the economy there has just about collapsed [Corning glass works, for example?] so prices are low-- Z and my entire holiday including three cases of wine and a posh B&B and lots of good food came to like $500 all told, and what with the weak American dollar, a Canadian could make out like a bandit down there.

9) The Pirate Festival. I know this is why you all are reading this. You want to know what the Pirate Festival was like.
And to you I say: It was awesome.
Sadly, it was only from 3-7 pm, and we didn't get there until after 6. So I didn't see much festival. We just went straight to the tavern. Which was located in the restored historic barracks of old Ft. York. And how brilliant was Adult Night? It was absolutely brilliant. It consisted of a large number of people old enough to know better crammed into a room with excellent natural ventilation (I was the hero of my table when I figured out how the window opened) with several kegs of beer, some roller weenies, and a crew of entertainers that looked as though they did all the area's Renfests. There were magicians, a standup comic, an all-girl a cappella singing trio who specialized in bawdy humor, a band who sang sea chanteys, and a lot of audience participation. Oh yes, and a belly dancer, who was great but her greatest talent lay in getting other women to get up and dance, so that she didn't have to. (At one point she sat down at a table and just watched for a while.)
It was a great time. Amusingly enough, afterward while I was in line at the ladies' room [I walked in, saw the line, and said, "God, what I wouldn't do for a cock right now!" and was greeted with a chorus of agreement from several who took me completely at face value with no hint of double entendre, especially humorous given that we had all just listened to a song about cocks* in three-part harmony] a girl in full pirate costume came along the line asking us all how we had heard about the festival.
I think the greatest part about pirates is that the costume consists entirely of the most awesome aspects of the farby stuff you see at Renn Fests. Because, I mean, pirate lasses aren't particularly historical, which means that there is no feasible way you can object to a girl in a skull-and-crossbones miniskirt, a leather corset, stretch lace leggings, knee-high boots, an eyepatch, and a tricorne hat bedecked with pink feathers. Not that you'd object anyway, but it is sort of more officially sanctioned here. Also ostentatious plastic weaponry is de rigeur. I am sad that I didn't get a photo of me and Z in our costumes.

If they have it again next year I'm totally coming back.

10) This is a placeholder because I am totally going to remember something else awesome within five minutes of posting this.

__________
* Has anybody seen my cock?
My big Rhode Island red?
He's mostly pink with a little bit of blue and purple round his head
He stands straight up in the morning
and gives me quite a shock
[pause for exclamations of glee from the singers]
Ohh, has anybody seen, anybody seen, anybody seen my cock?
The song was performed by the abovementioned all-girl trio, one of whom was about 7 months pregnant. She pretended throughout not to understand that they weren't actually singing about a real chicken, to great humorous effect ("What?" "Do you think she's--" "Look at her, she can't possibly be."). I think the act was called The Merry Wenches of Windsor but I'm not sure.

In entirely other news, the rollerskates Z and I ordered are scheduled to arrive today.
Our scooter mechanic, Percy, tore a ligament while attempting to rollerskate the other day, which is really unfortunate: he'll be laid up for two weeks. His girlfriend Holly is one of the roller derby girls. Tragicomically, this completes a circle of incompetence: she's a terrible scooterist and keeps having bizarre accidents. So she can't scoot and he can't skate: they're perfectly excluded from one another's hobbies.
But they are both great fun at parties, so I suppose they can meet in the middle.