Isn't it amazing, how little press notice this has raised? Are they influenced by their advertisers? Oh surely not!
GOOD NEWS, KEEP SHAKING TREE
Budget Committee has approved an increase to the Community Partnerships and Investments Program "in recognition of the work on the billboard tax." This is great as it will provide almost a million additional dollars for community led programming including everything from food programs for high-need kids to art in major institutions every year! The bad news is that it is a bit short of the 2.5 million left from the billboard tax for art projections this year and 9 million next. Additionally, not targeted to enhancing public spaces with art as the increase is essentially a 2% cost of living / inflationary adjustment to existing programs. For example it presently means only about 300K will go directly to Toronto's hundreds of arts organizations. Some have said that the arts avoided a 5% cut in general -- but that is a bit silly in the context of a 100 million dollar surplus and that the billboard tax is more than 5% of arts funding - find other arguments here: http://www.beautifulcity.ca/bc/bcarguments.pdf
However! Budget Chief Shelley Carroll also stated that there will be a "much improved plan" going forward to specifically benefit the arts at the April 7th Executive meeting (Committee Room 1, 9:30am - please RSVP / Share: http://tinyurl.com/yf233sn ) Our position is that substantial resources need accompany the go-forward plan this year -- conditions are good and positive precedent needs to be set in order for the policy to survive the election. There is no good reason settle on mediocrity...please help make this point via the 2 minute action below.
2 MINUTE ACTION !
The calls and emails are working. We need to do a round of really polite calls and emails to the Mayor and Shelley urging them to put the resources behind the billboard tax for art this year. Please call in (or email separately) something like the below. If possible, please reword, put a personal story and challenge if emailed back.
Mayor Miller - 416-397-2489 / mayor_miller@toronto.ca
Councillor Shelley Carroll - 416-392-4038 / councillor_carroll@toronto.ca
Friday, March 19, 2010
Sunday, September 6, 2009
O Noir. In the dark?
O Noir opened in the long-abandoned basement of the Town Suites a couple of months ago. Attracted by the editorial coverage, we had been talking about it, and finally we went. It was quite an experience.
The staff is young and unfailingly cheerful and interested. You go in through a dim bar/lounge area, where you order your meal. Two prix fixes -- three courses or main with either starter or dessert -- thirty bucks for two, thirty-six for three. You order your meal (you can choose to have a Surprise Dish), and then are escorted into the dark dining room. And I mean dark! 100% no light, double-door light traps at the entrance, blind servers.
The immediate effect of being in total darkness is some claustrophobia, and some effort on the part of the brain to make some sense out of the random sparks your retina produces all the time.
The mind clutches at any physical clues; the feel of the upholstered back of the chair produced a clear picture of the colour and texture of the fabric, the bare wood table-top became polished mahogany with no extra clues.
The server seems very close as he helps you to your banquette seat, the conversations at the table around are a difficult blur of sound without the cues of faces and body English. I had some sympathy with my aged father-in-law, who is very deaf and is similarly lost in a context with much background sound.
So far, so interesting. Unfortunately, the evening went sharply downhill.
The food served has to be manageable, so the meat is cut up and the dishes tend to be pasty, rather than runny or crisp, but what an opportunity has been lost to surprise and delight with strong flavours and unusual combinations, with unexpected textures and subtle differences. With no other sensory input, the tastebuds could go wild. But the food was institutional. The kitchen is working from a curiously boring mandate, or the costs have been kept too low. The food features everything that is bad about hospital and retirement home catering -- not hot, under-seasoned, covered with bland brown gravy. My bland portobello mushroom was set on a small nest of lettuce whose unremarkable dressing positively sang in the context, my veal al limone could have been recycled for the next night's stewed veal, or indeed any tender bland meat. The braised vegetables were distinguishable only by their mouth feel.
The Surprise dish would have been an embarrassment, because I can't imagine how one would ever guess what the food was. The Surprise would come as you paid the bill, outside in the lounge, when they told you the secret.
We didn't wait for a dessert, seeing that all the reviewers had been disappointed by its unrelieved chocolateyness, and we came out onto Church feeling let down.
What a shame that such an interesting idea, successfully running in Montreal, should have been so diluted in the application. Perhaps the space will attract another restaurant with less concept and better food.
The staff is young and unfailingly cheerful and interested. You go in through a dim bar/lounge area, where you order your meal. Two prix fixes -- three courses or main with either starter or dessert -- thirty bucks for two, thirty-six for three. You order your meal (you can choose to have a Surprise Dish), and then are escorted into the dark dining room. And I mean dark! 100% no light, double-door light traps at the entrance, blind servers.
The immediate effect of being in total darkness is some claustrophobia, and some effort on the part of the brain to make some sense out of the random sparks your retina produces all the time.
The mind clutches at any physical clues; the feel of the upholstered back of the chair produced a clear picture of the colour and texture of the fabric, the bare wood table-top became polished mahogany with no extra clues.
The server seems very close as he helps you to your banquette seat, the conversations at the table around are a difficult blur of sound without the cues of faces and body English. I had some sympathy with my aged father-in-law, who is very deaf and is similarly lost in a context with much background sound.
So far, so interesting. Unfortunately, the evening went sharply downhill.
The food served has to be manageable, so the meat is cut up and the dishes tend to be pasty, rather than runny or crisp, but what an opportunity has been lost to surprise and delight with strong flavours and unusual combinations, with unexpected textures and subtle differences. With no other sensory input, the tastebuds could go wild. But the food was institutional. The kitchen is working from a curiously boring mandate, or the costs have been kept too low. The food features everything that is bad about hospital and retirement home catering -- not hot, under-seasoned, covered with bland brown gravy. My bland portobello mushroom was set on a small nest of lettuce whose unremarkable dressing positively sang in the context, my veal al limone could have been recycled for the next night's stewed veal, or indeed any tender bland meat. The braised vegetables were distinguishable only by their mouth feel.
The Surprise dish would have been an embarrassment, because I can't imagine how one would ever guess what the food was. The Surprise would come as you paid the bill, outside in the lounge, when they told you the secret.
We didn't wait for a dessert, seeing that all the reviewers had been disappointed by its unrelieved chocolateyness, and we came out onto Church feeling let down.
What a shame that such an interesting idea, successfully running in Montreal, should have been so diluted in the application. Perhaps the space will attract another restaurant with less concept and better food.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
This best of all possible ...
I realised how lucky we are to be living at Church-Isabella. Here we are, paying the equivalent of the rents for similar places in Etobicoke or at Lawrence and Chelm, and just look at our neighbourhood:
With the imminent opening of Longo's at Bloor and Park, we have seven supermarkets within a quarter-hour walk, with two high end food stores just a little further out, with two greengrocers and four Rabbas in the same area, and three convenience stores within a couple of blocks. Of course the one thing you're looking for none of the stores has in stock right now, but that's fate. Who'd have thought Vegemite was so hard to find?
And we are indeed paying substantially less than market: apartments north of Bloor and West of Lansdowne are $835 for bachelors, $950 for one beds and $1275 for two beds. And they don't have the nice people in the building that we do.
In no particular order:
There were fifty Learning Annex boxes lined up along Breadalbane Street, all alone, lined up quietly presumably waiting to be picked up and taken home. Whatever happened to the L.A.? I remember it as being a high-end Continuing Ed, then it went weird, and it seems to have been dead since last year. As the schedule boxes indicate, I guess.
The Scientologists are rumoured to be moving to a compound north of the city. No loss, although we shall miss the masked protesters on Saturdays.
Miraculous, the way the city recovered from the garbage strike. The street cleaners revealed that they can actually pick up all the litter when it's an emergency. The last of the backlog of household garbage has been picked up and the fetid corners are no more. The posturing by the Mayor and the CUPE spokesman was embarrassing -- how do they frame these sentences that manage not to lie while giving a totally false impression? Is there a postgrad school of lying and cheating? What level of creative law-skirting is necessary? Is a conviction for fraud an advantage, or must you successfully defend yourself and then counter-sue?
Enough for tonight
With the imminent opening of Longo's at Bloor and Park, we have seven supermarkets within a quarter-hour walk, with two high end food stores just a little further out, with two greengrocers and four Rabbas in the same area, and three convenience stores within a couple of blocks. Of course the one thing you're looking for none of the stores has in stock right now, but that's fate. Who'd have thought Vegemite was so hard to find?
And we are indeed paying substantially less than market: apartments north of Bloor and West of Lansdowne are $835 for bachelors, $950 for one beds and $1275 for two beds. And they don't have the nice people in the building that we do.
In no particular order:
There were fifty Learning Annex boxes lined up along Breadalbane Street, all alone, lined up quietly presumably waiting to be picked up and taken home. Whatever happened to the L.A.? I remember it as being a high-end Continuing Ed, then it went weird, and it seems to have been dead since last year. As the schedule boxes indicate, I guess.
The Scientologists are rumoured to be moving to a compound north of the city. No loss, although we shall miss the masked protesters on Saturdays.
Miraculous, the way the city recovered from the garbage strike. The street cleaners revealed that they can actually pick up all the litter when it's an emergency. The last of the backlog of household garbage has been picked up and the fetid corners are no more. The posturing by the Mayor and the CUPE spokesman was embarrassing -- how do they frame these sentences that manage not to lie while giving a totally false impression? Is there a postgrad school of lying and cheating? What level of creative law-skirting is necessary? Is a conviction for fraud an advantage, or must you successfully defend yourself and then counter-sue?
Enough for tonight
Saturday, July 11, 2009
| I've been looking at the market prices of apartments in the close downtown area, and I realise the marvellous position we're in. A far west as Dufferin and east to Donlands, the apartments advertised on TorontoRentals.com are never cheaper than and as much as twice as expensive as the same nominal size in the co-op. I say nominal size because no-one ever accused a commercial landlord of having oversized rooms. I saw: | ||
| Palmerston and College | 2 bed | $1850 |
| Danforth and Donlands | 1 bed | $950 |
| Richmond and Sherbourn | 1 bed | $1350 |
| Dufferin and Dupont | bachelor | $550 |
| Yonge and Bay | 1 bed | $1350 |
| Bloor and Spadina | bachelor | $859 |
| Bloor and Brunswick | 1 bedroom | $999 |
| Richmond and Sherbourne | 1 bed | $1300 |
| Jarvis and King | 1 bed + den | $1750 |
CMHC says that a full market-value 2-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto should be expected to cost $1500.
They define affordable housing as being 80% of this, or $1200.
So if the other prices are in the same ratio, we are paying three quarters of the price of affordable housing.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Pride Saturday
Riding around the city, I had taken a long time to realise that new bike lanes are springing up all over. A mention in a newspaper column drew my attention to the fact that the Cycling Committee has taken its funding, long unused under the previous chairman, and started to make a difference.
By bringing the decision-making to a city level, rather than ward by ward, local prejudices can be balanced off against regional benefits. Long-planned routes are now in action.
But where are the headlines? Where is the public information?
Where is the news about the 3,000 bicycles and 4,500 parking stations that will form a free bicycle scheme starting Spring 2010?
What is the 'bicycle plus two chevrons' signage? It indicates a 'sharrow' lane for cyclists, who follow the line of the arrows, and cars, who must share the space.
Did you know that the minor intersections, where the lights are controlled by car traffic and pedestrian push buttons, also have three white dots in the bike lane where the weight of a bicycle will trigger the change?
We are becoming a cycle-friendly city, with streets striped with new bike lanes with more planned on major routes like University, and pleasure routes along the hydro allotments.
But why the maidenly modesty, people? This is one of the few unalloyed successes the Council can boast of, and I've seen nothing in the press.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Who'd a thunk?
It's amazing what you can achieve after you've graduated from the StraightFaced School of Politics. Some recent announcments:
- Most of the cancer tests in New Brunswick were entirely accurate.
- The great majority of Manitobans aren't in danger from swine flu.
- My bonus was as contractually agreed , to compensate me for losing the much larger bonus I could have expected in industry (Where the equivalent bonus was a third the size).
- The car suffers defeat when Jarvis is to have a bike lane after all. Ignoring the fact that Sherbourne has a wide bike lane on both sides all the way from Queen to Bloor.
No-one seems to realise that:
- "surplus" simply means, "We didn't spend as much as we thought we would." It's not free money, it's just money we don't have to spend yet.
And in the case of the federal government, it's money that's taken out of the real world of providing things and goes to pay down the national debt.
Speaking of shell games. - "We don't have it in the budget to give you more" means, "We have the money, but we're not going to spend it on you."
- "Challenging, a new era, exciting, on the brink, demanding" all mean it ain't going to happen.
- "After consultation with the stakeholders" means after an auction with the lobbyists.
This is appearing in the July Newsletter and also on a blog at www.tinyurl.com/ChurchIsabella.
I've just realised that we are not actually a co-op.
A co-op is a raft, with members kneeling with paddles on all sides.
Unless everyone has some commitment to paddling in a shared direction,
the raft will drift and spin and run aground.
We are not a co-op because we behave like tenants. A co-operative shares decision-making. We have forgotten that we all have the responsibility to put in our pennyworth of decision-making.
We don't want simply to accept decisions someone has made for us, we are not children. We want someone to decide for us so we can bitch about the decisions. Unfortunately, we have expert and committed volunteers who will make decisions for us. They are accused of sitting on their hoard of experience and knowledge, but the system leaves them no option if decisions are to be made at all.
At the 20/2o meetings and in conversation afterwards, I discovered that democracy actually works, and a consensus can be found, or at least approached, through free discussion.
Ideas floated up out of nowhere, were polished and organised within the group, and a detailed brief was prepared to tell the Board what we think is important. We were enormously helped by the facilitator, but we knew the views were our own.
I hope this blog will be a place where people feel they can bring information and concerns, so that the community can grow. Posting is anonymous, behind your own blog name, and you may find that you have more support than you thought possible, or that someone has already dealt with the bind you find yourself in.
The blog is not an official Co-op project, it is the electronic version of the laundry room rant, where until now all that energy solving longstanding problems has been wasted.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)