[Previous entry: "Yonge and Egligable"] [Next entry: "the olfactory walk"]
06/11/2005: "wading through NXNE"
Last night I went to the Korean Grill House on Queen West with my friend Nick. After eating too much meat (I refused to try Ox tougue), we strolled across Queen and passed the masses going from venue to venue as part of North by Northeast. I stood at the corner of Queen and Spadina for a while and watched people come and go and listened to their drunken conversations and horrible pick-up lines. Queen and Spadina at 11pm on a Friday is all about Sex. Everyone is horny and looking for some.
After that, I put my iPod on and listened to my own soundtrack: Feist, Manitoba, Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Raising the Fawn. I have 700 or 800 songs on it and just put it on random and it makes some of the best DJ sets I have ever listend to. I like how it can create a third perspective to my walks - I have my thoughts, the people walking have their own, and the music makes for another set of thoughts are have nothing to do with me or the public, but infulence how I see things when there are big drums rolls or someone sings "They all want to fuck the cause." It semed only fitting that my iPod was only picking local bands since some of them (like Manitoba, now known as Caribou) were playing at the Hoseshoe only a 100 feet from where I was sauntering. There was also a man pacing back and forth on the streetcar island at Queen and Spadina. He was carrying a crusifixtion cross and was dressed like a cross between Phantom of the Opera and the weird scapry character from the Scream movie.
I walked back and forth three times between University and Spadina listening to my soundtrack and watching the throng of people ebb and flow. I got a little excited about the city, thinking how it comes to life when we use it. Even if its some horrible people who are on their way to The Joker or System Soundbar to suck back Red Bull and mountains of blow, it was nice to see them outside instead of in front of a TV. I used to do this kind of stroll when I lived in Little Italy and had more free time to do what I wanted. It was jaunts like this that got me all those strange m@b encounters. I have to do this more.
I also stared into Pages windows and saw Spacing on the front part of a newsrack beside Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Harper's. It gave me a bit of a chill (a good, excited one). Then someone I don't know passed by me and said, "its not good to stare at your own magazine."
