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08/19/2005: "Quest for the Cadillac Lounge"

I was happy when Todd called me up at the last minute and said he'd cycle over and join me on my walk along Queen West from my place to the Cadillac Lounge, where Shawn had called on us to gather for the THIS magazine summer party.

His one condition was that we stop for food. As we walked along, he spotted New York Subway, the misnamed home of a kind of fantastical hybrid burrito/shawarma invention. We stopped in, and Todd asked for ordering advice. I strongly recommended the jumbo burrito (not to be confused with the satay jumbo burrito, a simpler creation - that has nothing to do with satay - which lacks the divine fried vegetables), and Todd ordered one with shrimp. While we were waiting, he noticed a copy of Eye opened to the M@B comic, which turned out to feature a conversation he'd recently had with Matt (though it was put in the mouth of Matt's friend/character Trevor, featured in the post below). I was like "Wow, it's your first M@B citation!", but Todd played it cool. When the burrito was finally ready, it looked so good that I regretted having already eaten. I will have to find an excuse to have one again soon, I think.

We set off westward, burrito in hand (Todd didn't finish it til past Trinity Bellwoods). We passed the usual denizens of a Queen West evening - pretty girls, goths, the homeless, a little burst of the glossy rich around Czehoski's. At the corner of Trinity Bellwood, we stopped to look in the window of the odd closed photography shop, full of pictures of the last Pope, so that we could let the two girls behind move past us because their conversation was annoying Todd.

As we approached the Drake, we encountered a well-dressed black guy on rollerblades, shaking a cup of change and asking for donations "to save that endangered species, the young Toronto black man". Todd said he'd been featured in Eye recently (it seems everyone that night had been featured in Eye). Then I spotted a fiver on the ground, which was coincidentally the entrance fee to the party. It seemed like a good omen.

When we got to the Beaconsfield (the Drake overflow bar), we spotted one of Todd's friends on the new patio (the one negotiated by Misha) and had a chat. She was there as a result of a surreal story in which she was trying to get into the Drake to pick up dog treats bought at an auction, but couldn't get by the bouncer. Or something like that.

We said our farewells and moved on. As we crossed Gladstone, a guy in a car asked us for directions to the Cadillac Lounge. It was the place to be, I guess. We finally arrived, paid our dues to the guardians at the gate, and found Matt Blackett and Jason and others already ensconsed at the bar. We headed out from the fairly cramped bar to the back, where I experienced the final surprise of the night, the HUGE patio that seemed to go on forever. It was like the Tardis, I thought out loud. Todd followed us out to the patio a couple of minutes later and said "It's like Dr. Who!" It is very comforting to find companions in one's geekdom.

Having reached the hidden land of abundance after our various encounters, we settled down for some well-deserved drink and conversation.

Postcript: Before getting the streetcar home, I walked over to the demonstration Eucan billboard/garbage can a few blocks west. It sprawled over more than half the sidewalk, and blocked the view along the street. A true enemy of psychogeography.