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11/07/2005: "When Fall Fell"
This past weekend it seemed like fall, which was on hold, finally fell, quite literally. There were storms of leaves falling off of trees on Friday, as if they just decided to let go and give up at the same moment. Late Saturday afternoon I had to do some cross-city riding. Storm clouds were coming, but it was getting dark, so I just convinced myself it was late afternoon, rather than a possible storm, that I was seeing. The ride from Yonge along College was misty and wet, but nice. There's something cozy about riding in a light rain, a weird sense of quiet and alone-ness.
After dropping off a proofed copy the next Spacing Magazine in deepest darkest Parkdale, I rode away in what I didn't yet realize was a full on rain storm. I took shelter under some school yard overhang, but soon it turned wet because of the wind so I had to continue riding. I was soaked, and wet awful leaves were falling and slapping against my head, stinging my eyes. I was swearing at it all, but realized there was nobody to swear at, so I rode home on back streets, and by the Annex, the rain was manageable again.
Last night, after a day of wild wind, I went for a walk down Bloor listening to Prince's Purple Rain on my iPOD (the song, not the whole album). It's such a good song, and the guitar sound he came up, and it's production, is a perfect blend of fried-up dirty rock and roll and clean, crisp modernism. It's a long song, about 8 minutes, and I listened to it maybe three times in a row. Prince, considerately, gives everybody time to think about love. It actually comes to an end at one point, then there is two minutes of additional ending tacked on to the end. There was so much extra money before the 1987 stock market crash that even the songs were over the top. I don't know if the Bridal Path will ever inspire such a masterpiece from him.
On Bloor, you can look directly into the exposed belly of the ROM right now.
It's a view that won't be around forever, so it's nice to see right now. All the industrial lights reminded me of the huge freighters that would pass slowly along the Detroit River between Windsor and Detroit. They were always covered with these sorts of harsh, bright lights. We called them floating hotels, because of the way the cabin and bridge stuck out of the water so high, like an impossible floating building.
Across from the ROM is the McDonalds where Ashlee Simpson had a little trouble last week.
Who can blame her though? Look at the font they use in the front window. Excitement like that is infectious, and McDonalds should beware of the power of fonts. When I was a kid, stores like this used to represent the big city for me. Two floors of fast-food was the only for the most metropolitan of places.
A little past this place a frantic couple said to me "we're looking for an upscale restaurant along here – we're supposed to meet friends." They said it started with an S so I said "Is it Sassafraz?" and they said "That's it!" There are a few other expensive S restaurants in the neighbourhood, but it was the word "upscale" that had me figure they were looking for the starfuck sensibility found at Sassafraz. At a "real" (whatever that means) upscale restaurant, people looking for it would never call it "upscale". The differences between old and new money are totally inconsequential but interesting, from clothing right down to language. Though sometimes I wonder if the old money'd types are more inclined to do the Noblesse Oblige thing or care about better art or something. Idle thoughts, but a walk through Toronto presents many opportunities to wonder about these things.
Like at the Christmas windows of Holt Renfrew, which were unveiled last week. They're always quite a production – like little film sets. One year, when I first moved up here, there was some kind of sifter at the top that made it snow 24 hours a day in the window. That was something. The clothes are always nice to look at, as well as the tableau the window dressers have created that tell wonderful stories about places where these clothes can be used. This year it's some kind of Vermont ski fantasy with some kind of slutty evening affair in the lodge, which looks great, but has a hint of belligerent frat boy that is sort of a turn off. It's much more fun to imagine these clothes being worn as they are in Prada ads, with pouty trust-fund darlings staring off into the empty emotional space of a gray, overcast November day in Milan.
Sadly, passing through the store during the day reveals the customers are usually either angry looking tight-faced Dick Cheney types with impatient, tight-faced Ann Coulter-ish wives in tow or creepy Eurotrash types wearing sweaters and shirts with inappropriate patches of leather (the kind of stuff Holt's sells, but seldom shows off in the front windows). Like small pleasures (like, say, a rare country drive in a finely engineered work of art like an old 1980s Porsche) such nice things are wasted on the rich.
