U of T Back Campus Fields Project

Concept: 0 out of 5
Execution: To Be Determined
Yeah, but: My new website project, backcampus.blogspot.com

The Long Version: According to the University of Toronto, their "Downtown Toronto (St. George) campus blends historical architecture and inviting green spaces as a backdrop to a truly remarkable community." The lead photo is theirs, and it shows a neighbourhood awash in significant architecture and large green spaces. There's a big round one in the middle of the photo, which is used for ceremonies and frequently fenced off for rehabilitation, and there's the big square green space on the left side of the photo. That's Back Campus, but don't get too attached to it.

In anticipation of the Pan Am games, the University will be spending millions of dollars to dig up two grass turf playing fields and replace them with an artificial turf surface. Confusingly, and possibly in honour of George Orwell's legacy, the University invariably refers to this simply as "turfing", and not in the sense of 'turfed him off of the governing council'. To avoid the confusion of their replacing one kind of turf with another, I'll be calling the mowable surface "Grass" and the future material "Plastic." That seems fair.

The outline of the project is that two playing fields will be changed from grass to a plastic surface. The existing field is lined with trees on three sides, both young and old. There's a nice iron fence on the north end of the field and a rather unappealing black chain-link fence with a plastic dryer vent duct along the top – as protective padding, presumably – closing off much of the remaining perimeter, with the quarter facing the main campus left open as the only access. The existing grass does get a lot of traffic, and even as a community member I typically use the field with one eye on the frisbee and another looking out for ruts, puddles, and dips.

The replacement plan is to move the formal boundaries (and fence) almost to the very perimeter of the playing surface, keeping the existing trees and grass on the outside and installing plastic on the inside. The idea is that this will provide a hard-wearing surface that's suitable for international field hockey competition one moment and casual baseball games the next.

The University of Toronto, an institution renowned for promoting critical thinking, has published a great deal of material talking about what a great deal this is. Much of the financial cost will be paid by other people, community access will be retained, none of the existing trees will be harmed, no chemicals will be needed to maintain the surface, and it will be able to be used year-round. Their material doesn't contain one single downside; there's not even a slight shrug and an admission of 'well, yeah, that one little part might not be so great when it's all done.' It's lollypops and bonbons for everyone.

Naturally, others have stepped into the vacuum to provide a countering opinion. The unambiguously titled Keep Back Campus Green website contains a collection of their own articles as well as links to ones published elsewhere, both pro and con, regarding the project. The formal plans, organized opposition, and outside opinions provide a good diversity of material. I've read a lot of it, and I'm pretty sure that the "the truth is somewhere in the middle" folks have something on their side in this debate, but I don't think that it makes any difference.

The University does need a better playing surface; I'm willing to accept their assertion that grass is not up to the challenge. But the argument of necessity doesn't stop their plan and actions from being fundamentally and inherently evil. The University should step up, own it, and say, "we need this anyway". Or even better, "we need this anyway, and here are all the great things we'll do elsewhere in the campus to mitigate its effects."

The replacement of two grass playing fields by what is essentially a carpeted parking lot simply can't be morally neutral even if all of the other possible negatives of the project – damaging century-old Elm trees, removal of smaller trees on the border of the field, application of biocides to the playing surface, massive water use, restricted student and community access, among others – are avoided.

Is it plausible that paving over the large field that currently absorbs and slowly releases rain water to the surrounding trees somehow won't damage them? Instead of this natural system the University will be installing a large under-field cistern to slow the flow of storm water before it inundates the aging municipal network of combined sewers. That isn't nearly as good an answer to the problem at all.

Has any project of this scale worked out according to the best-case projections that are created to steer it through the planning and approvals stage? We're just one minor engineering requirement away from losing dozens of trees that line the perimeter; once ten million dollars are spent on a world-class competitive surface will the department of Kinesiology still want to leave it unlocked so that people who just happen to live in the area can toss a ball around on a saturday afternoon? I don't believe it for a second.

Less than two-thirds of a kilometre from Back Campus, or about a five minute walk, there's a large grass playing field. It's controlled by the U of T affiliated University of Toronto Schools (UTS) private high school, and it's kept locked and unavailable to the community when it's not being used for a few hours a day during the school year.

Immediately south of this playing field is what might be a hockey rink if it hadn't fallen into shameful disrepair, and it's also kept chained. The difference is that it's not being used by the school at all, and simply sits abandoned. Next to that rink are two of the most bedraggled tennis courts in the city, left open, but one features a chain-link net while the other is stripped bare and only used for the occasional kids ball-hockey scrimmage. If only there was a proper rink nearby that people could use…

Given Toronto's recent water infrastructure projects to deal with storm runoff, the reviving interest in Toronto's "Lost Rivers" – such as Taddle Creek, whose watershed this is – and mandated efforts to create green roofs to combat the urban heat island effect, even the best case scenario that the University proposes is exactly the wrong answer. Toronto's downtown core, of which the St. George campus is a major part, already suffers from a lack of public space, insufficient parkland and green space, and inadequate civil infrastructure to serve the demands we already have.

Regardless of the stated need for better athletic facilities, and the impending arrival of the Pan Am / Parapan Games in 2015, the University of Toronto's decision is a massive failure of innovation and leadership. This simply isn't the way we build cities any more, and the University of Toronto should be championing innovative solutions here just as much as they do in other areas. Taking such a regressive action in the heart of the most significant university campus in Toronto deserves to haunt their reputation for decades.


I am chronicling the University of Toronto's Back Campus Fields Project, the conversion of Back Campus from grass to plastic, on a dedicated website: backcampus.blogspot.com.

last updated 29 june 2013

KO Burger, 366 Bloor Street West

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: It can be variable.

The Long Version: KO Burger is one of those interesting little places that doesn't quite make sense. Originally branded as Wing Shop 366, using the number of their street address – and still serving wings – from the outside they look more like a disreputable place for Bubble Tea. But there seems to be an inverse relationship between maketing slickness and the quality of the burger: McDonalds serves paper products, while KO Burger is really, really good.

It did take me quite a while to make it through the front door of KO burger, but after yet another abysmal experience at the local Lick's, I finally decided to give the independent business a try. That was on February 11, 2012. I know the exact date because it completely changed my burger-buying habits. (And because I wrote a tweet about it.) I wasn't able to bring myself to order a hamburger from anyone else for almost two months. I think the Harvey's near my work still has the "Missing" poster of me posted in the back.

In early April I finally succumbed and had a hamburger somewhere else, but it only because I was 450 kilometers away. Let me tell you, it wasn't the same.

One of the best things about KO Burger is that they use buns from the Cobb's Bakery that's literally right next door. That's about as good as it gets. The french fries ("freedom fries" for my American friends) are good, but like most, they don't travel particularly well. The hamburger patties are exceptional, and include the options for veggie and lamb-burgers as well. I usually go with their 9oz beef patty with back bacon and cheddar, and while tax brings the total to over $10, it's absolutely worth it.

The only way I could see KO Burger being better is if they offered Peameal bacon. That was what won me over at Gateway Storage and Marine, which remains the best burger that I've ever had. In case anyone's keeping score, it's also an even more unlikely-looking place to find great food than KO Burger is. Take that, McDonalds.

last updated 4 may 2012

Rowe Farms (Annex location)

Concept: 4 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's mainly because of the meat.

The Long Version: Rowe Farms is something of a contemporary butcher's shop, and reflects a move toward specialty retailing that targets customers who are seeking locally sourced and/or organic meats and produce. The Annex location at 468 Bloor West is a fairly new store, and it's a good fit in an area that already has a high concentration of health(y)-food stores. It replaces an organic fruit and vegetable seller that wasn't quite so successful, though, so nothing is guaranteed.

I've been a supermarket shopper all of my life, and there's nothing I like more than the "Freezer" section – growing up in the suburbs will do that to you. But Penny is more likely to shop at the specialty stores, such as Yorkville's Whole Foods, so when Rowe moved into the neighbourhood she was there to give it a try. She brought home some ground beef to make chili with, and even with all of the competing flavours and ingredients, the difference in quality and taste was inescapable.

I'm a little embarrassed now to admit that I used to just buy boxes of frozen steaks. They were convenient, I could get two month's worth at a time, and they were just as good as the unfrozen stuff at the local grocery store. I just didn't realize how low those standards are. I spend a bit more now – although see my two-year update below – but even without bringing in the personal issues of natural and/or local food, it tastes much better.

The big grocery stores are the prototype "Big Box" retailers – acres of parking lots spanning the suburbs to support massive stores that people go to because they have everything. But success in one extreme often creates a vacuum elsewhere, and Rowe Farms has local stores that really are worth an extra stop.

Updated two years later: Never ones to leave a new market uncontested once others have proved that it's viable, the big grocery stores in my area are now offering various meats that are intended to compete with the quality from specialty shops like Rowe Farms. This comes in various guises – free range, traditionally raised, hormone-free, homeschooled, and so on – and they're priced at a premium that makes Rowes' quite competitive. The product itself, however, simply isn't up to the same standard; it actually makes me a little sad to see what's being passed off these days. Rowe Farms remains my store of choice for evert product that they carry.

last updated 13 june 2013

Burrito Bandidos - Bloor Street Location

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

The Long Version: I'll start this review backwards - the biggest problem with Burrito Bandidos is that the ordering can be hit-or-miss. In the interest of speed, they like to ask for all of the information up front, and as a customer, I'm asked to tell them what I don't want on each burrito. Ordering one is easy enough, but the error rate for my typical two-burrito order can be as high as 20% - about one out of every five has something wrong with it. They're far from being as challenged as Hero Burger, where I no longer think it's worth the effort of getting food, but if Burrito Bandidos can boost their accuracy I'd easily give them a '3' for Execution, and even consider a score of '4'. That's almost stratospheric around here, but they certainly have that potential.

It's hard to break the $10 barrier with a burrito and a beverage, and the quality is very good. The steak uses real steak, and I've never stood there and thought 'I hope they don't use that tomato…' the way I can with some of the submarine sandwich shops in the neighbourhood. I used to go to the original location on Peter Street, back when it was still operating under the inferior Burrito Boyz name, and I think the Burrito Bandidos' Annex location does a better job. Aside from the occasional random ingredient, or random lack of an ingredient, I have no complaints. They've become my preferred replacement for Cora's Pizza, and I usually end up with a burrito about once a week.

The Annex location has a deceptive address. Officially at 362 Bloor Street West, it faces onto Walmer Road and is at the far end of the building, so you'll never find it by walking along Bloor. It's just across the street and a little south of the Walmer Road exit from Spadina Station, which in turn is behind the Shopper's Drug Mart. It's easy enough to find if you know where to look, and it's one of those places that will always get repeat visits.

Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture From the Fifties to the Seventies

Concept: 4 out of 5
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's a very dense book.


The Long Version: "Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture From the Fifties to the Seventies" is the second book I've bought from Coach House Press, the small but vital Toronto institution located on the charming bpNichol lane. Like HTO: Toronto's Water, this is a collection of essays written by a range of experts, discussing a specific and overlooked section of Toronto's physical environment. And before I put anyone off, Coach House publishes a broad range of subjects, including fiction and poetry, and it's well worth looking through their catalog. It just so happens that I love their dedication to local subjects, and Concrete Toronto is exactly the kind of book that appeals to me.

Concrete is possibly the least-sexy building material out there, and yet it's ubiquitous. It makes our roads and bridges possible, and it's the ground that we walk on in our cities, but it is to aesthetics what powdered mashed potatoes is to cuisine. Toronto's skyline is dominated by poured concrete buildings, but it's mostly associated with the broadly-unloved Brutalist style, which even takes its name from its love of exposed concrete exteriors. A book titled "Concrete Toronto" is clearly facing an tough battle just to get picked up off of the shelf, but it's well worth it. Inside is a huge collection of essays, illustrations, and photos.

Naturally, the prominent Toronto landmarks are well covered. The CN Tower, the Manulife Centre, and the New City Hall are all presented in considerable detail, and the book almost persuades me to like that particular government building. Less prominent buildings are also discussed, including many in the University of Toronto and Annex neighbourhoods that I see daily, and it really has given me a new way to understand the unremarkable - I can see Tartu and Rochdale from the balcony in my `70's concrete condo - and appreciate the ambitious, like OISE, Robarts, and 44 Walmer. But the book isn't just a tourists' guide to specific structures: history, preservation, technology, and city-building are all within the scope of the book. The buildings I've studied in, the suburb that I grew up in, and the highways that I drive on are all in here. And while most of the book is specific to Toronto and the area around it, who wouldn't be interested in an essay on 'The Rise of Parking Garages'? It sounds trivial, but this is the stuff that shapes our cities.

I really only have one criticism of the book: the type can be tiny. While most of the text is simply very very small, sometimes they designers have had to fit an inhuman amount of text onto a page, with a result that makes the fine print in a credit card ad seem luxurious. This isn't one to read while swaying around in bad lighting on the subway, even if you are approaching Eglinton West station on your way to Yorkdale mall, both of which are featured inside. A minor quibble is that the lack of colour photography leaves the book relentlessly grey, but I suppose that's partly the point. After all, one of the typefaces used is 'Slate' - I've always suspected that the people at Coach House have a subtle and sophisticated sense of humour.

Clearly, it's people with an interest in Toronto and its architecture that are going to get the most out of this book. I wouldn't suggest that anyone in Barstow, California should head over to Amazonto buy a copy, unless they were originally from here and were feeling an unusual variety of homesickness. But for those who like concrete architecture, cities in general, and Toronto's history and development, it's definitely worth checking out. The mix of different perspectives, the reasonable length of each essay, and the broad range of subjects within its narrow scope makes Concrete Toronto a surprisingly engaging book. I know I'll be picking it up and re-reading it, in both idle moments and dedicated sessions, for a long time to come.

Pizza Pizza (Bloor and Spadina)

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's safe and unsurprising.

The Long Version: Pizza Pizza is the McDonald's of the flat-meal world. It's predictable, it's consistent, and it's not exactly famous for its fine cuisine. It was a staple of my high-school nutrition plan, but once I finished grade fourteen, we drifted apart. I started ordering entire pizzas, and almost always from other restaurants. It wasn't a conscious snub; more of a life change. But during Toronto's one recent attempt at winter storm, the intersection of Spadina and Harbord was just too far to walk, so I hit the Pizza Pizza at Bloor and Spadina instead.

I got the 'all meat' pizza slice, since it was the one with the least-glassy cheese and didn't have curled edges. I was surprised - it was slightly cheaper than I expected, much smaller than I was used to, and not very good. In the interest of fairness, I went back a second time for the gold standard of pizza takeout, the pepperoni slice. I wasn't overly impressed with it, either.

Pizza Pizza uses cute little trays for its slices, while the two at Harbord use paper plates. Just for fun, I put a slice from Papa Ceo's on top of the Pizza Pizza tray - the red shows the part of the pizza that you don't get from the chain store. The one big thing that Pizza Pizza does have going for it is that it has a great track record on the City of Toronto's Dinesafe website. Papa Ceo doesn't have a spotless record, and the whole rat carcass thing has put me off of Cora's for a while. Pizza Pizza is nothing to get too excited about, but that works both ways and isn't always a bad thing. After all, if I wanted really good pizza, I'd be calling Regina's anyway.

HTO: Toronto's Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: Essay collections aren't a new idea, but they're great.


The Long Version: I like essay collections, local history, my neighbourhood, architecture, and typography. So when Coach House Press, a small publisher that's about a quarter-kilometer from my home, had an open house as part of Doors Open Toronto, it wasn't something I was going to miss. But before I went, I checked out their website, and found their great write-up of HTO here. I bought my copy with only the briefest look inside to check on the choice of typeface - in this case a nice one called freight - which is something I do with just about any book that I buy. The novel experience, if you'll excuse the expression, is that this time I bought the book in the building where it was produced, and after seeing the equipment that it was made on. That must be the literary equivalent of a pick-your-own farm, except without all of the hard work.

The essays are well-written, and cover an even broader range of subjects than the unwieldy subtitle suggests. But even with diverse subjects, the focus never shifts away from Toronto and its immediate area. A discussion of the Lake Ontario water levels over the past 135,000 years examines the levels of sediment in the former Don Valley Brickworks quarry. Essays deal with the Garrison and Taddle creeks, which once ran across what's now downtown Toronto, as well as Castle Frank Brook which once ran through Nordheimer Ravine (photo above), and the history and local conditions that lead to them being buried in the city's sewer network. A section looks at the discovery of the Queen's Wharf during construction of condominiums far from the water's edge, which I remember from early 2006; the changing shoreline is just one example of the extensive and ongoing landfill that has shaped the city.

The essays also look at the history of civic water in Toronto from the grand era when it was knows as 'public works' and created monuments like the R.C. Harris filtration plant, above - a popular movie and TV filming location - and the St. Clair reservoir that lies a few metres beneath the surface of Sir Winston Churchill park seen in the opening photo. It also offers an excellent overview of the contemporary infrastructure involved in the city's stormwater management plan and efforts to recover wetlands and rejuvenate our remaining rivers.


Toronto isn't actually the centre of Canada - that would be just south of Yathkyed Lake in Nunavut - so I'm not going to suggest that this book will have anything more than academic interest to people who don't live in, or come from, Toronto. But this geographic specificity also makes it easy to recommend for people in Toronto who wouldn't otherwise be interested. Not many people pick up book talking about the formation of river valleys and how they're affected by changing lake water levels in an abstract way - those are called textbooks, and students need to be threatened with failure before they'll read them. But it's also what formed the ravines that characterize the city, and that makes it much more interesting.


Coach House Press is an important resource both for Canadian publishing and for the city. It's hard to imagine books like HTO happening without them. They're a friendly bunch and clearly passionate about what they do, and I know I'm going to be looking for more titles from them in the future.

Streets Named After Saints

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 1 out of 5
Yeah, but: We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.

The Long Version: First, to be clear: it's not the saints that I have a problem with. I once lived in the northern Toronto 'community' of Willowdale, and anyone who's ever driven through there knows that it has the highest density of stupid street names in the city. Some of the gems include Moonstone Byway, Purple Sageway, Thimble Berryway, and Water Wheelway - all private roads in condominium townhouse developments. I used to live at 1 Burnt Meadoway, and to get there you'd turn onto Song Meadoway from Freshmeadow Drive. If you hit Hollyberry Trail, you've gone too far. It was so difficult to get a pizza delivered that I only lived there for about six months.

So I'll take any sort of 'people' street name without minding its origins, be they religious, historical, or contemporary. History and culture adds to the texture of a place, which I love. Really, there's nothing special about living at the intersection of Mentor and Mogul - yes, it's in Willowdale - but in Toronto's downtown even a generic street name like John is an historical reference. No, my complaint is tied to Tom Stoppard's observation about the qualities of the English language and how it's applied.

In a nutshell: who thought it would be a good idea to use the same abbreviation - ST. - where it has two different meanings? It's bad enough that English lacks style, this borders on intentionally obscure. It absolutely wasn't an international city when these streets were named, but it is now: most of Toronto's residents today were born outside of Canada. The tourist trade is also a major factor in the economics of the city, with 'vistors from overseas' spending $1.09 billion dollars here in 2008. Having Street and Saint abbreviated the same way on the same sign is a quirk of the language that's not even noticed by native English speakers, but it's a needless barrier to those who are less familiar with the language and the city. There's no excuse for making life more difficult for people who are here from somewhere else.

And while I'm on the subject, there's also no consistency to how the signs are punctuated. The ST for Saint invariably gets a period after it, which is traditional even though contractions usually aren't punctuated. I suppose the ST for Street could be either an abbreviation - the first two letters of the word - or a contraction - first and last letters - and its ambiguity is reflected in the fact that sometimes it has a period following it, and other times it doesn't. Signs on different sides of the same street may not be written the same way. Details matter: if I had to navigate by the languages that I can't read, I'd be trying to match the shapes of the characters that I see on a map or in a photograph. Being inconsistent isn't fair.

When I was a kid, my teacher awed the class by telling us how many words the Inuit have for snow. I remember it being 22, but it hardly matters since it's basically an urban myth inspired by a lack of both linguistic and cultural awareness. But it's still an appealing idea: that someone else can be in some faraway place where they see more distinction and have better insight than we do. Well, I've lived in the city all my life, and even I can tell the difference in snow depending on the temperature (wet, dry, heavy, light), traffic (packed, ice, slush) and recent weather conditions (drifts, crusted). But try as I might, I can't see that many different types of road.

We English-speakers have a lot of different words for the strips of land that we dedicate to cars. Street, road, avenue, drive, boulevard; highway, freeway, expressway, parkway; interstate, turnpike; crescent, circle, grove, gate, lane, and court. But there are a lot more to choose from. Alley, Beach, Bend, and Bypass are all recognized by both the Canadian and American postal services; Canada adds Abbey and Byway, the USPS likes Branch, Bridge, Brook and Berg. Needless to say, the list doesn't stop at "B".

I'm not going to try to count all of the different abbreviations that Canada Post and the USPS recognize for street types. I gave up when I hit 100 on the American list, and I was only about half-way down the page. The Canadian list is even more difficult, since it - like the Inuit and their words for snow - includes more than one language. I'd guess that there are at least 300 'official' words for street. Twenty-one of them are common enough that they're listed at the start of my Perly's map book.

There's no common trait that defines what designator a street gets. There are broad categories: 'Highway' is going to be a limited-access road, and 'Crescent' is probably going to be something quiet and residential. But nobody can stand on a particular patch of pavement and determine from its inherent characteristics if it's a road, boulevard, avenue, or street. There's no impartial standard that determines whether an it should be called Bob Loblaw Road or Bob Loblaw Avenue. Odonyms matter, but we need to remember that they're arbitrary.

Alliteration is great, and Saint Something Street has a nice rhythm. But street names aren't the place for style, and there's no excuse for obscurity.

7-Eleven, Bloor and Spadina

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: The world's biggest seller of cooked hot-dogs can't be all bad.

The Long Version: 7-Eleven always makes me think of William Gibson's Bridge trilogy, in which the convenience store chain Lucky Dragon plays a pivotal role. They're in places where they probably shouldn't be, and at one point security guard Berry Rydell realizes that it's the only store for miles that actually sells anything that anyone actually needs.

But downtown Toronto isn't a dystopian society that has broken down after a catastrophic earthquake - we're temblor-free. And within a block or two of the 7-Eleven at Bloor and Spadina there's all kinds of food stores, Chinatown, discount retailers, heath food supplies, and the most expensive shopping district in the city. So it's not like there are no other options.

There are even several other convenience stores, coffee shops, fast-food places and donut stores, most of which are cheaper and/or better than 7-11, several are open 24 hours, and are all within a few dozen metres of the intersection. In one way or another they all sell some of the same things that the Seven-Eleven does. But they're not actually on the corner, or they don't have the bank machine, or they don't routinely put their 2L bottles of coke on sale.

So 7-Eleven isn't always the best choice, doesn't have the happiest employees, and doesn't usually have the lowest prices. It is convenient, brightly lit, and sells just about everything. But they don't call them "happy employee and low prices" stores, they call them something else.

But 7-Eleven is similar to Gibson's Lucky Dragon in one other way: both attempt to saturate and control popular culture. Naturally, a large corporation has its own web site, but so does one of it's products: slurpee dot com. And like Luke Skywalker, 7-Eleven has its own day to celebrate its existence - July 11 - which happens to be today. That's not a big deal, if Coke had a numeric name, I'm sure they'd do it too. But what really amazed me is that 7/11 has made a registered trade mark out of the term "brain freeze." That phrase currently gets half a million hits on Google, and two out of the first ten are related to 7-Eleven. I wonder if the rest are using it with permission?

Queen Video (Bloor St. Location)

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: It would be a "5" for execution if they had more of what they have in stock.

The Long Version: Small video stores are great. They've been the subjects of songs, movies, and probably even books. But it's something that many people love in theory more than in practice: those big chains with the hidden charges and twenty copies of each of their twenty movies clobber the little independents over and over again.

But it didn't work that way in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood. The crowded shelves and aisles of the neighbourhood Queen Video created a thriving, vibrant contrast to the stark airport-corridor emptiness of the Blockbuster Video that was almost directly across the street. The massive American chain store - with its video games, great lighting, and no late fees - is now gone, with its sign pulled down in an attempt to make its defeat anonymous. Soon a new grocery store is about to take over it's space; hopefully it's better than the neighbourhood Dominion, but it would be hard for it to be any worse.

But back on subject: Queen Video is the reason why I don't have cable TV.

Exploring the aisles of Queen Video is either a great pleasure or an experience in frustration and claustrophobia, depending on the time of day, my mood, and whether I'm trying to find something in particular. The most popular titles are arranged around the walls of the long narrow space in a rough approximation of the alphabet, but with no other organization. Hollywood films, foreign cinema, documentaries, and pr0n all exist happily mixed, and most of it will be rented out at any one time. There are also vast quantities of titles stacked with just their spines facing out, grouped roughly according to genre, but the alphabet is still a fuzzy concept and it's hard to know when to give up the search. I'm still not convinced that they don't have a copy of Buffalo Boy - an excellent film by a man who's a friend of my father and stepmother - but I haven't wanted to spoil the game by asking for it.

My only true frustration with Queen is that some of their titles are perpetually rented out. The documentary Helvetica really is excellent, but I had to find that out the hard way. After seeing its empty box on the shelf, I looked for it every time I went in for at least six weeks before I finally just broke down and bought a copy for myself. It took a month before the first season of Get Smart was available, and I made a dreadful mistake by not renting season two when I had the chance. (I missed it by that much.) I'm okay with the idea that a specific title that I want may not be available - something that Blockbuster offered at the expense of Queen's variety, culture, and intelligence - but sometimes I wonder if they've just lost the velcro-backed tag that indicates when something's back in stock.

Queen Video's Bloor location is open from 11am to 11pm every day of the week.

Cora Pizza

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 0 out of 5
Yeah, but: See the December 2009 update.

The Long Version: Cora's Pizza is one of those things that's difficult to rate. It's significantly better than the pizza chain that was a staple of my childhood, to the point where I can't remember when I last ordered pizza through a central dispatch phone number. But at the same time it's not nearly the best pizza that I've ever had. So how should I rank it?

It's fast food. It's very generous portions for not very much money, even better than the chains. But it's still fast food, and doesn't rise above its station - nor does it really try to. It's a significantly above average performance in a fairly average product niche. I'm happy to go there for dinner every week or two, and it's where I take friends who want a quick and easy meal. But is it approaching perfection? Not really, unless perfection needs to come in under $5.

Updated December 24, 2009:

In an article eloquently titled "Cora Pizza closed after dead rats spotted", the CBC news website writes: Cora Pizza, a popular eatery near the University of Toronto, has been shut down after several dead rats and fresh rat droppings were found on the premises. The city of Toronto's Dinesafe website summarizes their inspection results in much less poetic language. The report from December 21 details four 'crucial' violations: "Operator fail to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated; Employee fail to wash hands when required; Operator fail to prevent a rodent infestation; Operator fail to prevent gross unsanitary conditions." There were another eight violations that were merely 'significant', and four more minor ones. I had actually spent a few minutes copying and pasting some of them before I realized that I was actually looking at the results from their Conditional Pass ratings from June and March 2009.

This review was written back when they only had one conditional pass (quickly corrected) and three previous Pass ratings. I'm not too fussy - after all, anyone can 'fail to use proper procedure(s) to ensure food safety' from time to time. But in this case, Cora not only had the health inspector shut then down because it was unsafe for people to eat their food, but then also didn't get the situation reversed in time for the follow-up inspection two days later.

Updated Yet Again, June 16, 2010:

Cora did pass a routine health inspection on April 27, 2010. They then received a 'Conditional Pass' on June 7, and while they passed the make-up test the next day, the results of the earlier inspection look pretty familiar. The restaurant is now closed for renovations, and it looks like they're doing a thorough job. For what it's worth, this is probably a good time to renovate - the university students are gone right now - so there's no reason to think that the work is connected to the results. I just hope that they come back stronger.

Spadina Subway Station

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: Dance with the one that brung ya.

The Long Version: Subway stations don't need to accomplish many functions: they connect people to trains, surface transit, and the street. Somehow Spadina station manages to do it all the hard way. The streetcars come right to the mezzanine level, which is unique to this station. It's an unexpected convenience, and when the streetcars are running properly it flows very smoothly. On the other hand, when something goes wrong, it takes only a few minutes for the whole area to clog. This just emphasizes the other unique feature about Spadina station: except for the streetcar, there's nothing much else going on.

There is also a bus that runs from Spadina station, still using the surface loop that the Shuffle Demons made famous. It's hard to find, as the exit to the loading area and street is cleverly hidden around the corner and - in rush hour - behind the crowds that are waiting for the streetcar.

There's a second exit to the street level at the Bloor end, which is at the end of an unpeopled annex concealed behind a row of pillars and an abnormally large ATM enclosure. The ultra-diligent will also find the walkway to the north-south tracks here. Spadina subway station is the least-used transfer point in the Subway/RT network, and for a very good reason: it's much easier to transfer at St. George where the tracks are literally right on top of each other.

From the University-Spadina line there's another set of exits that are half-way to Dupont station. Traveling from these exits to the exits at the far end of the Bloor line's station creates the longest trip you can take on foot after paying a TTC fare. There used to be a moving sidewalk to connect the two distant halves of the station, but it was taken out and tiled over to save some money. It wasn't an unreasonable decision -- hardly anyone uses it, after all -- but I really miss it and docked an Execution point for it.

Spadina Bus - The Shuffle Demons