JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

981: DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE! Ah, the fun one can have with Photoshop... As is becoming usual, I spent Thursday night roaming around the city, just a trio this time. This week's trek started in Cabbagetown, wandering back and forth along the side streets east of Parliament. Beautiful homes with a wide range of lanscaping styles, from waterfalls to elephants. Cabbagetown is one of the few, possibly only, neighbourhoods in Toronto with its own flag - a green variant of the Canadian flag, with a cabbage instead of a leaf (it also reminds me of the Foodland Ontario flags that flew by 401 in Woodstock). The man-eating sunflower? We're not telling...but we hung around long enough to show off its scale compared to mere mortals. After Cabbagetown (and a very yippy dog in Wellesley Park), we headed towards the Danforth. A sudden craving for saganaki came over us. Cheese and flames - how can you resist? The sound of "OPA!" has long been a piece of North American Greek restauran...

Toronto's most exclusive new place to relax - the Art Gallery of Ontario construction site! The chairs may not be Frank Gehry-designed, but they are classic institutional stock!

The Summer Olympic Games. It's good for Canada!...It's good for you! With a tag like that, all that seems to be missing is a tie-in to Participaction , which was getting off the ground at the time...but then the ad would have to be red and blue, instead of the classic 70s green spot colour used. How good was it for the Canucks? We went home with five medals (two silver, three bronze), putting us on par with the Netherlands and North Korea. The Soviet Union led the gold count with 50, followed by the US (33), East Germany (20), host West Germany (13) and Japan (13). Interesting to note which cities were among the finalists for these games: Montreal (who landed the next Summer Olympics), Madrid and Detroit. The Prelinger Collection contains a 1965 film promoting Motown as an Olympic site . Keep in mind that Detroit was only two years away from the '67 Riots when this was filmed. Viewers and listeners would receive more than tales of the thrill of victory and agony o...

969: CATCHING UP ON WALKING (2) Last week, different locale, different cast of characters. From Jane station, we followed the Humber south to the lake, winding through several parks and cliff-hugging paths. We entered the parklands along the river via the stairs on the left, off of Bloor. We followed a dirt path along the edge of a cliff, the walker in front clearing away spider webs for the others. We noticed a weird green-lit building along the river that reminded me of the Donald Sutherland version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Turned out to be the Humber Yacht Club, home to a row of boats with patios next to them. As you can see from the picture on the right, comets were also attracted to these vessels. If this picture was less murky, you could make out a donut-shaped object found on the Humber path by the water treatment plant on Queensway. Attached to a set of locked washrooms, the echoes and reverb produced near the hole had us hand-clapping for several minutes. I suspec...

966: CATCHING UP ON WALKING (1) A couple of outings with Toronto Psychogeography to catch up on... The trek two weeks ago started at Dundas West station, wound down Roncesvalles, through Parkdale to the CNE. As Dundas wound towards the bend at Roncesvalles, we noticed a store that appeared to be in a time warp: baby carriages advertised on the sign, old man clothing at ridiculously low prices in the window. The next storefront was equally out of time. Then we saw the sandwich boards and the gig was up: location filming for Hairspray was starting the following week. Most of the storefronts on Dundas for the next few blocks were redesigned to match the early 60s, with some fronts requiring less work than others (Macks' Gym, a travel agency that added a period map, etc). Some fronts weren't quite finished, or else the Parkdale-High Park provincial by-election was also run in 1962 Baltimore. There's a better picture of Hefty Hideaway (still standing as of last night) ove...