JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Source: Marvel Super-Heroes #34, January 1973. No geeky newsboys for Grit as the 1972 holiday season neared, just a parade of prizes in green and red. Perhaps the paper hoped the colour scheme would appeal down-on-their-luck or tight-allowanced readers desperate for money or economic gifts to give at Christmas? But wait, isn't this comic book dated January? Wouldn't the holiday season have been winding down to a close or over by the time this issue hit the stands? Nope. Since comic books were dated two to three months after they hit the newsstands, the January 1973 Marvel lineup would have hit newsstands closer to Halloween than Christmas. Wikipedia provides a brief explanation . *** Originally published in Tales to Astonish #79 (May 1966), The Titan and the Torment! (story: Stan Lee, art: Bill Everett over Jack Kirby layouts) picks up where our previous look at ol' Jadejaws left off. Konrad Zaxon (evil!) aims his "Organic Energy Attractor" at the ...

Awhile back, I floated roadtrip out to Scarborough among some friends, based on a walk along Lawrence Avenue that a few had done several years ago. One element from that trek occasionally surfaced during conversations about Scarborough: an image of a stern-looking man used on the sign for The Kirks, a side lounge for the venerable Wexford Restaurant . This required investigation. Before eating, we checked out 54 East . Located in a former drug store, the space is part local history centre, part gallery. The main exhibit spotlighted the musical heritage of Scarborough. Thousands of records were pressed in the area, some on labels whose names derived from the neighbourhood (e.g. Birchmount, one of Quality's subsidiaries). Most of these albums passed through my family over the years (this copy of Lightfoot! looks much healthier than mine...). This year marked the 50th anniversary of the first cracked eggs and squeezed orange at the Wexford. The walls celebrate ...

1,457: PHOTO DU JOUR American Express used to remind customers "don't leave home without it." At Donlands and O'Connor, Paan-O-Rama puts its own spin on the old credit card slogan. Bonus feature : Stephen King, American Express pitchman. Photo taken December 4, 2008

Back in the early 1990s, I regularly taped the Friday "Viewer Mail" segment of Late Night With David Letterman and any skits that followed. One segment Amy and I continue to quote from is a showcase of odd-but-real video tapes. Archaeological expeditions through the valley of YouTube have unearthed several of the videos that Dave took potshots at, but evidence of others remains lost to time, unless the tape this segment was preserved on is found. Among the highlights: A tape for pipe smokers, where the host extols the virtues of the "brotherhood of the briar". A smoker passes by, prompting the host to greet him with "Hi Bob, nice pipe!" T-Bone's World of Clowning , an introduction to the art. A man tells T-Bone that he'd like to know more about clowning. The clown's response, uttered in a stilted, wow-can't-you-tell-I'm-not-reading-cue-cards-manner: "Really? Acrobatics is a skill I really enjoy! Let's make a dea...

1,453: COME BE PAMPERED - BONUS FEATURES Like DVDs of motion pictures, sometimes posts I write for other web sites merit bonus features. Before browsing this entry, read "Vintage Toronto Ads: Come Be Pampered" , posted on Torontoist on Nov 25/08. Sources : The Toronto Star , February 29, 1956 (left), The Toronto Star , February 23, 1956 (right) A pair of ads for Toronto's first Japanese restaurant, the House of Fuji-Matsu (operated 1955 to c. 1958-59). Based on the ads I've unearthed, the house specialty was sukiyaki, the Japanese dish most often found in mid-century cookbooks whenever the editors wanted to present something slightly exotic. My lone experience eating sukiyaki came at one of the cheap sushi joints in The Annex and I wasn't that enthralled—maybe it was the runny egg that didn't mix well with the other ingredients. Source : The Toronto Star , February 6, 1987 The last trace I found of Tanaka of Tokyo while digging through the local...

Back in the spring at the ever-wonderful Elora Festival book sale , I purchased a stack of 1950s Gourmet magazines. The December 1958 issue featured a lengthy "Garden of Eating" gift section devoted to specialty food producers. Over the next few weeks, you will tempted by tasty treats from half-a-century that may inspire you to bestow a 5-1/2 lb drum of roux on your loved ones—it would be quirkier than a run-of-the-mill Hickory Farms sampler!

Over the lunch hour yesterday, I popped into the neighbourhood used record store and picked up a pair of soundtracks: The Producers (original film version from the 60s) and North By Northwest . I usually test out additions to my CD collection on the road, so when I needed to head out to the east end to snap photos for a future article, I brought along the disc pictured at left, Bernard Herrmann's score to one of my favourite Hitchcock flicks. Driving home along Danforth, I noticed a police car with all lights flashing race up behind me...just as the soundtrack reached the scene where Cary Grant suddenly finds himself holding a knife lodged in the back of a diplomat at the United Nations. My heart jumped out of my body and performed acrobatic stunts I haven't been able to do since grade two. I pulled over to the side to allow the police to race to their emergency and to chuckle at how the music and traffic had coincided so perfectly. Not the right scene, but the pho...

Then: Source: Monthly Detroit , July 1978 Now: Check out Spacing Toronto for a recent tour of the complex, now home to GM's world headquarters. - JB

For its recent reopening and public introduction to its Frank Gehry-designed additions, the Art Gallery of Ontario offered free admission for the inaugural weekend. Due to other commitments, I wasn't able to check it out until the Sunday. I arrived around 2:30 to find a line running down McCaul Street that curved onto Grange Road. Feeling hungry, I decided to eat a late lunch then return to assess the state of the line. The top picture was what I returned to at 3:15 - the line had curved back onto McCaul and now stretched about a block further south. Since the AGO is maintaining a free admission night (unlike the Royal Ontario Museum, which I've only been to once since its star-architect addition opened), I figured it would be more relaxing to wait a few weeks to take in the changes. Photos taken November 16, 2008 - JB

We all agree that Bowling Green, Kentucky was one of the low points of the trip. Perhaps we should have taken a derelict motor court on the outskirts of the city as a sign. The Everly Brothers may have thought Bowling Green had the prettiest girls they ever saw , but nothing went right for us inside the city limits. We were looking for a place to grab a quick lunch, but every road I took led into residential neighbourhoods or out to the middle of nowhere. Downtown was a dusty construction zone, the university a haven for monster speed bumps. Nary a pretty girl wandered by. On our way back to the freeway, we came upon a Waffle House . Never having been to one before (the closest locations to Detroit are in Toledo), we figured it was worth a shot. We stepped in the doorway and Mom's jaw dropped to the floor. Imagine the messiest diner you have ever been in and multiply the dirty dish factor by five. The Toronto Board of Health would have had a field day with the state of the ki...

Like DVDs of motion pictures, sometimes posts I write for other web sites merit bonus features. Before browsing this entry, read "A Wartime Letter" , posted on Torontoist on Remembrance Day. The material I used for the story comes from a box sitting in Mom's basement. It appears to be material my paternal grandmother collected, mostly photos and newspaper clippings. The earliest photos are probably from the 1920s, while the newest content consists of my first regular media gig, writing the monthly highlight column for my elementary school in The Amherstburg Echo while I was in grade 8. Much of the material is World War II vintage and revolves around my great-uncle Morrey. This is the notice that appeared in The Toronto Star on August 11, 1941, when Morrey was reported missing. A similar story appeared the same day in The Evening Telegram. The loss was devastating to the family. His name lived on among several nephews, including my father, who was given Douglas a...

1,440: CATCHING UP: A FALL HIKE AND TWO DINNERS Longtime readers may have noticed that I'm not quite as speedy as I once was in posting about things going on in this corner of the world. Writing for other sites, fatigue from increasingly busy times at my day job and a hectic everyday life in general have dented some of the grandiose schemes I've had for this blog and its offshoots (examples: brief election coverage, tales of the family summer roadtrip that will stretch into 2016, a Backstreets of Toronto sitting in "draft" for nearly two years). So, in an attempt to play catch-up, here are a trio of recent events, all of which are fully fleshed out in their respective Flickr photo sets (hit the link on each event name): *** Mono Cliffs : Growing out of a suggestion at a party, a group heading out near Orangeville in September to go for a hike in Mono Cliffs Provincial Park . Fueled by burgers and Blizzards from the Dairy Queen we met up at, we spe...