Global Nerdy

Welcome to the fourth installment in Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, a series of offbeat articles to acquaint attendees of the upcoming RubyFringe conference with Accordion City.

There’ve been three articles in the series so far:

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel
3. Boozin’ in Accordion City

When I visit a city that’s new to me, I try to get a sense of “the lay of the land”. What sort of areas are around where I’m staying? Which zones come alive at what times of the day? If I started walking in this direction, what sort of neighbourhood would I end up in? Where can I see some interesting stuff, and where will I end up running into something I could easily get at home? These are the sorts of questions that I’ll try to answer for Toronto in these “Lay of the Land” articles. In this article, I’ll look at what’s within a couple of blocks of the conference hotel.

What’s Near the Conference Hotel?

The map below covers the area that’s within about a ten-minute walk of RubyFringe’s conference hotel, the Metropolitan Toronto. The Metropolitan is represented by the red marker with the letter “A” (it’s very Hester Prynne, isnt it?). I’ve added some annotations to give you a general idea of the sorts of neighbourhoods that surround the Metropolitan.

A City of Neighbourhoods, A Pocket of Boring

Accordion City can best be described as a city of neighbourhoods put together like a patchwork quilt, each patch having its own character and offerings. This is good news: it makes life pretty interesting for the locals, and it should be doubly so if you’re visiting.

There’s bad news, I’m afraid: the neighbourhood in which the Metropolitan is located is a pocket of boring. How boring? So boring that this is the most interesting view on the street where the hotel is located:

The curved backside of New City Hall, as seen from a few paces south of the hotel.

Yup, the immediate area is that boring.

It’s a zone of nondescript office and hospital buildings surrounding Dundas Street, which used to be downtown Chinatown’s main drag back in the 1970s when I was a slip of a lad.

(I say downtown Chinatown because we’ve got three Chinatowns here. I’ll elaborate in a later article.)

Downtown Chinatown moved west towards Spadina Avenue, and the offices rushed in to fill the void. There are still remnants of the old Chinatown that still dot this part of Dundas, but for the real Chinatown action — the restaurants, the shops, the lively street stalls that will gladly sell you a big-ass, smelly-as-ass durian, the “holy crap, Blade Runner came true” Chinatown, you’ll have to walk about ten minutes westward.

The Metropolitan Hotel and Chinese Food

Lai Wah Heen Restaurant.

The Metropolitan Hotel is the biggest testament to the fact that the area was once the heart of downtown Chinatown. Most hotels in North America have a primary restaurant that serves your generic “North American” cuisine; the Metropolitan’s all about the Chinese food. Their main dining room, Lai Wah Heen, is a Chinese restaurant that serves some very good food — so good that it’s one of the few hotel restaurants where you’ll see at least as many locals as guests. I’ve been to a Chinese wedding reception in this hotel and it was some of the best wedding reception food I’ve tasted. I’m looking forward to the dim sum conference lunch scheduled for Sunday, July 20th.

Across the street from the Metropolitan is a building that looks like a hotel, but missing the hotel markings. That’s because it used to be the Colonnade Hotel, which used to be the Chinese hotel until the Metropolitan took over (it’s deVilla family tradition to have Chinese food for our wedding rehearsal dinners, and my sister’s was there). It’s now a University of Toronto student residence.

Just East of the Hotel – Yonge and Dundas: The Seething Pit of the Main Drag

Yonge Street, looking north towards the corner of Yonge and Dundas.

Yonge Street (pronounced “young”) is the city’s main north-south street; it divides Accordion City into its east and west halves. The corner of Yonge and Dundas — a very short walk east of the Metropolitan — is pretty much in the geographic centre of the downtown core. You should think of it as the local equivalent of New York City’s Times Square: major retail shopping, “grey market” electronics stores, billboards and lights, bored teenagers, tourists and pizza, pizza, pizza.

The Eaton Centre, as seen from across the street.

I’ve been to nerd conferences where I’ve wished that there was a computer store handy because I needed something like a cable or a USB key. That’s not going to be a problem at RubyFringe, as there’s both a Best Buy on the southwest corner of Yonge and Dundas and a Future Shop (a Canadian electronics/computer big-box store) on the northeast corner.

(There’s a far more interesting electronics store — Active Surplus — not too far from the hotel. I’ll cover it in a later article.)

If you go south on Yonge, you’ll hit the Eaton Centre, the major downtown shopping mall. It’s got the sort of shops you’d expect at a mall; the only surprise for American visitors is that Sears in Canada isn’t as ghetto as it is in the U.S. (that’s because Sears in Canada took over the Eaton’s chain of department stores after they went under).

Interior of the Eaton Centre.

It’s tempting to dismiss the Eaton Centre as just another shopping mall, but for a lot of Torontonians, it’s also one of the most-used and useful pedestrian routes in town. Spanning the distance between two subway stations on Toronto’s busiest line, the mall remains open even after its stores are closed (it closes when the subway closes), making it effectively a covered sidewalk for Yonge Street between Dundas and Queen Streets. (Urban planning nerds should see this article for more.)

Just South of the Hotel: Nathan Phillips Square: Wasn’t it Blown Up in Resident Evil 2?

Toronto’s City Hall.

You may have seen Toronto’s City Hall in Resident Evil 2, or perhaps you caught a glimpse of it in either the original series or Next Generation version of Star Trek. It’s architect Viljo Revell’s modernist masterpiece and one of the more distinctive features of our city. It’s worth the short walk over from the hotel, and if you’re into taking pictures, it makes a pretty good subject.

If you walk into City Hall’s lobby and turn to the right, you’ll see this:

It’s a wall mural made of thousands of nails. There’s a local tradition: take a penny and drop it into the mural, among the larger nails on the left or right side of the mural. It’s descend, pachinko-like, making a musical noise along the way. Here’s a video:

Just North of the Hotel: Nothing, Really

Well, I wouldn’t say nothing — there are a number of hospital buildings, including some world-class institutions of healing like “Sick Kids” (a.k.a. the Hospital for Sick Children, where Pablum was invented) and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre.

The atrium at Sick Kids.

If you’re an architecture nerd, you might find a visit to the atrium of Sick Kids worth a visit — it’s so bright and airy that it’s easy to forget that you’re in a hospital. Having said that, my guess is that the last place you want to end up during your visit to Toronto is a hospital.

Toronto Bus Terminal.

The other place just north of the hotel is the Toronto Bus Terminal. It’s nowhere near as scuzzy as a lot of other big city bus terminals, but the usual parade of off-their-rockers and off-their-meds are often milling about.

Just this evening, while the Ginger Ninja and I were walking past the station, a large woman in a motorized wheelchair started a conversation with us.

“I gotta go to the hospital tomorrow,” she said, as she took a sip from her large frappucino. “I got the diabetes.”

“Sorry to hear that,” we said.

“It’s not funny! I’m goin’ fuckin’ blind from the goddamn diabetes!” She took another sip and poured on the speed, disappearing down the street to stew in her own juices, which I assume are made of high-fructose corn syrup and bad life choices.

There are a couple of conveniences to the north: a Starbucks and a convenience store, both at the corner of Dundas and Elizabeth, a block away from the hotel.

Next Time…

I’ll cover what’s west of the hotel, which is where things get interesting. For starters, there’s this:

OCAD’s Sharp Centre Building.

Welcome to the third installment in Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, a series of offbeat articles to acquaint attendees of the upcoming RubyFringe conference with Accordion City.

There’ve been two articles in the series so far:

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel

In this article, I’ll cover the social lubricant that helps keep a good tech conference going: booze!

The Legal Drinking Age in Ontario: 19

If you look at Wikipedia’s Legal Drinking Age page, there are generally two places with a drinking age of 21 and some regions which ban the sale (and sometimes consumption) of alcohol:

• A handful of Muslim countries that allow alcohol: Indonesia (except Bali), Oman, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates, and
• the United States of America

Here in Ontario, as with most of Canada, the legal age drinking age is 19. Underage drinking is permitted at home under adult supervision. No, underage RubyFringers, you cannot come to my house to drink. A number of RubyFringe after-conference events will be taking place in or near licensed establishments, so be sure to bring some government ID with you — a driver’s licence or passport will do.

Where Do You Buy Liquor and Beer in Ontario?

If Ontario has a more civilized legal drinking age, we pay for it in terms of where we can buy it. The sale of beer and liquor is limited — with a few exceptions — to two types of stores:

The first type: the LCBO (short for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario), a set of stores run by the Ontario government that carries, spirits, wines and beers.

The second type: The Beer Store. Its official name is Brewers Retail, but since everyone calls it “The Beer Store”, that’s what they typically display on their storefronts. They sell beer and beer paraphernalia.

Okay, Enough Preamble. Where’s the Alcohol Store Closest to the Hotel?

Of the two types of store, the closest one to the Metropolitan Hotel Toronto is the LCBO at the Atrium on Bay, a shopping centre located a mere two blocks away. If you walk out of the hotel, take a left until you hit Dundas Street, then turn right and walk two blocks. The LCBO is on the lower level, about half a block into the shopping centre. Here’s a map:

This LCBO keeps these hours:

• Monday – Wednesday: 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Thursday – Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
• Sunday: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

The Beer Hunter is Your Friend!

The Beer Hunter is a Google Maps mash-up that shows you the locations and hours of alcohol retail outlets in Ontario, aswell as which stores are open right now. It’s a creation of local web development shop Bad Math, and was recently featured in at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit, Design and the Elastic Mind.

I’m Crashing at a Friend’s House. Can I Get Booze Delivered There?

Yes, you can! For a CDN$8.00 delivery charge, The Beer Guy lets you order alcohol online for home delivery in one hour.

Okay, Enough About Stores. What About Bars? Any Good Ones Near the Hotel?

There are a number of bars within walking distance of the hotel. Here are three decent ones that I used to frequent when I lived in the neighbourhood. They’re not cookie-cutter drinking establishments that you can find anywhere, but places with some character and local vibe.

The Village Idiot Pub (126 McCaul Street, about 6 minutes’ walk from the hotel). This one’s a hangout for locals as well as art students from the Ontario College of Art and Design or visitors to the Art Gallery of Ontario, both of which are just across the street. The bar has about two dozen higher-end beers on tap, from imports like Guinness, Leffe Brune and Kronenberg 1664 to local microbrews like Waterloo Dark (a favourite of mine) and Brick Honey Brown. The outer walls of the bar are garage doors which are rolled up in the summer to let the air in.

I made some decent coin (and a lot of beer!) busking here during the great blackout of 2003.

The Rex Hotel Jazz and Blues Bar (194 Queen Street West, about 10 minutes’ walk from the hotel). A jazz and blues institution since I was in high school, The Rex is a retro, just-divey-enough place that has a decent selection of beer and live blues and jazz. I’ve seen some pretty good acts here and have stumbled home tipsy many a night from this joint.

Smokeless Joe (125 John Street, about 12 minutes’ walk from the hotel). This is a place for the serious beer enthusiast. With a half-dozen taps and a couple hundred bottled beers, this tiny, friendly place was my preferred watering hole when I lived in the neighbourhood. If you want some food to go with your beer, they have delicious sandwiches and some pretty good oysters.

I’ve been there on some pretty good dates, such as this one as well as my first date with The Ginger Ninja.

When is Last Call in Ontario?

Bars and pubs have to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m..

Is There Any Way to Get Served Booze After 2 a.m.?

I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the urban legend of “cold tea”, only that the urban legend exists. It does, after all, exist as an entry in Urban Dictionary.

There are speakeasies in town; the local term for them is “booze cans”. Their locations change over time, and the ones from my days as a single guy probably no longer exist. The best way to locate these places is to ask anyone who works in the entertainment/service industry such as a bartender or waiter; they’re where they go when their shifts end.

Be advised that you’ll get more out of the conference if you get some decent sleep and aren’t hung over…