Riding the Rocket on Queen St. Wby Metrix X
Riding the Rocket on Queen St. Wby Metrix X
Queen Westby NyxProject.com
Queen Westby doug mcneall
Bovine Sex Club benefit for the Queen W. fireby karen bowness
Active Surplus on Queen W.Interesting Queen West by Kevin Steele
Upper Canada Collegeby Phil Marion
122 Old Forest Hill Rd.by flickr prestigeliving
OCAD (Ontario College of Art)by Rik Abel
OCADby openended
Malvern Town Centre spelling beeby Derek Lee,MP
Pacific Mallby bittermelon
Pacific Mall: North America's largest Asian shopping centre
Kensington Marketby openended
Kensington Marketby openended
Kensington Market cheese shopby photo nuevo
1398 Queen St. WTrue Parkdale by Kevin Steele
1267 Queen St. W.True Parkdale by Kevin Steele
Taste of the Danforth festivalby Torontoist
Queen West/Kensington by ettml
toronto, on by ardenstreet
My Toronto by Toronto Paul
The Junction Region of Toronto by rodolfo novak
[all pics: flickr.com]
Toronto is All in Your Head
by Sean Micallef
Eye Weekly - 02/05/09
(Excerpt)
Most people's concept of city is full of silly walls and no-go zones
There are unseen barriers all over Toronto. We hear about them sometimes and they informally tell us where we can and can't go. If a collective map of how Torontonians view their city could be visualized, it would be divided and walled up like Berlin during the Cold War, with vast dark and unknown patches. We often lock ourselves into pockets of the city, shrinking the size of our metropolis.
Some of this is unintentional. We easily get into habits and routines; it helps us get things done. If our friends and favourite stores and, if we're lucky, even our work are in the same area, we'll naturally stay in that area. Living locally makes for smaller carbon footprints and more time for everything else.
Certain parts of the city also have more stuff going on, so it's natural that they become common places of congestion. Petula Clark sang a song called "Downtown", not "Uptown" or "Post-War Suburb" - there's a reason people head to where many things are located, and that concentration is part of what makes cities attractive.
Fetishising a neighbourhood turns insidious when it leads to the balkanization of Toronto. The worst is an often-heard West-Queen-West hipster sentiment that goes something like, "I never go north of Bloor, there is nothing there." I sometimes respond to this with an equally stupid comment like, "I never go south of Dundas because it's full of venereal disease-ridden hedonists." The downside of this kind of thinking is two-fold: it devalues other neighbourhoods and limits how much of the city people think they are allowed to experience.
The hipsters are not alone in this feeling (but are the most obnoxiously vocal about it, mostly in online media) as the city blinders go in all directions. I've met folks who live in North Toronto whose sons went to Upper Canada College, who only shop at Holts in Yorkville and go to the Second Cup in Forest Hill Village when they need a coffee. Some of my OCAD students are familiar with either Malvern Town Centre or Pacific Mall, but have rarely walked through Kensington Market. Why not just move to (lovely) Cornwall and pay much cheaper rent if your city-footprint is going to be so small?
Worse, these dark patches on our mental map can become malignant. For that UCC parent, Queen West and Malvern are where people get shot and little else. When parts of the city are unknown and unfrequented, they seem farther away and they can easily be innaccurately perceived, as your undergrad philosophy course may have suggested, as full of "The Other".
Is there any value to breaking out? If life is fine in the neighbourhood, why go elsewhere? The shame is missing out on what else Toronto has to offer.
When a friend went through a breakup recently I encouraged him to date a nice girl from north of Lawrence. Maybe Don Mills, or perhaps Agincourt. Then we would have an excuse to go there socially.
Culturally, reason to break out of our routines may come whether we like it or not. The same gentrifying forces that have pushed artists west along Queen into and out of Parkdale will move venues and event spaces with them. You've likely already been to a "downtown" event in The Junction or east on the Danforth. The more you move around Toronto, the less far away that party in Willowdale will seem.
