(76) Take it easy

Ah, Easy! Almost ten years ago Poorkdale began to grab the city’s attention for its trendy breakfast eateries. Awesome, we thought. The Mockingbird was our own favourite, but alas, the good die young and Easy remains front and centre and has even expanded onto the tail of King Street where we caught this freshly completed mural. Now, their homefries are usually blacker than the side of an airport limousine at night and about as tasty. Service is somewhere between poor and psychotically indifferent. ...a perfect recipe for growth in Toryonto!!! The first problem is preventable and the latter is likely a product of the fact the employees are as underpaid as the rest of their generation. The rise of breakfast as a time for dating, seeing friends, relaxing, enjoying the fruits of urban life is related to the economics of underwagedness through more than the presence of bored, unmotivated (though hip and young) wait staff.

Our decade and a half of undercover work examining the lives of what is left of our working classes and our pseudo middle class office working population indicates that breakfast is one of the few indulgences left. Maxxed out, indentured to the student loan system into middle age, over-worked, insecure, unpensioned, younger working people still in the grip of the illusion that they will someday become middle class have only a small window on weekend mornings to reinforce this belief through leisure activity. Hence, the enormous presence of breakfast eaters in world class cities like Toryonto.

Don’t get us wrong. We love breakfast, we will eat it and eat it right until we die and then we will dig our way out of our grave and order up bacon and eggs. That’s if we hadn’t already sold our soul for a toasted western on brown, that is. When the sun shines on a greasy, buttery breakfast, well, who needs heaven?

editor’s note: Is she enjoying a cuppa Joe or panhandling? We think she’s drinking coffee - if every panhandler looked that good there wouldn’t be any.

(55) Flower power is dead

We have always liked movies filmed in locations we know. It heightens the illusion. We were drawn to Monkey Warfare because it is set right here in Poorkdale. If you ride bikes and like dope and second hand anything as well as lower budget independent films, dislike SUVs and are concerned about the fate of neighbourhoods you'll see into Monkey Warfare further than most. It is psychogeographical & available on DVD.

After the DVD we made an errand to IFT for shaving cream. The clerk had a coughing fit. If only real life were as interesting as a book or movie, then we wouldn't need to live in Poorkdale.

editor's note: watch for awesome babes-on-bikes medley at Dufferin Street underpass!

(41) Foyer Horribilus: TD Canada Trust, the Bank Gestapo!

Applied to the smeared, grimy walls of a bank at Queen & Lansdowne this kerchiefed lass surprises us with her composure. She may be wondering though, 'what sort of financial industry entity turns multi-million dollar profits operating from coast-to-coast in an environment protected by a special act of parliament yet cannot keep a few square feet in front of an ATM clean?'

TD Canada Trust, cupcake, that's who!

Years ago we complained. The response was a piteous load of corporatespeak from the manager and someone at head office. The ATM foyer at Queen & Lansdowne has been a disgrace for which one need almost seek out the Bible in order to come up with the requisite metaphor and proper sense of hellish scale. The entire branch has the architectural merits of a portable toilet at best. The ATM specifically is a toilet.

Only the other day we wished to attend to our banking and were put off by an unfortunate young woman giving herself a hit from a crack pipe while reclining on the floor. Undesireables sleep in the ATM area and urinate there. Frequently there are no deposit envelopes and food waste and other rubbish is strewn about inside.

What has been TD Canada Trust's latest customer service effort at this troubled location? To lock the doors after hours. Legitimate customers, not in search of a place to act out their addictions, vomit or urinate, who pay interest and service charges to the bank are left to the streets along with those who would tarnish the foyer. This approach to customer service has a logic the Gestapo would take pride in: one of collective punishment. As grandfather used to say, 'up with this we will not put!'

We are not remotely amused at the ongoing disaster the local TD Canada Trust ATM foyer confronts us with. We are paying for this satanic cess-pit and now cannot even even use it! Fee-paying customers who do no harm must use the outdoor ATM on Queen Street. The screen has been vandalized making it difficult to read. Envelopes are absent after hours.

If we were less than the nimble, long-limbed and well-proportioned working man we are we would not find the corner a safe place to openly handle money. What indeed, if we were elderly or disabled or were a female accompanied by her children? Poor winter weather (this has been a record year my friends) makes forced al-fresco banking a painful experience.

Irony of customer service ironies, a cluster of locals stymied in their attempts to GIVE MONEY to TD Canada Trust formed a spontaneous circle of support last friday night on Queen Street. Many a hearty jeer was directed at TD Canada Trust of a kind which would surely haunt the nightmares of any CEO. Bouyed by my new-found comrades spirit of disdain for their very own bank we walked across the street to a Scotiabank which remains open within sight of the Foyer Horribilus. How quaint and curious that another bank's ATM foyer remains open and stocked with deposit envelopes on the very same corner! We fetched us some deposit envelopes and distributed them to the masses who, we have to say, were ready for a good old bread riot. One garrulous fellow with a case of ice axes and the keys to a front end loader was talked out of rash behaviour by his brother-in-law only at the last moment!

The masses are smart enough to wonder why they should trust their wages, salaries, student loans, cheques and other business to a bank which cannot muster enough imagination to solve a simple technical problem.

The full weight of the POWcityblog will be flung at this rampart of corporate idiocy, technical incompetence and contempt for our part of the city. If other ATMs in Toronto can be clean and user-friendly why can't this one be as well?

This will not stand!

editor's note: click above whenever you have a problem with TD Canada Trust

(16) No Appointment Necessary

We promised you real, live action from the streets and here it is: a west end Family Day mission to Camille's Beauty Lounge.

Before spas there were beauty parlours and beauty lounges like Camille's. You needn't be an archaeologist to discern that we're dealing with the 1970s here. UNISEX being the first major clue not mention the pink naughahyde chairs. (Major points for anything pink!)

If beauty salon culture is half as good as barbershop culture then it's no wonder chicks are so into it. My barber is great, his name is Luigi and he's been clipping away in the same place since 1964. Talk about patina. I wasn't even born then! 11$ for a cut is my idea of economics. Nothing refreshes a guy's perspective like a good old-fashioned haircut from an old-school professional like Luigi. (Except maybe sitting on a high pressure air hose that is, me and the guys at work, we take turns.)

To know what it was like having Camille in your life you'd have to watch the movie Camille 2000 while Hurricane Camille rips the side off your trailer. Don't let that pale skin and bouffant fool you, we're talking force of nature here. (Baby, my year in traction should have been punishment enough. If you are reading this please, please call me.)

Our Cray III supercomputer pointed out that the bouffant disappeared when women made that return to the workforce in a fairly big way during the economic dysfunctions of the 1970s.
Le sigh. Economics usually trumps culture and lifestyle. An entire generation of women now have come of age not knowing what they are missing.

In addition to evoking the hairstyles of 1950-1975 this type of piled-on-top look reminds us of women in ancient Roman times. Cray III also made a connection to the 19th century fancy for cameos. These small carved portraits of women were all they had in the days before cameras or the Internet. Back then you had to spend hours carving agate, shell, lava or ivory (tsk, tsk) just to have a picture of a gal pal or contemporary celebrity. Imagine having to put up with a life that wasn't instantaneously saturated with celebrity infotainment and pornified images from the moment your eyes open in the morning. We're talking the days before TV and digital photography too, as well as Flintstones Chewables, the Concorde and even the El Camino. Each historical era contains curses and blessings for those living through them but if you lived before 1970 you are pretty much a loser.

nb: We never bought into the whole 9mm thing back in the late 80s. For a simple urban recon like this one a concealed M-1911 pattern Colt .45 ACP is plenty.

editor's note: the movie pic for this posting is American Mullet

(7) Boho boo-hoo: there goes the neighbourhood

They knocked down the car wash for a condo they’re calling Bohemian Embassy. Poster Woman didn’t last. She was special though and there was a satirical video of her with a look-alike model and sign on a loop in a little crap gallery across the street that called it Bohemian Embarrassment. Boho boo-hoo ‘n’ all that. Art girls they’re crazy and they make me crazy every time but I just can’t stay away. This disease should have its own name. Does she really look Bohemian? Zowie, that's all I can say.

nb: this wall just got knocked down, it used to be the side of the Gibson's Textile Dyers plant, the sign is gone too. Ah, Parkdale