Author: Alan

BeerBistro!, Toronto, Ontario


I had the occasion to visit BeerBistro! near the corner of King and Yonge Streets in Toronto today…ok, twice today…which in itself tells you something. I had to meet a friend for a quick lunch in that area of town and later took the time to have another beer as I waited for the train back home.

We had a good old blabfest in the corner where the bar curves to the front window. I had a Granite Brewery Best Bitter, a beer that served as one of the entry points into the world of craft beer for me back in the mid-80s when it was first brewed at the old Gingers and later at the Henry House down at the end of Hollis Street near the railway station in the south and of Halifax. Lots of nutty and raisiny malt with a whack of pine resiny hops. It was the perfect match for the pulled pork sandwich which was surprising as it was both excellent and in Canada. The raw fennel salad was a bright accompaniment.

Later I returned. I had a good old read of the menu during which time no one bugged me to make up my mind. I settled on a 2005 Tsarina Katarina Imperial Stout from the good folks at Scotch Irish who brought us Sgt. Major’s IPA. It was thick licorice and cocoa with minty hops. Fabulous.

The decor is hip trendy, reasonable for a beer bistro, and the prices are as honest as having both the LCBO as your wholesale monopoly and the desire to stay in business selling rarer beers requires. Well worth it as the staff was excellent, relaxed and knowledgeable which matched well with the thoughtful food and and well handled drink. Definitely worth a stop when in the downtown of the Big Smoke.

Star Gazing Canadian Style

brettbAfter last week’s Jane Pitfield debacle where I had a nice talk with the possible future Mayor of Toronto I vowed never to let it happen again. For folk not of the Great White North, this is the new Red Green, Brent Butt of Corner Gas.

The scene. I was at the corner of King and Young, exactly kitty corner from “the Pitfield event.” I approach the corner and see the moment opening up before me in an instant. I stood beside him waiting at the cross walk – like him looking forward – and said “Are you who I think you are?” He says “That depends, who do you think I am?” I say “the guy my wife is in love with.” He says “now that could go a number of ways…” Once I told him I wrote a blog he asked me if I knew The Flea and if he could wave to him in a picture. I obliged.

As nice a gent over the course of a 27 second conversation as ever there was or one very well versed in dealing with whackos.

Zip There And Back

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You know why Trudeau should have gone all France and built that high speed train in the Quebec-Windsor corridor?

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So I did not have to get up at 4:30 am to be in downtown Toronto for 9:00 am. It’s about privacy law so I can’t get into the details of the course…GET IT??? That is the sort of joke I heard twice today. So there will be no pithy comment in the morning. No noting that Harper is now back to unloved and has no buddies with any pull in the US that like him more than they love Bob Rae.

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It’s that different now. Bob Rae goes to Washington 1 January 2007? “Comrade!!! is all you will hear echoing throughout Congress. Clinking glasses as the brass bands play The International and everyone shouting “Comrade!!! as they kiss each other’s cheeks.

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Harper? What will he be greeted with in Washington after 1 January 2007? Somewhere between tumbling tumbleweeds and Deadwood. The unloved. Will it really be over that quickly? How delish. Yet…I will not go there tomorrow. I won’t. I can’t. No, I will be on a train between Belleville and Cobourg and you will not even be out of the Land o’ Nod.

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That is why Canada needed that high speed train in the Quebec-Windsor corridor to be built back in 1983.

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When Will The Chaos End?

As the cause of fun advances with the further creeping domination by that thing that is the robot with a billion keyboards, let us not forget that there are victims along the way, good people working hard and getting crushed:

A firm selling machinery to make tubes and pipes has sued internet sensation YouTube – saying the video-sharing site causes havoc at its own business. Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment said its own website – Utube.com – had to be moved five times after millions of inadvertent hits made it crash.

And they told us the internet would be like one big library for all. What world have I woken up to today?

US Political Blogging?

Is it fair to suggest that this US political season, where Michael J Fox can sum it up by saying he needs neither the pity or permission of Rush Limbaugh, is a dead zone as far as the blogging goes? Is it truly the case that is is no bombast left in the bloat?

Remember in 2004 when this was the medium that would change everything? What changed?

Big East Basketball

In my never ending drive to mix insipid views of world affairs with solid reporting of what I get to see on my TV set, it is a particularly big day – even if the sun is not up yet as I am likely late for work – when there is a report in the NYT on Big East basketball. I do not follow the NBA. I do not care a whit for it. But I really like NCAA college b’ball, which is not to be unexpected from someone who was 6 foot 2 at 12. I knew the ways of the orange ball once, let me tell you. Then I stopped but that is another matter. The other, more specific Orange, is ranked third going in:

Coming in third in the coaches’ poll, Syracuse may need a big season from the freshman Paul Harris, who was named preseason rookie of the year. He will be called upon to provide some of the offense lost with the graduation of Gerry McNamara.

I don’t know if the games will be on the local northern NY radio but I will check that out soon. There…I just did. It states we should tune to 103.1 but I am thinking that 100.7 FM actually has the SU broadcast deal for Watertown.

Speaking Of Campaigns

Speaking of political campaigns, a subject most facinating, what we are witnessing to our south is even more interesting than questions Iggeriffic. Consider this:

As this country’s most outspoken and polarizing social conservative, the two-term Pennsylvania Republican senator has been in Democrats’ cross-hairs for two years. Now they’re moving in for the kill.

Recently when chatting with a northern New Yorker mention was made that this year might well be the end of the thirty years of a particular brand of conservatism that began – people will shake their heads now in disbelief – with the rise of Jimmy Carter in 1976, when the words “born again” entered the political arena with legitimacy for the first time. It has been that long since I would have imagined conservatism as a general thing being able to be described as “on the run” as the quote above does. It has been a long time since the moral majority might not have enough votes. To be fair, these things certainly have natural cycles as no theme captures the public imagination forever, but that is perhaps especially the case after corporate and public scandal, after it becomes apparent that debt financing is all that actually gets trickled down.

But, as in most things, there is a penchant to count one’s chickens before they are hatched. Needless to say I will be a gawking at the TV tube come election night. I’d have another US election pool but Kateland and I began our falling out over the last one, something I could not bear to repeat. But maybe I should. Maybe it is time. The Vote Master, after all, is back.

Nationalism

I do not know what to make of this:

Morale plummeted inside the campaign after the remarks and Mr. Ignatieff’s perceived clumsiness in dealing with the fallout from them. But it rebounded after Quebec Liberals received him with enthusiasm and echoed his call for recognizing Quebec as a nation within Canada.

On the one hand, being a Scot, I am well versed in the arguments for nation. It’s in Flower of Scotland, the anthem we hum as we make the coffee in the morning, it’s in Scot Wa Hae the poem we all recite between dinner and our wee bit of pudding. It’s in the very food, which is based as Mike Myers once said, on a dare. Pretty much everyone knows about the claim and call to Scots nation and why and what it is based on. So I have never understood why the details of Quebec’s claim is so not notorious, its Sancho Panzas as well known Bonnie Prince Charlie. What makes it a nation in the way that, say, the Western Sahara is (except no one will fully back them up)?

On the other hand, what is the big deal? If Quebec wants to be a nation within a nation, what do I care. Newfoundland already is for all practical purposes at least on a cultural level – not to mention PEI and Alberta pretend they are. Heck, Nova Scotian led the first separatist movement, right after Confederation. How do I lose out from an asymetrical confederation? Isn’t it pretty much the same argument over same-sex marriage, that “they” will alter something undefinable in relation to “us”? Unevenness abounds as far as I can tell – Rhode Island gets the same two senators that California does. Alberta flukes into boundaries which encase the nation’s oil deposits and plays grumpy child with the only ball in the schoolyard. What makes it so wrong?

Those are a lot of questions. And good questions. And tough questions. I have another. Can Iggy get them all in order, get them under control to pull his campaign up in these last few weeks?

Village Games

I was sent off on a YouTube adventure by a kind reader of note who last evening sent me emails with videos of cheese rolling attached like this one and all these.

That got me thinking that maybe there were videos of the ancient pre-football village games that happen at holidays. And there were. Like Royal Shrovetide Football you can watch here. Kind of weirdly but appropriately put to music. I think this is that game explained on wikipedia. Here is another – this from Orkney. Again set to music. Here is a web page on that game. Nothing on Winchester College Football on YouTube yet.

As we start moving from the recreational and civic holidays of the warm half of the year to the traditional holidays of the darker half, I am reminded that village and community are interesting things which are not like suburbs, workplaces or shopping malls or even families. The internet will only create real community when this sort of game starts up, including people you do not necessarily like doing things together you do not necessarily understand because you must. Maybe it has and maybe it hasn’t. Maybe that is what the Kingston Society for Playing Catch is to be. I will only know if anyone gets the hat and even then likely not.