The city that does not work*

Meanwhile, this story on Toronto's half-hearted venture into legalizing street food sums up everything that's wrong with this city. (Accurate headline: "So you want to cook bhajias or fajitas? Do we have a slate of rules for you".) Well, maybe not everything, but enough: red tape, indifference to the point of the policies under consideration, and, basically, stupid stupid people (both elected and administrative) in charge of city policy. That for decades we had a system designed to legally prevent the sale of anything other than semi-toxic hot dogs is a total embarrassment; that now, instead of just adopting whatever New York or Singapore or Bangkok does -- you know, doing what works -- we are slowly custom-designing a regime so snarled up in red tape that no one you would want in the street-food business would be willing to go into it -- that's beyond embarrassing and into infuriating. And it's really hard not to see it as a sign of general indifference and dysfunction -- remind me again why everyone was so excited about David Miller?

* I wonder how many of you even remember when Toronto used to be called 'the city that works'. A phrase that has gone the way of 'Harvard of the North', and for much the same reasons.

Toronto Life watch

I see Toronto Life is still running that stupid poll feature on the back page. Every month I hope it will have been changed to something more interesting, like 'Casserole of the Month' or 'Celebrity Lint', but no. They ask random vox pops a bunch of neither-serious-nor-actually-funny questions and print the meaningless results. I can see the advantages from the editor's point of view: it's free, and the intern can do it in an hour. But you'd think there'd be a voice in the back of his head pointing out that it's totally unamusing, month after month.

The only reason I notice is that the back page used to be the best thing in the magazine. It was a kind of obituary page, only for local institutions as well as heroes and villains -- I remember one for the old CHUM AM. It was often very poignant and well written, with a genuine local feeling. And before that it was a pretty good humour column by Marni Jackson. (Yes, Dr. B. goes way back.) It's the perfect spot for a snappy interview, or to a spotlight a local hero. But I guess advertisers don't care what goes there. And so the editors don't either.

Because there are no cool couples cooler than Toronto cool couples

In the November 24 New Yorker, a profile of Duguid and Alford:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_kramer

In the December 8 New Yorker, a profile of Naomi and Avi:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar

So which hipsters will be welcoming the New Yorker to their downtown Victorian brick semi in the December 22 issue? Atom and Arsinee? Peggy and Graeme? Those lesbians with the big dog down the street? Please god not Jack and Olivia.

J'ai l'oeil Americain et je dirai tout

One of the less-noted benefits of living in Toronto is the whole French TV thing. Due to an obscure regulation from the Trudeau era, cable companies are required to provide French-language channels equal to the number of Francophones currently resident in Toronto. Which means we're now up to four: CBLFT, TFO, TV5, and RDI. (Wait, where did RDI go? Did somebody leave town?) Freed from the unreasonable demands of actual viewers, every one of them offers better programming than the anglo channels; TFO in particular runs great movies, often with surprise value as the TV guide coverage is sketchy. Late Friday night I was hooked by something grainy and enigmatic which eventually resolved itself into a classic of the cinema francais: Le Corbeau, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and a safe bet for the best French film of 1943. A tense, queasy-making tale of poison pen letters in a country village, Le Corbeau was banned at the Liberation for giving an, erm, unsympathetic portrait of French provincial life, and blacklisted by the Catholic Church to boot (films à proscrire absolument parce qu'ils sont essentiellement pernicieux au point de vue social, moral ou religieux). Apparently it was made by a German company of collaborationist stripe, but the movie itself is misanthropic in a subversive and implicitly lefty way, much like the creeptastic Bunuel Diary of a Chambermaid. So check it out, and don't say bilingualism never did nothin' for ya.

The post title should be a link: for proof that the interwebs can explain anything, see here.