The Antisocial Socialist

It's time for my favourite thing: The festival of light and fire, thinly veiled political allegories as mummers plays, and giant puppets. This year was very sedate—they once again didn't do the burn, and there wasn't really much a parade on account of it was cold AF, but we still defied the darkness. And despite the fact that I couldn't see and my camera doesn't do well in the cold, I got some decent pictures out of it, the best of which are below the cut.



( cut for picspam )

I've posted about this before, but my favourite thing about Toronto is the Kensington Festival of Lights. In 2020, it was virtual; in 2021 it was cancelled because of Omicron, so this is the first year that it's been back and people are allowed to attend.

It's a massive Solstice celebration run by a group called Clay and Paper Theatre, but there's a ton of community involvement from all sorts of individuals and organizations. There's a parade, with giant puppets, musicians, and dancers, and it culminates in a big burn in the park. Unlike everything else in this rapidly gentrifying city, it resists commodification and corporate sponsorship. It has been grassroots and anticapitalist for 33 years.

Tonight it felt like the sun had returned. Like my city is not completely doomed.

( bad pics that don't do the beauty of this event justice )

( bonus content: some nice goblin-type stuff )

Happy Solstice everyone!

Last night marked the 30th annual Red Pepper Spectacle Arts Festival of Lights in Kensington Market—in my opinion, the best event Toronto has to offer. It's a parade filled with samba bands, clowns, papier mache puppets, paper lanterns, Indigenous art and activism, Doug Ford effigies, raccoons, and of course, a giant burning thing at the end. It's beautiful and joyful and in-your-face and there's nothing else like it.

I attempted to capture some of the energy on the street last night. It's too crowded to shoot properly, so I just take a million pictures and hope for the best. Here are the least bad.



( more photos )

I was privileged to see Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal's Dance Me: Music by Leonard Cohen on its Toronto premiere. I admittedly do not know much about dance, but I am game to see anything involving Leonard Cohen, and it was transcendent. Just...every single artistic choice was perfect and most were unexpected. Cohen himself had some creative control before his death, and the sense I had from the director was that it was a thing that wouldn't have been done if it couldn't be done brilliantly. And it was done brilliantly.

Ottawa peeps, it is headed your way next. It sounds like an international tour is in the works, so if this comes to your city, absolutely go see it.

On a related note, I am seeking context, backstory, and/or theories about the older gentleman in the audience who wore a full-on colourful wizard's outfit to the performance. He was extremely polite and took off his pointy hat during the show, so accordingly I was too polite to ask him about his sartorial choices. My current theory is that he came straight from work—after all, I ended up riding the TTC and going to a doctor's appointment in a shark onesie for similar reasons—but I would like to believe that he is, in fact, a real wizard and decided the best way to avoid his secret being revealed was to dress like a wizard, because no one would ever suspect him of being capable of real magic.

Mystery solved!

Police have located the two men who built the tunnel near York U and determined that:

a) They are not terrorists. (Read: white guys.)
b) They pose no danger to anyone.
c) They did it for "personal reasons."

Yes, that was what the official police statement actually said. "It's all good, no charges will be laid, they did it for personal reasons."

In not-entirely-unrelated news, I can only assume that this is our police department's new logo:



Seriously. Our local police make official statements that combine the words "mysterious tunnel" and "personal reasons" and they expect to get paid $100,000+ a year and no one has a problem with this.

Other sources have reported that the two men built it as a "man-cave," though since they were not identified in any media, I can't rule out the possibility that what they were building was actually a Bat Cave.

In fact, I think it was probably a Bat Cave.

That, or they were scabs trying to cross the picket lines (good luck, 3903 friends!).

But it was probably Batman.

ETA: The National Post, of all places, has more speculation and a diagram. The video is worth watching.

I really really really wish there was a gravy spewing Marxist tax dragon so that I could vote for her.

P.S. That's the best campaign site. Better than the one I made. Not just in Toronto, but anywhere.

P.P.S. My ward, of course. It had to be my ward.

P.P.P.S. Of everything, "amateur dental hygienist" is making me laugh the most. Even more than "phrenologist."

ETA: Oh, it's Dimitri the Lover, professional sleazebag. It all makes sense now.

So Toronto experienced epic flooding last night. I am lucky enough to have been spared, so if anyone needs electronic devices charged or a dry place to hide out, let me know.

I'm sure you're all surprised that the Honourable Wife-Beater is being useless in terms of crisis management, leading Toronto residents wondering if we could borrow Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi for a bit. Here's a comparison between the two mayors' Twitter feeds. (Somewhere, I saw that a benefit for flood relief in Alberta had been cancelled because of the flood here.)

The most dramatic moment yesterday involved a submerged GO train that had to be evacuated by boat, but I didn't realize just how dramatic it was until corwin77 texted me just now to tell me that there was a snake on it, too. I am sick of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking aquatic train!

It does seem like no one died or was seriously hurt, so that's a relief, despite chronic underfunding of city services and infrastructure maintenance. It could have been a lot worse. But with extreme weather becoming much more common, perhaps some actual planning might be in order here.

I hope no one is sick of me posting constantly on this, but really, the Rob Ford crack scandal has done such wonders for my mood that I can't help myself.

Yesterday, after picking up the first round of rock star t-shirts, I sat out on my porch with a friend and tossed around conspiracy theories. Later on that evening, I tossed around a few more conspiracy theories with chickenfeet2003 over dinner and wine before hitting the truly excellent Figaro's Wedding (which, naturally, had a Rob Ford crack joke in there as well). Tossing around conspiracy theories about the Fords seems to be all anyone does in Toronto these days, and it seems like the more implausible the idea, the more likely it will be proven correct in the Star by the following morning.

If you don't live here, if you haven't, like me, lived here for 15 years and come to know the city as a nice place to live but not very exciting on a day-to-day basis, I don't think you can imagine how much bloody fun we're all having. Note that this scandal has not rocked the Honourable Wife-Beater's support at all; he retains about 34% support among the public. Olivia Chow would clean the floor with him in an election, but she's yet to announce formally that she's running.

This is no exaggeration: I wake up every day with my radio timed to the 8 am news on CBC, then I take care of the cats and bounce downstairs to read the latest updates. Sometimes I don't even make it downstairs; I scan Facebook on my phone for any exciting developments. Some of you know how hard it is to get me up in the morning. This has done it.

Today's updates:

There's been a new arrest in the murder of Anthony Smith. It seems increasingly likely that Smith had the original video and was killed for it—either by the Fords' allies in the police department or organized crime, or by rival drug dealers who realized its value.

Obviously, Ford was lying when he said that there was no video. If there currently is no video, it's because he destroyed it.

Interesting commentary on the potential that this scandal could lead to the de-amalgamation of Toronto. (Spoiler: It won't. And I'm not sure that's even a good idea—lefty sacrilege, I know, but I have a certain attachment to Scarborough and the hopes that it will ultimately benefit from the megacity.)

I will be at the rally to demand Ford's resignation this Saturday. In a massively ironic twist, I don't actually want Ford to resign. The best thing that could happen would be for him to hang on stubbornly by his teeth, further fracturing the Sensible Right and the Crazy Right, ruining Tim Hudak's chances in the next provincial election, exposing how deep the criminal rabbit hole goes among the city's rich elite, and, most of all, ensuring that Future Mayor Chow wins by a nice wide margin.

Via the_siobhan, a truly excellent moment in Toronto history: The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855.

No one seems to agree on exactly how the fight at the brothel got started. Some blame a particularly loudmouthed clown. Some say the clowns cut in line — or knocked the hat off a fireman's head. But this much is clear: that night, the clowns kicked some firefighting ass. At least two of the firemen were seriously injury [sic], dragged out of the brothel to safety as the Hook & Ladder crew retreated. For the rest of the night, the clowns could drink and have sex in peace.

But it wasn't over yet. Those firemen had a lot of friends. In those days, Toronto was still pretty much entirely run by a small group of Protestant, Tory elites. They were all members of the Orange Order, hung out together at the Orange Lodge, and made sure that other Orangemen got all the important jobs in the city. The police were pretty much all Orangemen. And the firefighters were too. Usually, they focused on beating up Catholics. But they were willing to make an occasional exception.

The whole thing is quite short and worth a read. Also possibly worth a reenactment as part of a Heritage Minute commercial, if Heritage Minutes were actually cool.

On a related note, I finished watching Carnivàle and am quite sad that it got cancelled. It's basically exactly my cup of tea, if instead of tea I were into methamphetamine.*

* I'm not really into either, but you get the point.

Well, that's a relief.