Dec. 26th, 2016
[BLOG] Some Monday links
Dec. 26th, 2016 04:05 pm- blogTO notes that a Vancouver nerd bar is opening up shop in Toronto.
- Dangerous Minds provides its readers with a take on an upcoming Tom of Finland biopic.
- The Dragon's Tales notes that Enceladus seems altogether too hot and notes that dwarf planet Makemake seems to have a surprisingly uniform surface.
- Far Outliers looks at Afghanistan and Poland at the end of the 1970s.
- Language Log explores the evolution of the term "dongle".
- Marginal Revolution wonders if Donald Trump is guided by his thinking in the 1980s about a Soviet-American condominium.
- Torontoist looks at the Toronto's century house plaques come to be.
- Window on Eurasia suggests Russian media outside of Russia are gaining in influence and talks about modern Russia as a new sort of "evil empire".
Joe. My. God. and Towleroad each respond to the untimely death of George Michael.
Chinese blog the Beijingers noted, in the aftermath of George Michael's death, that the late British pop singer actually played an important role in Chinese popular culture: As part of Wham!, in 1985 Michael was the first Western pop star to perform in Deng Xiaopeng's People's Republic of China.
A tribute tag on Weibo #georgemichaelhasdied has over 8.5 million views and 2,700 comments as of 11am this morning, many referring to the legendary concert on April 7, 1985, when George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley's band Wham! played to a crowd of 15,000 at Gongti.
From the perspective of Beijing's music scene circa 2016 – where we're being treated with a visit from Metallica next month and local punk bands are having 10-year anniversary tours – it's hard to fathom the revolutionary impact of a visit from any foreign band, let alone one that at the time was one of the most popular acts worldwide.
It took 18 months to get the show off the ground, and that it was a bit of a consolation prize for the duo now making it bigger in the US earlier, according to the group's former manager, Simon Napier-Bell. "Jazz (Summers, the group's co-manager) came up with the idea of perhaps we could make you the first ever group to play in China. George [Michael] just liked the idea – he said, 'yes – fix that.'"
As is still somewhat customary at rock performances here in Beijing, the crowd did not go wild. After a breakdancer he had hired was asked to go dance with the audience, the authorities got antsy and announced over the PA system that the audience must remain seated, Napier-Bell told the BBC in 2005. "Everyone had to sit down through the whole show – which was 100 percent my fault. It really killed the atmosphere," he recalled.
The Toronto Star's Aparita Bhandari reports on how a kosher Chinese restaurant in suburban Thornhill does roaring business with a Jewish clientele on Christmas Day.
At first glance, the menu of Golden Chopsticks restaurant doesn’t seem all that remarkable. The long list of items is the same as many Chinese takeout eateries across the city: egg rolls and sweet and sour chicken balls for appetizers, combo specials featuring General Tao chicken and Hunan beef with steamed rice. It’s the big sign on its window proclaiming “We Are Glatt Kosher” that’s unusual.
It’s a Chinese restaurant for Jews who follow a strict kosher diet and its busiest day of the year is Christmas.
Located in a Thornhill strip mall at the corner of Bathurst St. and Steeles Ave., Golden Chopsticks was the first kosher Chinese restaurant in the city when it opened almost 20 years ago.
Rony Gafny, an observant Jew who had never tried Chinese food, wanted to cater to the predominantly Jewish community in the surrounding neighbourhood when he opened the restaurant.
Jewish people eating Chinese food for Christmas is now part of a North American tradition, says Daniel Koren, a former online editor of Canadian Jewish News, and current media co-ordinator for B’nai Brith Canada. He included Golden Chopsticks in his “For Jewish Christmas: The 10 Best Chinese Restaurants in Toronto” roundup for Canadian Jewish News last year.
“Everybody, who’s Jewish, knows the place because it is the only kosher Chinese place. Or it used to be the only one,” he says. Although Toronto doesn’t have much of a kosher foodie scene compared to say New York or Tel Aviv, there’s a definite interest in kosher food in the city — and that’s brought competition.
The Globe and Mail's Suresh Doss reviews seven Chinese restaurants of note just to the north of Toronto, in Richmond Hill.
The reviews are at the link.
The adage that Toronto’s best Chinese food is uptown and not downtown is never more true than along Highway 7 in Richmond Hill.
The thoroughfare has seen a rapid growth of restaurants and new waves of cuisine that reflect the area’s increasingly diverse and growing population. Diners are seeking out their version of “authentic” and are willing to spend money on it, from $6 bowls of noodle soups to banquet-style set dinners that can cost upwards of $1,500. While all corners of Asia are represented in the dozens of tightly packed strip malls that line the highway, regional Chinese food is a standout attraction.
“In the past, all you saw was Hong Kong-style food, but now you’re seeing everything” a woman remarked as she waited in line at a small noodle shop. “There are so many different styles of Chinese cuisine up here, you won’t find any of this downtown.”
Minutes later, before diving in to a bowl of hot noodles and dumplings, she leaned over from her table and exclaimed, “Have you had anything authentic like this in Chinatown Spadina?”
The reviews are at the link.
I quite like Dave Leblanc's feature in The Globe and Mail describing efforts to revitalize the stretch of downtown Toronto where Parliament Street meets Bloor Street East.
Toronto, it is widely known, is a movie stand-in for Chicago, New York, and even Southern California (The Bridle Path has played Beverly Hills). Until recently, a long, triangular patch of land near Bloor and Parliament was a shoo-in for Detroit: a shabby Victorian stood alone in a weedy field, and, half a block away, a dead-end street sported a row of falling-down, boarded up semi-detached homes.
The area bounded by Sherbourne, Parliament, Howard and Bloor streets had been that way for two decades, give or take. In 2006, The Globe’s Alex Bozikovic wrote that the stub of Glen Rd. between the Bloor Street overpass and Howard Street was rife with hookers, drug dealers and crackheads. One home had a “large hole” in its roof; another had a tree taking root on its rotting, wet shingles. “I feel that the city has abandoned this neighbourhood,” one Glen Rd. resident told Mr. Bozikovic at the time.
It was a rare spot of neglect in an otherwise prosperous city. A few years later, however, Lanterra Developments handed heritage superheroes ERA Architects an assignment: Make something out of this.
“They wanted to do this development at the outer parts of the site, but they couldn’t really do anything with the centre just rotting,” remembers ERA’s Scott Weir, “so the first phase of this was ‘let’s make a beautiful district, whatever it takes to do that,’ so they did restoration on all of these almost un-repairable buildings.”
One of those “almost” dead buildings was the hulking, three-storey Victorian home that stood alone at 76 Howard St. After years of planning, Laurie McCulloch house movers pulled it, slowly, to its new digs at No. 28 just a few weeks ago. Hello, neighbours!
The Toronto Star's San Grewal looks at how an early 19th century land grant in Mississauga is going to be the basis for a massive new park in Mississauga.
Smack in the middle of Mississauga, just north of its shimmering new skyline, sits 200 acres of fenced-in, desolate land entrusted to the local education system in 1833 by King William IV of England.
Almost two centuries later, after developers and golf course planners and former mayor Hazel McCallion tried unsuccessfully to get their hands on it, the Peel District School Board and the city are about to launch a historic project — Mississauga’s very own Central Park. But don’t call it a park, it’s an urban farm.
“I was looking at the land around there and asked some people, ‘what’s this farm?’,” recalls Mississauga Councillor George Carlson, reminiscing about his election as a school trustee in 1985, when he first heard about the massive tract of land owned by the board. “I got some vague answers about 200 acres that we owned and it was given to us by the king.”
At the time, Carlson says much of the area surrounding what is known as Britannia Farm, was also agricultural land, as Mississauga was at the epoch of its transformation from a collection of rural townships into Canada’s sixth largest city.
The Toronto Star's Azzura Lalani notes the expected huge throngs of shoppers even now crowding Yorkdale.
Toronto shoppers arrived early, armed with game plans and strategies to snag the best Boxing Day deals at the Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Shopping Centre.
Visitors at Yorkdale were up 50 per cent more on Boxing Day morning compared to last year, said general manager Claire Santamaria. She expects about 120,000 people will visit the mall by the end of the day. A normal Saturday sees about 75,000.
“Boxing Day is our busiest shopping day of the year and it also has our longest hours,” said Santamaria. “The increase in traffic is really pushed by the fact that we have extra shopping hours in the day.”
At the Eaton Centre, where some stores opened as early as 7 a.m., crowds didn’t pick up until later in the morning.
“I think that the pre-Christmas sales in the week leading up were almost the same — there’s maybe an additional 10 per cent off,” said Lisa Madokoro, 30, who bought a dress she’d been eyeing at Club Monaco that was half price.
Since Ben Spurr's Toronto Star article has come out, John Tory has emerged as opposing the idea. Myself, I think that an rejigging of the subsidy system to account for the incomes of individual users regardless of their age might be the best way to do this.
For nearly half a century, Torontonians have been assured of at least one perk of growing old: getting a discount on the TTC.
But with major changes coming to the transit agency’s fare structure, some at city hall are starting to ask — is it time to do away with seniors fares?
Sparking the conversation is council’s recent approval of the Fair Pass Program, which would provide discounted fares for low-income adults of all ages.
Speaking before the decisive vote on Dec. 14, TTC chair Josh Colle told his colleagues that it’s unlikely the city will be able to pay for the program — which will cost $48 million a year when it’s fully implemented — while also retaining discounts for seniors and other groups.
The approval of the Fair Pass “will trigger another discussion” about whether the existing transit discounts are a good use of public funds, Colle predicted.
“Forever, our concession has only ever been based on age. And while I understand that seniors vote and that seniors are vocal, they’re also some of the wealthiest people in our city,” he said.
I largely agree with Akwasi Owusu-Bempah's brief Spacing National article. Let's have sane marijuana laws, please, and deal out justice properly to those unfairly caught up by the old laws!
At a time when many Canadians stand to benefit from the legalization of cannabis and the burgeoning medical and recreational markets, consideration should be given to those already caught up in the criminal justice system because of pot. Cities and town across the country have seen a proliferation of cannabis shops open on their main streets, and many police raids during this grey period in their legality.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose to power last fall in part based on a promise to legalize cannabis. Having admitted to smoking it while sitting as an MP, Trudeau’s campaign message clearly resonated amongst a Canadian population with its own fondness for the drug; 1 in 10 Canadians aged fifteen and over admitted to using cannabis in 2012. Recognizing the harms brought by prohibition, many Canadians have long supported its legalization. Now, the federal government is responding to public sentiment. It aims to generate tax revenue from a legalized market while at the same time stripping organized crime of billions of dollars in illicit profits.
However, as the government eyes potential tax dollars, and wealthy investors stand to profit nicely from the growth in our medicinal and recreational cannabis industries (Canada’s first cannabis company recently topped a billion dollar valuation), little attention has been given to repairing the harms done to those who have suffered under prohibition — mainly young people and members of disadvantaged minority groups. Indeed, the policing of cannabis and other drugs has been a priority for Canadian law enforcement agencies. According to Statistics Canada, Canadian police departments reported approximately 109,000 offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) in 2013, the most recent year for which data are readily available. Of these, roughly 73,000 were cannabis-related cases and 59,000 were for possession. While many of these cases were cleared through police discretion (i.e. not taken to court), the number of people tried for simple possession was not insignificant. Between 2008/2009 and 2011/2012, cannabis possession accounted for approximately 59,000 adult and 14,000 youth cases completed in our courts. Of these, 25,000 adults and almost 6,000 youth were found guilty. So, in about half the time our PM has held office, more than 30,000 Canadians were branded with the marker of a criminal record.
CBC News' Taylor Simmons notes that this year marks the 50th anniversary of Kwanzaa.
Zakiya Tafari remembers celebrating his first Kwanzaa over 20 years ago.
"I was introduced to it at a very young age and just found it to be really empowering," he said.
"There are some guiding principles that really help individuals know who we are as individual black people, what are some of the great things that our ancestry came from and what we need to be doing to move that message forward."
He sees that continuation in his 12-year-old daughter. This year, she bought a new dashiki, a colourful African garment, to wear during their Kwanzaa celebration.
"It's really cool to see a kid who grew-up in a different generation from me, who's very much a modern kid ... but she still respects some of her African ancestry and is proud to embrace it."
The centrepiece of Kwanzaa, according to Tafari, is spending time with each other.
CBC News' Amara McLaughlin describes a location in Hamilton that is apparently the locus for dangerous selfies. What does it say of me that my first reaction is happiness at learning of this spectacularly scenic place?
(I'll be safe, don't worry.)
(I'll be safe, don't worry.)
A small, rocky outcropping above Hamilton's Tews Falls that is twice as high as the American side of Niagara Falls has become the city's go-to spot for shareable snapshots and selfiies.
Known as the Dundas Peak, the spot is attracting a steady streams of amateur photographers, dangling their feet off steep cliffs, hanging over ledges with sheer drops, climbing fences and pushing the boundaries of safety, all to get closer to the edge of the escarpment for the quintessential shot.
The peak has long been a popular local destination.
But in recent years, influenced by the desire to see breathtaking panoramic views of Spencer Gorge and capture them for social media, hundreds of people are putting themselves at risk trying to recreate what they see on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
A search of the hashtag #dundaspeak on Instagram turns up more than 10,000 pictures. Some are actual "selfies," others use friends to help get the ideal angle, but it is always about sharing a dramatic picture of yourself.