Great expectations and the real city

For quite awhile, I've pondered why a lot of people outside of Toronto detest the place. A friend sent me this link.

http://www.torontoist.com/

Interesting. It espouses a city that in truth, doesn't exist. A lot of the artsy fartsy types that control city hall promote the city as being that way. Oh yes, these events and people do exist. The reason for this dominance is that the city elders feel the need to compete with other cities. Then for the reason for economic development, attracting conventions and tourism all this... all this... call it what it is... out trots this bullshit.

At the leading edge of this tourist effort cycles the artistic effort of youth before alcoholism and the ravages of crack take their toll on the straw castles of mythic dreams. The fastest way to get funding for their artistic urges is to create things like this link. It appeals to the wealthy elite of the city, the business leaders that holds a firm grip on the life of this city.

Literally it is young artists and the useless progeny of the upper middle class trying to make a lazy partying life out of trying to appear to be culturally advanced. In other words its a gang of young culturally challenged goofballs trying to appeal to the elite business class. They do such things to kiss the bigger ass.

The result carries all the way into the annoyingly elitist CBC and rests displayed for all to see. These leaders of culture show nothing but arrogant, self interested, small minds unable to see their city outside of the rose colored glasses they wear.

In turn, in righteous justification for their well clothed greed, they work assiduously to misrepresent the true Toronto. The polished society, the modern city they portray, the mythical city doesn't exist. And at the end of the day, its good for their property values.

This facet is lost in ridiculous sites like the Torontoist. That city is an invention. That city is like the singles ads which portray a single person looking for a mate as liking arts, music, dining, Blue Jays, and long walks in the park.

Have you ever been to a Toronto park? Its like any city park. I never see these people there. Mostly its joggers, drunks, crackheads, nannies, suicidal bipolars looking for a tree to hang themselves, and city works personnel goofing off. Cute sexy singles are to city parks as elephants are to Yellowknife.

Worse, they pass this off to the hinterland as the real way to live. Well this would be good. Except it doesn't exist.

To a person from places like my former hometown like Marathon, which is a small community purpose built to serve the labor needs of a large corporation and possesses a simple mono-culture, a place like Toronto confuses. They bring their values, their social experience to the bigger pond and as such their expectations don't work for them.

One does not need an advanced education to live in Marathon. It doesn't challenge the temporal lobe of a Nematode. One does not need intelligence or wisdom to climb the social ladder. This isn't wrong. Such a life is quite comfortable. Its another world socially. But its failure comes that the dynamic dreams of youth must be suppressed for creature comfort. It leads to mental depression. However when a person arrives in a place like Torontoist portrays they rapidly become disillusioned since the social dynamics are so different and the promise of the elite doesn't match the real culture.

They are no longer socially important. It is why small towners complain about customer service. In a small town customer service comes from a neighbor. In a city the customer service comes from a stranger. The latter expects a tip.

And it is no coincidence whatsoever that the leading brainiacs of a place like Marathon brag about not paying out tips. It never failed. Two lines down the conversation these forested intellects will always parlay this rant adding that they don't like Toronto because they get poor customer service... Well duh!

Now father always did well in city travel more than my mother. He travelled the world often and functioned adequately for a small town type of person. He had the intellectual edge to explore and cared less about social status, race or cultural bridges. He could live anywhere. The only disconcerting thing that as an advanced intellectual he possessed the charming quirk of tending to mutter unaware anyone else was listening.

A couple of times I caught him muttering about what size of tip acceptable in this city. There was a rate for every city in Canada. He would slide over to every inlaw chum and always, always ask about the tip rate in every town. He would chart every facet of life but failed to record each rate in every city. In Calgary and Port Arthur, it was 10% of the bill. But in Winnipeg, on the train and in Fort William, it was 15%. He liked Port Arthur and Calgary quite a lot.

Yet he was absent minded to the extent that I overheard him mired in the usual end of meal internal debate. He sometimes lost track of his rate schedule mentally. And this usually exploded into muttering about which the percentage in this city was. I heard it several times. So did the waiters standing right next to me. Not a cool thing.

I digressed. But it shows the angst which even seasoned travelers from small towns confront the social dynamics of the larger city. They expect the city portrayed in the Torontoist web site. Alas. It aint.

The real Toronto is a gritty mud bath of ordinary people from a confluence of global cultures all mushed into a single community. They are friendly enough. They are more open to new people than the small town person. As they grow older they are not as status conscious as found in small towns. Toronto is a collage of cultures and its a dirty hot tub. It is not CBC.

A small town person is no longer a person of some status in this social structure. Most Toronto people are occupied with working hard, paying off the rent or mortgage, raising a family, getting fucked, eating, finding cheap food, partying, and getting loaded. Social status except for the few, doesn't exist. Its a muddy swamp. Thats the real Toronto.

Most city people I know have never been to a play, haven't even been up the CN Tower, or the Zoo, or the Harborfront, or Pantages. Professional sports events are too much money. Cable provides entertainment. I don't know anyone who listens to CBC. I don't know too many people who attend the theatre on a regular basis. And most of the arts and music culture are buskers looking for a buck on the streets.

The problem with why people hate Toronto is that they get off the plane expecting a city like the brochures. They will find the advertised in the narrow tourist traps that do exist. City tours go up Yonge street or Spadina to Yorkville. Tours don't go up Sherbourne to Regent Park. They tour down King West to Bathurst then turn right north up to Queen street. They don't go beyond to Parkdale or Dundas West.

Tours. To get to the small elite Beaches district, one must travel through East Toronto where the real city dwellers live. As a result even the street cars go fast through that zone in a headlong need to get to the magical land. It is when the visitor steps outside the glitz of the tourist trap that they run into the real city. Whoops! The myth falls.

And its expectations. It can be a confusing crush, the real city. The small town person is a stranded guppy in a clash of people, and transactions. Its a jungle path dark and full of hidden traps to the perceptions of a visitor outside the glitz tourist channels. Its like Disney World set in the Everglades. Inside the wonderful experience. Outside that compound, alligators.

To live in Toronto, the real Toronto one must like the swamps and alligators of human existence Not appreciating this fine point about urban existence leads to the misconception about a place like Toronto.

To a person from a small town driving in a busy town like Toronto can be a nightmare. It is not that traffic is all that bad in Toronto. Its perception. Small town drivers think that they are great drivers. No on the contrary. Its that to live in Toronto one must be a very good driver. Traffic in Toronto is actually a very efficient system. One needs to understand that to thrive to drive one must practice good driving.

The final point strikes the heart of the small town person. Officially they proclaim that they hate Toronto when really they do not want to admit to the world that they lack the driving skills or talent to function. e.g. Most Marathonians hate the 401. Oppositely, I have always loved driving the 4o1. I like driving down Bay Street from Dupont to Harborfront. I like driving through Portage and Main or Cumberland Street or Fort William Road. Its the challenge. Its attitude.

There lies the problem. People from the small towns in Northern Ontario bash Toronto or city life. Its their privilege and it makes them happy. But it isn't the fault of Toronto. It is the fault that everyone seems to buy into the mythic vision that Toronto wishes to portray. Its a show, not the real Toronto.

And it confuses the people outside Toronto because the real Toronto is far more dynamic and contrarily ordinary than advertised. There is a wall created by the city elite, and the tourist misconception between how absolutely functional Toronto is compared with smaller communities. Such a site as Torontoist displays the dream of a city not the actual gritty core of a city.

Political pontiffs like the present day Mayor were elected by the voting majority of suburbanites of the metropolitan zone. There lies the problem. The suburbanites are professional, or financial, or well paid government workers or educators who know little about inner city life. They go to work the same way every day, and go home to a quiet refuge or nest. They toil for years, grow a family, sell the house and quietly die banished to an old folks home. They are not the real city. They buy into the vision of the city portrayed by pseudo-intellectual and completely compromised politicians like David Miller.

They participate little in the city life. The suburban home is but a quiet refuge where it is convenient to hide until death. But every three or four years they control the voting power to elect politicians that paint the pretty version of their community not the real city. They sit communicating away on the internet inventing the city that really doesn't exist and never did. Their city is pretty, cleansed of all foul smelling things.

Yet like the sewers these people exploit the inner city. It is why the rest of the city foisted on the residents of St. Clair a transit way of ancient, antiquated street car technology because it was their vision not the real vision of the real St. Clair resident. The people that are now doing this to what was once a wonderful culturally dynamic neighborhood will destroy it much like they molded the Spadina district. Its not the concept of the real people living there. These arbitrary people imposing a vision on a vital district eventually destroy that neighborhood. They visit the place once to open the beast they conceived then go elsewhere to plague city life.

Such behaviors destroy the city neighborhood. Despite the pontifications from the bombastic mayor, while transitways look good on paper, in every instance they are factual disasters. The operations of the Spadina right of way are spastic, inefficient, impaired the functioning of the street, and is an alien space vehicle in a cringing world. Patently it is a success to the people who forced the project on the community in retribution for stopping a commuter motor expressway. In reality though having experienced the before and after of such a project clearly the
Spadina transitway is an abject failure.

The only saving grace for that area is the Kensington market where the real city retreated to and thrives is that it escaped the attention of the other neighborhoods. Unfortunately for the residents on St. Clair they will experience the same idiotic project that plagued Spadina. It takes a year to build the transitway and it takes about 15 years to recover socially from such a false project. It gives the neighborhood about ten years grace before the next social brainstorm from the suburbanite social elite to return its attention.

Why explore this pathway into this essay. What it shows is that there is a great gap between the perception and the reality. When I moved to Toronto I didn't move to the alleged upscale parts of town. They are the minority dysfunctional parts of Toronto. If I lived there in those illusions for any length of time, certainly I would be back in Edmonton.

The first time I moved here twenty years ago I went straight into the neighborhoods one is not supposed to like. I found it to be gritty, affordable, real and fun. I didn't go with the program. Also I found that the people who came to this city into a district like this one tended to stay in Toronto. The suburbanite refugees tended to always want to be somewhere else. They wanted a small urban town in a big city.

Now this confuses the people in places like Marathon. A large part of this is that they buy the outward face portrayed by the minority elites of Toronto. When confronted by the real city, like the city suburbanites they tend to go back home. Now this is not wrong nor right. It is the way it is.

One cannot come to a densely populated place like Toronto and expect things to accommodate their needs at the snap of a finger and no tip. One instantly loses all the social status, personal recognition, and close familiarity of a small town. One must drive to the efficiencies of city traffic not fumble around like it was a country lane.

So when a person clicks on a site like "The Torontoist." Take it with a grain of salt and a lot of doubting gravy. Its the promotion of a myth. A city that really doesn't exist. Its interesting for a few. Really though. Its complete bull crap.


(Note this is a draft only, I may return to revise the essay.)

Seal of approval

Doesn't anyone else find it totally ironic that the jet setting do-gooders fly in on aircraft spewing tons of hydrocarbons in the air to save some "cute" seal pups. On the other hand that very activity is more likely to cause Global warming which will in turn cause the species to go extinct far more quickly than all the Newfie clubbers have done in the last four hundred years and could do in the next four hundred years.

Or is this just me?

Black's case

I thought you might like to keep up with the Black fraud case where Conrad Black is alleged to have embezzled a wad of cash to sate the spending habits of the Black Queen of King Street (BQKS). Of course on her defense she is the most beautiful, most intelligent person in the world. Just go ahead and ask her.

*The following article is provided for the education and edification of Canadian students on a noncommercial site of no particular benefit to anyone else.

*************
This article originally published by the Times of London (this day), which was a oh either a competitor or owned by Conrad of Doublecross Harbour. Anyway to know him... and all that.

Black portrays himself as a victim

The Hollinger boss claims that he was taken in by a ‘web of deceit’, reports Tom Bower from the trial in Chicago

WITH obvious distaste throughout the first week of his trial, Lord and Lady Black have silently entered the 12th-floor Chicago courtroom appearing like outsiders at their own party. Walking past dozens of journalists whom Barbara Amiel characterised in a courthouse lift as “vermin” and facing a jury described as “working class, meat-and-potato folk” — a class the two social aristocrats have always disdained — the Blacks seem bereft of much comfort.

The odds, they know, are stacked against his acquittal. No less than 95% of federal prosecutions for fraud in the city end in conviction, and he faces 17 charges, including racketeering and obstruction of justice with a maximum sentence of 101 years in prison.

After their marriage in 1992, the Blacks had gleefully posed as an A-list power couple, travelling on their corporate Gulf-stream jet between their four sumptuous homes and mixing with billionaires, power brokers and politicians. Neither imagined the current scenario of humiliation and financial ruin. Nor did they calculate that their lifestyle, financed by Hollinger International’s public shareholders, would become the subject of a criminal trial where her confession — “now I have an extravagance that knows no bounds” — would be mercilessly regurgitated.

Conrad Black is accused of stealing more than $60m (£31m) from Hollinger by helping himself to money assigned as noncompete payments in the contracts to sell most of Hollinger’s newspaper empire after 1998. He is also accused of spending $40,000 of Hollinger’s funds on Amiel’s 60th birthday party in New York for 80 friends, of spending $250,000 by using Hollinger’s jet to fly on holiday to Tahiti with Amiel, and of swindling the company of about $3m in a swap of apartments in Manhattan. In the prosecution’s words, Hollinger was transformed by Black into his personal “piggy-bank” or the “Bank of Conrad Black”.

In his opening statement, Ed Genson, one of Black’s lawyers, dismissed the “perks” as consistent with a tycoon’s life. “His private life is his business life,” said Genson. Portraying Black as “a family man and a master of language who did everything by the book”, Genson admitted that Black’s self-incriminatory e-mails where he speaks disdainfully about shareholders and is unapologetic about using Hollinger’s money for his personal lifestyle show him as “snotty” and arrogant but, he insisted, not a thief.

“Other than a bad attitude you’re not going to find a single thing that’s wrong,” said Genson. “He was not stealing for himself. The company was stolen from him.” Establishing Black as a victim of theft is a fascinating undertaking.

The “thief”, according to Black, is David Radler, Black’s partner since 1969. Together they built the world’s third-larg-est newspaper company. According to Genson, the two partners split their newspaper empire, isolating themselves from each other.

While Radler ran the business in Israel, America and western Canada, Black was responsible for eastern Canada and Britain. Allegedly, neither spoke to the other about their own activities. “And just as the companies were run,” said Genson, “they were also sold.” In other words, Black was allegedly ignorant about all the sales and the phoney noncompete payments that Radler negotiated as the newspapers were disposed of.

In return for a 29 months’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, Radler has admitted one crime and agreed to testify against Black and his three codefendants. Radler has also paid about $100m in fines and compensation to Hollinger.

Just how Black will successfully pose as the ignorant victim of his partner intrigues the prosecution. After all, he was chairman, chief executive, a major shareholder and exercised the majority of voting rights. Repeatedly, in e-mails and conversations, he called Hollinger “my company” and described himself as the “proprietor”. Although more than $100m poured into his personal bank account from illegal deals, Black claims that he never closely questioned Radler about the source of the money.

Black, Genson told the jury, was Radler’s victim. “Radler spun a web of deceit,” said Genson and, to save himself from 30 years’ imprisonment, “cut a deal to end all deals . . . by dishing Conrad”. However, in his autobiography Black repeated 33 times how Radler was a close friend and partner with whom he shared every thought.

The first witness to undermine the defence was Gordon Paris, a banker recruited by Black in May 2003 as a director of Hollinger to reassure irate shareholders about Black’s honesty.

Paris testified: “Conrad Black was quite knowledgeable about Hollinger’s finances . . . Black had effective control of Hollinger.”

In June 2003, Paris ordered a special committee of directors to investigate Black’s conduct. In November 2003 they reported that Black had masterminded “corporate kleptocracy”, pocketing with Radler and others about $400m, or 73% of the company’s net income over six years.

Black and his codefendants have so far prevented the jury hearing the report’s damning conclusions. But in the internet age, it is likely that some jurors will, contrary to the judge’s orders, read the report.

In court, Black wanted to accuse Paris of outrageously enriching himself and wrecking the company. His lawyers squeezed into the record that Paris did at one stage earn $15,805 a day and feathered his nest by replacing Black as Hollinger’s chief executive and chairman.

The conclusive evidence of Paris’s greed, suggested Black’s lawyer, was a dinner on November 13, 2003, at Le Cirque — “one of New York’s most expensive restaurants”. Paris shot back: “That was only for Hollinger directors. We were talking business.” The topic was Black’s dismissal for dishonesty. Black has waited ever since that dinner to exact revenge.

The characterisation of that dinner as a “perk” provoked the prosecution.

“When you were at Le Cirque at Hollinger’s expense,” Eric Sussman, the prosecutor, asked Paris, “were you celebrating a birthday? Was there an opera singer? And was there a pianist?”

Sitting close to her husband, dressed in a black suit and a Chanel scarf, Amiel lent forward, noticeably tense. Conrad Black’s face flushed.

“No,” replied Paris. To intensify the Blacks’ embarrassment, Sussman continued: “And did you charge to Hollinger any clothes and tips for doormen?”

Amiel sank back in her chair. Notoriously, despite receiving an income of $1.45m from Hollinger, Amiel had charged the company $20 for a tip to the doorman of Bergdorf Goodman, the fashion store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

“No sir,” replied Paris. All those perks will emerge during the trial, which promises to be ferocious and dirty.

Before leaving Toronto, Black promised to destroy his accusers. The lust for blood is shared by his young prosecutors. Their careers depend on convictions.

Over the next four months, neither side will show mercy or magnanimity. Conrad Black has declared that this is a fight to the death, and nobody disagrees.

Tom Bower is the author of Conrad and Lady Black, published by Harper Press

Copyright furball & disclaimer

Somebody using the sacred name of a premier paleolithic cultural god head pointed out somewhat correctly, somewhat incorrectly about copyright regulations. Alas we be Canucks.

Here goes. And this is sworn on the Bible. Well a Quran. I got that for free last week. It will do.

"All written material posted on this website aka Blog is for the edification and education of students in Canada. This is a noncommercial publication. "

"No moneys paid. No monies received. If they want 15% of doo dick all, they got it. Would you like that in cheque form or direct deposit from me behind?"

"If any clown decides to bitch about this read the Canadian Copyright legislation for a change. And if said comedian decides to go anal about this throw me in jail where I will get three squares a day at $100,000 per taxpayer year: and like I will get a degree in Extraterrestial Aquaculture again at taxpayer expense just like learn to speak French too just like Karla; go ahead, go for it. How do I get four years out of this? Oh, I will get off the copyright charge, but get four and half solars for telling the judge just what I am going to say to you. Got a problem with our fine education system? If you do. Fuck right off."

Man, can I write a disclaimer or what.

Black is the colour of a heart

Lady Black finally took a correct stand. As you all know, I am a fan of the Lord and Lordess of Crossharbour. You can read for yourself.

Black's wife slams media

Mar 19, 2007 08:33 PM

Canadian Press
CHICAGO — Barbara Amiel Black lashed out at the media Monday, reportedly calling reporters “vermin,” as the fraud trial of her husband Conrad Black was adjourned for the day after questions over tainting of the jury surfaced even before lawyers had a chance to present opening arguments.

The constant media spotlight on Black and his family — and the clambering of reporters and photographers trying to get to him — sparked an incident between Amiel Black and journalists in an elevator when the Blacks left for a late morning break in the trial.

The former newspaper columnist was waiting to go down in the elevator with Black and his daughter when a television producer approached them and asked if they were leaving the building.

Black, who recognized her from earlier coverage of the trial, asked if she was going to ride down with him and “breathlessly” relay word of his approach to the cameramen waiting outside the building.

British journalist Joanna Walters said that as the doors closed, Amiel Black called the TV producer “You slut!”

According to Walters, who is covering the trial for the London Daily Express, Amiel Black then turned to her and another female journalist in the elevator and told them: “You’re all vermin. I’m sick of this. I used to be a journalist and I never door-stepped people.”

There was no immediate comment from Amiel Black denying or confirming Walters’ account. Amiel Black has not commented to the media about the case since jury selection in the trial began last Wednesday.

The elevator incident came shortly after Judge Amy St. Eve delayed the trial and Black’s defence lawyers raised concerns that news of a settlement by the media baron’s former partner David Radler — a key prosecution witness — may taint the jury’s views and are interfering with Black’s right to a fair trial.

St. Eve planned to swear in the jury and start with the prosecution’s opening statement but postponed the trial to Tuesday. Unconfirmed reports said a juror did not arrive in court and could not be reached in time.

On Friday, Radler — Black’s former top executive in the Hollinger group — signed a US$28.7-million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a deal that will also see him barred from being an executive or director of a U.S. public company.

Then Sunday night, a second US$63.4-million settlement was announced with Sun-Times Media, the new incarnation of Hollinger International, that settled claims against Radler related to backdated stock options when he was chief operating officer at the company.

The timing is “real troubling,” Black’s U.S. lawyer Ed Genson told St. Eve before proceedings began.

Radler has already pleaded guilty to fraud and has agreed to testify against Black in the criminal case in return for a lenient jail sentence of 29 months and a US$250,000 fine.

Genson also objected to a quote by former Hollinger International CEO Gordon Paris — the prosecution’s first witness — “bragging about the money these people collected from Radler.”

Tammy Chase, Sun-Times director of investor relations, would not comment on whether the company had considered the possible repercussions of releasing news of the settlement just hours before the trial was set tto begin.

She said the settlement had been finalized over the weekend.

“Once we had the settlement nailed down we had to disclose it,” she said. “We’re a public company.”

Asked about the defence’s objections to Paris’ comments in the Sunday night release, Chase said he “was quoted because he was the head of the special committee.”

Lead prosecutor Eric Sussman said he had been unaware of the Sunday settlement until Genson mentioned it in court.

James Morton, head of litigation at Steinberg Morton Hope and Israel in Toronto and president of the Ontario Bar Association, said the timing would be “highly problematic” in Canada, and questioned whether the prosecutors were using the media to try their case.

But others said it was “dangerous” to read too much into Monday’s one-day adjournment, which could have resulted from any number of reasons.

“It could be as innocuous as a doctor’s appointment” for one of the jurors, said Orin Snyder, a former federal prosecutor currently with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Crisis Management Practice Group.

Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, said starting jury selection over would be one possible remedy in the case, especially if enough of the members of the pool read the articles about Radler’s settlement.

But, he added, St. Eve may have just been looking to get all the opening arguments in in one day, and decided to adjourn once it became clear that wasn’t going to be possible.

“She’s going to have to examine (the issue) and see whether it taints the 20 people,” Henning said.

“The last thing a judge wants is to have a conviction reversed.”

While he agreed that the timing of the news, “certainly lends some credence” to the defences claim that Black and his co-defendants may not get a fair trial as a result of the settlement, he said it was unlikely to be enough of a reason to get rid of the current jurors.

“Once the jurors hear the government’s opening argument, they’re going to hear about how bad these people are,” he said.

Earlier Monday, Black had little to say upon entering court to face fraud and racketeering charges.

“My views of these charges and my expectation of the verdict are well known and I haven’t changed them,” said the former media tycoon, who has called the charges a “monstrous defamation” and predicted he will be vindicated.

Officials said the trial was set to resume Tuesday, when St. Eve is expected to swear in the jury and then give the floor to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Cramer, who will lay out the government’s case.

Prosecutors allege Black defrauded shareholders and used money from the Hollinger International newspaper group to cover extravagant personal expenses. The charges centre on the sale of hundreds of community papers and US$85 million in “non-compete” payments allegedly pocketed by executives of Black’s former newspaper empire

Black is charged with wire and mail fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering and obstruction of justice.

Going to buy

People wondering about this cluttered memory
Keep on chatter
Oh what, oh what
All knows what comes next
Oh what if I won the lottery

Some buy cars
Some buy vans
Some buy houses
Most buy drugs
Some buy hookers by the cans

After an hour skill dreams fits
I only have one fantasy skid
Instead, I'll get a big street car
Painting up like a part of transit
Sign reading "Not in Service"
Then run along the Dundas streets
Sucking up free power
From the citywide grid.



By G. Duncan Campbell

© All rights reserved 2005

Dilemma

Well recently I sat inside for a couple of weeks. Outside there was fairly good weather.

Freezing rain keeps pouring down in this endless storm. Which is okay, this is good for the grass. The lawn grass to be more specific. Would hate to spread false imagery.

Anyway, now there is a strong desire to go outside. Yes I know its confusing to me too.

_