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.)