Halcyon Harbourfront

Harbourfront. Yes, it's a bit of a cliched tourist-trap, but if you've got some weekday time it's worth a visit. (Weekends are overcrowded and best avoided). I had a baby-free day and decided to head down there. I took the LRT from Union Station as parking is steep and scarce.

Some good things at Harbourfront in the summer, many of which are free:

1) The York Quay gallery in Harbourfront Centre. There is pretty much always a decent group show on in the gallery and the coolest craft stuff can be seen in the vitrines located around the building FREE. And yes, the ubiquitous non-free Power Plant is next door.

2) The craft studios. They are pretty much always open to the public and often occupied by artisans doing cool things. No matter how many times I see it I am still amazed by glass blowing. The heat, the speed, the beauty. FREE

4) The Pearl restaurant. It serves some of the best (but not cheapest) Dim Sum in the city and the views (at any season) are pretty phenomenal.

5) The view of the water and island from pretty much everywhere, but especially. . .

6) when sitting on the open-air part of the food court at Queen's Quay Terminal (the VERY 80s-style retail and condo development that also houses some offices and a theatre). There is a great ocean-like breeze up here that you really can't get anywhere else that makes it a few degrees cooler and you can look over the water to the island while enjoying some cheap Udon from Edo Japan ($6.75) and feel superior to those people below paying for overpriced salads at the dockside restaurants. On a warm summer day this feels like a true city getaway and a nice respite from the hipster pavement-side patios of Queen West and College St.

7) The retail store "Bounty" located in Harbourfront Centre. If you are looking for a gift for anyone into design and craft, this is where to go. Most of the stuff is Canadian and all is unique and hip.

Embrace your inner "own city" tourist this summer and revisit Harbourfront.

Luminato sheds light on a darkened neighbourhood

I don't want to say too much about this artwork as it speaks volumes on its own. Yet it has struck me visually more than almost anything I've seen this year and I knew I needed to feature it.

After a quick Google search, I learned it was part of a portrait series of residents of Regent Park, put on by the Luminato festival. Artists working with neighbourhood youth put together the larger than life images.

This portrait's huge size and almost hyper-real amount of detail make it visually striking, as does its unique placement on the side of a Regent Park apartment block. (My initial first thought was "wow, great graffiti!") Furthermore, the subject itself is emotionally effective. You quickly see the vulnerability and pride in this young pre-adolescent living in what is known as a "troubled" neighbourhood. He sports a basketball jersey as both uniform and armour.

I've not yet seen street art of this quality and I applaud Luminato (sponsored by Loreal, somewhat oddly) for its strong programming. The success of this project I think shows how art can bring something positive to people who cannot or may not have a chance to shine in other areas.

"Moment of Truth:" revealing the decline of American cilivization

I recently saw a terrible show called "Moment of Truth." It was a bit like watching a train wreck -- gruesome but you can't look away. The premise: Ask a person who has something to hide a bunch of progressively more personal questions in front of their family and friends. If they tell the truth all the way through, they can win a pile of money. They are pre-asked the questions using a lie detector in order to create a control answer set.

After watching it, the show haunted me and upset me for days. And I think I finally figured out why. It's because it shows, very clearly (and disconcertingly) a fundamental shift in American (dare I say North-American) life towards the privileging of truth over ethics. Case in point: A woman who was ashamed to admit on the show that she fantasized about a professional baseball player because she didn't want to hurt her husband (significantly, when she did admit it, she was booed by the audience), readily and almost proudly admitted that she would "without hesitation, rob a bank to pay off her family's debts if there was no chance of getting caught." Where is the ethical dillema? She clearly has none. The same woman admitted to repeatedly lying about her credit card charges to her credit card company to avoid paying for purchases.

After trying to work out this seemingly screwed sense of ethics, (WHAAT?) I realized that I couldn't reconcile her ethics, because she didn't have any. To clarify: morals I see as those innate feelings that stop you from, say, cheating on a game with friends or yes, even cheating on a spouse. Ethics, I see as a pertaining to a bigger picture such as respecting laws and authorities that may be faceless, but keep civilization in order, like not cheating on your taxes (or robbing a bank or defrauding the credit card company). And while this woman's morals were questioned, and her ethics revealed to be fairly non-existent, the show seemed to say that it doesn't matter! We don't care as long as she tells the truth. We will reward her (in cash) for her truthfullness.

This will never, I promise, be a political blog (I don't know enough, or even care enough), but the treatment of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush I think is a prime example of this new shift. In his little-picture world, Bush's morality tells him to help out his family and friends, even if it means the death of nameless, faceless people across the world. His funding of war is simply not ethical, but for him, the morality behind it all stays solid. The bible after all says love thy neighbour, and says nothing about people on the other side of the world. If your circle thrives, civilization be damned! (Sidebar: Isn't it great how the word"civility" is connected to the word "civilization"? It spells it right out!) (Sidebar 2: I also think that "civility" is being confused with "politeness" these days. Eg: you can tell someone to fuck off politely, but you can never do so with civility). In sharp contrast to how George W. Bush was let off ("gee... he's just a nice man from Texas who "truthfully" didn't know how his dealings would affect the rest of the world"), Bill Clinton was skewered for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky and not really admitting to it. Perhaps his was an act of lapsed morality, (not ethics, I would argue) but it was a lapse that didn't affect much more than his family and friends (for whom I did truly feel sympathy).

At the risk of sounding too . . . well, ethical, I'm just feeling nostalgic for a time before this media-saturated one (of which I am taking full-advantage, I realize) in which ideas, ideals and ethics and not dalliances and moral slip-ups held our attention and in doing so, helped hold together our civilization.

Alessi for me

A watch is a simple thing perhaps.... or perhaps not when you think of all the tiny mechanisms and movements at work (analog or digital, there is still a lot going on).

I myself wear and collect watches like some women do jewellery. Some are in heavy rotation for a year or two and then a broken strap relegates them to the back of the jewellery box, which of course, I use for watches more than for jewellery.

My favourite new watch though is definitely something to write home...or should I say "a blog", about and will probably be in heavy rotation all summer if not fall.

It is the Alessi Kaj watch. I bought it in New York a few weeks ago, but although that adds to its souvenir-like aspect for me (ie. a nice memory of my trip), I think it can be purchased almost anywhere.

Why I love this watch?

1. It was cheap. $85 cheap.

2. It reminds me of clocks from the 1970s, the ones that plugged in and sat on your parents' bedside table. I chose a brown one, which totally adds to this nostalgic appeal, as does the orange hand.

3. The whole band and casing is made of one piece of some-kind of rubber. This makes it really tactile -- you just wanna grab it-- and it makes it seem indestructible (it's one of the only watches I let my 11 month old daughter chew on, literally). I also have a Lexon alarm clock that I love for the same reasons and because it is deep matte turquoise.

4. It is super chunky and thick, very much like one of those toy watches you got in loot bags as a child whose display was some sort of hologram. But this one has the real time on it. It's like a very practical adult toy, and who doesn't love those? (see ipods, Dyson vacuums, Kitchen Aid mixers and anything by RIM.)

When I googled the watch for this blog, I discovered it was designed by Karim Rashid, which brings up mixed emotions in me because a) it's cool he's Canadian, but he did leave quickly to set up shop in New York, b) he wears all white all the time, which seemed neat 5 years ago but now seems cult-like, c) he left his wife, a super-chic, thin model-ish woman, for yet another super skinny, younger, actual model wife and d) He wrote a book on design called "I want to change the world," which I find simultaneously admirable and obnoxious.

But none of these mixed emotions will stop me from wearing it. A week after I bought it, a salesperson at the Umbra store complimented me on it and thought it was designed by Philip Starck. Not that it matters to me, I love my watch regardless if it has a name behind the design or not (in fact it would be better really if there was no name behind it, proving you don't need a big name to achieve good design.) Nonetheless, Starck was the one who said "we have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept." I think this statement is a step-down in obnoxiousness from "I want to change the world," and although it seems un peu idealistic, I think it's also a step in the right direction n'est ce pas? (Note to self: Future post on green design??)

BGL's "Nowhere 2" takes me somewhere good

South of Queen St, on the Don River, at a spot you can't see easily from the street, but easily from the bike path, floats a 25 foot model of a cruise ship with the name "Nowhere 2."

From where I was walking on the bike path the boat came as a surprise even though I was looking for it. In this part of the Don River trail, any "surprise" that doesn't involve gruesome garbage or things that look like crime scene remains usually evokes an internal sigh of relief. Nonetheless, this artwork was a really nice surprise... it ranked right up there with seeing a pair of swans a few minutes before. The swans reminded me that the river can still sustain wildlife and the boat . . . well , firstly it looks cool. The art group BGL that conceived it wisely made it black, so it seems to be almost one with the river (yep, the black river...hmmm). Secondly, while the Don IS kind of "nowhere" these days (certainly, the swans notwithstanding, it has lost its destination as an ideal spot to observe nature) it perhaps can continue to be a spot of contemplation. And not just the "what am I doing with my life" kind, but also the "what are we doing to the city and its natural environments?" kind of contemplation.

On a decommissioned bridge above the boat hangs a second piece by BGL, a hugely oversized life preserver with the words "Don River" on it. While I applaud the '"Save the Don" message of the piece, its aesthetic leaves me cold. It's a bit like looking at a huge McDonalds sign hung in a forest, albeit a kinda dirty forest next to a freeway.... But maybe that's the point, to create such an aesthetic clash and strong visual statement that you are made to look, and think, twice.

BGL's project on the Don River shows until June 29th.

Lucaffe --- Too hip for T.O.? Or just too racist?

Every time I walk by the coffee shop Lucaffe, at Queen and Boulton, the "Uncle Remus-like" white-toothed, barefoot, smiling chubby black guy that part of their icon (his image is on everything) makes me cringe. It's like walking by a black lawn-jockey statue, but seriously worse because it is so huge and obvious. Okay, the company is Italian, so Italian in fact that the English on their site is well...less than perfect. I'm guessing that the mascot from the Italian perspective is either a) considered hip and kitschy, political correctness be damned or b) is the original logo from eons ago and they think that it is now hip and kitschy, political correctness be damned.

Either way, it doesn't play out well here in East Toronto. The fancy schmancy place (they have put a bundle into it) is a ghost town... always. On a strip where a new coffee place opens every few months to standing room only, this is unusual. I think we'll be saying "Ciao" to Lucaffe in the next few months and maybe I can walk by this corner without embarrassment once again.

"Pick Yourself up by your Bootstraps."

Does that mean suck it up and take hold of your life? Or is it, like someone once suggested, actually counterproductive, wherein pulling up on your bootstraps while wearing your boots does nothing?

Maybe kinda like blogging?

Oh well, I'm hoping it means the former and I am making an attempt to get my career and life on track. If it's only the latter, that's okay too. At least it's a place to vent.