Inside the floating classroom

Yesterday, some Psychogeography regulars (including me) led a pair of groups of students from the University of Toronto's Hart House to the Gladstone Hotel. On the way, our group detoured to investigate the new Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building. You may remember that some of us wandered onto the construction site & discussed the building-in-progress with a helpful security guard last winter. The building is finished now, and at night the giant white pods are illuminated in brilliant colours. The higher one, apparently a staff cafeteria, is inaccessible, but the lower one is a classroom, and it was open! Here is what it looks like inside:

It made me think of a CBC sound studio from about 1975. It's a room with no windows or straight lines and a kind of old-school sci-fi feel to it, like a classroom aboard the Starship Enterprise. More pics.

Tomorrow is Nuit Blanche! I am so stoked! There will be photos!

When sunflowers ATTACK

Night of the Sunflower!, originally uploaded by jbcurio.

Photographic evidence that those Cabbagetown sunflowers can be dangerous. Pic (and Photoshop tomfoolery) by Jamie.

Our vegetable overlords

Next: Cabbagetown!

Cabbagetown, of course, gets its name from the fact that it is ruled by a cabal of sentient cabbages. The likeness of the Glorious Cabbage Leader features prominently on the flag of Cabbagetown, which is proudly displayed by many households in the area, but which I did not get a good picture of during Thursday's walk because it was dark. The cabbages are benevolent, but their will is enforced by fearsome and triffidlike sunflower guardians (see above photo).

We walked all the way from Cabbagetown to the Danforth, where we had saganaki, which is Greek for "cheese that is on fire." The way it works is, you go to a Greek restaurant and order saganaki, and a man comes out with a piece of cheese on a plate, throws a shooter of ouzo over it, sets it on fire and yells "OPA!!", and it all happens so quickly you don't have time to turn your camera on. The cheese is delicious. Alison developed a sudden hankering for flaming cheese while we were in a parkette in Cabbagetown, and we were eating it less than an hour later, which is all the proof I need that I live in a world-class city.

Feeling the love in Parkdale

Okay, it's been a while, I know. Did I mention I got a Mac? And school started again? Two posts today, in an attempt to make up for my negligence. First: Parkdale!

As part of the Queen West Art Crawl, there was a ROM-organized walking tour of historic sites in Parkdale last Sunday. It was interesting to hear about the earlier lives of some of the area's buildings and institutions: what's now a large rehab centre, for example, in the Victorian era rejoiced in the Edward Goreyesque title of The Parkdale Home for Incurables. But the buildings in Parkdale aren't nearly as fascinating as the residents. My favourite sighting was of the guy who stomped by us, grumbling, cap jammed over crazy hair, periodically stopping to replace one or the other of his filthy flip-flops, which kept falling off. The front of his T-shirt read: KISS ME. The back: I'M A PIRATE.

How cute is this car-free lane of wee Victorian cottages? I suspect they're a lot pricier now than back when they were built as cheap housing for labourers.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms, originally uploaded by squiddity of toronto.

Here are some mushrooms we saw under a bridge last night, by the Humber River.

School started again this week, but the really big news around here is I've got a new computer, and it's a Mac. I switched to Mac! It is a time of new beginnings.

Live illustration

Pontiac Quarterly illustrators, originally uploaded by squiddity of toronto.

Artists illustrate the August 30 issue of Pontiac Quarterly, the live-on-stage literary quarterly at the Drake Hotel. The evening's "special announcement" turned out to be that Pontiac founder Damian Rogers will no longer be organizing and hosting the event; she's turning it over to the equally wonderful Liz Clayton. And Liz is looking for submissions! E-mail her if you have ideas.