squiddity.: Winter drives us underground

The last psychogeography walk, a couple of weeks ago, started at 401 Richmond, then meandered through the heart of downtown. Above, Shawn regards the Eternal Flame outside Metro Hall with some skepticism. We put snowballs on top of its cage to see if they would melt, but they didn't.

We went into BCE Place and then down into the PATH system, which is fun to walk on winter evenings -- it's warm down there, and eerily deserted after office hours. We wound up in Union Station, somewhere in the bowels of which we found the Amuse-O-Matic, an old-skool, scuffed-up games arcade. In addition to the pinball games and vintage Ms. Pac-Man, there was this very Japanese dance game:

Alison took a photo of it & later noted that "the Toronto version of Dance Dance Revolution should require only nodding." (If you've ever been to see a band play in Toronto, you know what she means.) I suggested that the Toronto version of Dance Dance Revolution should be called Nod Nod Incremental Social Change.

After blowing a few rounds of loonies and quarters, we wandered on along Front a bit, until the cold got the better of us and we took refuge in a Jack Astor's. I'd never been in one before, and it was exactly what you'd think it would be like. Todd did a quick tour of the crowded bar area and came back to announce, "There is WAY too much testosterone in there." There were two separate fights on the verge of breaking out: from the door, we could see a guy at the bar antagonizing the bartender (bartender, loudly: "Well now you're just disrespecting me personally!"), and farther back Todd had seen two suits being physically held apart by a third suit, who kept saying, "It's all love, man! It's all love!" There was some kind of sporting event on -- it was the Grey Cup, right? -- which may have been intensifying the atmosphere, and was probably the reason one man was walking around with half a watermelon on his head. We sat in the dining room instead, and drew on the paper tablecloth with the crayons provided.