Rainbows, butterflies, and tacky souvenirs: this must be Niagara Falls

On Thursday, Maggie and Stuart read as part of the Virus Readings series, in the Book Nook at 4555 Queen St, Niagara Falls. Stuart's friend Heather and I came along, and we made a day trip out of it.

We stopped in Grimsby to eat lunch and check out a nifty thrift shop Stuart knew about, and got to Niagara Falls sometime early in the afternoon. Heather went off on a bike ride, and Stuart, Maggie & I went looking for the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory.

Now, Niagara Falls is the kind of town where there are a lot of tourist attractions of dubious interest, with long lineups and inflated ticket prices. The Butterfly Conservatory, on the other hand, is totally worth your 12 bucks. It's a huge greenhouse filled with lush, blooming tropical plants, and giant, drifting, fluttering, jewel-coloured butterflies. There's a hatchery where you can see chrysalids (above), and watch butterflies crawl out of them and spread their damp new wings.

There's also, as you might guess, a hideously tacky souvenir shop, where these magnets seem to be popular:



That's a found poem, right there.

Then we went and looked at the Falls themselves, which are of course beautiful, and are also a Baudrillardian essay in hyperreality, the real thing being effaced and superseded by its signs, the mediation of experience through technology, etc. Maggie said, "You can tell we're the intellectuals because we're the ones taking pictures of the coin-operated binoculars."



The cultural-theory field trip continued as we ventured into the Clifton Hill tourist area, which is a kind of insane, disorienting sensory-overload environment, like a mini Las Vegas. There are a lot of wax museums, and a lot of attractions advertised as "4-D", as if the same old 3 physical dimensions were just not exciting enough anymore & a new one has been added to jazz up the carnival rides. Seriously, we have no idea what "4-D" was supposed to mean. Also, the Tourist Area is just crawling with robots. There are animatronic figures rappelling up the sides of buildings; disembodied voices boom from every storefront, hyping the wonders within; and sometimes the animatronic figures speak in recorded voices, trying to entice you inside. Robot barkers! Impervious to boredom, heatstroke or laryngitis! Also, you see the word FUN a lot.



Tired out by the heat, loud noises & flashing lights, we met up with Heather and were happy to stumble upon Basell's Diner, where we had classic diner food and beers and I GOT CARDED, much to my delight and the astonishment of everyone else. (Maggie: "I can vouch for her being really, really old.") Someday I want to have breakfast at Basell's; they have those little single-serving cardboard boxes of Kellogg's cereals, and they also have three kinds of pancakes:



Then on to the reading. We had been speculating all day about what kind of arts community or neighbourhood Niagara Falls might have: it's a pretty small city, built around tourism, with no universities, though I'm told it does have some good community colleges. Who would show up to a literary reading?

It turns out that much of the arts community in Niagara Falls (as far as we could make out) revolves around one nifty building, 4555 Queen St., affectionately known as The Four-Triple-Five. A former nightclub, it's got a cafe, an art gallery, a music performance space, and -- up a flight of stairs, in what was once the VIP lounge -- an adorably cozy little second-hand bookstore, which is where the reading took place.



If you're ever in Niagara Falls, and if you're the kind of person who gets migraines in Tourist Areas, escape from Clifton Hill and check this place out.

The reading was intimate, the small audience attentive. Maggie and Stuart both read substantial, sometimes intense sets, impressive given how wiped out they were feeling in the late afternoon. I was intrigued by Tanis Rideout's work-in-progress, a nearly-completed novel based on the true story of a failed attempt to climb Everest 30 years before the Hillary expedition.

All my Niagara Falls photos here.

Squiddity at the Scream

The Scream Literary Festival is on now, with events every night until the mainstage in High Park on the 14th. I'll be blogging on the Scream website about events I attend throughout the festival. Do drop by!

That was the week that was

It's been an unusually busy, interesting week, though I didn't take many photos. A brief summary:

Monday: Visited Paul and Allysun and their tiny, brand-new daughter River. I believe that was the first time I've ever held a newborn baby.

Tuesday: Saw Nancy Cartwright talk at U of T, then went over to Trinity College to see Maggie, who is doing an M.Div. there, give a thoughtful and impassioned sermon on the metaphor of God as food. Appropriately enough, as part of the service I took communion, another thing I had never done before. The wine was sweet, the bread was wholewheat and chewy.

Wednesday: Coach House Books spring launch! A lineup of excellent readers, including Maggie, who read from her new novel, Girls Fall Down. Saw tons of book people I hadn't seen in forever. Jude's friend Katie is building a 20-foot mushroom in the Sculpture Garden. Sharon's wrapping up work on her "I Love You" book. Sean Dixon says he's writing a children's novel in which "a leaf dies and it's very sad," which led to Carl and I trying to explain to him what "emo" means. Etc.

Thursday: Long psychogeography walk, to commemorate Shawn's birthday. Started on Bloor, at the windows of Holt Renfrew (currently featuring an odd and underwhelming display involving lots of neutral colours and giant insects), meandered through Rosedale and into the ravine, all the way to the Brickworks, then on to Cabbagetown and Church St. A woman visiting from Scotland, a friend of one of the regular walkers, was with us, and expressed astonishment as we descended a flight of wooden stairs into the dark ravine: "You would NEVER do this where I'm from! You'd be robbed and killed instantly!"

(Above, a photo of office towers taken when we climbed to the top level of a Yorkville parking garage.)

Friday: Philosophy department end-of-term party at York, followed by end-of-term-party afterparty at the Duke of York, followed by several of us grad students (and one intrepid faculty member) roaming the dark streets of Toronto at 2 am. I led everyone down bpnichol lane and showed them the Coach House. We peered into the windows of the print shop and the bindery, and saw Rono, the elusive night guy at the Coach House. I have heard about Rono for years, but had never actually seen him before. He had a lot of shaggy grey hair, and he glared at us. I felt like we had glimpsed the Yeti.

Best overheard line of the week: A U of T undergrad to her friend, walking down St. George one afternoon: "I mean, even if you thought it was a dead balloon, why would you pick it up?"

I have the only copy of Therefore Repent! with a squid in it

Went to the launch last night of Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam's new graphic novel, Therefore Repent!. It's about an oddball Canadian couple adrift in a post-Rapture Chicago where everyone is developing magical powers, dogs speak in the voices of the dead, and a merciless angel militia is roving around and mowing people down with assault weapons. Look what Jim & Sal wrote in my copy:



Hee! Pick up your own copy at TCAF this weekend.

Speaking of militias, I was stumbling home sometime well after 1 am (following many beers with Comics Jam people) when, across the street from my building, my way was obstructed (as frequently happens around here) by a film shoot. This new Incredible Hulk movie has basically taken over my neighbourhood; apparently if I paid attention I might see Ed Norton wandering around dressed like a pizza delivery boy, though I doubt I'd recognize Ed Norton if I tripped over him. What I saw last night was dozens of people milling about on the lawn, with a lot of huge lights and trucks and trailers and whatnot. When I tried to walk around it all, a perky blonde with a clipboard said, "Could you wait just a moment? We're about to roll," and then someone somewhere yelled "ROLL," and a number of tanks, as well as a platoon of American soldiers in battle fatigues and camo facepaint, stormed up from College Street and laid siege to the front entrance of the Koffler Student Centre. So, you heard it from me: Incredible Hulk has tanks and soldiers in it. I'm guessing no squids or gay angels, though.

It takes a steady hand

A couple of things I learned at the launch of new books by Stef Lenk and Shannon Gerard at the Gladstone last night: "Operation" is a surprisingly engrossing spectator sport when you play on a gameboard the size of a large door. Also, Stef Lenk is the unidentified woman with the awesome tattoo I saw at Scream. Another Toronto mystery solved!