I didn't realize until recently that the Drake Hotel was actually a hotel. Now, before you go busting out the #MarkIsDumb hashtags, I had a valid reason for this. For those non-Torontonians out there, the Drake is a well-known bar/nightclub/concert venue in town and while I figured the building was once a hotel, I thought the name had just been retained as part of the club's overtly hipster vibe. But no, in fact, you can still rent rooms at the Drake. Man, I almost feel like staying there for a week as a social experiment. I can work on a novel (or claim to be working on a novel), grow a soulpatch, take up smoking, start wearing one of those dumb-ass Castro hats, and suddenly become a really big Yo La Tengo fan. It'll be great.
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While I'm on a Toronto topic, let's talk about the intersection of Strachan and Wellington, a.k.a. possibly the current worst-designed intersection in the city. I imagine that this was once rather a sleepy little corner, but with all of the condos on King West and the Liberty Village, traffic is zooming down Strachan at all hours. Ergo, if you're on Wellington, trying to find a window of space to get past Strachan is very difficult. Turning left onto Strachan from Wellington takes bloody forever. Even turning right onto Strachan while traveling east on Wellington is a pain due to an inexplicable curb extension that juts out and cuts Wellington from a two-lane street (through the right lane is basically a parking lane) into a one-lane street. So, if you just want to make a simple right turn, you have to get in line behind what may be a number of cars looking to go straight along Wellington, thus trapping you in their web of waiting.
In summation, this intersection needs a four-way stop ASAP. Maybe even a set of lights.
Also, "hey Mark, did you write this simply because you were caught for an ungodly amount of time at this intersection the other day?" Yes. What's it to ya? For that matter, what's up with the construction on Bloor between Avenue and Yonge? What's the matter Toronto, was Bloor Street not quite congested enough for your liking? It started out as a rebuild of the Yonge/Bloor corner, but now it's spread like an infection all the way down the street to the ROM. I can't help but think that this is somehow a Ghostbusters II-esque scenario here. Is the ROM's ugly-ass extension really just mood slime that is slowly growing over the original building? Did the ROM recently unveil a creepy-ass painting of a European warlord?
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I wish I could buy stock in things like "while I think 'Waving Flag' is a pretty good song now, I know I will gradually come to hate it after hearing it about 7,000,000 times on the radio over the next couple of months."
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Peter of Man Vs. Clown checks in with this hilarious recap/analysis of the impossible-to-describe new Insane Clown Posse song and video. I was thinking of doing my own breakdown of this instant masterpiece of unintentional comedy, but Peter's take on it was too good to top. SNL tried their best to spoof it last weekend in a sketch with Bobby Moynihan and host/mannequin/professional Larry Mullen impersonator Ryan Phillippe, but the original is spoof-proof --- it's just too funny on its own.
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While I'm on a Toronto topic, let's talk about the intersection of Strachan and Wellington, a.k.a. possibly the current worst-designed intersection in the city. I imagine that this was once rather a sleepy little corner, but with all of the condos on King West and the Liberty Village, traffic is zooming down Strachan at all hours. Ergo, if you're on Wellington, trying to find a window of space to get past Strachan is very difficult. Turning left onto Strachan from Wellington takes bloody forever. Even turning right onto Strachan while traveling east on Wellington is a pain due to an inexplicable curb extension that juts out and cuts Wellington from a two-lane street (through the right lane is basically a parking lane) into a one-lane street. So, if you just want to make a simple right turn, you have to get in line behind what may be a number of cars looking to go straight along Wellington, thus trapping you in their web of waiting.
In summation, this intersection needs a four-way stop ASAP. Maybe even a set of lights.
Also, "hey Mark, did you write this simply because you were caught for an ungodly amount of time at this intersection the other day?" Yes. What's it to ya? For that matter, what's up with the construction on Bloor between Avenue and Yonge? What's the matter Toronto, was Bloor Street not quite congested enough for your liking? It started out as a rebuild of the Yonge/Bloor corner, but now it's spread like an infection all the way down the street to the ROM. I can't help but think that this is somehow a Ghostbusters II-esque scenario here. Is the ROM's ugly-ass extension really just mood slime that is slowly growing over the original building? Did the ROM recently unveil a creepy-ass painting of a European warlord?
--------------------------------------------------------
I wish I could buy stock in things like "while I think 'Waving Flag' is a pretty good song now, I know I will gradually come to hate it after hearing it about 7,000,000 times on the radio over the next couple of months."
------------------------------------------------------------
Peter of Man Vs. Clown checks in with this hilarious recap/analysis of the impossible-to-describe new Insane Clown Posse song and video. I was thinking of doing my own breakdown of this instant masterpiece of unintentional comedy, but Peter's take on it was too good to top. SNL tried their best to spoof it last weekend in a sketch with Bobby Moynihan and host/mannequin/professional Larry Mullen impersonator Ryan Phillippe, but the original is spoof-proof --- it's just too funny on its own.
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3 comments:
Drake is also an up and coming Canadian rapper, who used to be on Degrassi: The Next Generation.
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.05-music-almost-famous/
Thanks for the link! And if you could provide any links to how magnets work, that would be most helpful.
As for the curb extension that turns Wellington into one lane, that's a means to calm (i.e., restrict) traffic and keep the street from becoming arterial. Offhand, I can think of another one located on Logan, south of the Danforth. But if traffic is as bad in that area as you say now, the city ought to restore that second lane or find some other means of getting traffic through there.
The Bloor street thing? That's part of a large-scale project. I was working over around Church and Bloor about two years ago and it was under the same kind of construction. It's just gradually moving west, to end up who knows where.
"Up-and-coming Canadian rapper" and "used to be on Degrassi" pretty much guarantee that I'll never give a crap about this guy.
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