Category Archives: Killer Cars

Of Reyner Banham and Charlie Mingus

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(We here at All Fried Up in the Big Smoke are doing our damnedest to adhere to a very strict American boycott policy. Since we don’t pay anyone for contributing to this site, technically speaking, we’re not purchasing a U.S. product with today’s post. And besides, our Los Angeles correspondent, Ned Teitelbaum, is one of the good ones. With the subject matter being public transit, a favourite topic of ours, look at it as endeavouring to build a bridge between two beefing allies, no tolls applied.)

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Charles Mingus gave free concerts on the Red Car. Reyner Banham missed it. Continue reading →

Toronto, the Bad Driving

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Driving. (A companion piece to a post from last September).

I recently spent a few weeks overseas, some of the time in a couple cities comparable in size to Toronto. Sydney, Australia and Singapore.

In neither place did I ever sit behind the wheel of a car, doing the actual driving. Mostly because the wheel was on the wrong side of the vehicle, and I may just be getting too old to handle that kind of cognitive dissonance. Motoring habits and clutch-pedal foot rusted into place. Continue reading →

Training It II

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Ten days ago or thereabouts, I wrote a prequel to this post, Training It. In it, I suggested that folks like me yours truly (because I don’t know the proper I/me grammar with that), North Americans raised with little hands-on exposure to the wider world around them, couldn’t fully appreciate an optimally functioning transit system. Continue reading →