Category Archives: Renovations and Remodeling

Renovations

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OK, so we’ve finally caved to our older demographic who have been moaning and complaining for months about how difficult our site and its black background was to read. Where we saw edgy noirish, they saw blurry. “I don’t care what you have to say,” they harped. “If you’re gonna make me squint, I ain’t reading it.”

So here. Happy now, grandpa?

We’re not completely satisfied with the look just yet, and would like to add more things like blog rolls and links to all you fine people and sites out there that we read and would like to promote . We’re just kind of retarded technologically speaking, and we’re not being glib with that word either. It’s taken us all weekend just to arrive at the changes you’re looking at. So, clearly the process is going to be a torturous one. Please bear with us.

— pleadingly submitted by Cityslikr

ExTreme Makeover: New Orleans

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Its [New Orleans) frauds and farces represent some of American’s worst excesses and affronts. But, day by day, year by year, New Orleans also conjures moments of artistic clarity and urban transcendence that are the best that Americans as a people can hope for. That is, if we who bare witness to them are not too jaded, too spent, too stupid to recognize them for what they are.

— Creighton Bernette (John Goodman), Treme.

I’d hardly think to offer a thoughtful analysis of the city of New Orleans after a quick jaunt there that left me less full of insight than it did life threatening fatty foods and rum induced bleary-eyed incoherence. But its future fate is something anyone interested in urban affairs should watch with keen interest. The dynamics that once made the city a cultural touchstone – race, economics, an international port of call – are currently undergoing highly charged changes that are either necessary for its survival as a vital, forward looking city or nothing short of an ethno-class cleansing. Or do such divisions have to be so starkly drawn?

The worry to some is that, post-Katrina, New Orleans simply becomes a gentrified tourist destination. A Cajun Orlando where the world comes to party like they’re all still college undergrads and watch the inhabitants perform nothing but past glories. Play When the Saints Go Marching In again while I eat a bag of beignets, will you? Museum New Orleans, monument to past glories.

There’s little room for innovation or adaptation within that framework. New Orleans as it was not how it could be. If you’re not part of that (re)vision then there’s no place for you in the new New Orleans. Play music. Wait tables. Deal blackjack. Hail taxicabs. If you don’t want to be part of that, well, there are other cities in other parts of the country that you can move to. Here, the past is the future. Minus, of course, the unsavoury, unpleasant bits.

That’s all too harsh and in no way so black and white. But it is a struggle that we should all be aware of, not just in New Orleans, but wherever we live. How do we embrace those things that made our homes, neighbourhoods, communities livable, vital and, in some cases, great without smothering them or not allowing for new ideas and approaches to help bring about necessary improvements to all our lives? Building on the past instead of plaster casting it and elevating it on a pedestal to be gazed upon but not touched.

Or maybe that’s just the whisky sours talking.

— almost soberly submitted by Cityslikr

Let’s Hear It For A Job Well Done

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Amidst all the irate rhetoric in the air about the state of this city’s services, whether it be the TTC or, well, the TTC… there’s been a lot of bitching about the TTC of late… I think a shout out should be made when something positive catches your attention. A reminder to all the nabobs of negativity out there that Toronto runs pretty darn well and our needs are met with an efficient routine that goes largely unnoticed until it doesn’t, usually when something goes wrong which, as I’m trying to say in this long, convoluted introduction occurs less often than we might think. Or that politicians running for office would like us to think in order that we vote for them.

It was garbage night in my neighbourhood last night and, as is my wont, I threw my cape on up over my shoulders, and went out for a stroll to garbage pick, I’ll be frank. A treasure hunt for artifacts that others deem to be extraneous; my own personal recycling program. Springtime is a particularly bountiful period for this as people are more prone to junking stuff that has driven them batty over the long winter season, cramped up with it in close quarters as they were.

Making the rounds last evening, I was stopped up in front of a house, struck silent and motionless by the sheer amount of content sitting at curbside. It was not anything that I was on the lookout for, an old art deco floor lamp, for example, or LPs of long forgotten artists, just simply everyday detritus that must be dealt with every week (or bi-weekly as the case may be) from every house, on every street, in every neighbourhood. Tonight, for example, along with the compostable material in the green bin and non-recyclable garbage in the black, there was yard waste. Paper bags filled with old leaves, dead plants, pruned clippings or clipped prunings.

At this particular house that I stood before, there were 9 of these paper bags, all full. In addition to which, there were two neatly tied bundles of branches that clearly came from the dogwood which stood just back further up the front yard. And a Christmas tree, looking shockingly and robustly green. How is that even possible? Why would anyone still have a Christmas tree in April?

Moreover, there was no way in hell this was all going to be picked up tomorrow morning, I thought. It’s too much. Too, too much. What if everyone in every house on every street in every neighbourhood chucked away this amount of refuse, fully expecting it to be hauled away to some miracle location? The work would be non-stop and ultimately impossible to stay on top of.

Besides, haven’t we had it drummed into our subconsciousness that the city workers who do this job are lazy, shiftless, strike-taking ne’er-do-wells who are simply underworked and overpaid? No way, no how was this heap sitting out in front of this house all going to be taken away in one trip tomorrow morning.

Yet, gone it was as I took a slight detour up the street on my morning run early today. All of it. Not a twig left behind. Even the Christmas tree.

As we have pointed out in an earlier post here, all of this for a mere $6.39 a day for Toronto homeowners (in addition to all the other services we receive). What’s there to bitch about, people? Yes, it’s their job and they’re doing it. Could it be done cheaper? I guess so, although I’m still waiting for someone to send me the numbers to show where and how that’s being done. The only way it could be is to pay people less for doing the exact same job. Why would we want to do that? How does reducing people’s wages and benefits add to the well-being of this city?

Should they have the right to strike and inconvenience us all? Call me old school and a traditionalist but I say yes. It seems to be the best, most cost effective way we’ve come up with to maintain a healthy equilibrium in the ongoing struggle between management and workers. The alternative is simply a one-sided, take it or leave dynamic that never encourages but only instills fear and resentment. That’s a tone that plays well on the campaign trail, even to a larger degree during times of economic uncertainty like this one, but ultimately leads to piss poor governing.

Before giving in to that frame of mind, take a moment and think about all the things that go unnoticed throughout the course of one day and marvel at just how smoothly our city does in fact operate.

— chidingly submitted by Urban Sophisticat