Protesting the shutdown of Shepperd line

Something is afoot!
Somebody is staging a protest for the shutdown of the shepperd line.

Interesting objects: RDIF payment system at the TTC

This is interesting. You can pay via a little keychain fob at union
station.

Dimsum @ Dim Sum

Hmmm .... good.

Poetry Exercises

I was so cock sure that I had plateaued with poetry. I told David that I wanted to learn about prose. he gave one of his non-judgemental, impassive looks and changed the topic.

I finally got around to looking at the second set of notes he gave out.

Shit.

Those excerises aren't lala writing games I am used to. This is really hard shit.

One involved writing a poem and re-writing it in different, diergent meters.

Anotherinvolved ... well ... words I didn't know the meaning of. Most were some convoluted multi part word games with prompts and multiple rewrites that shifts the piece from tone to tone, POV to POV.

It will take me a whole year to do all of these.

Fuck. I don't even know if I am technically able to do all of them.

I fell like I am at square one with poetry again.

My plateau turned out to be a chasm and I need to learn how to climb out.

BMV - Annex

I was in BMV today, browsing. I noticed that the books we read are really different from those in SF. Different coast, different country.

Those bookstores Thea took me to in the Mission are really cool. The selections are amazing. In comparison, even BMV and Eliot's and Seekers seems asisnine.

I asked the booksellers about it and they tell me that it is just the reality of the Canadian book market. In the fiction section, there were only line after line of Peguin Classics and NYT bestsellers. In SF they seem to be able to sell novels and poems that can't have appeal to more than a few thousand people in the world.

This about Toronto really sucks.

Who is a Torontonian anyways?

I was buying a Shawarma at the JCC on Bloor and Spadina. The guy behind the counter started talking to me. He was going clubbing tonight. We talked about girls. I told him that SF was shit and how they don't have a club district and how the women are more beautiful in Toronto.

I gave him a smug grin and knowing look that said, "you know what I mean."

He didn't know what I mean.

He just came from Lebanon six months ago, he told me, and has been in St. Catherines. This is his first week here.

I didn't believe him. He had to say it twice more before I did. Whoa. He just seems so Toronto.

Then I thought about it and what makes Toronto -- Toronto -- is that most are from somewhere else.

He is Toronto, just as I am Toronto, or anyone else who declare some residency here is Toronto. Immigrants, refugees, East Coasters running away, high blood from Rosedale, Jane and Finch.

It's just the Toronto state of mind.

Leeliana

Walked past St. Paul's and saw all the AA people outside smoking. Remember that Leelee has her intermediate class tonight. I haven't seen her in a long time. I vacilliated outside. A little embarrassed for not dancing for so long. I walked inside and everything is still the same.

She is till wearing the same baby blue tanktop and yoga pants, coaching even the most experienced dancers the basics.

I don't care what James says. She is a great instructor. She puses even the most beginning dancers to be the best. She forces an exactitude for everything. I am going back. Come hell or high water.

Dropped by very quickly at Winner's

Quick price comparison between here and TJ Max/Marschalls. WIth the exchange reates right now. Hands down. No shopping in Canada for me if I am planning to go south again.

They were selling Levi 501's at the Marshall's in Pittsburgh for $12.99. At the Winner's in Yonge and Sheppard Centre, they were going for $19.99. Even at $.90/$1, Winner's still more expensive.

Still recovering

Last 4 days had been sheer horror as I tried to catch up on all my work at school. I think being a tech communicator is all about planning, achieving business objectives, and meeting project milestones.

I've been fucking up all that shit. Still horribly jetlagged. Couldn't sleep last night till 5AM. Still working out on Pacific Standard Time. Makes it real hard.

I am only meeting 60% of current milestones at school. Have a super embarrasing time explaining to instructors. Feel like this is reflecting on me badly. Though more so that it is a bit of an ego hit.

Life is not reflecting my Ganntt charts.

Dundas Station, TTC

Back! Toronto is so hot. 32 C. I had to shed my brown coat I wore all week in SF. I put away all my American money. Took $40 CDN from a CIBC machine. Called home. My little cousins are here.

The Toronto women in skirts are pretty. The A/C air is cool. I am on a subway train, totting a hunting bag and a laptop case. Nobody cares. I love T.O.

Niagra Falls, Canada

Slept thru all the way except for the one-hour layover in Erie and another hour in Buffalo.

Gave a homeless guy in Erie $6. Unprecedented for me. I hate giving money to the homeless, but we were talking. He had me when he told me that was an alien from another planet. Told me that his real father was Jesus Christ. He also promised me that he will give me $20 the next time he sees me. Like fishes and loaves.

And he sounded so sincere about everything.

He shook my hand and hug me before jumping on his trolley bus. He also blessed me. He drew the sign of the cross on my forehead.

In Buffalo, nothing happened except the pretty girl with the Coach bag. She thought I was looking at her. I was looking at her purse. Fuck. That thing was more expensive than most of the luggage under the bus. What was she doing on the coach?

The border was of slight interest. They built a little customs building now. Staffed all by regulars. The inspectors looked dry and pissed off. That’s why I didn’t stay!

Pittsburgh Greyhound Station

I was eating a hamburger at the cafeteria. A staff member came to clear all the tables. I tried to help by putting the little bits of garbage into the brown paper bag my hamburger came in.

“No, no, no,” the women in the apron yelled at me.

She took out all the garbage from the paper bag that was not mine and took them all away. And left all my garbage on the table.

I was displease only by the fact that she felt the need to do that.

Pittsburgh Again

Back on the East Coast. 28X bus again. Sunrise. Very groggy. Not yet 4AM in SF. I slept poorly on the plane. Flight was rocky.

Over Nebraska were storm clouds. Terrible flashes. I thought about what would happen if the plane got hit. Pilots lose all control. Plane stumbles into the flat plates of America.

In the last moment, would I be calm? Where would I find faith to hold on to sanity when doom comes and I am all alone?

All over SF

Spent most of the day talking to Thea as we toured Mission and Castro. She, far more keen than I, actually bothered to ask people at the workshop who lived in the Bay Area what their favourites places to go are.

This second trip to the Mission was therefore much more pleasant. Thanks Thea!

Ate lunch at some hipster place that was actually quite good.

We went to some really cool bookstores in the Mission.

She chastised me for being overcritical of SF. Then she peer-pressured me to sit on grass. We compromised and sat on dried, brown grass. Green grass would be too much for me.

Then we walked over to Castro. Dull Castro. I had to take the F Streetcar back to my hotel for luggage.

Before reaching the station, I complained about the geriatric feel of the place. I pointed out to the bar I was in yesterday and how old and pirate-like the men inside were. She said, “well, maybe that ‘bears welcome’ sign has a lot to do with it.”

Boy, was my face red. I hate to be wrong....

City Lights Books

With sticky hands I entered the sanctum. It’s very ... posh. Hardwood floors and flood lights. Except for the young people, everybody seems to make 6-figs. I was here till midnight. Three very interesting things happened (sticky hands, the 14 years old girl, the boy from Tennessee.) I am going to write them out as a separate piece cuz they are long.

Beat Museum

I don’t know what to say. This bare commercial space is the Beat Museum? Twenty editions of Howl in the gift shop. I went over and made fun of the Indie Rock white kid who worked cash. He didn’t get it.

I left.

Jack Kerouac Lane

Still no bathroom but.
Didn’t know Kerouac liked Chinese poetry THAT much. Drunken revelry poems. Friends.

Did he know that the word from that poem that got translated to “good friends” is a very far mark from the much more endearing meaning in Chinese? “The-one-who-knew-me-like-I-knew-me” it should be instead.

Columbus and Broadway

Running around trying to find a bathroom. My hands are still sticky from the sandwich and I feel like I need clean hands to go inside City Lights Bookstore.

On the Pier, overlooking Alcatraz

I am eating a shrimp and crab sandwich
It's good Cheap
Seven-fifty

Made by Chinese people
without care

But very very good

Made with confidence
of known quality
method practised by million unreflective seconds

the shrimp as good as crab

I look over to the lights of Alcatraz
A lone beacon warning ships away
I lit a camel

This is the best moment I had in SF

Marina

The sun is setting over Golden Gate. Mist shrouded, sounds of waves and gulls. Fighting. Beautiful. But this ocean smells different than the ocean of my childhood. Lack of brine in the breeze. Cool and does not sting. So this is the difference between the East and West.

On Powell-Hyde Streetcar

Finally tried the cable car. With my MUNI pass, it was only $1 extra. Normal fare is $5.

Feels like being on a living museum. Interesting. Loud. Rickety. Like the double-deckers in Macau.

Funny Incident. Some milkfed with a red face kept falling over people. He would blame the driver every time.

"Drive like a maniac," he muttered repeatedly,

He is 217 lbs, he told another passenger. If his IQ was half his weight, he might be ok. He is standing on the alley, toes pointed forward to the front of the car, half-inch apart. His center of gravity is kept at his chest. He keeps trying to compensate by gripping he overhead bars with his white-white knuckles.

I wanted to slap him. Then slap his stupid wife for dressing him in a stained blue sweatshirt tucked into deep blue Eddy Bauer jeans.

I hope they're both infertile.

Castro

Castro is kind of like CHinatown. Lots of history, great institutions and communty. I can't say I like it. It's boring here. Good, expensive shopping. Awesome clothes, and books, and videos. It's a good place to live. But wha do young queer men do for fun around here?

This place is like Treasure Island. Full of grizzly men. Bald. Tight shirts bunching up wrinkled sking and a single gold hoop on the earlobes.

I went to A Different Light bookstore. Very good reading selection. I was in some sort of hardware store. What does a queer hardware store sell? Garening supplies, notebooks, and minituriezed powertools.

I went to some kind of gay Irish bar sipping Jameson's and coffee with cream. It's like a retirement home where the residents keep gving me the eye....

F-Line Streetcar on Market St.

It's interesting how San Francisco built a dedicated street car lane in their main street. I wonder if Toronto can build a streetcar like that on Yonge Street. It would alleviate some of the Yonge line rushhour jams. Good for local business as people will actually see what's on Yonge Street instead of zipping by underground. And those tramlines make people drive slower. Good all around.

Mission Street Again

Didn't go home last night till 4AM. Ate at a Guatamalan place.

Woke up too late to go to the checkout at VONA. Feel bad. Didn't get to see Diem's little kid. He looked like a fun little tyke in the picture.

Went back to Mission to a different Guatamalan place. Breakfast Huervo.

Bernal Heights

James would freak. I am in a salsa club and the competency of this place is beyond belief. This is something else.

Mission

Spent Forth of July all over. Saw the top of fireworks on Lone Mountain. Then went to Mission. Kareoke with VONA people.

Clement St.

Saw New Chinatown. Newer than the old but still small and incomparable to Scarborough.

Powell STN

What a slow and lazy city! Nothing is open till 8:30AM. Same time right now, Toronto is pushing with people.

The MUNI lady was nice and spoke to me about SF.

"One sees the mask of Justine worn by people who use innocence to avoid the harsh realities that life presents or that well up from the heart...The Justine innocent may not have felt the stings of life and therefore lives a partial consciousness, a girlish simplicity. Or, she is not capable of aggression and will not intentionally hurt anyone under any circumstances. Such sensitive people cannot edit a manuscript or correct a student's paper or honestly advise a friend, precisely because they cannot be agent of hurt, even with the best of motives."

--Thomas Moore

Fillmore Jazz Festival

Went thru it on my way to VONA. Quaint. I does not compare (if I must compare) to Taste of the Danforth. More like the Little Italy thing on College West. Interesting to see the collaboration of Japanese- and Black-Americans.

Fat Americans

No joke. They are fat.

I was at Marshall's again today because it was too cold in SF.
I have a really hard time buying clothes here: all the sizes are either L or XL or even XXL.

A little frustrated, I went to the kids section, picked up a Kids XL, and slipped it on. Fit perfect around the shoulders and al little bit of slack around the waist. It's suppose to be a skin-tight for atheletic kids....

Too much $6 burgers.

Fisherman's Wharf - Jefferson St.

Saw the whole place in the dark under the full moonlight. Everything is closed but still pretty.
Took the F-streetcar by the water so I can see all the piers on the Embarcadero.

North Beach - Union & Filbert

Saw my first American-style police chase -- like something right out of Grand Theft Auto.

A White Ford Explorer almost sideswipe the electric bus I was on. SFPD chasing after.

North Beach

In the Little Italy of SF, North Beach.
I guess it's kind of nice. No real difference from College Street.
Same as always in the US, gritty.

I actually slept in all day today, so this is my second meal. Very nice. First time I actually ate cabbage sprouts and liked it.