Island hopping

I. A Wedding and Happy Times

We just returned home after 4 days in Toronto to celebrate the wedding of our friends Steve and Lilla. They were married at the Algonquin Island Clubhouse on the Toronto Islands. This is a neat destination, a kilometre or less off the Lake Ontario lakefront, a stone’s throw (if you have a really strong arm and a really light stone) from downtown. It’s downright bucolic there, on Algonquin Island anyway (that part is 100% residential with lots of pretty little cottages): no cars, wooded, and just incredibly peaceful. Here’s a shot of the bride and groom just as the sun was breaking through the crowds:

The officiant was from the Humanist Association, which is interesting since we also used a Humanist “minister” for our wedding in 2003, which Steve and Lilla both attended. There were lots of good people, good food, good tunes, and loving vibes there. I said it before, of course, but will say again: Love and best wishes to the newly marrieds.

Since we had such a spectacular view of the skyline I wanted to take some pics of it, but the weather wasn’t very cooperative. It was humid and very hazy, so the best I could do was this one of Brian and me:

And there ya go.

SO we stayed at the Town Inn Suites just north of the main strip in the Gay Village, 620 Church, and it was really quite nice, with separate bedroom and living areas (important since Brian brought work and I wanted to sleeeeeep) and a very comfortable, by hotel standards, bed. Rate was very decent, and yeah, I’d stay again. High points of the trip were the wedding of course, seeing friends (Ed, Teresa, Brian #2 (T’s bf) and Dennis), roti and doubles at Island Foods on Friday night (we went to the one on Dundas instead of out standby at King and Dufferin, and it was just as good as King and Duff, this time at least), pizza at Amato (the Yonge St location- it is a DUMP, but their made-to-order pies are incredible, so much better than their slices), seeing the new ROM, and doing lots and lots of walking in the hot-but-not-too-humid, once things blew through Saturday night, weather. It was a very full few days, and man, WE LOVE TORONTO.

II. The Coffee Challenge

But not all was sweetness and light, and as happens too often in my life these days, the problem was coffee. There is one excellent cafe that I am not going to name, but it’s on Granby off Church and its owner seems to hate having customers — well, a customer, namely yours truly — who know something about coffee and dare to attempt a human discussion about coffee, and manages to ignore me when I am, literally, two feet from his face. I’ve suffered this rudeness on prior visits but was willing to give him another chance because his coffee is the only game in town, a town with generally horrid coffee. I decide I will pull this off by not even attempting chat with him, but my plans didn’t go as, uhm, planned. Here is an attempt at the script from Saturday morning.

One guy in line ahead of me and Owner is pulling what looks like a latte to go. I get in line.

Owner: What can I get you?
Me: Cappuccino.
Owner: (after saying something to other customer and not having, in any way, acknowledged that I’d ordered something) How are you doin? (NOTE that he says this while looking AT THE LATTE, and not at me)
Me: (Confused) Are you asking me?
Owner: You’re that guy from out of town, right?
(“That guy from out of town.” Yes, there is only one of us.)
Me: Well, yeah, I’m John from Calgary. I’ve been in here lots of times when I visit, I was here in February.
(Silence. He’s finishing assembling the latte.)
Me: Oh, and that was for here.
Owner: (Pointing to guy in front of me) This is HIS.
(Okay, I can SEE you’re making this guy his drink, but you’ve not even NODDED about my order and I don’t have a CLUE as to whether you know what I’ve ordered or whether it’s for here or not.)
Me: Right. Hey, you really renovated this place!
(and yeah, I will admit that it looks great)
Owner: Yep, it took three weeks.
(okay, three weeks is nothing but whatever)
Me: Wow, it’s great you could get the contractors lined up to get it done that fast.
(silence)
Me: It looks fantastic- it’s a huge improvement.
(silence)
Me: It seems more spacious now.
Owner: Oh hey, Mike! (to the customer who’s now lined up behind me and taken the responsibility off him to respond to me as if I am an actual human being).

And the cappuccino was 8 frigging ounces, not 5 or 6 like any “champion barista” should know, and it was WAY too hot, so I had to drink it slowly and witness him make small talk with regulars who merited humane treatment, for some reason.

And for the record: Yes, I think that everybody should like me.

And so I will not give this place another penny of my business. Problem is, espresso in Toronto is generally horrible, all one click of stale grounds, “tamped” with the grinder attachment, filthy steamwands… I had an espresso at one branch of Lettieri that actually had a La Marzocco Linea (a great machine, very very rare in TO) that came out like water, no other way to describe it. I did have one really excellent espresso, at a place on Mt Pleasant called Il Gelatiere (647 Mt Pleasant, at Hillsdale, south of Eglinton) that had not only fantastic gelato (FANTASTIC!), but also very good espresso from Santos in Rome made on a spotless Elektra Modern. I’ve learned to steer clear of Italian beans but these were perfect, and a single shot was a perfect ounce. Oh, I also had a great macchiato at the brand new Aroma Espresso Bar in the Annex (wow, good espresso in the Annex!!), on Bloor east of the Bloor Cinema. I’ll be back.

Off to the Folk Fest and then on to T.O.

Today is the first day of the Calgary Folk Festival; tonight (Thursday) is just a four-act lineup on the mainstage, but sadly it’s all we’ll get to see of this one. That’s because we’re off to Toronto for the wedding of our friends Lilla and Steve. L and S were among the handful of friends (no relatives, but we weren’t really aggressive in our invitations) who showed up to ours, August 8, 2003, so we’re honouring them with our presence for theirs. It’s on the Toronto Island(s) (Algonquin Island Clubhouse), which is the best place for photographs of the skyline, so look for one or two of those.

So we’re missing one happy occasion for another, and so it goes. On the stage tonight are, among others, City and Colour, and the headliner, Rufus Wainwright. Should be great, but I am sad to be missing The Cape May and Final Fantasy. But there’ll be other opportunities.

So the concert folds at 10:00-ish and we have to be up around 4:30 for out flight- it’s 4:10 in the afternoon now, gates open in 20 minutes and I have to finish packing- so blog ya later, folks!

Leopard spots!

I just made this shot, a single pull:

The spots, the gradations in colour and mottling? Those are all good things. Things I generally haven’t seen (or maybe not been able to accomplish) with my Elektra. I made this with the Big Mountain Yirgacheffe that I discussed earlier. I ground as per usual (6 clicks above “zero” on my Rocky- “zero,” or the point at which the burrs touch, is actually 2 on this one), but I followed some advice on home-barista and didn’t pack as much coffee in the portafilter, so I had more “headspace” above the grounds than I normally do. I’m going to try to emulate this practice from now on.

Incidentally, further to the “Ethiopian” post: The Abeba was not as good as my first impressions suggested. What I was drinking, then, was actually the Abeba mixed with a few beans still in the hopper from the previous pound of Hines espresso blend. Once I got to drinking the Abeba straight, I found it harsh- bright and almost sour, and even though those beans were incredibly fresh, it had a stale edge to it, like I associate with old, old “Italian” espresso. I can’t help but wonder if it’s the roast. It was the lightest one I’ve used in this machine. The Sidamos I’ve loved and this Yirg were all full city or even “Viennese” roasts, and that might be part of the answer. More to come.

Harry Potter, how not to run a street fair, and bar food

The new Harry Potter book was, of course, released at midnight Friday night and apparently 4,000 showed up outside McNally Robinson Booksellers on Stephen Ave. They turned the street into Diagon Alley (or something like that) and it all sounds really cute. Thanks to the parents who brought kids out to the scary downtown that night instead of taking them to sanitized events at Chapters. I don’t know what Diagon Alley looks like, exactly, but I can bet it’s nothing like Chinook Centre.

So Brian and I were downtown on Saturday, had lunch at the always-delicious Han’s in Chinatown (303 Centre Street, in the City Centre mini-mall- the end of the corridor off 3rd Avenue), and went to McNally’s and bought the book.

I finished it at 6:00 this morning.

No worries. No spoilers, yet. I’ll just say that it was satisfying, and I’m glad to have my life back, but a little sad too. I also saw the new film (book 5) a week or so ago and was a little disappointed with the choices made about how to deal with such rich, and lengthy, source material. The film of book 7 comes out in 2010, so that’s something to look forward to.

Sunday was a street festival called “Sun and Salsa Festival” that takes over the Kensington area, which is a very nice, pedestrianized neighbourhood just NW of downtown. It’s sort of reminiscent the Annex in Toronto or the Glebe in Ottawa. Here’s a photo thread of it, compliments of “Surrealplaces” at skyscraperpage.com. As you can see, the area has great character and should be able to put on a great street fair.

They try, and they screw it up. This street fair has a THEME, which is idiotic for a diverse little area like this to begin with (unless that “theme” is pretty vague and inclusive), and the theme has nothing, not a single thing, to do with the community. The theme? Why, salsa! People (75,000 people) line up to but $3 bags of commercial tortilla chips and wander around to taste salsas prepared by various restaurants and other businesses. This is wrong for so many reasons.

1. The neighbourhood has no “Latin American” aspect at all, nada, aside from one absolutely horrible “Mexican” resto that was imported from that Mexican-food paradise known as Edmonton.

2. Instead of using this opportunity to promote local businesses and the BRZ, some among those businesses that might need some promoting, they’re ALL forced to push aside their “normal” offerings and make SALSA. Tibetan restaurant? No, you may NOT promote your delicious momos! You have to make SALSA. Sushi places? Put that rice away, nobody will be allowed to come near your bread and butter; you’re making that Japanese delicacy known as SALSA today.

3. There is NO FOOD! There are many of the aforementioned salsa stations, but what about lunch, what about sampling the cornucopia that is usually provided at these sorts of festivals? Nope, salsa for you or nothing.

4. The fest starts at 11 and ends at, God help us, 5:00. Sure, you could stick around and while away the evening on a patio there, but that’s true any day. Ending a “street fair” at 5:00, in July when it’s light until nearly 10:00, is STUPID.

5. Salsa Fest was the same time as a REAL Latin American event at Olympic Plaza, which I, of course, missed because I was at farking Salsa Fest.

6. People who read this might be offended because the chips are donated and this events makes money for charity. Well, look, you can collect money for charity if you want a themed charity every year- you can have collection points or you can charge merchants a small percentage of REAL food sales. I read in the paper today that Salsa Fest made $2500 for each of two charities. This is, I am sorry to say, pathetic. This event does NOTHING for local businesses, it does NOT promote Kensington at all, and the charity aspect can be accomplished with my suggestions here. $5000 for an event that attracts nearly 100,000 people is terrible.

I’ve usually missed this thing because it usually happens on the Sunday of Folk Fest. Not this year, and not last. Last year I was enthralled by the size of the crowd, I guess, and I came home with strong recommendations to everybody to check it out next year. Now, I’m embarrassed to have done that. It’s pointless, the whole thing, and a waste of an opportunity to do a great street fair in Calgary’s best inner-city neighbourhood.

So we left this fiasco and had lunch at a pub called (I’m sorry) the Regal Beagle. I am too much of a child of the ’70s not to be ashamed to admit this. But here’s the thing- THANK GOD FOR THE SMOKING BAN! This is one of those places that serves superb, cheap, abundant pub grub and I had never set foot in because of the damned smoke. Now we got to revel in fantastic chicken wings (”hotter” among the menu options) and nicely-cooked burgers with a mound of delicious fries… the burgers are served on grilled ciabatta, a great delivery system. Mine was melted swiss and ’shroom, yum, and although nothing on our plated was remotely “healthy,” it was very tasty, honest food that we can finally enjoy in smoke-free comfort. Happy ending to a disappointing morning.

Ratatouille

Visually gorgeous, funny, uplifting, life-affirming, as perfect a movie as I’ve seen. Ever.

See this movie.