Be a tourist in my own city

I made my way downtown a few days ago, with the hopes of checking out a few CONTACT shows. I had mapped out a rough itinerary and was on my way. Besides the shows, which were interesting, and quite a distance apart, I took joy in the little things about the day…the way apple blossoms drifted off a blooming tree and looked like snow in the middle of Spring…the row of construction workers that sat on a window ledge while having their lunches, which instantly made me think of Men on a Girder Having Lunch as I walked past and smiled to myself…the TTC subway conductor, who smiled at me as I made my way off the platform, so sweet and innocent…the almost neon yellow coloured feet of a seagull…the brightly coloured duck that snuck up behind me as I ate a cookie on the grass (a. What was a duck doing in Nathan Plillips Square? b. Did he really think that I was going to share my cookie?)...the cool breeze the subway makes as it comes into the station, that causes my hair to dance and float…the sweet relief my feet felt once I sat in the car after a fantastic day and made my way home.

I have a pretty big family and it’s quite difficult to get together with everone on a consistent basis…so we’ve decided that every beginning of the year all the cousins are going to go out as a group, have dinner, maybe see a game and have a jolly ol’ time. This was the second year but the first time for me…I missed last year. We went to dinner and to see a Toronto Marlies game…so much fun! I’m pretty sure that it’ll be our ritual. My oldest cousin goes on a regular basis so we got fantastic seats…right beside home bench, with first and second row. We saw little “Timbit” players…so cute. Anyway, it was fun and something I consider doing more often.

I got a really great Christmas gift from my older brother…platinum seats to a Leafs game…so much fun! I’ve been wanting to go to another game for a while now. We went to dinner at this really great Italian restaurant not too far from the Air Canada Centre. _{They made pretty good pizza…but the service and ambiance were great!}

Our seats were fantastic…it was great to actually be able to see player’s faces. With a $6.00 pack of peanut M&M’s and a $4.00 bottle of water we were set to watch the game. We laughed and cheered…took a few picks and joked about being from Alabama…no offence to anyone who is actually from Alabama…I just like making the accent.

It was a great time…and one that I’m sure we’ll both cherish. Plus the Leafs won 3-2 against Minnesota…kept us on the edge of our seats the whole night.

Casa Loma, a famous mansion in Toronto, has ‘ghost walks’ every year for Halloween…It sounded promising, however, for $12 I pretty much had some fun laughing with my friends…could have done that on $0.93.

...when you have those moments of serendipity…those happy little accidents that you love?...well finding out about nuit blanche was one of those serendipitous moments. Being a tourist in my own city has been a rewarding experience and I’ve taken every opportunity to go and do things. So when I attended Word on the Street, a great book fair with free talks and cheap book sales and heap loads in information held on the streets of Toronto…well Queen’s Park…I was also informed of nuit blanche which had been advertised as “a free all-night contemporary art thing”...how great is that? I love that it was referred to as an ‘art thing’. So it’s safe to say that I would have never really known about it had I not gone to Word on the Street. The thing is that nb was advertised in may places…the evening news, the AGO ’s latest handout…and I only noticed them because I had read about it a few days prior.

While I was excited to go and hang out for a good chunk of the night I was a little taken back by the lack of adventurous people in my life…I could think of no one who would want to go to this…all say one…my great friend Jen…my travel buddy and laugh riot extrodinar…(you’ve gotta feel sorry for people who pass this stuff up!).

So, we made our way down…guide in hand, complete with dog-eared pages. Our first stop was Hold That Thought by Kelly Mark. Written in capital white neon lights above the entrance of a gothic church “HOLD THAT THOUGHT” enforces the idea that “when you try to hold a thought the mind wanders, other thoughts intrude and displace…thoughts flow through our minds in the same way that blood flows through our veins.”…We also went back to see the inside of the church as well…very beautiful.
We made our way down to Yonge St. to the Toronto Reference Library where we saw a gallery exhibition, Culture from the Ground Up, of grass roots posters that had been pulled off of the lamp poles of Toronto. Protests of the Vietnam War and draft, the Spadina expressway expansion and advertisement for Rochdale College adorned the walls as a graffiti artist held a demonstration and spoke outside.

On our way back down Bloor St. we stopped to check out the Gardiner Museum of ceramic art. We created a watercolour in the lobby and messed around with clay in the lower lever…Jen made a pretty little dish for her rings and I made a pen holder shaped as a clenched fist…which my brother has claimed…that was a fun, creative stop!

Crossing the street we were in search of my next favourite amoung the many choices, as time was running out (we had to be back on the subway before it closed at 1:30). With street meat and mock-street meat in hand we roamed the back streets of the ROM in search of a path known as ‘Philosopher’s Walk’ and came across a guy playing a ‘piano’ made from a tube with warm water sprouting from holes that had been drilled into it…very cool…but we were in search of fog!...yes, we were looking for a piece by Fujiko Nakaya titled Fog in Toronto #71624. Walking along and not really knowing where it was that we were going, we laughed to each other and scurried down the set of stairs when we heard a young guy with a puzzled voice say…”I’ve never seen so many people excited about…fog!” We knew that we were in the right place. The fog was beautiful and it changed by appearing and disappearing as the elements of the outdoors changed, (check out makeupanid ’s photos on flickr!...there’s even one of the piano). We found a small, white, doll-type thing just sitting in a tree at one point as we walked through the fog…and made him our own little art piece as a contribution to nuit blanche by leaving him at our next stop for someone else to find. On our way there, however, we couldn’t help but laugh at a group of obviously drunk guys in a taxi cab as they drove by…“Don’t look at us! We’re not art!”…“Are we art??”…some might have seen it as inappropriate and ignorant, but it was just plain old funny! Heading into the ‘Club Excellence’ (not worth a link!) hosted by the French Embassy we were taken back by the fact that it was more like a Smart Car dealership than an art exhibition. What a scam!

Down the street and to the left of OCAD we were awaken by the spirit of the night once again as groups participated in jumbo twister and two lads played with an oversized chessboard…which reminded me of the time that I played jumbo chess in Hofgarten in Innsbruck, Austria with Paul. Our magical night was coming to a close. With little less than half an hour to go we searched for Adrian Blackwell’s Model for a Public Space (speaker). As a “circular, ramping seating structure, the piece is built to facilitate conversation between large numbers of people sitting in close proximity to one another.” We joined the group of people and listened in on the discussion of what a night such as this means for the arts. Essentially, how do the arts maintain their essence while accepting corporate sponsorship? As an artist I have fought with this issue myself a few times. We stood and listened with keen ears for quite a while as the cool night sky circled above our heads. Noticing the time we decided that we needed to get going. Before we did, however, we took our “5 minutes”, an idea that we had developed while in Europe. We sat on a picnic table and with the C.N. Tower peaking above the trees to our right and the busy movement of people to our backs we enjoyed the cool night air. We continued the conversation that we had just listened in on, feeling more comfortable with expressing our ideas now. We realized that we were in a world full of art and that it is out there for people to see and explore…if they want to.

...I realized that I’ve been doing a lot within my city lately…between conferences, fairs and festivals, I have gone to something just about every weekend for the past three weeks…and it feels great…being a tourist is great!

Throughout my travels I have always thought that other cities were more exciting and fun filled than my own…with so much to see and do there was never a spare moment. Although Toronto is a pretty cool place, I never really though that it could compare to the other places that I’ve been. Oh, how wrong I was! Within the last few weeks I’ve really focused on attending events within T.O., maybe it’s because of the spare time that I now have, or maybe it’s because there’s a lot going on now and it’s kind of hard to not do SOMETHING. Honestly though, I don’t think that many people do do anything, even if it’s at their front door step. It’s strange…when I go someplace to visit I make the extra effort, as a tourist, to see and do the special things, or even do the common-everyday-local-type things, within that place. In my own city, however, I rarely, if ever actually go out of my way to take guided tours, attend free talks or sit under the C.N. Tower and enjoy the view!

So…I’ve realized that while I may not have enough money to go vacationing in some far away place, I do have enough to take the subway down to explore my own urban home turf.

My first of hopefully many adventures began with Race in the City. Our time was horrible and embarrassing, but we finished it, and by golly we had fun!...sort of.