RubyFringe: Day 0
Friday, July 18, 2008
We drove up from Albany Thursday and had a pretty good drive: a little longer than I would have wanted, but interesting once we crossed the border. The entire cultural milieu is different enough to make us feel that we are in another country, but similar enough to jar when faced with ads for American big box stores and chains. The Canadians put up some helpful signs to assist Americans with the traumatic adjustment to the metric system. Don’t want anyone driving 100 MPH when the speed limit is only 100 KPH!
Toronto is big. Our hotel is in the heart of what used to be China town and the entire motif of the hotel is Chinese. You can even get Congee for breakfast. There are tons of great inexpensive asian restaurants within a block or two of the hotel.
We checked in late in the afternoon, and took the time to look around before looking to get dinner and explore the vicinity of our hotel. The main downtown shopping strip and indoor mall are located nearby, so we had to check it out, moths drawn to the consumerism flame. The weather is beastly: mid to high 80’s with high humidity. So walking around in this gave us a big thirst pretty quickly. We stopped at a bar called “Elephant and Castle”, which had friendly and comforting echoes of great public houses in England, intentional I’m sure. I had a nice Boddie’s and Linda had a Strongbow, both really refreshing. Our enjoyable interlude was cut short when an employee managed to trip the fire alarm and could not turn it off. A very loud siren and alarm ensued, and we left in time to see the local fire company show up and get very pissed.
Dinner was at a restaurant that was recommended in a blog attached to the RubyFringe main site. Good ideas for cheap eats, as the world famous restaurant in the hotel would bankrupt an emperor! We had a hard time deciding what to eat as we wanted to have something we could not get in Albany, and were drawn from one exotic cuisine to another as we walked down the street. We bailed out and had to “settle” for exquisite chinese.
Friday morning involved an expedition to the Kensington Market area, where we searched for breakfast, but wandered around long enough that our first meal ended up being a dim-sum lunch that was superb. We got there just in time to avoid a huge crush as the lunchtime crowd showed up. We initially ordered from the menu, but as the pace picked up, carts of dim-sum flew by and tempted us with every kind of delight. As we were near the kitchen, we always got first pick as the carts came out.
After lunch we headed to Bloor and Bathhust streets to find a well recommended comic and graphic novel store “The Beguiling”. It is a really great store, with a big selection of European comics and independents. Very knowledgeable staff as well. We walked around for a while then made our way back down to Dundas street and back over to the hotel to get ready for our first RubyFringe-related event.
We tried to restore our humidity-wilted selves back at the hotel, then headed out down Queen street to the Rhino bar for FAILcamp, kind of like AA for failure as opposed to drinking: Talk about your failure, Own the problem, and go over lessons learned. Add beer and lots of laughter ensues.
Then we hopped back on the streetcar to make it to the first official RubyFringe event, the welcome party at the “Amsterdam Brewery”. Housed in an old warehouse just off the main railyard in Toronto, it is a great steampunk event space: Brick, steel trusses, giant ventilator fans combined with projection screens and improvised electronic music. Great beer and wonderful food!
Until next time,
Tom Porter