Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Shawn Micallef: Toronto Mike'd #576

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Mike chats with Toronto Star columnist and Spacing co-founder Shawn Micallef about Toronto.

Welcome to episode 576 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Palma Pasta, Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business.

The Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. And Banjo Dunk from Whiskey Jack, one of the most celebrated roots country bluegrass bands in Canadian music history. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me is Toronto Star columnist and Spacing co-founder,

Sean McAuliffe. How was my Maltese accent on that? McAuliffe. That was pretty good. Yeah. Thank you. That's the first time I've pronounced something correctly. So thank you.

You can be an honorary Maltese. Well, I was telling you before I press record, this is a shout out to my buddy Joe, Joe Cheney, who I always called Joe-ciney. And then I learned it was supposed to be Cheney, but he never corrected me. So Joe introduced me to pastitsis, six and six. Yeah, it's the national pastry, savory pastry of Malta. You can get them in the Junction neighborhood of Toronto.

Yes, by Malta Park. And you can probably buy pastitsis at the Malta Bake Shop, right? Yeah, and they actually send them out to no frills across the province so not every no frills but you can the one at pacific avenue i bet there's a pacific uh right near saint cecilia's church there yeah probably there that's probably where you can pick them up okay well thanks for being here i'm gonna find out uh the answer to the first question which is from mike gamble and he wants to know he says i just need to know how he arrives by foot by ski or by bike how did you get here today if i came by ski or bike i would have been on time but i was tardy i was late uh because i came on

the ttc um which i thought i banked enough time in more than an hour. But the Islington bus, there's three of them. The 110, right? Yeah, the 110 south. And some go in some directions, but they don't all come down here to the lake. It's confusing, right? I actually don't take a lot of public transit because, ironically, I was at One Young Street between recording Hebsey's podcast and this. I was at One Young Street for a meeting not Toronto Star

but in the building and like to me it's a no brainer like I'm biking there because it's 15k each way but I hear this neck of the woods is kind of tough for TTC kind of not ideal yeah you got to rely on the buses I guess and because you're far enough away from the rapid

transit and if the bus doesn't come every 10 minutes then you you know did you ride today the rapid transit. And if the bus doesn't come every 10 minutes, then you, you know. Did you ride today? Yeah, I rode today. How were the trails? Good. No, they're very clear. In fact, I didn't even, so I have a, one of my bikes has snow tires on it for what I see and it's got good traction.

And no, I didn't need it today. I brought my other bike because it's completely dry and clear. The Murray Goodman Trail anyway. One of the nicest times to ride is when it's just a smidge below zero. So it's almost too hot today, right? Because you're wearing all your winter stuff. You're getting hot because it's like two or four degrees or something. Right.

I actually removed a layer that I've been using lately. So it was really just my T-shirt, then I had my one layer long sleeve, and then my jacket, my wind-resistant jacket thing. And it was, yeah, warm. I was toasty. Yeah, it really kind of liberates winter when you move around in it in, you know, normal ways or on skis. You don't kind of, you don't have to hunker down.

But where do you ski? Like, I mean, I'm guessing, because I saw the comment about skiing. I was thinking, like, is there skiable parts of the city right now? Like, is it just like, are we talking like AT&T and Brulee Park? Like, where are we talking here? It depends if it's during like an actual snowfall or blizzard anywhere like i skied on saturday during the one of our few blizzards we've had now uh around high park but skied all

the way along dundas to little italy because the the the shoveling can't catch up to the snow falling and you can just ski across and i only had toage, I call it taking off your skis portage, once when there was a really big salt dump. But like a day like today, you could still ski high park. It'd be a bit sticky. But yeah, any ravine system and you can go and go. Yeah, so you've got to find the ravine systems where they're not maintaining it for cyclists, right?

Because I know from example where I am right now, if I go on the waterfront trail and i head east it's they salt and plow that thing like it's going to be really clear but if i if i want to go west forget like i need the snow tires and even then some because uh it's it it depends on the weather obviously but it's pretty snowy like it could be out of bounds for a while yeah if there's if there's a if there's if it's all pavement they'll probably salt it but if it's you know pavement through like a lawn um you can usually find just a really you just need like a foot of snow on the edge of a of a cloud path and you can ski it i know i never consider does anyone ski the city like you know

i i i've been skiing in the dawn valley like underneath the prince edward viaduct at one in the morning uh by myself and a lone woman was skiing up towards me and we just kind of nodded at each other as we passed in the night um so the people are you know they're not you do kind of have the place to yourself but um over the last few years i've seen more and more people skiing like you don't have to drive an hour or two hours north uh once it snows you know the snow is here man i'm gonna enjoy this convo here what took me so long to get you on the program uh okay but i need to tell a little story here before we dive deep with you here so this is my uh my kathleen win story and this just happened this week so i was thinking i should tell the

story so i record i produce uh r Ben-Murgy's podcast. It's called Not That Kind of Rabbi. And it's very good. And he was having on as a guest Kathleen Wynne. This was a few days ago. I lost track of the week, but I'm going to say this was like maybe Tuesday. Let's pretend it was Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday.

Anyway, Ralph, all the guests come here and we record here. And Ralph was, he didn't want to have, the former premier, he didn't want to have her go to my basement. So he was like, yeah, he was self-conscious about having a guest. This is the real Ontario, the basements of Ontario. I know. And Kathleen Wynne is a real human. I don't think, you know.

But this was, you know, he's a client. And he said, can you arrange to do it somewhere else? And I happened to also produce the Humble and Fred show. So I called my, by the way, happy birthday to Humble Howard, who turns 60 today. So happy birthday, Humble Howard. But I called up my friend, Humble Howard. And I said, can I use your store? They have a place at Queensway in Islington, a storefront studio.

And I said, can we do it there? And he said, yes, of course. Excuse me. Anyway, so it was all, and Ralph arranged all this with Kathleen's staffer. So I had nothing to do with communicating anything except Ralph was happy we could do it at Queensway in Islington.

So I'm at Queensway in Islington to record it there. We're waiting for Kathleen. She's a little bit late. And I get a call from my wife who was homesick here where we're recording now. So she was here because we live here, as you can tell. And she was homesick. And she was here and there was a knock at the door. And she goes to the door in her robe because she was under the weather.

And Kathleen Wynne was at the door. So somewhere, um, Ralph Ben-Murgy's, uh, messaging to, to Kathleen and her handler, he messed up, he messed up. I didn't mess up that one,

but, uh, so Kathleen Wynne actually came here and was told, you know, you know, go to Queensway where, you know, Ralph is and Mike is.

So anyway, I just thought I'd share that story because this whole thing about, to me, just have her come here because I got the good gear here. I know we could just do it here. And the impression I got from being around Kathleen Wynne there for about an hour is that she's a real human being who would not have minded coming here. In fact, she did come here first

because she thought she was supposed to come here. Yeah, she always struck me as one of the few politicians who actually just kind of talk like a real human. But I followed a few politicians and would be politicians around when they're campaigning, going from house to house, which I'm sure Kathleen Wynne has done a lot and you meet everyone in their bathrobe,

right? And it is the most interesting thing you can do. If you ever have a chance to volunteer for like any political party, if you want to get to know the city or town that you live in, hang out with a politician, you know, looking for votes and just hang out.

On every step, you learn something new about the place you live. So she would probably, yeah, it's all normal to her to have somebody in their bathrobe and so there are, but she did wonder, where's Ralph?

Like it didn't seem, but anyway, she was a little bit too But she did wonder, where's Ralph? Like, I didn't see him. But anyway, she was a little bit too far south here. So that's my funny Kathleen. And tomorrow I have a birthday party, a family birthday party for my son who just turned 18 this week. And I plan to tell this story. I'm going to tell the story of Monica, my wife,

answering the door in her robe and Kathleen Wynn being there, which I quite enjoyed. And I opened up this episode, I opened up to questions like, let me know if you have a question for Sean, which I do for every episode, but there's a gentleman I need to address. So where's the camera here? Okay. So this message is for Matt Layden, who likes to write me emails and tweet at me. And Matt, thank you for engaging. I enjoy it. But Matt needs to understand something. He needs to understand that Sean,

you'll tell me if I'm wrong here. You're going to tell me if I'm wrong. When it comes to personnel hiring decisions at Rogers, like replacing Don Cherry on Coach's Corner, for example, Sean, for the record, do you have any influence or power in that regard? At Rogers? At Rogers, yes.

Rogers Sportsnet, to be specific. Other than complaining about my cell bill, which has never changed and only gone up, I don't think I do. Okay, so Matt, Sean has no power there, but I'm going to disclose something to Matt. I've told him this via email and via Twitter, but just to be clear once and for all that I,

even though I have people from Rogers on my podcast, I have zero, maybe less than zero. Can you get less than zero? I don't know. Zero influence over who Rogers or TSN, Bell Media, who they hire for their sports properties. I'm not in that. I don't have that power.

I think maybe Matt has overestimated my power. Maybe just sending out emails to everyone and hoping one lands at the right person. You might be right there. You could exactly be right. Dwayne writes in to say he's very happy you're coming on. And he says, I follow him on the Twitters. He seems to be a genuine advocate for your city.

So thanks, Dwayne. And that dovetails nicely with what Lewis wrote. What keeps Sean so curious about Toronto? Ah, good question. I think it was because I'm not from here. I'm from Windsor. But I'm about to have my 20th anniversary of moving up here, which is really, that went by fast.

And I think it was, you know, I moved here from a town that I knew really intimately. It's much smaller. And Toronto, I kind of knew, you know, come up for Phantom of the Opera or whatever, or a Blue Jay game at the C&E. But when I got here, I realized I didn't know it very well. And it was huge. And so I started exploring it.

And the more I explore, even 20 years later, the more the city reveals that there's more that I don't know, if that makes sense. It hasn't got boring, the exploration. Well, it's a big city, right? And yeah, I guess the more you poke around, the more things you uncover, I guess, are unearthed, right? I guess.

Yeah, there was like i forget who it was maybe it was samuel johnson or something said the something something um if a man is bored of london england not ontario you can get bored of london ontario no offense um you are bored with life right and i think the same applies to toronto you know this thing has three million people now and it's 44 kilometers wide and then you know six or seven million if you include the gta which we should uh that's a lot of people doing interesting stuff and building interesting things and hiding stuff and um it's it's sort of like an onion that you can endlessly peel you know i've lived here my whole life and i just i've given myself the moniker toronto mike

but when i when i'm in scarborough I feel like I'm in a different land. It's so foreign to me because I pretty much explore the city via bike and that means 10 trips to East York a year or something like that. But when I talk about Toronto, it's so much, even though I was at one Yonge Street, I guess that's like the border there,

but it's west of Yonge and sort of like south of like, I don't know, maybe even south of Eglinton really. Like that's sort of yonge and sort of like south of like i don't know maybe even south of eglinton really like that's sort of where i'm spending every day i'm out there a lot but uh there's so much like when i'm in scurva i feel like i'm a tourist yeah and i think a lot of people i mean that's part of the good thing about living in toronto we have these great neighborhoods all over the place and you can just kind of hang out in them and be comfortable and do all your stuff uh shopping and whatever and life um so you don't necessarily have to break out of it and and the the geography is huge um you know it's it's been partially my job to to um to search this you know look at this geography and it's like it's really big and you know i go i still

go to neighborhoods where i've never been to it been to it before. And it's like, you know, the capacity of this, this place is, is, is, uh, that's why when I think about like, how do you be the mayor of Toronto? You know, like it's so big, it's such a daunting challenge to like govern and, and, and understand this place. Right. Because if you got here 20 years ago, then you've only been here in mega city time. You, you, right. Cause right? Yeah. Yeah. Two years after. And so I, when I got here, like the,

you know, all the people who wrote about the city and talked about it, we're all, you know, in the aftermath of that. And the city was still trying to put itself together. It's interesting.

I teach at U of T a couple of civics courses and some of my students are 18, like your son. So they were born, you know, after amalgamation. And it's a, it's a historic thing that some of them

don't even know about um you know if they live in scarborough if they live in etobicoke still proud of these places identify with these places but it's still the city it's still toronto they don't have like these kind of downtown suburbs hangups as strongly as you know like older folk do no yeah i think you're absolutely right yeah um now Now, Toronto, I think you said it there, but we've often said it's a city of neighborhoods or whatever. Like what neighborhood do you live in? A little Portugal, Dufferin Grove kind of. Okay.

Okay. And do you have a, you know what? Here's what I'm going to do. My newest sponsor is a real estate agent. And he did this Q&A, basically listeners of Toronto Mike submit Toronto real estate questions, and he answers them. And I actually, this is the one that was for Mike Richards' episode, which was yesterday, episode 575. But as I was going to load in the new one for your episode, I want to ask, I want to have this Q&A air again, and then ask you about it.

and then ask you about it. So we're going to hear a minute of Austin Keitner from the Keitner Group. And then Sean, you're going to espouse your wisdom on this sucker here. So let's go. Welcome to another Real Estate Minute with Austin Keitner at the Keitner Group with Keller Williams. Sheila asks, what are the up and coming neighborhoods in Toronto where there are still deals to be had? Sheila, that's another amazing question. We get it a lot. There are a handful of up and coming opportunities and it depends what you mean by up and coming. But usually when there's municipal redevelopments happening, when there's large scale projects happening, when there's highway extensions, those are areas that are good purchases, especially if they're a long way out and you're planning to hold it for a long

period of time. So the investment strategy will definitely factor into what an up and coming area is by that person's definition. But there's deals to be had in any market because there's people, it really depends on the motivation of the seller. So when you've got an agent who's prospecting and finding off market opportunities, that's usually your best opportunity is to partner with an agent who has their finger on the pulse or to just put your finger on the pulse and make that as part of your part-time job or, or, or side gig or, or go into that full-time and actually proactively look for potential sellers. But to get more information about some of the up and coming areas that have been identified for the majority of people, or to get an assessment of what you're specific based on what your needs

are, what the best area or the best type of investment opportunity would be, just text Toronto Mike to 59559, and then we'll set that up for you. All right. So in your opinion, what are some neighborhoods in Toronto that would be, I would guess, and again, everything depends on your definition, but up and coming, like maybe new developments or... Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting i mean he's correct

about like um uh infrastructure investments you know you see it right now all along eglinton where the lrt is going to open in a couple years hopefully um there's been realtor real estate speculation all along it um the problem in toronto is like up and coming sometimes just means it's going to become unaffordable. Right? So it's like, is there where you can find that balance? It's interesting coming here to New Toronto because my first real writing gig

was for iWeekly. If you remember. I loved iWeekly. Great alt weekly that competed with. Well, shout out to Mark Weisblatt who did some writing for iWeekly. He. Great RIP. Great Alt Weekly, you know, that competed with. Well, shout out to Mark Weisblatt who did some writing

for iWeekly. He did. Anyway, I wrote a thing about New Toronto, you know, like just walking around New Toronto as I do

and like, because there's cool old Victorian homes here because it was a railway area. Right. You got the lake, you got that view downtown,

from down to downtown. Yeah, at Fifth and Waterfront, yeah. Which is gorgeous and so there was this young couple who was a friend of a friend uh you know had a couple kids and they were looking to buy out here and the bank wouldn't give them a um a a mortgage because they said yeah we've

never heard of this new toronto and so they showed them my i weekly the all weekly uh article and said oh it's up and coming and they gave him the the mortgage. And I was like, oh my god, is this how this works? So you are more powerful than we think. Right. Maybe you could help out our buddy with the Rogers Sportsnet stuff. Yeah. But I guess the up and coming places are the ones that aren't, you know, the ones that aren't

the kind of, I guess, what, the trendy sexy neighborhood. I always think of it when I bought here. And I bought here because where I wanted to go, which was kind of in a high park area, I simply couldn't afford to be there. So I ended up here just because I could still afford to be here. And I've fallen in love with this neck of the woods because, you know, as a lifetime Torontonian,

I even went to high school in Etobicoke and I still didn't know about anything like south of Lakeshore. I didn't even know this pocket really existed here. But I'm, and again, I quite like it, but I've lost track of my thought there except i found up and coming but like i think like maybe like long branch you know like like just beyond here because the if as the go train network this is kind of an interesting thing

as the go train network becomes more um frequent like you know like all day service on some of these lines if it came every 15 minutes you know places like all day service on some of these lines, if it came every 15 minutes, you know, places like Weston and all these like stops, Malton would suddenly have this easy access to downtown and the rest of the city. So I think those are the places that will really kind of like, so it's again, that's like, that's an infrastructure investment. So here in the West End, the two parts I always think are growing rapidly. The one is the Humber Bay Shores, I guess, kind of like the park lawn. I remember what that was like 15 years ago.

The motel strip, right? Yeah, right, exactly, the motel strip. Now that we're just building up, right? And I always wonder, all these people who work downtown and live there, I guess, is there a plan for some kind of a Go Hub there? Is that, like, where the Mr. Christie, is that where? There's been some talk about a Go Hub at Park Lawn.

Yeah, right where the Mr. Christie is. Which would maybe be a good idea. I mean, there's one, the closest one is, what, Mimico Station, which is too much of a walk for, you know. Yeah, it's rural York, which is kind of. Yeah, it's not a convenient, I mean, it's okay once in a while. But, yeah, I mean, that's a thing. And Liberty Village kind of has the same thing.

This is like a kind of repeating Liberty Village. These big clusters of intense density. But, you know, one of the reasons we get these things in Toronto is because there's so much of the city where you can't even put in, you know, like a two or three-story apartment house. Because it's

off-limits. Sometimes called the Yellow Belt because it's off limits, sometimes called the yellow belt because it's colored yellow in the planning maps. You know, it's only zoned for single family residential more or less. So the pressure on Toronto is all driven to these spots. Maybe if we loosened up the neighborhoods a bit, though that always gets local opposition, you know, we won't necessarily have to put everyone

who's new in the city in these places. That reminds me of the other spot, which again, I declare my West End bias because that's where I spend the majority of my time. But the Kip District, I think, is what we're calling this fancy real estate term. But yeah, right where they cleaned up that whole Dundas and is it Dundas and Kipling, I guess? Yeah, that weird intersection. Where the Westwood Theater was, right where they cleaned up that whole Dundas and, is it Dundas and Kipling, I guess?

Yeah, that weird intersection. Where the Westwood Theater was, right? Yeah, it was a tangle of 1960s style roads and it's all going to look like an urban street now. Right, right. But there's a bunch of stuff, kind of condos and stuff growing there. Yeah, I think it's kind of being built also as the Kip District and like the new downtown of Eglinton, sorry, of Etobicoke.

Like, you know, the Etobicoke City Center, the old city hall is kind of off. Burnhamthorpe and East Mall? Yeah, East Mall. Or West Mall. West Mall, right. You can see it as you, you know, fly by on the 427. 27 um but it's just kind of alone out there where it doesn't have that kind of you know like residential commercial cluster um that the that the kip the kip i always think sometimes that the the you know the antipathy people have towards new condos is because they're named so ridiculously

right they're like just let's come up with adult names for condos. Somebody, because my brother rents in the Kip district. That's how I know the name. But somebody said it was trying to be like the new Liberty Village, basically. More affordable, I guess. Well, when you get off the Kipling subway and you're like standing on the platform, maybe waiting for one of the buses or the old airport rocket, which still goes. It's every time I've been there, it's like, wow, another one. It's like the thicket, I sometimes think of them as forests.

The forest of buildings is growing ever thicker by the month, it seems. Okay, so I named a couple that I see in the West End, but is there any pockets like that that I should be aware of happening east of Yonge? East of Yonge, does it exist? As a fellow West, I used to live happening uh like east of young east of young does it exist as a as a fellow west i used to live i lived am i speaking to an a fellow west of young biased guy or i lived east of young for 10 years until recently and it's very quickly how your allegiance has changed um i think i think the first few neighborhoods in Scarborough are going to be kind of interesting to watch as this kind of wave of gentrification of places that are hot and trendy.

Because there's a lot of really neat, older, you know, post-war homes in these neighborhoods that are relatively close to downtown, that you're relatively close to say you could take a quick bus to warden station or or or uh victoria park um those those kind of neighborhoods i think you're gonna uh people will be it'll be like the way leslieville has been for the last 10 years you know but it sounds like if uh if we don't change the bylaw zoning or whatever then we're gonna at some point we'll be full right like the city will be full, like no more joiners. Is this where we get to? That's, that's, that's why a question I always ask people who say,

yeah, we don't, who don't want more buildings around or don't want, you know, an apartment, a small apartment building or basement apartments are controversial in some neighborhoods. Like,

are you going to say no? Are you going to just like close the door? We're full. Like there is no city on earth that's successful that ever closed the door right um successful cities are always crowded and they always have to figure out you know what to do with it what if new york city closed the door in 19 i don't know 10 1920s when they had those those kind of teeming you know manhattan kind of i guess godfather kind of you know like the godfather too right right um which which you know they they ended up building massive amounts of public housing in

in the 1940s and 50s to kind of accommodate that growth um which is something maybe we have to do here well my other fear because i mentioned the 18 year old is the obvious which is that i don't know but it was six or something six and a half years ago when i bought this place i barely it was exactly like the most that we could afford me me and my wife. And then we ended up here. But like today, if I were buying, I couldn't afford this. So I couldn't afford my own house today. Like what happens? And I know this is the common topic, but what happens when Toronto is for the very wealthy only?

Like where do regular teachers and regular people? Yeah, that's a disaster, right? And I think this is one of the interesting things i've seen is that like unaffordability these things are kind of abstract but when people see that their kids could never do what they did right because you're right we were always supposed to be on this you know post-war you know better generations right and now that that's not happening people see you know people might you know start to agitate for you know like plans to make housing more affordable. We did this before after the war in Canada, we had a massive housing bill, the Canadian

Mortgage Housing Corporation, you know, all those, all those 1950s to 1970s apartment towers in Toronto were often funded by this. So many suburbs, you know, single single family homes you know we we built housing as a national um uh kind of strategy and we have to we have to kind of mobilize like that again it is a disaster it is a disaster if your kid can't live in the neighborhood that you you know and it's even it's like one thing to say okay you can't own sorry because that's like we started a million bucks or whatever and we go up now or whatever but you can't rent like i i know i've before i owned i rented and i know i still remember what i paid for like the one bedroom and the two bedroom and i mean of course even with inflation we're not even close anymore like

like i just like we just send our kids to milton and hope there's still something affordable there is that the deal yeah that's kind of like the reverse of you know like how it used to be the kids used to move back downtown after the parents you know moved to a new place in the suburbs and now do the parents live like age downtown and the young people all live far out uh you know like you're apart from you know people like your son having to ask can i live in toronto you know other people like your son who don't live here who are talented and we want to come here and to do stuff, to, you know, start startups

and to just bring their, you know, energy here. They're not going to come here. They're going to go to other places that are affordable. Man, okay. To turn the channel a little bit, lots to cover here, but I really enjoy your tweets about the Christmas trees. Like, right?

Like, can you just tell us a little bit about what that was yeah I do some it's weird to talk about Twitter because it's so ridiculous some of these things I do but just walking around in December walking around the city a few years ago

I started to notice all these really elaborate Christmas displays that companies put in their lobbies and stores put up. And so much effort for this month that it got really interesting. And so I just started taking pictures of them and rating them as things. They all get good ratings now because it's a feel-good project. But some of these places, some of the the downtown, you know, lobbies, they

hire, they hire like a whole team of people, uh, interior designers who come in and like decorate and like, they have these really elaborate trees. Some of the trees, Christmas trees have become almost abstract. Like, um, like they're not even trees anymore. They're just like the faint outline of a tree. So it's really interesting as a, as a sort of kind of cultural decoration thing we do for a month and also like it makes people happy it makes me happy i like i like christmas i like trees and all the light because it's getting so dark and this is all about light

and everything so i actually think we should what is it january you said 24th yeah we should keep the trees up till about february it's leap year it's february 29th right it's a terrible idea keep them in keep the light keep the light into the depths of winter. Oh, man. I hope your influence isn't great, actually. I'm kind of worried now. But did we declare a winner? Like, was there a champion Christmas tree at the end of this Twitter project?

My champion tree has been for a few years the one I've started with because I always go back and visit it. It's just at Cumberland Terrace, which is this 1970s kind of mall right at Yonge and Bloor. And there's been a development sign in front of it for the last four years. It's supposed to become two towers, but the project seems to be taking its time. But for whatever reason, even though the mall is kind of like emptying out, it still goes. There's still some good places in there, sort of right behind Holt Renfrew. And they still put up this really kind of basic tree in the hallway.

And it gives me faith that, you know, they still will drag this tree out and put it out in this kind of forlorn but wonderfully 1970s hallway. Speaking of those types of buildings, do you have an opinion on what's happening to a place i worked at for five years uh the gallery of mall like so the gallery mall i i get photos sent to me by somebody a listener who like lives right on the right on the cusp of the uh the parking lot there as it gets you know uh destroyed i guess and they're they got these great ambitious uh plans i guess for a big condo tower and retail space and stuff uh does any part of you is any part of you gonna miss the gallery of malls yeah i mean i'm nostalgic for the malls in general because i used to work at a mall in windsor and

i grew up as a not boomer when am i uh gen x in that kind of stranger things the way stranger things celebrated the 1980s malls, 1970s malls. They're very nostalgic spaces for me. So there's that. But Galleria was really interesting because it was also a community place, right? If you would go in there in the big kind of center court where there was a little cafe. El Amigos.

Yeah, everyone was hanging out, right? All the older people, the retired people. And some of these malls that are like the gallery, you go to Albion Town Centre at Albion Road in Islington, straight up the road from here, you'll find people hanging out, retirees hanging out in the food court. And so the malls like Galleria,

when we lose them, we lose these community spaces, especially a city like Toronto, which is a winter city, but we don't really have public spaces for people to hang out in winter. So that's what I'm going to, I would, I would miss the most about that place. The old Portuguese guys. Yeah. And like, where are they going? And I hope the new development, you know, the cluster of, um, somewhat fancier, you know, like residential areas and shops. Um, I don't think the developers are like i hope that smoke shop comes back but i do hope the smoke shop comes back and and and they still provide some space for that maybe that's

something we should you know mandate make it a requirement that you have to provide this kind of loose public private space for people to hang out you mentioned uh early in this episode you referred to our ravine system. We have these, this is amazing, right? I mean, because for somebody who's born and raised and doesn't know anything else, I just take them for granted that we have these amazing, like I know, I like to bike that Humber Trail

and I like to bike the Don Valley Trail when I get out east. Can you talk to us a little bit about maybe, because not everyone listening has probably explored the ravines or maybe there's others taking it for granted. Like what we have here. Toronto, a lot of people think

it's like this flat city, right? And it actually has some pretty interesting topography. You know, it's not Vancouver with mountains looming in the background or it, but it always has the slope towards the lake, but it has these ravines that kind of carve through it. But we've done a really good job in hiding them, right? If you drive down many of our roads

and the bridges that we built are these kind of hefty things and you almost, it renders the ravines invisible. And the entrances to the ravines are kind of hard to find sometimes. True, yeah, true. We need, there's actually, the city actually has a pretty good ravine strategy.

Whether or not it'll be fully funded and rolled out is another question, but there's a strategy to make the ravines like better signage, you know, invite people. People need an invitation if they haven't gone down since they were a kid or never gone down to this wonderland. It's almost like an alternative, say, subway or streetcar or bus network that is natural, right? You just have these kind of bike highways and forested paths that kind of snake their way all the way through the city

from almost downtown, because we filled in the ones downtown, to the farthest edges of the city and beyond. Do you have any, like, favorite spots in the Chornos Ravine system? Yeah. I mean, I really like the Rosedale ravine that leads kind of down towards the Don Valley Expressway Bayview and up around the Brickworks, which I think, which is probably one of the more popular places because of the Brickworks. But when I used to live on the near east side, i would walk up i would get either snowshoes or skis and walk up um mount pleasant for five

minutes so like literally five minutes from young and bluer you know the center of the universe or whatever um two subway lines etc etc skyscrapers and be in a ravine where I could pop on the skis or in the winter and see deer within 15 minutes. Right. So that's really remarkable that these that that landscape is so close to the kind of most intense urbanism in the country. So it's felt like a very Canadian thing to have, you know, the landscape and yet here it is next to like the biggest city in the biggest city. You know, you mentioned here, I think I took a break from biking. Like I biked a lot as a teen and then I took like a, I don't know, 15 years off. And then I started biking like crazy again. And when I started up again, uh, several years ago, like I would, you know, I love the waterfront trail. I love the Humber Trail and the Don Valley Trail, and anything else is just because I need to get somewhere.

I was surprised at just how much deer I would encounter. There's a lot of deer in this big metropolis of ours, if you know where to kind of look. They make their way down and they hang out. I don't know where they sleep. Sometimes if you're kind of going deeper into the ravines you'll find like a a bunch of grass kind of padded down it's like oh the deers were sleeping here but like where do we we see raccoons all the time where are they all sleeping right it's just like where are all these nests right just it's kind of remarkable how much wildlife can can hide you know i mean they appear when they appear or

coyotes where are they sleeping yeah but that's the thing i will say uh it seems like in the past few years the the coyote count seems to have climbed quite a bit like i don't remember seeing a lot of coyotes and now like on a regular basis you see coyotes out there a friend was talking about her uh her um junction area um i guess, listserv, you know, where the neighborhood all talks. And there was a coyote sighting or two somewhere in the junction, probably around the railway corridor.

And she said half the residents on the listserv were freaked out and going, oh my God, a coyote. And the other half were like, oh my God, a coyote. Right, so they elicit such interesting emotional reactions from from people there's you know baby point when because you got the big ravines there and my uh my daughter has a friend who lives in must be a wealthy friend those are very expensive homes but that's neither here nor there except uh yeah there was a lot of coyotes i guess suddenly i've decided to leave

the ravine and kind of wander around the uh the baby point uh circle there so yeah i also see them um near young and st claire because that same kind of rose daily ravines go up to uh to that and and out of the corner of my eye you would see something moving and it would oh it's like dog sized but it they move totally different than dogs right they have this kind of interesting lope kind of like casual lope and it's almost like like they really their presence really kind of changes the air when you see them uh never been bothered by them like they they feel like i feel like they're they don't want to come near me and my dog either um but uh but such interesting characters that you see out

of the corner of your eye what kind of dog do you have uh a miniature poodle so yeah i what's i guess okay miniature so that's miniature is the medium okay because there's a toy there's a toy but the miniature is a good good formidable 12 kilos okay right you know like he's he's tough but um if he is is if he's being stubborn he can be picked up and you can take away all his his power okay i have another wildlife question for you. But first, I want to give you some gifts for making Oldsway. So local, fresh, craft beer. This is courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery.

That six-pack is for you. Oh, amazing. Thank you. Their retail store is, I got to get the address, but it's near Royal York and Queensway. So yeah. Can you see it maybe from the Gardner Queensway so so yeah yeah can you see it maybe from the Gardner

the Gardner yeah you got it buddy that's the one it's down the street I always tell people it's down the street from the Costco so there's a

I gave you an assortment there but the winter ale is obviously seasonal and amazing like just just amazing so you're

not you're lucky only VIP guests get the winter ales. Thank you, Great Lakes Brewery. They've been proud sponsors of this program literally for years now, and they just re-upped for 2020. Tasty as all hell.

You're going to love it. Yeah, I think I've had it before. A few places had it. It's interesting the way these companies are able to make their product get out. And about 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevards. You know, you think I would have memorized that. Everything named after Her Majesty. That's right.

That's right. And you can see it from the gardener there. The good people at Palma Pasta, they are in Mississauga and Oakville. But they have sent over a frozen lasagna for you. No way. This is actually an empty box, so don't take that home. But in my freezer upstairs, I have one for you. Wow, I didn't expect to get so much great stuff.

Swag, yeah. I was almost going to make a joke. Do I get pasta too? Yeah. That's fantastic. So that's courtesy of Palma Pasta. And by the way, they have a big deal, and I should have taken note of the specifics.

I'm a terrible host here. But it's a Super Bowl Sunday. And I don't even know. I think legally I can't even say the word Super Bowl with this. Let's say the big game. Yes. There's a big game happening. I don't know if you heard about it.

It's a football game. And a lot of people are going to watch it. They have a tremendous lasagna deal at Palma Pasta. So you pick up your lasagna at Palma Pasta for the big game. I think you have to buy it before the end of the Saturday, though. I don't think the deal is available on the Sunday. So get to Palma's Kitchen or one of the other Palma Pasta locations and get that.

Yeah, lasagna for you, beer for you, and a Toronto Mike sticker for you. That's courtesy of Sticker You. I actually was talking to StickerU. So I mentioned I produced the Humble and Fred show and we want to change up some of the imaging, like the graphics with the show. And we have this idea.

And in fact, I'm working with Steve Hagee at igniter.ca. So shout out to Steve. On a new design and we're going to get a decal printed from StickerU at StickerU.com. And we're going to have it out front of that Queensway and Islington location. So these guys are great. Oh, I have a contest. Right.

There's an opening of the Sticker Museum at 677 Queen. Do you think I nailed that address? Let's see here. Oh, I saw something about that. I had no idea we were getting a sticker museum. Yes, and it's opening on January 30th, and Dr. Draw is an electronic violinist, and he's going to perform,

and I have four tickets to this. I'll be there, and I have four tickets. I tweeted a picture of a wall that had a bunch of stickers on it. So Toronto Mike is my Twitter handle. There's a wall I tweeted. Reply with your guess as to how many stickers are on that wall

and the four people who get closest get tickets to this thing. Yeah, so this is apparently, I'm told, this 677 bricks and mortar store for Sticker U is the largest sticker store in the world, I'm told.

And there's a museum and a permanent art exhibition, too. Wow. 677 Queen West. And finally, I want to thank... I'm wearing a t-shirt. Here you go. I'm wearing a t-shirt for Banjo Dunk.

And Banjo Dunk is with Whiskey Jack, of course, and the Stompin' Tom tributes. And he's recorded a message for everybody. So here's Banjo Dunk. This is Banjo Dunk, and for the last few weeks, you've been hearing my ads on Toronto Mic'd about the big Stompin' Tom show coming up on April 16th, 2020. But there's another Banjo Dunk production that's happening very soon.

My music buddy Douglas John Cameron and I, known internationally as Doogie and Dunn, are going to be performing in Oakville at the Moonshine Cafe on February 27th, not too far from Toronto Mike Head Office. So, if you live in Toronto, Oakville, Mississauga, Burlington, Milton, and surrounding areas, you'll find all the information you need

at themoonshinecafe.com. We look forward to seeing you on February 27th. Okay, Sean, there's one more gift for you. A copy of Duncan Fremlin. Duncan is the Banjo Dunk. And it's his book. What is it called again? My Good Times of Stompin' Tom. So you get a book, you get beer, you get a sticker, and you get a lasagna. What is it called again? My Life and My Good Times of Stomp and Tom.

So you get a book, you get beer, you get a sticker, and you get a lasagna. Are you glad you came? This is a good old Canadian time that I can have after this. Did you ever have the pleasure of seeing Stomp and Tom before? No, I didn't. I've been to Sudbury. Hey, Sudbury Saturday night. It felt like the closest I would ever get to him.

I remember when Conan O'Brien came. You were here at the time. So Conan O'Brien came to Winter Garden. Winter Elgin Garden. Yeah, yeah. What order do those words go into? Anyway, I went to see a taping of the Conan O'Brien show. I was there.

And the musical guest was Stompin' Tom Connors. So he did the hockey song. Cool. All right, I want to do this game because I'm interested in like wildlife beyond the obvious like chipmunks and squirrels and raccoons okay get them out of the way do you could you off the top of your head name some interesting wildlife that you have seen in toronto like deer we talked about deer and coyotes so those are two could you drop some others and

maybe i want to hear what you've seen and i'll tell you what I've seen. I've seen snakes on the Leslie Street spit. I've seen beavers. Like if you go in the ravines, you see beaver dams. You know when you're driving up the Don Valley Parkway and there's that rainbow bridge, right? Just north of Eglinton or Lawrence. Yes, yeah. Just across on the west side, there's a pond, Don across on the west side there's a pond but Don Mills Pond and there's a beaver that swims at least a couple years ago.

Oh wow. I've never seen a beaver in the city I don't think. It was the first beaver I ever saw in my life despite living however many decades in Canada

and having nickels I've had a few. I'm jealous you've seen a beaver here. In Toronto. And then the occasional opossum. Yeah I've seen a couple. And kayaking around um and then the occasional opossum yeah i've seen a couple

and kayaking around the leslie street spit i saw mink yeah like i've seen i see them a lot near humber bay shores on the waterfront trail where the rocks just on the beach of the the lake there there i've seen the uh a few times i've seen minks yeah and living close to yorkdale there are some weird fancy dogs as well which i think can be included in wildlife i don't know rich people dogs like very strange breeds i need a ruling on that i don't know if that counts but is that covered i'm trying to think now if i've seen anything because anything else i mean birds i but i don't know much about birds but there's a whole variety of them yeah sam smith has a whole bunch of weird like colorful looking

strange birds and people come, bird people come, and they have festivals. And there's one type of bird I need to shout out at the Sam Smith Park called a whimbrel. And apparently, there's only two days of the calendar year where they stop at this spit there in Sam Smith. They call it Whimbrel Point, actually. And if you go on those two days,

and all these bird watchers collect to catch it, get a picture or a glimpse of these wimbrows. Yeah, I once saw the bird paparazzi at the Mimico Park, like Humber East, I think, you know. And they all had these huge lenses trained on it. It was some sort of red-beaked something-something hawk. But it was a celebrity bird that I had never heard of, but they all knew about it. It's really interesting to find these communities you know

yeah yeah for sure for sure for sure uh anything else hold on i didn't i'm trying to think if i've seen anything else we mentioned the minks have you ever seen a fox a fox yeah once or twice once uh once one of a very early trip when we stayed before I moved here in the 90s, a friend was going to go to Humber College, so he had to take a test. Actually, he was going to go to Humber College for whatever it is, mortuary, you know, like to be a... Oh, like a funeral director or something? Yeah, they have the program there. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, who also sponsors the program.

Oh, nice. So anyway, he got in. But anyway, so we went up with him, and we were walking around the Humber North Campus and we saw foxes. I'd never seen a fox in my life either, but it was in Toronto where I saw it. Yeah, that's Toronto for sure. That's right by the racetrack,

not too far from the racetrack, kind of in that area. I saw a fox near the lawn bowling on Clendenin, like between Annette and Bloor on clendenin like between uh done between annette yeah and bluer on clendenin where the lawn bowling is i saw a fox a long time ago now but yeah uh if you kind of hang out on the scarborough bluffs sometimes you see a couple do you know i've never been to the scarborough bluffs uh i think every time i want to go on a nice day i do the mapping and i don't have the time to get there and back on the bike.

I think it's a couple hours or something for me to get there. For sure, from here. Also, I think the bluffs are this sort of defining part of Scarborough. And you see pictures of it. But when you're, say, driving out Kingston Road, there's not that many invitations that say, this is the bluffs. Mostly the streets say, no access to the bluffs. Yes, I've seen that.

When I was delivering a sticker, it said, no access to the bluffs. And I'm like, oh to the Bluffs. Yes, I've seen that. When I was delivering a sticker, it said no access to the Bluffs. I'm like, oh, I'm close. Yeah, it's like somewhere out there. So I think if you go to Bluffers Park, that's the best place to see them. I'm going to do that this summer. I'm going to do it this summer. Heck of a thing to ride your bike to

because it's the one place in the city of Toronto where there's an actual emergency lane, you know, like you see on highways in the mountains for truckers because it's so steep going down. So you got to bike that back up. I'm excited. So yeah, there's some dramatic topography and flora and fauna in this place. For sure. And for sure. And what's also interesting to me is like the largest park in this city is a park I've never been to. You can probably name the largest park in Toronto.

Rouge? Yes, it's Rouge. Because a lot of people think it's Hyde Park, but no, not even, Rouge is way bigger than Hyde Park. But I've never been to Rouge Park. I find that, to me, that's kind of embarrassing. And it's a national park now, right? It's the first urban national park in Canada.

And there's a little part right at the um the i guess the the border between pickering and toronto right at the lake there's a nice little beach there but it really goes up high past the zoo into pickering into markham um and it's it's massive the amount of uh territory it covers well i mean i've been to the zoo i just want to point out many times oh one of the interesting things, if you're on the 401 in the summer or spring, summer, fall,

coming in and out of the city, it dips, the 401, when it's like, it's like 10 lanes wide there and it dips down into the Rouge Valley. You can't really see it

because the 401 is so big, but there's a campground there, the Glen Rouge Campground, the only place, campground uh the only place campground in toronto you can camp in toronto right um but uh going there coming back in and out in the evening you can always catch a whiff of campfire because it's the campfire so close i did once take my oldest camping uh the border of like mississauga and oakville and it starts with a b and i can't remember the name of this right now, but there's a campground there.

Yeah, when you're there, you don't hear the highway, but it does feel a bit strange to camp when you're so close to the big city. You're supposed to go far away. You can definitely hear the highway at that one in the Rouge. It's almost like this. It almost sounds like the ocean, if you want to romanticize a bit,

just that constant roar of kind of white noise. Okay. So while we're talking about recreation, do you have any, like maybe you can share with us your favorite Toronto beaches? Because that's another thing. People,

I think people my age and your age, we remember like you never swim in Toronto waters. Like this is sort of like pummel into our head as a kid. Like you'll get like ear infection or something it's dirty water nowadays i'm i'm told by people i trust and of course you can see the measurements and stuff but this it's totally safe to jump in a number of toronto beaches and they test it every well so tell us uh what are the what are your favorite toronto beaches for swimming yeah we go this we go swimming as many times as possible in the summer. The island beaches, definitely number one.

And I would say Hamlins is my favorite beach, one of my favorite beaches in the world because it's so close to the city. You can swim out in this really clean, clear water. You can be well over your head and see the ripples of sand down below and look up and there's the CN Tower. And it's kind of a bit of a Libertine beach,

the clothing optional beach. So it, and it's, it's the most remote one on the Island. So it kind of has its own scene, which is quite nice. But this last summer I started swimming at bluffers park, which was dirty until about 10 years ago.

And they managed the kind of some of the storm run runoff that was coming down from um the the built-up part on the top of the bluffs they managed it well and now it's one of the cleanest beaches so the the the lake has come a long way but it was a lot of effort by um you know the toronto conservation authority and the city itself to get this uh and other organizations so uh it's it never never fear lake. The lake is a wonderful place. Well, I'll shout out a couple of beaches. Primarily a great beach that I've discovered is in Marie Curtis Park.

And Marie Curtis, half of Marie Curtis, the half that has this beach actually, is the Toronto half and then the other half is Mississauga. But yeah, and I see surfers there all the time. You never think of surfers surfing here. And they're often in winter. Like there is, I follow a winter surfer and she's on Twitter.

So I follow her on Twitter. And like there was one day just before the holidays when it was, I don't know, 10 below, but they had not a nor'easter, but whatever the wind is that comes into Asperger's Bay that makes, you know, surfable waves. And so they're all in their dry suits surfing in 10 below zero. And it's like, they're hardy, but they look amazing when you see them doing it. And they have like ice crust growing on them

as they're surfing. Oh, sure. And if they have like some facial hair or something, you get that cool ice in the facial hair look, whatever. Is there anything else that would surprise somebody? Like, I think there's a lot of Torontonians who would be surprised to hear about the winter surfers that are in the 416 or whatever whatever are there any other surprises like that that come

to mind that you think i know i'm putting you on the spot here yeah uh winter surfers well i think i think i mean you're you're a winter cyclist and i think there's this idea that uh uh that that you don't cycle in the winter and i I think Toronto in the last five years has really like the critical mass of cyclists in the summer is massive now. But in the winter, like even, you know, before we had this past weekend, we had the snowstorm within a day, you know,

there was like, I would regularly see people downtown cycling. And you would, even 10 years ago, I don't think you would see it as much so i think people those kind of that you can cycle in a place like toronto in the winter you can be a four-season cyclist um people sort of come around to that there's other cities you go to copenhagen it snows there in in the winter and they still cycle there it's sort of a given and toronto's kind of going in that direction which i think think surprises people. I think so too. And I get a lot of, like, some people will say I'm crazy for doing it.

Like, in fact, today I was at this meeting I mentioned at One Young Street and it came up in the conversation that I had to bike back. I think I made a joke that, oh, somebody who writes for the Toronto, and we will get to this, but somebody who writes for the Toronto Star is my guest, but not here. I was in the Toronto Star building and they thought it was funny. I was going to have to go back home 15k to do that but um yeah like i i will say like if you go back not too long ago i would never even consider winter biking like i remember i used to shut it down when i used

to bike a lot was uh halloween was like i would go to halloween and i would shut it down because it's too cold but then once you start to like like why stop and i now it's like to me there's almost there's very few days there might be like three or four days during the calendar year when i just i have to shut it down because there's an active big snowstorm yeah yeah it's it's fantastic so on the note of cycling if you don't mind uh uh some routes do you want to shout out some some cycling routes because our infrastructure, I don't know. I feel it could be better, but I personally never have any, I don't have many difficulties getting where I need to go.

But I'm sure it could be vastly improved. I explore a lot on my bike as well as foot, especially the city is so big, you kind of need a bike. If you're in a car, it goes too fast, right? But a bicycle, you can kind of stop and look at things and right it's it's a more intimate way of understanding the city so i'll go far out to places that have less bike infrastructure than say downtown though downtown doesn't have enough um and and sometimes i feel i feel confident enough to like ride on some of the big arterials but i get freaked out more and more maybe it's because I get older. Um, and, and so I have this kind of strategy of like point, seeing a spot I kind of want to go to and taking a more meandering like side routes, you know, and sometimes it takes me off in the wrong way.

It's, if I was commuting it, it would, I would be upset because it, I want to take the direct route home, you know, and just like a car driver would be upset if they were told to like drive this meandering route. No, you want to take the most direct one. But when I'm not in a hurry and I'm exploring, it's kind of revealed all these different neighborhoods, again, that I didn't know existed. So sort of seeing a spot, trying to avoid the biggest, ugliest, dangerous roads, and taking some of the side roads. Or taking some alleys. Actually, downtown, sometimes it's just on foot even.

Try to play a game and take the alley route um to where you're going you totally see like the flip side of of a place maybe you thought you knew off the beaten path absolutely now uh on the note of uh the bike bike trails i want to ask about the the rail path so right now it ends at where the chocolate factory is there at like a Sterling and Dundas. Are we ever going to get that thing to connect to the waterfront trail? There is a plan.

Um, I think what is happening right now is that, uh, Metrolinx has to rebuild some of the, the, uh, the rails themselves. And once that work is done,

they can do the, um, they can put the path in um and so the path will go all the way down to queen and uh gladstone like the gladstone hotel okay and then kind of i think in a few places we'll have to go on street because there's not enough room uh though these plans are not totally finalized and we'll get to that new fort york bridge which will connect to the waterfront trails and uh i think once that network kind of clicks in place it'll like change the people's roots you made me think of the the ronces bridge and a photo i took of the mimico skyline

and then just kind of like realizing what the mimico sky, like there's an actual like real Mimico skyline now, which is sort of, I guess it's fairly recent. It catches you off guard. Yeah. Where did this thing come from? Yeah. And so it just,

just, you made me think of that by the Palais Royal there. Okay. So do you have an opinion on the new mountain equipment co-op location on Queen? I do. I wrote about it last spring. I don't mind the location. Queen Street's a fine place to do it.

I thought their old building was just fine, though. And it seems to me to be wasteful to get rid of a perfectly fine old building. The new building is not that much different. But did they get an offer they couldn't refuse i just assume somebody yeah they parked a brinks truck in their driveway that was basically they owned they own the land and they sold it um and for for a lot of money i think right you know mech is having a bit of a

problem right now with you know their and so maybe they needed the cash infusion but then you know this new building is is nothing special it just kind of it's a box right it's a big box sitting in the middle of queen street you know we could have had much much better there you know so it's nothing you know king street or queen street is fine places for mac but you know um for for a company that sort of touts being environmentally responsible, one of the most environmentally irresponsible things you can do is to abandon and tear down the building. You wrote that today. I read that today in the Toronto Star. Did you know you write for the Toronto Star?

I did. I do once a week. Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to, yeah, maybe I should have done this earlier, but how did it,

well, let's do that. And then we'll come back. I have somebody, you're coming over and I'm like, I got to talk Toronto with this guy because I love your perspective on the city and I really really enjoy it but maybe can you tell us a little bit and do it all in chronological but I mean you co-founded spacing you you write for the star could you tell us a little bit about about how all that came to be yeah uh when i when i moved here i got like real

jobs which were good uh but then i was always interested in this place and i wanted to be a writer so i started writing for wherever uh and then found a group of people that were into toronto the same way i was and that's sort of how spacing magazine uh um evolved which we founded in 2003 then i started working on other kind of city projects, documentary projects, and then got some other writing gigs in iWeekly, which morphed into, I think... The Grid.

Yeah, and then I morphed into Toronto Star Column probably around 2011. So it just kind of evolved in that way. And the spacing, so tell maybe, tell people who aren't aware, what is spacing? Like maybe a little bit about it. Yeah, spacing, it's a magazine we started in 2003, printed four times a year,

but we also have daily blogs, spacing.ca. It's a magazine about ostensibly public space in Toronto, hence the spacing. But basically it's a place about ostensibly public space in Toronto hence the spacing but basically it's a place where we can talk about Toronto politics, Toronto urban design Toronto architecture, Toronto parks Toronto public art and just Toronto life small l Toronto

life our main competition I think we're complimentary St. Joseph's should buy you guys up I was always thinking Time Warner for 23 million dollars that's our exit strategy No, I think we're complimentary. St. Joseph's should buy you guys up. Is that the deal? I was always thinking Time Warner for $23 million. That's our exit strategy. Why not $33 million?

But yeah, it's actually a sort of bad idea to start a magazine in Canada, or especially a Toronto one, because the market is still relatively small. And so we started selling trinkets to at our events our our magazine launches and we started selling these buttons these subway buttons yeah they're great yeah right they have every subway station had its own unique tile pattern even though they kind of some of them might look the same on blur right or yeah um and and uh we thought

it would be a fun thing to sell for a bit but we've sold something like six or seven hundred thousand of them wow in the 10 12 years we've been doing it so they they didn't make us rich but they kept the magazine afloat and that morphed into other kind of fun things and four years ago we opened a store at 401 richmond richmond and spadina selling it's a toronto store selling toronto stuff as well as our magazine and that's good for you man honestly you went out and you did it you created that did you want to shout out uh be more specific with some of those like you mentioned some documentary projects like you kind of it's like you you know yada yada yada that stuff like is that did you want to be a little more specific the thing that helped me understand toronto really

well was also started in 2003 this thing called Murmur which was I did a residency at the Canadian Film Centre's Media Lab and met two people that really liked Toronto the same way I did as well I kept meeting people that like the city despite its reputation that no one likes it and we wanted to do something with technology that told Toronto stories and cell phones were just sort of becoming ubiquitous then around 2003 people were getting them but they were very utilitarian we didn't do anything cultural with them like they're totally unfathomable now because we live in our phones and we play games in them and everything and our our whole lives are in them but we so so we we recorded people telling stories we started in Kensington market of specific stories of locations

just everyday stuff like this was the first apartment I lived in when I moved here from Cambodia in 1972. Or this is where I fell in love with my wife on this park bench or people that might have had some historic knowledge. And we recorded them, put it into a sort of a computer database that was connected to phone lines. We put up a sign with a phone number that you could call and listen to people telling you stories in the spot that they happened. So it was like a documentary project, the oral history project that we dragged out onto the streets. And we did, over the 10 years we ran it before we retired it in 2013, I think we got 250 sites around Toronto in different projects. And then we went around the world and did it in a couple dozen cities. Another thing that didn't make us rich

but I got to see a lot of Toronto and talk to people about the city and learn about other cities but to me that's like an art project somewhere in between yeah that sounds really cool it was good for you on that one

it was really fun to do and as a new person to Toronto I mean I could explore on my own, but there's something about, I'm talking into a mic right now, a mic, two mic, with a mic. This gives you this excuse to ask people questions about them, right? When you have a mic, when you have this kind of weird art project reason. So it allowed me to scratch the surface of the city even deeper that if I didn't have, you you know like a funky weird art project that

I it would have been weird if I was just on the street asking people about their life now in August 2012 when I launched this program I I knew I already had a blog torontomike.com so I was already going by the moniker torontomike and I knew I wanted to call it torontomike but the debate I had with myself was is it is it torontomike mic-i-c apostrophe d or is it like like i went i can't tell you how before i i ended up deciding it should be toronto miked m-i-k-e apostrophe d and i'm still not sure i picked the right one i mean it's your name right so if it was miked that seems more generic but this is you but also plays with the others yes okay so that's basically that's where i ended up and obviously i've been there ever since but we could keep

we could keep convincing ourselves otherwise it was funny when we even had to name projects like murmur um or even spacing it's it's actually more difficult than it sounds you go you pick something good and then you question it and that process that kind of brainstorming process it could be endless and and and uh but once you settle on it and you decide it's and that process, that kind of brainstorming process, it could be endless. But once you settle on it, and you decide it's the one, it's hard to go back, I think. I think this is your thing for life. Well, now that you're right, now I can't imagine it the other way,

but there was a period of time when I was setting up shop in the summer of 2012 when I didn't know which way to go. So it's funny how things work out. Eight years, that's an eternity to do something. That something that's wonderful in podcast years that's a long time actually i saw just yesterday and i don't look at it a lot but i'm i subscribe to this thing called chartable and it allows you very easily to see where you rank in different countries uh apple podcast charts and stuff and in my category that's an important uh qualifier there but in my category in apple podcastss, yesterday I was

number 11. And this is the same category as This American Life and some big time podcasts. And I was thinking, you know, the algorithm which they don't publish, and this is a quick aside, but the algorithm which Apple does not publish, it seems to have, it takes into consideration velocity of subscription as a huge indicator. And it seems to favor new podcasts, like just by design. So if you've been around for eight years, your velocity of new subscriptions via Apple, that's all they see,

is you're kind of, you know, even though This American Life is number one and it was around before I was around. But I guess all this is to say as I patty myself on the back here a little bit, that I thought that was pretty strong considering much like you kind of discovered this too, but this is a Toronto centric podcast and it's a Canadian ranking.

I know we're a populate. There's a lot of people living around here, but you know, there's still a lot of people in Canada who don't live near the GTA. So I thought that was pretty cool. As a person who's written a few books about Toronto, know how small the market is um it was funny my dad who doesn't parents don't necessarily understand what you do when you do something different that's kind of not you know a regular job and he'd be like oh you're writing a book why how much do you get for these

books and they would tell him he'd be like what yeah they think you're like you're gonna be like John Grisham or something it's like how many hours do you work uh doing this and then so one day when a couple a year or two ago so he said oh wait you're doing the books for posterity and like okay we can settle on that yeah and then he said but they said but you still you should do one of those harry potters which i don't disagree with necessarily but but the market is so is so small like even like you know toronto seems so big but um right um it things shrink so it's it's it's remarkable to to stay um popular for that long yes thank you that's that's my thoughts too uh and that we're going to talk about your books for a moment because this question came from zach and it was just this

ready bees of a question mark bees i saw that bees um i was hoping it would mean something to you yeah i was because that he tweeted it at me too and i don't know if it was a non-sequitur bees bees um like did you ever write about uh maybe there's i did toronto bee i did once write about beehives and the star a couple feet four years ago because there's actually a remarkable amount of beehives, you know, tucked into the city in places. If you walk on Bloor, just west of Lansdowne, and look through an empty lot before it goes under the train tracks,

I can see two beehives on top of some guy's garage. And I interviewed him about his urban bees. And his bees, the honey that they make tastes like the neighborhood, because all honey is local, right? So it's the most interesting way to taste the neighborhood is to eat local honey. Well, you want to taste the, because the Galaxy Donuts at Lansdowne and Bloor

was notorious for where you pick up your supply, your drugs. Anyways, I'm a gallery mall guy back in the day, not too far away. Okay, so B's from Zach. And then Michael says, what is Sean's favorite Mexican restaurant in Detroit? I think Social Michael's. That was the one everyone went to.

We went there in Mexican Town. We kind of alternated. Those are the two ones. There's a little Mexican Town just across the bridge. And one of the restaurants was called Mexican Town. And one was called Social Milko. And on Monday nights, they had Canadian money at par, at least in the 90s.

I don't know if they still do it. And so we'd go there often. Actually, it was sometimes- Because to remind people, you're a Windsor guy. Yeah, exactly. And a border town guy. And sometimes we'd go to America. And the easiest thing to say is just going to mexican town uh when you're at the windsor detroit border and they'll be like okay go ahead

jsg writes uh will he write a sequel to stroll covering additional areas of the city as a toronto wanderer living in 905 exile i really enjoy it so tell us about tell us this uh because there's a follow-up i should point out before you get into this moaz i think is how you would say this says uh and would it be okay to call it ski uh yeah my book that came out in 2010 my first book was called stroll and it was 23 different rambly walks through the city um a little bit of history a little bit of what's there now not exactly a walking

tour but kind of a rambly essay and it was kind of the culmination of my first 10 years of Toronto and discovering the place I think kind of what I write now in The Star occasionally not every column but is a bit of a sequel to that.

Whether or not I want to, I don't think I want to do another book about Toronto, at least right now. I think I need to do something else just to avoid kind of burning out on the city. Plus there's other people who should write books about Toronto from different perspectives. So I think, I think no, not in book form,

but maybe in like late night twitter uh feed uh of discovering things that might come out in it you know well this last this last august august 2019 uh my me and my family we went to bc british columbia and we we downloaded this app and it wasn't free but it was something reasonable i don't know 5.99 or something and using the gps it would basically talk to you, basically, and tell you, oh, to your left now you see this church, this church used to be called whatever. To your right, that was built for the 2010 Olympic Games,

and then they'd tell you a little back story about some controversy from indigenous peoples, this, that, and the other. Bottom line, it was really a cool way to kind of get to know a city because you can travel the city and then it just knows, it knows through GPS where you are. And then this, you know, I was thinking you need to do the Toronto app.

Yeah, those apps are really wonderful. And that was, it was kind of, that's the evolution of our murmur project, right? That thing was a dumb GPS and that we had to tell, you had to tell the machine where you were standing. And one of the reasons we retired it was because there's all these apps that do that

now. I don't know if someone wanted to take my stuff and do it. I just like, I feel like I, I know I really love the city and I'm not bored with it at all. And I want to keep writing about it, but there's always this itch to kind of like do something else yeah because you get comfortable maybe maybe yeah you're yeah you need to get out of your comfort zone and shake things up i know that feeling i mean you're you're you're toronto mike but you're not you don't only talk about toronto on this thing no right no and i never i almost never talked with scarborough so i'm not really toronto mike at all i get a new toronto mike actually maybe maybe if you need to rebrand like new coke right right and then people will beg for the old toronto mic and i can bring a classic toronto mic and then

everybody will love me more you're a genius sean honestly now john wants to know when are you launching your campaign for mayor ah um i think i i ran a fake campaign in 2014, but I think I'd be a terrible, terrible mayor. I have suggestions, but the actual job of a mayor is relentless. And I don't think I could keep John Tory's hours. He works hard. He's up at the crack of dawn and then he's at social events.

He's at everything. Actually, I like to be social, he's had everything actually i i like to be social but like i mostly like to be alone as you know i'm quietly writing alone it does get a bit lonely and i like to be social but not that social right um and also when i when i was writing my last book and i followed politicians around running for city council in toronto um i realized i didn't have the the kind of tenacity like I just didn't have the fortitude, right? They built themselves up at every door and sometimes the door was slammed.

Sometimes they were sworn at. Sometimes it was really wonderful, but they had to get ready for everything. It was like a little performance that they built up the energy and I don't have that energy and I don't have that thick of a skin. So not anytime soon.

I don't think so. I did my two degrees in political science i used to think i would be a politician that was like the end that's that's why you take it um and it's funny that when i when i got to know real ones it's like no i can't do that brad says uh ask about the complex relationship with cars. They are generally bad for cities, but at the same time, some of them are rad. I like that Brad used the word rad. Can we talk about...

Because we've talked a lot about walking, we've talked a bit about TTC, we've talked about skiing, we've talked a lot about cycling, but apparently I'm told that some people in Toronto drive places. Have you heard this? Yeah, I secretly like cars a lot. I should whisper that. I'll told that some people in Toronto drive places. Have you heard this? Yeah, I secretly like cars a lot. I should whisper that.

I'll edit that out. I think it is a Windsor thing. My mom worked at GM. My grandfather worked at Chrysler. My uncle worked at Ford's, as we would say in Windsor, Ford's or Chrysler's. You know, and I like cars. I subscribed to Car and Driver and Road and Track when I was growing up. And I still... This is shocking. Um, and I still,

this is shocking. Yeah. And I still like, uh, I still see him on the street and I'm like, look at that hot one. Scandalous. I don't think cars work in cities as a day to day thing.

There's like, it's like, there's no solution we could come up with to make driving easy in Toronto. The only solution is public transit or biking and these other things, right? There's just too many cars and that's the same at every big city. And we're just beginning to learn that in Toronto And that's the same at every big city. And we're just beginning to learn that in Toronto because we're at that point.

But cars are these kind of sometimes beautiful things as for Sundays, for driving out into the 905 and the 705. Right, going to St. Jacobs or something. Yeah, like Country Road, like these kind of romantic car commercial when it's a romantic car commercial kind of thing. And also just as works of engineering. Some of them are wonderful and beautiful.

So I kind of appreciate them there. And the act of driving, I really like driving, especially sometimes occasionally going to Europe and renting a car and driving with people who know how to drive. I think the skill level in Europe is a little bit higher than here um as well it's fun to drive a stick shift a six speed so one of my favorite things was being on

sardinia once with a six speed tiny little volkswagen golf i think they call them ponies over there and it was the most fun i've ever had driving wow well anyway edit this whole part out please of course because it'd be bad for the brand right yeah i mean people ungear this spacey nonsense pro car so there is no war on cars like because who who is that again was that dog or rob or both yeah and and a number of media outlets and and um yeah like we're spending a billion dollars in or more in toronto um which is like half the capital budget or something on rebuilding the Gardiner, a stretch of the Gardiner that doesn't get that much traffic.

Is this east of Jarvis? East of Jarvis. A billion dollars, half the capital budget. There is no war on the cars. That money could be spent on biking infrastructure. On biking infrastructure or houses or the falling apart ttc you know that okay what about that uh what's the is there a quick fix there like why do i feel

the city's grown so much since the 80s for example but the subway i don't know you tell me what is the answer for transit uh i told you i've already kind of moved to the bike so i don't have to rely on anything like i control my own destiny on the bike well we have to build more like the downtown relief line or the relief line that gets talked about has been on planning map since i think 1912 right it's been talked about that we need this thing but 108 110 years later we don't have the political will to build it maybe now we do. We do tend to build transit by crisis here. Like if you look at pictures of Yonge Street around right after the war in 1945, the thing was just totally jammed and terrible. And that's why they built the subway. So we do react to

crises. That's how we get politics moving. But there's like simple things like bus rapid transit, like make, I live near Dufferin street and the i take the suffering bus the dufferin bus as it's called um and and make bus only lanes make the two side so the buses can move through the traffic just like what's happened on king street you know and those are cheap quick fixes that can that will happen long before we you know decide to build another subway all right i'm gonna just ask you to touch on a couple of these books. How many books have you written? Four.

Well, three and a half, because one was a collaboration. Okay, so Frontier City, Toronto on the Verge of Greatness. Yeah, that was the last one that came out three years ago. Okay, and maybe tell us a little bit about what that's about. I was asked to write a book. Is it all in the title? Yeah. I was asked to write a book at Is that all in the title? Yeah. I was asked to write a book

at the height of the Rob Ford drama when he was on Jimmy Kimmel and the famous crack smoking and that kind of tragic story. And because the publisher thought, yeah, we should write a book about this. And one says yes, if they ask you to write a book.

But it became apparent that the kind of titillating soap operatic tragedy of that people's interest would pass. So I decided to write about what was it about the city that elected Rob Ford. He was kind of a Trump character before Trump, right? We were ahead of the curve here. And yet this is a cosmopolitan city with universities and everything else. And so that's when i went for walks with a bunch of different candidates running for council because they're they're the people who are

on the ground who understand the neighborhoods um and they're like they were 44 when we used to have 44 counselors before doug ford cut it in half um 44 basically miniature um maroral candidate uh races uh but people put their entire life on hold for a year to run for council. So it was walking through the city with these people trying to understand what was it about this populist politician that was attractive to them. What was, tell me a bit about, you know, a brunch book, right? Yeah. And before that, I wrote a book called The Trouble with Brunch.

Class, Leisure, and the Pursuit. Wait, wait. I forget. The Trouble with Brunch. It was a book about class, basically. I came from a working class town, moved to Toronto. Right. And this is a really wealthy city,

and it's a city that has incredible poverty at the same time, and everyone kind of lives in their own zone, whereas Windsor was much kind of flatter, it seemed. But also Toronto has a lot of people who work kind of in the creative industry, you know, people who work, younger people, who work creative jobs or precarious jobs, you know, contract to contract, you know, people who were younger people, uh, who were creative jobs or, or precarious jobs, you know, contract to contract, no benefits. Um, and yet kind of perform these very middle-class things like, um, like go to brunch. Brunch was kind of a fun hook to kind of get into a discussion

about class and, and what are the, uh, a little bit what you're talking about, about your son, who's 18, right? You're like, what are the things that he's going to need uh will he have a pension right like like we have to start talking about these things more so it's kind of like a cheeky way to nudge people into a conversation about class and precariousness have you considered uh your own podcast uh i don't know do i want to do people want to hear my voice that much? I've learned it's the content, man. This isn't the days where you have to sound like Tom Rivers or whatever.

Deliver the good content and people will listen. This is hard. I write. I write 800 words a week in the Star. I write from home. I don't actually go to the Star. I was going to ask you if you ever have 800 words a week in the Star. And I write from home. I don't actually go to the Star. I was going to ask you if you ever have to trot over to one young.

I've gone once in a while. And it's always just like, wow, look at that. Look at this newsroom and people working with other people. And they get along. And they like ask. Because, you know, and I don't know, because it sounds like once a week. So you're freelance? Yes.

Okay. Freelance. Because they're actively right now. I don't, I'm Ruja Mudhar, did I get the, yeah, he says that there's a new podcast division. Like, they've hired, they're actually going to launch a bunch of Toronto Star podcasts. Yeah, they sucked up some good talent for that,

so that'll be interesting to watch. There could be a Sean, even if maybe, I don't know. That could come on once in a while, sure. Oh, as a guest. But I was going to say. You need your own as a guest. But I was going to say, You need your own show, man. But I was going to say,

like I write, it'll take me a day to put together my thing and I'll go away and think, whereas this, this is actually hard to keep it rolling. Like you gotta,

you gotta be thinking about the next question you're going to ask people. You can't really like rest your brain and go for a walk or like go for, That's true.

Go get, go walk to the kitchen for the 18th time. you could, you don't have to do it the way I do it. Like I decided it's exciting to be live. Like I'm not going to edit this, but you don't have to do it this way. Like you can relax on this and edit it later and then piece it together. And normally, by the way, normally I'm a lot better at this.

I have, I guess I have the January cold in it. So it's like, I'm like, hey, pull it together here because it's a hope. I hope I haven't noticed. So good. You have a, you haven't noticed. Good. That means you haven't,

you haven't listened. That's a good sign here. Tell me about psych Toronto psycho geographic society. What was that? That was a walking group that still vaguely exists, but there's this thing called psychogeography, which is sort of a silly way of exploring cities that a whole bunch of French revolutionaries

basically in the 60s and into the 70s sort of invented. They saw people in kind of modern society in, say, Paris as just kind of almost like cogs in the machine, right? You go from home to work and back home. You never really explore the city. So they wanted to get all these techniques about how do you break out of the rut. So they would go around Paris using a map of London sometimes.

They would intentionally try to get lost, go on smell walks. And one of the interesting things they would do was go on drifts or derives. They would just drift through the city. And that's what I found I was doing when I moved to Toronto. I would just like go to some subway station, Jane Station, which I'd never been to, and like just start walking, see where it leads.

And I found other people that did it. And then I was reading up and found all this whole thing about psychogography. So I called our thing the Toronto Psychogography Society, which annoyed some of the people I was walking with because they thought it sounded a bit snooty, which it is. It's like a ridiculous thing. It's like a minor pseudoscience. But I think it's just a kind of fun approach

of just exploring for the sake of exploring, going for a walk for the sake of going for a walk. Well, like Honest Ed would say, come in and get lost. Exactly. Getting lost is one of the most wonderful feelings when you know you're kind of safe. Like you're never going to get,

you know, this is not the wilderness in Toronto. You will find a bus stop if you keep walking. Yeah, just make sure you're walking in the right direction. Now, I did get lost in Berlin. So I went, I was walking Berlin. I got completely turned around and I got lost. And then I didn't have a smartphone on me or anything like that.

And I finally found a cab and I knew where I was staying, obviously. And I just told the cab, take me to where I'm staying. So now I get to my destination and I have my, like my MasterCard in my hand. And the Berlin cabbie's telling me cash only. And I was, I borrowed some euros from somebody on the street. Like I actually, yeah, I needed to pay this cabbie for this. Anyway, that's my, I got lost in Berlin story. I also got lost intentionally in Venice,

which is a lot of fun actually to get lost in Venice. Yeah, and those places are not grids, right? So it's much easier to get turned around. Whereas Toronto is a grid, even though like you might be in the, say the suburbs where it's called a Saxon river but there's still a basic grid that's that it's hanging off of it's the old concessions that the British settlers laid out

so it's those feelings where I get turned around in Toronto are really like fleeting but kind of wonderful also the CN Tower you know like it always and the lake like I find I'm always like I always I always know which direction the lake is and I always and the lake like i find i'm always like i always i always know which direction the lake is and i always know the lake is south and i can it's the lake and the sea and tower there's these markers yeah you can't get lost in the city if the sea and tower went down for what for some reason we would we would feel disoriented i remember after 9-11 new yorkers

said the same like they didn't like the the twin towers were always the bottom of manhattan right and you even at the corner of your eye you would know where the bottom is oh yeah and and without it they were just kind of floating and you can see it from everywhere like i'm always blowing away where i am and i was like i can see it because you know yeah yeah it's just uh yeah hopefully that thing never comes down um we've actually in spacing we've there's an artist a friend of mine matt bore it um and if you i think if you google tipped over cn tower he has this great apocalyptic these paintings yeah uh and he also does like what happens if the lake rises and and this and and floods say the sky dome and people are living in it like um anyway he has this great

picture of the cn tower kind of uh toppled over in a bit of a swamp, in a bit of a post-climate change thing. And it's a great, fun, apocalyptic Toronto. That's right. And I'm just going to, today, so there's a Toronto Star article today. You wrote it. Uh-huh, yes. And you referenced, you talked about how, like, if you said if a city, here, I'll read it.

I'll read what you wrote. Any city that is sincere about its commitment to mitigating climate change would strongly resist tearing down buildings, wasting all the energy it took to create them, and expending even more energy on the replacement. Such waste. And you wrote that specifically.

You were talking about calls to tear down the St. Lawrence Center for the Arts on Front Street, which you say is a 1967 centennial project. And you were writing about the modernist... Sheridan Hotel, yeah, across from City Hall. Yeah, it was kind of... There's also the Chelsea Hotel at Gerard and Young, this massive hotel that's being torn down for new towers.

Those two things inspired me to write about a building that's actually up and there's no plan right now to tear it down. So I thought it would be interesting to write an appreciation of this book in the context of we're tearing down these other ones. And there's a saying among uh architects or environmental architects um environmentally minded architects that the greenest building is the building already built because an incredible amount of energy went into building especially these concrete 1960s buildings right incredibly concrete's really dirty to make um and so all this energy was put in and

you tear it down not only are you exerting more carbon to do that, you're wasting it. And then you're building a completely new thing. So renovating is really the only moral thing to do. With some mitigating circumstances, sometimes we need more housing and that sort of thing. Right, right, right. Now I need your opinion on one other structure,

which I watched kind of be renovated. The crystal, the ROM crystal, what is your opinion on the crystal part? Yeah, when it was being built, it was really audacious. You'd walk by and it's like, look at this thing kind of exploding out of it. It's kind of like Superman, right?

Like in his Fortress of Solitude. But the museum people would say, it's hard to hang stuff on a wall that's slanted and so it's like okay that's a good point uh and and lisa rachon who was the uh architecture critic in the globe for a long time she said when it was built uh so was that 2008 2007 she said it will be torn down in 20 years and i was like no way and then it just got this massive renovation only 10 years later. And so I think, you know, maybe Lisa Rashan is right. And that's unbelievable. That was a quarter billion dollar building, I think.

Right. Which is also audacious in Canada. Like we don't usually go, like that's American money. Like we don't, American style, you know, audaciousness. We don't usually go that big here. Right. go that big here right um and and and and maybe maybe lisa was onto something that this this thing um uh is going to go down but it all architecture you know it's built at a moment and it can be nothing is perfect and and things can be corrected and you can correct you can correct

bad architecture so can we fix the the mech on there? It's basically, see that one is a shell. It's a rectangle. Yeah, it's like, there's a freight, what was it? A decorated shed is, what was the phrase? Lended to casinos in Vegas. You know, like they're basically all the same box, but they have these different decorations on it. Like a trailer, like in a trailer park. Yeah, so I think that's what the mech is. You know, I they're basically all the same box, but they have these different decorations on it. Like a trailer, like in a trailer park.

Yeah, and so I think that's what the mech is. You know, I don't know. You know, I think it should have been a little taller, put some apartments on the top of it. Gotcha. Okay, so you've been here 20 years. You sticking around? Are you here for the long haul?

Like, or do you have an itch to live anywhere else? I've had the itch. When I go to London, England, not the other London. Not the other London. It's the only city, being a Windsorite, it's the city we're allowed to make fun of is London. Well, they also cheer for the Detroit Tigers in London, right? Yeah.

I think their affinity might be split. Just like in Windsor in hockey, it's split between the wings and the leafs. The Canadian Tire in Windsor near the bridge to Detroit used to have this kind of countdown on the wall of how many mudflaps they sold. Leaf mudflaps or red wing mudflaps. But anyway, when I go to London, England, sometimes I think I should have been a Londoner. You kind of fantasize about your other life in a different city or maybe Berlin. But I think this is my city.

Whenever I go to these other places, lucky enough to travel, I am never sad to be flying back home. I'm always very happy and get giddy when I see it from the plane window. Now let's leave people with a to-do checklist because I was thinking I have some things i need to do one thing i haven't done in a long time is go to the island like i see it it's there but it's been a long time since i've actually like taken a ferry over there so i was thinking of a checklist like for example swim in toronto you know there's a website you can go to and see

that they tested it very how often do they test it very often yeah every single day in the summer it's probably cleaner than the same beaches you're going you're going to travel like rio de janeiro or something much dirtier uh dirtier water so swim in toronto uh what else can we tell people to do uh i want to go to the island uh this winter uh since you brought it up um i always go in the summer but neglect it in the winter and a ferry still runs and it might be kind of magical to be there because the crowds won't be there

and you'll have the thing to yourself with the islanders that still live there. And I think the rectory cafe is still open in the winter so you can get a drink and something to eat. Okay.

You know, civilization. Okay, so should we tell people maybe they should consider skiing? So maybe ski... I would recommend it to plug MEC. Even though I've been down on their building. They rent skis and snowshoes. So the problem is the snow,

when it snows here, it doesn't always last. And that's why I bought my own skis, which actually aren't that expensive to get a basic pair. Or you can buy them used. But yeah, if you see a big blizzard coming, And that's why I bought my own skis, which actually aren't that expensive to get a basic pair. Or you can buy them used. But yeah, if you see a big blizzard coming, go rent some skis for a couple days.

And I think it'll really change the way you think about winter. Winter is not a time to hibernate. It actually makes, it liberates. Like the ravines, because the leaves are gone, you can kind of get around more places than you could in the summer. So then I'm adding on the list, bike in the winter. Like go for a ride in the winter. You don't have to do it during a snowstorm. But on a day like today, I found like, I think this is a good day. And maybe if you're not, if you're not the most confident rider,

especially in Toronto traffic, until we get the proper infrastructure we need, you know, go along the lake, maybe the lake trails or one of the ravine trails. The ravines are actually kind of warmer in the winter because they're down below and not as windy. But I find that don't they have a lot of snow and ice in the way? They're not clear in it. Some of them clear. Yeah, you'd have to check which one's clear. So get on the, maybe get to the

Martin Goodman Trail or something. Okay, anything else for that checklist? Or is that about cover it? It's pretty tucked a lot of Toronto. Well, it is Toronto, Mike, Sean. Yeah, just maybe go to a different neighborhood. Pick some neighborhood you've never been to. Maybe I should go to Scarborough.

That's what you're telling me. Yeah. I agree. And what I want to do is I need to get to the Bluffs. And I need to see what's this Rouge Park that is the largest park in the city that I never go to. But, Sean, do you have a favorite place to skate in the city? I'm not a huge skater. I don't like to go in circles, if that makes sense.

But the one place I did skate was, again, on the island when the canals freeze over, but it hasn't been that cold this winter. I'll shout out the Sam Smith. They have a nice figure eight thing in Sam Smith. That's really, really nice. I'll be there. Oh, actually, I was supposed to be there tomorrow with my son, but I heard it's going to rain or something. And then they usually close

these rings when it rains like that. But Sean, thanks so much for doing this. That was awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you. This was great. And that brings us to the end of our 576th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Sean, is that Sean McAuliffe? That's M-I-C-A-L-L-E-F. Sean, by the way, is the S-H-A-W-N, not the S-E-A-N. That's a whole different person. So don't follow that person. The correct way. The correct way.

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