Toronto November 2023

This is a looooong post. Grab a coffee and settle in.

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Seen here: Toronto’s giant sky penis poking up in the distance.

My Dad and I love to go to Toronto for the day, just to get out and do something different. It’s exponentially better when Mike can come too, but this trip was short notice so it was just the two of us. It’s a big trip for us (roughly 2.5 – 3 hours’ driving, one way) but it’s always worth it. We’d meant to go earlier this fall, but life made it hard to get a day free for it. Last minute, I saw that I had this past Sunday open, and Dad is retired so he doesn’t care when we go and is always ready for it. The weather was projected to be good (which, in November, is always a crapshoot), and it was lovely both here and in the city, so away we went.

It was a great day, overall, but not without its adventures:

01: There was so much traffic on Highway 10 S that we truly could not even get over to our exit for the 401 E, so we missed it, and ended up going towards Hamilton (definitely not our goal) (and one of Dante’s circles of hell, imho). So, I got the next exit, for Eglinton Ave E, and we just stayed on there, taking the surface street across the west end (added a lot of time), but that’s better than fighting impatient traffic on the expressways.

02: When we finally got to Bathurst Street it was closed off, so we went past it and had to work our way around a twisty subdivision on the east side, back up to Eglinton, back past the blockage at Bathurst, then south and back east on the west side of it to finally catch Bathurst. Ugh. When I ultimately got onto Bathurst below the blockage, I got pulled over by a radar trap for speeding. No cruiser visible (it was on a side street, and several house down), just a cop on the sidewalk with a handheld radar gun. Seeing my boring license abstract, and my just being a nice guy to him, the cop knocked it down to a lesser fine (rather than a fine and demerit points against my license). If it was a 50 like it always was, I wasn’t speeding. But I hadn’t known they’d more recently dropped Bathurst from a 50 to a 40 (due to resident safety complaints) and I got nailed. Of course, all the other cars around me going my speed or faster weren’t caught, but there’s my luck. Of course, I was driving my parents’ car, which is registered to my Mom’s name, so it took a while for the officer to sort it all out, adding more time to the trip.

03: Dad also got a warning for his car, that the province of Ontario requires there be no obstruction around the license plate. No plastic covers, no funny/branded frames, and not even any dealer frames. I looked it up and it is true, there can be a $110 fine if you have anything other than plain license plates front and back. I don’t know how much that is enforced, as I see cars everywhere with all sorts of covers and frames on their plates, but that is the law and we were told about it. Warned, even. Sitting there, I pointed out three cars parked around us to the cop that had plastic covers and frames, and the officer nodded, so I don’t know if he nailed those folks as well. I checked and both our cars have dealer frames so I will be removing those.

So, heads-up to all Ontario drivers.

Not a photo of the cop that caught me lol.

04: When we finally got to where we park, we were walking away and just about forgot to pay for parking, talking (as we were) about our interaction with the officer. Imagine also getting the car towed for forgetting to pay for parking lol. Sigh. So, parking was paid for and all was well.

05: For years, as tradition after we get there, the first thing Dad does is get a coffee at a place on Bloor. Alas, it was gone, replaced by something called Fat Burger. He had to find coffee elsewhere.

06: Also, on the way out in the evening, we got up to Allen Road towards the 401 W but the ramp was blocked (of course), so we took the collectors lane for a bit until we could merge onto the 401. Only to realize it was stop and go all the way out past Dixon Road (not a short distance) as they had two lanes blocked, so three lanes were bottle-necked to one, and traffic was heavy all day (see 01, above). As we slowly inched below the 400 N highway bridge, we realized we should have stayed in the collectors lane and taken the 400 north to Highway 9 and across to Orangeville instead. Sigh.

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But the day wasn’t all bad/weird/exhausting:

We had lunch at Paupers (as is tradition) and talked over our adventures thus far. We both had the sunny side up burger and they were lovely. Now, married as I’ve been for 20 years, my skills are probably way off on this, but the pretty waitress seemed to be overtly flirting. Like, obviously so. Now, she may have just been after a good tip, I dunno, but I made sure to display my left hand and its Ring Of Power, which wards off all the other ladies lol. Again, she probably wasn’t flirting and I’m a doofus (this is the likely answer), but it sure seemed so to me, which took me aback because it’s rare for that to happen to me, and so overtly. Either way, sorry lady. Lol. Anyway.

Then it was off to the fun stuff.

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BMV now has a new location, next to the main Bloor location, called the BMV Café, in which everything is 3-For-$10. I overheard the young girl working in there say that it was basically all their overstock. Imagine having enough overstock that you can pay rent on a second place on Bloor St. Anyway, it’s a random assortment of CDs, DVD/Blu, graphic novels (mostly superhero stuff) and books (fiction and non). It’s actually a lot of stuff, for all that.

Dad got three TV season box sets for $10, I think for my sister for Christmas.

I loved that most of the CDs were in bundles (there were single CDs too, of course), and each counted as 1 towards the 3-For-$10. So I got 21 CDs for $20. I haven’t opened the bundles and checked the quality of them yet (who knows, they might all be scratched) but it was worth the chance.

Interestingly, there was a single CD I wanted (more on that later), so I got 5 bundles and one single disc to make 21 CDs for $20.

Then I went into the main BMV next door and got some more scores (of course). The guy at the desk wasn’t used to the department, and had to call for help in finding the discs for some of what I wanted (as they are not kept in the cases on the shelf), but it all worked out in the end.

Then we headed south to Kensington Market, and I got coffee at Moon Bean, then went to Sonic Boom while Dad disappeared into the crowds (as usual). I got many scores there as well (of course).

BMV scores (8) on the left, Sonic Boom scores (8) on the right.

Here are some other fun things I saw at Sonic Boom:

Autographed Black Sabbath. I didn’t buy this, obviously, but it was neat.

I didn’t buy this (Christmas is coming) but I WANTS IT THE PRECIOUSSSS…

Saw this and thought of James, texted this pic to him. He doesn’t have it yet, but I assume he will have it, and in short order.

On the cash desk at Sonic Boom, there was a bowl with “FREE PICKS” written on it. They must have a press that makes guitar pics (I’d love to have one of those!), because in the bowl were a bunch of picks made from used gift cards. Great recycling initiative! Of course I grabbed some:

And I bought two $3 tokens for the PhonoMat machine, to try my luck on random 7″ records. So far, in the past, I have gotten Billy Idol and Elvis Presley. I spent one token and got an interesting record (more on that in a later post), and the other token I kept, for now, so I can show you what they look like. Kind of a neat souvenir, but I’m sure I’ll drop it in the machine next time we go back (probably in the spring).

Side A

Side B

I did not find anything on the KMA Master Grail List (sorry, everyone, I truly tried!), but I did find an LP set that my buddy Irwin had on his wee list – it’s not a Grail List, per se, just a want-list as he has just gotten back into vinyl recently, so he gave me a short list in case I saw anything. So I grabbed it for him and texted him, and he is thrilled, says it’s his favourite live album by this guy. He wanted this 2LP set:

Cool. It was in great shape, and at a reasonable price, I thought.

And here are some other fun things I saw on our trip:

Spot the spelling error, laugh at the spelling error.

Random Neil graffitti art.

And finally, we always stop in Orangeville at an Irish pub for supper on the way home. Outside the men’s room door, there is a picture hung upside down. I don’t know why it is so, but I assume it is in error. Last time we were there, I pointed it out to the waitress and she laughed and said they’d fix it. This trip, several months later, it’s still not fixed. I didn’t point it out again this time, because now it’ll be fun to see how long it stays that way. Who knows, they might never fix it.

Also at the pub I spoke, in passing, with a lady whose young kids were dancing on the wee stage in the pub (they have bands in there, sometimes), and she said they’d driven straight through from Knoxville, TN that day. Now that’s a road trip. Google Maps says that is 11 hours and 18 minutes. Not counting time at the border. With wee kids in the car. Yeesh.

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Oh yeah, and as some final advice, this sign in Kensington Market has it correct:

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Thanks for Reading!