Mr. Musicface

Be fair, Downsview has only been a park for a couple of years, give it time. And better they made it a park now than give it all away to developers to build yet another block of condos, and then have everyone cry later about the lack of park land. It'll be decades before the positive impact of Downsview is seen, but our kids and grandkids will see it. Best Chretien-era federal decision since Flag Day.

- M.

Oh and as far as being a soccer venue, I think being immediately south of Woodbridge makes perfect sense, don't you? The real soccer fans are definitely in the burbs.

- M.

Hey I'm not arguing, U of T made sense to me too but they were the ones who backed out, not the Argos. (Which was really stupid on their part but don't get me started on U of T's insane politics... really, don't.) The Argos haven't been able to afford the Dome for a long time. If this means them not having to loose the francise in the long run, I say good on 'em.

- M.

I don't see CFL football as an urban appeal sport the way, say, NBA basketball is. The populations of Brampton, Markham, Vaughan & Richmond Hill add up to more than Calgary, Ottawa or Edmonton, so even if nobody who lives south of Steeles ever goes to see an Argos game again, there's still a big population of SUV drivers to take their place.

BTW I'm not saying this is a good thing by any means, I'm just stating a fact.

- M.

In fairness Jaimoe, what fanbase? I know I haven't been to an Argos game in years (In fact I think the last one I was at was against Shreveport, so that tells you something!) Them playing at Skydome was always stupid. And it's not like they didn't take a crack at getting a new downtown home, U of T were the ones who screwed them over first remember.

I say best of luck to the Argos, perhaps they'll develop a fanbase in the 'burbs, if so good on 'em.

- M.

The key to turning around the downtowns of cities like Hamilton, Brantford and Kitchener is to get people living there.

Here, here! One of the things that scares me the most about American cities that should be very cool, like Syracuse which has a big university and some good local music and beers and whatnot, is that the city centres shut down after 6 pm! We had a hell of a time finding a place to have a big and a brew when we were in Syracuse for a show a few years back. We did eventually discover a student ghetto where there were cool bars and even a great indie record store, but I'll tell you it took some searching.

One of the reason I think condos are actually a really good idea is 'cus they keep everyone from moving to the cookie-cutter-car-centric suburbs. AND if they're done right, you can have decent retail on the first floor, but unfortunately they're often not done right.

- M.

Actually Jaimoe it's funny you mention Indigo 'cus the first one I ever encountered was in your old hometown, Kingston, back in '98 when I was doing some grad work at Queen's. At the time I remember thinking it was a very cool concept and I sat in there for hours studying and drinking coffee. There was a coziness to the place even thought it was big, and it seemed to fit naturally into the downtown. (As an aside, Kingston still has one of my favourite downtowns of any city in the world.) Since the Indigo/Chapters merger thou, all of them seem to be a lot colder.

- M.

God, does anyone remember that movie "Kids"? Sunshine's post reminded me of it. I remember watching it thinking "is this sh!t for real?!?" I'd still like to think it's the exception rather than the rule.

- M.

Oh yeh I agree anything is possible. Hell, the first thing that should be dealt IMHO with isn't retail but it's mixing affordable housing into all our neighbourhoods. A friend of mine had a fantastic idea a few years back that I've occasionally heard echoed since, that some percentage of all these condo and subdivision developments should be allocated as geared-to-income housing. One of the biggest problems with places like Scarborough and why it has the rep it does is that there are gigantic developments where all the low-cost housing is lumped together in places like Orton Park and Malvern. If we could spread those populations out and "de-slummify" neighbourhoods that would be as great a value as anything, I think that's your highest priority when it comes to urban planning - particularly in Toronto where they keep saying there will be a million new people in the next 5-7 years.

- M.

Hey Ms. Hux! Yeh, I actually grew up right beside the Rouge Beach at the end of Lawrence Ave, you can see the lake from my parents front lawn and it's about 3 minutes walk down to the river. There's a bridge that goes across the river into Pickering, so we spent a lot of time on that side around Petticoat Creek, but we would also go through Highland Creek a lot, as well as occation trips up north around Twyn Rivers and the zoo, or out toward the Morningside Valley.

A trip to the convenience store near Morningside Mall which was the last known retailer of the original Gator Gum was also a favorite quest! Mmmmmm, Gator Gum...

- M.

Hey thanks for asking this ahess, yeh I am very curious about this too!

Thankfully, they havent really hit those teenage years yet, because as soon as they do, they are going to be rotten little assholes.

Just like their uncle...

Man, we used to bike EVERYWHERE. I grew up in the east part of Scarborough, and the range of my high school was about a 10 kilometre radius, so my friends were all over the place and we'd get on the bikes all the time so we could get together and hang out. We'd bike to the malls, bike to the Pickering flea market, bike through the Rouge Valley, you name it. I guess kids must still do all that stuff, things are even more spread out now so they'd sort of have to.

I do see "kids" (tweens and teens really) out and about in my neighbourhood, downtown, in the malls, etc. so I don't know about the common wisdom that they're all inside on the computer. In fact, most studies show that time spent on the computer by kids and adults is almost all time they would otherwise have been likely to spend watching TV rather than going out.

- M.

Oh hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Vaughan is a model for anything but sprawl, I'm just saying I'd rather see a trend back towards "traditional" enclosed malls rather than boxes.

I agree you're unlikely to get back to real city-centre planning, which is sad. But I'm looking at this from my own experience - Scarborough, where I grew never really had a downtown of its own anyway, but the malls did reflect the culture of the neighbourhoods - Morningside was different from Cedarbrae was different Agincourt etc. They did and to some extent still do reflect the ethnic make-up of the neighbourhoods and had some personality.

I also agree with paisley and ahess that they are tending towards greater homogeneity, but at least small retail has a chance in the malls. For instance Sherway Gardens has a great litle art gallery that deals in local originals and prints where my wife and I have found some great stuff over the years. East York Town Centre which is close to my place does have a big-ass Zellers but it also has some unique bulk and Halah food shops and clothing retailers that appeal to the local population. (And a bowling alley!)

At least in a covered mall, small retail and local colour stand some sort of chance.

- M.

I was actually glad to see they are opening a proper mall in Vaughan. People crap on mall culture, but at least there is some culture there compared to the boxes. I'm a suburban kid and I grew up in the malls - where the hell do kids hang out now? Plus I always think people scurrying in and out of their cars in February in the big box complexes is, among other things, un-Canadian. It's a cold country, give us some shelter ya corporate bastards! Gimme a nice food court and some fake trees, yeh baby!

Peace,

- Mr. M.

Have a big happy one, man!

- M.

ahess - you can call me Face or Musicface or Mr. M. or Jay (which is actually my name, go figure) or "hey you" or even "jerkface", I don't really care. The Rush-bashing remark was more of a holdover from a previous thread. Really I don't care much either way, it's just the cliche and the potential for sidetracking (like MarcO's comment which I'm actually gonna address in a second) isn't really necessary. We're talking The Slip and some interesting stuff here let's stay on that, you wanna start a Rush thread, hey you know I'm right there.

Now, notwithstanding my last comment: MarcO - haven't read Neil's latest, in fact Ghost Rider (his previous book) has been sitting on my nightstand for a while. Did read his first book The Masked Rider, not bad although a little self-indulgent and even a bit mean-spirited in a couple of places. These two newer books actually got better reviews generally, I will get to them but I'm a bit of a slow reader.

- M.

Okay yeh, I am actually quite a bad speller and bit dyslexic on top, so usually use a spell checker but didn't this time. But for the record zero, if I remember the conversation you're referring to, the word I called you on was "intrepidation", and I did not do it to be a jerk but because I honestly didn't know what you meant by the word 'cus it could have had two different meanings in the context it was being used. I believe I apologized at the time but do so again now, no offense was meant.

To your point, indeed a good one - I agree wholeheartedly that we are a juncture where the whole entertainment business is changing, but what I see it leading to is a more is extremes of "narrowcasting" and even greater classification and niche marketing than ever before. Like nothing but acid-jazz played on household appliances? I'm sure there's an Internet radio station for you, hell there might be a digital TV channel as well soon. How many people here do you think subscribe, for instance, to Much Vibe or listen to streaming urban/hip-hop radio or the like? Probably not many, so you've got a whole bunch of music lovers who are not exposed at all to a rich area of musical innovation that is happening right now. But I'm sure most folks have some opinion of that "scene", of it's members and all sorts of things about it. I know you probably understand niche marketing as well as anybody here Isn't classification is actually a necessary means to surviving and thriving in the future entertainment industry? Does that actually NOT bode well for bands that are hard to classify?

For the record, I think a band like The Slip will always have an audience 'cus they are just plain excellent, but unfortunately "Excellent Music" will never be a genre that is programmed by Clear Channel or the like.

Peace,

Mr. M.

P.S. I used a spel cheker for everthing but the last line of my mesage, that beter?

Hmmm, yeh... but do you think most people really know what jambands actually sound like? Other than The Dead and Dave Matthews, what do you think most people think jambands sound like? MMW? Gov't Mule? New Deal? Jimmy Swift? nero?

- M.

P.S. Oh, and would you mind laying-off the not-so-stubtle Rush digs? I like Rush, you don't, we all get it, time to move on don't you think?

Not only is the lack of stigmatizing and categorizing a good sign for the future, it's just another reason that people who don't like or don't know the Slip are pretty likely to find something in it that they haven't found elsewhere.

I dunno ahess, don't you think the stigma just doesn't exist for The Slip yet 'cus they are under most people's radar? In my experience most people who object to INSERT RELATIVELY-TO-EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN BAND HERE do so 'cus of either (a) fans/scene that they associate (correctly or otherwise) with that band or ( overexposure (or © they actually suck, but this is a distant third and obviously doesn't apply to The Slip anyway). Like, most people I know who claim they hate Phish (outside of "the scene" that is) couldn't name 2 Phish songs if their lives depended on it. Same applies to the Dead (although most Q107 listener-types could come up with Touch of Grey, Truckin', perhaps a couple others).

I'm not saying I'm not hopeful this won't happen to the Slip, but saying they're likely to escape this curse 'cus they intrinsically defies categorization... well I don't know, I would have had a hard time categorizationing Phish in the early 90s when they were still playing clubs too. Once you start selling out statiums (which could indeed happen to The Slip) I think all bets are off for staying clear of stigmas.

Peace,

Mr. M.

See, and this is why bradm will always be my friend!

- M.

Can you even make friends or do they just appear?

Now THAT'S a far more interesting discussion IMHO than the, ehem, "Douchebag Express" one (anyone else feel like they were in grade 6 again when they read that?)

- M.

Wow, now I'm "level headed"? Shucks zero, you sure now how to get to a guy.

2) Dr. Huxtable is no more.

Pardon? Sorry, whoisntplayingwithwhointhewhatwherenow?

- M.

Awww, now there's the love! If I was there zero, I really would give you a hug, ya big softie, ya!

- M.