kathleen_dailey

The Artful Dodger has been our local for the last 15 years. It's shabby and friendly and quirky. Now that the spouse is dependent on a Rollator and can't manage the stairs, the pub's accessible, roomy patio is even more of a valued destination in mild weather.




It looks like the owners of the Dodger are about to tangle with a developer that wants to build a 76-storey tower (yes, yet another behemoth in my poor beleaguered little neighbourhood) next to the Dodger.

For years we've been patronizing the Dodger at every opportunity, because we know that development pressures make it inevitable that the venue will eventually disappear (when the owners die, sell to new owners, or get an irresistible offer from another developer). But in the meantime, I hope that the pub lasts for a good few years to come. The developer has a reputation for zone-and-flip shenanigans, so maybe the proposal will remain in limbo until either it or we disappear from this plane of reality.

1. Friday was mostly consumed with medical claptrap--following up on follow-ups; booking blood-lab appointments (what an unfunny joke--never once has an appointment at the nearest lab happened within an hour of the booked time); and waiting on hold for ages after futilely trying to interpret the contradictory and outdated boilerplate instructions in the spouse's Wheel-Trans package and on the TTC website. TTC bureaucrats, please hire an editor!

2. Our condo board has undertaken a massive renovation of the building's public spaces and common elements. Any day now, we'll be getting new entry doors to our unit, replacing the original burl-elm versions. Some of the residents are keeping the old doors and converting them to dining or office tables; they're real wood and attractively unusual in their colour and pattern. Even though the renovations are accounted for in the 2024 budget, I know from sad experience how renos invariably proceed, and I foresee a special assessment in my future.

3. In other condo news, the unit next to ours has been sold. This is a big deal because there's not much turnover in our building (a unit changes hands every two or three years). Each floor has seven units, and our floor is a tight-knit micro-community of very diverse and very compatible humans and animals. So we're all hoping for more of the same with our new neighbours.

4. If some of the AO3 tags describing Spock and his personality traits, childhood development, mental and emotional stability, and interpersonal relationships had been available to the psychological screening department of Starfleet Academy, I'm pretty sure that he never would have gotten as far as an interview for the cadet training program, much less risen to become "the best first officer in the fleet."

5. In this week's Rob Fordesque episode of LOT: CI, the investigative reporter was said to work for Toronto Life, which IRL hasn't raked a microgram of serious muck since before David Miller was mayor. The disclaimer card at the beginning of the ep said, in part, "No identification [sic] of any actual person is inferred [sic] or intended." Showrunners, follow my advice to the TTC in item 1 above and hire an editor! Otherwise, the story was forgettable and the performances anemic. The two leads have zero presence and less chemistry, although the IT guy has a tiny (really tiny) bit of promise.

Documentarian Jamie Kastner's film Charlotte's Castle should be of interest to anyone interested in social history, architecture, residential design, gentrification, renoviction, urban activism, community organizing, and/or the quasi-magical power and synergy of like-minded and passionate individuals sharing common spaces.

To a person, the residents and former residents are entirely relatable: their love for the building, its history, and the experience of living there is clear. By contrast, the representative of the Dutch developer Prowinko that attempted to desecrate the building (and partly succeeded) is entirely complicit in his own portrayal as a grade-A asshat. (Thank you, Jamie Kastner, for keeping the outtakes in.) The developer's tactics are classic--undertake renos apartment by apartment, as tenants move out, and thereby make life a living hell for the remaining residents until they too are forced to flee.

Ah, capitalism. It never gets old.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of our move to Yorkville. Still haven't gotten over lamenting that during all the years in which I longed for Yorkville I wasn't able to persuade the spouse to sell the house, but now that everything fun is gone from the neighbourhood I'm living here at last. Not only are all my friends from those days dead or elsewhere, but there are no more artsy-craftsy shops, no more European-style cafes, no more exotic restaurants, no more strains of acoustic music drifting out of pubs and clubs on summer evenings, and (of course) no more music stores or bookstores. There's just Chanel, Tiffany, Hermes, and so many more of their ilk, and an endless landscape of multi-multimillion dollar condos. I think that Over the Rainbow's recent move to its (undoubtedly hideously expensive) Manulife site was the final proof of--well, of something bad. The 'hood is so extremely boring now, and yet here I am. When The Artful Dodger and The Pilot fall to the developers (as they must and will), there will be no place to go--even for a beer--that doesn't require a bank loan.

The upside is that my own condo will, if I'm lucky, be my retirement fund. I feel that I should be happier about that than I am.

At least the Scarf Lady of Yorkville (Suzy Sprott) is still around. I see her on her flower-bedecked bicycle from time to time, but she's my age if not older, so she too will be disappearing soon.

Never have I been so glad to see the end of a month. May was truly awful, and not only (but maybe principally) because of Merc in retrograde. Certainly nothing worked as it was supposed to--including and especially the house search. Whoever thought that there was a buyer's market in this town was, as the RE folks say, dreaming in Technicolor. But we managed to get our offer in and accepted for The Enormous Retro Condo (and, thanks to my agent's wiles, we didn't give the sellers time to think--if we had, they would have been looking at multiples for sure). If all goes well we'll be in there before August. Gigantic sigh of relief all around, except on the part of the cats (one of whom will have to be smuggled in).

Major renos are on the horizon. Stepping into the place is like stepping back in time to 1982, but at least everything is neat and clean and hasn't been mucked up by previous renovators. Thank you, spiffy old gent who lived there so tidily and unimaginatively for the last couple of decades.

I kept hoping that AOS would spur me to tell a story, but now that Romulus has been wiped out in at least one universe I've kinda lost the desire to revisit the characters. I have the T'Pring opus (begun in 2001 and never finished) gathering sand on my hard drive, so maybe I can find a way to rework that one in the new timeline. Or not. Many fans are sure (or at least they hope) that T'Pring has died on Vulcan, and I have to admit that the chances are good that she probably did. Oh, well. At least Wildcat is happy about the S/U, and I'm happy about that!