A long Walk for Wine

Although there seems to be a LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) store on any corner here in Toronto, I have a favoured one. The branch at Summerhill is in a restored Train station and is one of the “Flagship” stores, so given a choice I like to shop at this location. They have a excellent selection of wines and their “Vintages” section is huge. As well I have found the staff are friendly and helpful. They got a charge out of my two shopping methods when I visit the store. I like to get the latest LCBO vintages magazine and browse the new selections featured. I highlight ones I might like to try and then go and search them out in the store, so I often ask for help. Then on my next visit I shop in the regular section and only pick wines that look interesting and are on sale. Works for me!

I wonder where that bridge leads

On a lovely May day with warm temperatures and sunshine I decided to take a walk. Now one nice feature in Toronto is the lovely network of trails running through the city’s ravines. A walk through the neighbourhood and you can find a trailhead that drops down into the ravine and in minutes the high-rises disappear and you are walking trails alongside streams through woodland. 

Today I chose a route through a neighbourhood I had never explored before ended up down following Yellow Creek through the ravine. You literally can not see the city at all when enjoying these trails but I knew that the Summerhill LCBO was on a railway line; it is in an old train station, so when I found myself under the railway

No concrete to be seen

bridge I made my way back up to the city and after a nice eight kilometres walk I was shopping for wine. I did not really need wine, but there were a few empty spaces in my wine rack and I can always find some interesting bottles here. 

One other nice thing about this LCBO is that it is half a block from a subway stop so I did not have to carry my two new bottles of wine the eight km back down through the ravine,  I just hopped on the train and finished my outing in comfort with the subway carrying me home. 

Time to head back up to the city

More Toronto Sculpture

 Recent posts have told you about my looking for doors and street art during my walks around Toronto, and the other thing I am constantly on the lookout for are sculptures. A couple of months after we “moved” here I posted about a Toronto Sculpture walk, and did the same in China, and in Florida. There are lots of statues and sculptures all over Toronto and I find something new on most walks. Here are a few of the most recent ones I have found.

This one is in what is called a "Sculpture Garden", and the art featured changes regularly. This one looks like the Loch Ness Monster, but is in fact the wave lengths of various local sounds, a Streetcar, a church bell, etc. Very interesting. 

This sculpture shows how everyone is equal before the law - thus the lion on one end and the small cat on the other, but the scale is level. 

This is three cube shapes balanced together in a little park but I have no idea what it represented.

A fireman rescuing a child from a fire is at Queen's Park and honours Toronto's fire service.

This one is a mystery. It is a huge metal stop watch but has no hands on the face. It is fastened to a large rock and is facing away from the street, so you can only see it when walking between two large office building. And behind the watch is a little sculpture of a sleeping cat. 

This is one of my favourite statues. It is huge and extends up and becomes part of the building behind it. It looks like an animal with four legs, but also like a tree with branches, but what looks like leaves from a distance are actually hundreds of metal birds. I could find no plaque explaining what it was, but it is an amazing piece of art.

Graffiti Alley

 Toronto has lots of amazing street art, and as I walk around the city I am always looking for examples to photograph. I wrote a while ago about the great work done to decorate one of the many highway underpasses, and the other day I finally found my way to the actual “Graffiti Alley”. I had read about this street art location, but I was never completely sure where it was; downtown off Queen St. Somewhere I knew, but Queen St. is long and very interesting on its own, so I had never actually found it. 

But, on a mission to visit one of the many Bead Stores in the area, I noticed some interesting looking street art down an alley and detouring to take a picture, I accidentally found my way to graffiti alley. It really was one of the best displays of Toronto’s amazing street art culture. Here are some of the photos I took.

This was the art that drew me down the alley.

Three Stories of street art; the entire building was painted.

Can you find your garage door?

And bonus . . . Another door for my collection.

I don't think the phone still works . . . .

Knitting and Skateboards.

Amazing artwork!

I especially like when windows and doors and backgrounds are integrated into the artwork.

More Doors

Are you ready for more of my doors? I have been taking photos of doors for years and I have over 500 pictures of them from all over the world. I am not doing much traveling anymore, but here in Toronto I manage to find interesting doors on most of my walks around the city. I do get some odd looks from people when they see me stopping to take pictures of doors.

 Not sure what happened to this door, but the simple grey tones caught my attention.

Not only interesting old doors, but some very cool dragon lights. 

Yes, if you look closely there is a door blended into this "street art".

A very cool old door, but the handprints made me stop to snap a photo.

A Frankenstein door "stitched" together?

Another door integrated into some beautiful street art.

A very "Industrial" door on the back of a building which featured this metal look all over. I also liked the wires beside the door. 

Okay . . . this door is just really extra cool.

Slightly vandalized and tagged.

And finally a door from Sorento Italy sent to me by a guest photographer Jim Ballinger who was traveling and thought I'd like this door. 

Joy of Writing - Story 8 - Emulate

The hallway seemed to go on for at least three more classrooms, before he finally got to the computer lab. It had been years since he had worked on a computer, his years in the prison did not allow him to use computers since his crime was computer fraud and hacking. But now he was finally out and although he was not supposed to be anywhere near any serious technology, he thought he might be able to get into the lab here in this old seldom used school. 

He cautiously entered the lab and sure enough there was only one other person in the room a fellow with a long ZZ top beard was all the way over on the other side of the lab.

Sitting at one of the computers he quickly logged into the network and then was able to  navigate to the website that had sat there for the 10 years he was away. Typing in the code he was able to access the program to emulate the 12784 COMPAQ system he was used to using. 

Five minutes later he had access to the files he needed. 

Delete . . . . Delete . . . . Delete . . . . . Delete, Those files were all that was left of his attempts to get into the government network, and he should now be able to escape the punishment  that he had worried about for years. 

As he pushed the final “delete”, The ZZ Top guy stood up and smiled, “Thanks, we were waiting for that.”

Joy of writing - Story 7 - Forward

The only way through the dense crowd was to push your way forward, There were people crowded in the street from side to side and as far as he could see. This was the biggest spontaneous gathering the city had ever seen, and it was going to last for days according to the newscasts. He had no idea how he was going to get back to his condo in time for the important call he was expecting. It was at least five more blocks to go and he had made little progress in the last ten minutes, but he continued to push forward. 

Twenty minutes later he felt he might make it in time. There was only another block to push his way through and he could now actually see his building. The crowd was still as thick as before, but he was finding that if he followed in the wake of the more aggressive individuals as they moved forward he could follow them and make some progress. 

Finally with five minutes to spare he reached the door to his building and forcing people out of the way he opened the door and entered the quiet of the building foyer and was greeted by the friendly security girl on the desk. 

“Mr. Bukosky, it is crazy out there today, how did you make it from downtown?”

“It is a zoo out there for sure, but I’m happy to be home at last.”

Taking the elevator to his unit on the 50th floor he opened the door to hear the phone ringing on his desk. Rushing to pick it up he answered, “Yes, what is going on so far?”

“Mark, bad news, the crowd is getting bigger by the minute and you will have to stay there for a while, but don’t worry, no one knows it was you.”

Joy of Writing - Story Six - Mystery

The library was closing in 15 minutes, so I decided to quickly pick out a book to take home with me. I was sort of leaning towards a good mystery story. I spent a few minutes  looking through the mysteries but could not find anything that really interested me, so I wandered around some other aisles, to see if I could find anything I might like to read. 

The romance section was crowded with teenagers giggling about the titles, but I really did not expect to find anything there. 

I spent a few minutes in the non-fiction area but then noticed a table with a display of local authors. There I found a book on local history that I thought might be interesting, but then noticed the author’s name. OMG, I went to school with her, she was such a lame student. 

Time was running out when I noticed that there was a cookbook section and a quick search revealed a book on “Mysterious cooking” featuring recipes that appeared in famous mystery stories. Perfect, I could be eating what Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot ate. This was a great choice, I picked the book up and carried it to the check out computer. 

I scanned the back cover on the automated check-out system and got a message that the book was not in the library. Obviously a mistake, so I went to the actual librarian, who also got the same message. Looking confused, she went to her computer and typed the title in. 

“Well this is a mystery, I’m sorry, I don’t know what is wrong. The computer says this book is signed out by some unknown patron who doesn’t even seem to be in the system as having a library card. I’ll have to do it by hand since this book is obviously actually here.”

Perfect, I did say I wanted a good mystery.