Suburbs vs. Downtown: Let's Get It Started

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It's 416 vs. outer-416 vs. 905 week on the Ethnic Aisle. We're going to be writing about downtown, the suburbs, the much-ballyhooed divide between them, and what ethnicity has to do with it. Hopefully you'll find it all interesting enough to come to our in-person chitchat next Monday, September 26. To kick things off, a few links:

From last weekend's Toronto Star, a piece by Kenneth Kidd on How the Liberal Lost Toronto in the last federal election. How much did it have to do with the Conservatives' targeting 905 ethnic communities? How repulsive is it that Jason Kenney was supposedly labelled Minister of Curry?

The blog Blue Kennel discusses Why Non-Suburbanites Distrust Suburbanites: "people move to suburbs not just to get things, like bigger houses and yards, but to get away from things in their old neighborhood:  crime, traffic, and bad schools....And how to keep the bad things from following them?  They have to be able to control the neighborhoods around them."

The Atlantic thinks this is The Beginning of the End for Suburban America because no one can afford to heat/cool huge houses or commute long distances the way they used to.  (Thanks to Bernie Michalik for these last two links)

Secret Republic offers up an infographic on the Suburbanization of Poverty in the U.S., which should be old news to Torontonians  familiar with the 2004 United Way report Poverty By Postal Code.

In August, Ute Lehrer and Roger Keil from the City Institute at York University were on Metro Morning discussing how suburbs are going to keep on growing--in the GTA and around the world--through the 21st century.

Will the suburban GTA decide which party wins this October's provincial election?

Hazel McCallion once told the Star that her biggest regret as mayor was not designing Mississauga to be more dense so that the city could afford decent transit.

And in Vaughan, mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua wants to transform the 905 outpost "from a suburban municipality to a world-class city," starting with a walkable downtown.

Teachable Moments: Spiritual Gangster

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What we're making fun of today: the "yoga" clothing line Spiritual Gangster.

Denise: Were we discussing Spiritual Gangster?

Anupa: No. But is that the yoga clothing line?

Denise: Yes...weren't we? Like way a long time ago? Anyway. they're selling it at my yoga studio,  sigh

Anupa: Ohhhh. I thought it was someone else i was discussing it with. Hahahah. How does it make you feel?

Denise: Sad. Sad at yoga people

Anupa:  Why would someone think that's an okay name for a clothing line? Like really.

Denise: Because they are yoga.  They probably think they're reclaiming both words.

Anupa: We should write an open letter Dear Spiritual Gangster, STFU. Sigh

Denise: Lolol what?

Anupa:  I am tired

Denise: I thought you were sighing about how hilarious you are

Anupa:  It is very convenient that their about page isn't working right now. I would've loved to read the description Denise: vomit

Anupa: Why is it $44?

Denise: Right?

Anupa: I wish i could comment on there "Why is this $44?"

Denise: It comes with spiritual vibrations. This is making me like actually mad. But also I am laughing at myself. Are people going to understand why it's annoying?

Anupa:  I think we should maybe try and explore it a little otherwise we're going to sound like yawny brown oppositeyuppies

Denise:  Ok well - I will admit, I wear Lululemon. But I always say, love the clothes, hate the brand. Their "Love! Feel! Breathe!" shit is annoying, but they do make good, structural workout clothes. Whereas...this is just about shopping. But pretending it's deep. Yeah?

Anupa:  Sure. Or "branding." Barf. I mostly only buy Lululemon when it's on sale. Basically nothing justifies $100 stretchy pants for me. Also, everyone in there is an asshole.

Denise:  I go more for the shirts. Ummm...but also the word "gangster"?

Anupa:  I know, right? It is weird because it's basically utterly confusing? But also seems like the yuppiest thing to say ever? I kind of resent atheist, agnostic whites borrowing spirituality from yoga. Which is why I prefer the least "spiritual" studios possible.

me:  And also all the models are super skinny super long-haired white girls. Kind of what I like about yoga is when women that aren't your "typical" hot body are super muscular and flexi.

I'm sad about my studio carrying these, sob

Anupa is busy. You may be interrupting.

It'll always be Caribana to us!

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Ew.

Toronto's annual Caribbean festival underwent a major branding change this year, with the end result of the fray being a tacky corporate renaming of the long-running summer bash that originated in 1967! We like to keep it old school here at the Ethnic Aisle (shout out SkyDome, Paramount Theatre!) so check out our little acronymic ode to our favourite, local fete below.

But first, Trinidadian transplant Renee Sylvestre-Williams wonders if her refusal to attend this weekend's festivities--uh, every year--makes her a bad Trini.

Cops will jump up too; all you have to do is ask!

Arrive early to the parade, or you'll be wandering aimlessly down Lakeshore forever.

Royalty, West Indian-style is better than any fascinator Kate Middleton ties to her head. Watch the coronation of the carnival King and Queen tonight at Allan Lamport Stadium.

If you haven't planned your Caribana outfit yet, get thee to Costa Blanca for a surplus of "fun and stretchy," post-haste!

Beware Yonge Street on Caribana Friday.

American guys think they are at a premium up here, ladies and gays: do not entertain them.

Need libations along the parade route? Look for my friend Brad selling water, pop, and airplane bottles of booze if you ask nicely, out of his cooler.

After it's all over, let us know how it goes--we'll be at the cottage!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxFefO99yf8&w=425&h=349]

What's Beef?

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Visiting India as a 13-year-old was a nightmare realized. Bad things happened: being groped by skeezed-out men in crowded places, disembarking a congested train by jumping as it pulled away from the platform, traveler’s diarrhea, seeing a giant cockroach in a hotel bathroom (my first roach!), getting a bag of chips snatched from my hand by a hissing monkey, screaming at an overly persistent street vendor from a hot, cramped car, blowing smog-blackened snot from my nose in New Delhi. I can go on (but I won’t). My reaction to all of these things was very visceral: Ugh.

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The Problem with Food and Authenticity, Part Two: Your Mom

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There is a blog post by Lea Zeltserman I keep returning to when I think about this. She was reacting to a New York Times review of a hip, nostalgic and probably quite nice Brooklyn deli called Mile End. The kind of place that makes noodles for its kasha varnishkes by hand, because that’s the way the owner’s great-grandmother made it, and was therefore the right way. Neither would ever buy their bow tie-shaped pasta at a store.

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The Problem With Food and Authenticity, Part One: The Restaurant

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By Chantal Braganza

A year ago I interviewed a brilliant and incredibly nice woman named Lily about a book she wrote. It’s called Eating Chinese; a perceptive look at how Chinese-owned restaurants in Canada both invigorated the country’s restaurant industry in the early 1900’s and, in some cases, created cuisines of their own. If you’re interested in food, immigration issues and Canadian history, this is a read I would suggest. Among many things, what Lily’s book does remarkably well is make a case for North American-Chinese cooking as a legitimate cuisine. And by North American-Chinese cooking, I mean the stuff no one ever thinks of as “authentic” anymore: egg rolls, chop suey, sweet & sour and moo shoo pork.

With time, our ideas in this part of the world about what food is change. Fifty years ago we’d go on dates and bring our kids to restaurants with such sino-colourful names as Gold Mountain or Red Dragon, awkwardly slurp a bowl of egg foo yong with these newfangled things called chopsticks and tell ourselves we were eating something exotic—the way everyone, every person, from all over the most populated country in the world, ate at home in China.

By the late nineties, and definitely now, to certain types of food lovers there is no such thing as Chinese (and yes, rightly so). There’s Szechuan, Hong Kong and Hunan, sure. Double points if you can pin what you’re eating to a specific city. Triple if the person who made it is actually from there.

Lily told me funny research stories about poring over archived menus, photos, even grocery orders while working on the thesis that later became a book. None of these made it to the story, which was kind of a shame.

One time, she looked at the grocery orders from a migrant Chinese cook who worked for a wealthy family in Alberta a long time ago. I never wrote down when. It wasn’t in a major city, so he would have had to send out orders weekly for the household’s food. She looked at what the cook was ordering and could figure out what kind of dishes the cook was making based on the ingredients. When more vinegar was being ordered, more sweet and sour dishes were happening. Bell peppers and onions for improvised stir-fries were a common occurrence. As with a number of Chinese restaurant owners who by the Second World War no longer felt they had to serve canned spaghetti and hot beef sandwiches to stay in business, this cook was simply using ingredients available with techniques he knew to make what he could.

“What’s so interesting about these kinds of Chinese restaurants,” Lily told me, “is that they take what that question of ‘What is Chinese?’ reveals, and they give it back to them. They say, well, ‘Here’s what you think real Chinese food is, and this is what we think you want.’ They were incredibly perceptive, these restaurant owners, at reading the communities they were in, and giving back to people a version of it.”

And you know what? That version’s actually pretty great if you know where to go. Try the chicken balls at China Gourmet, and tell me I’m wrong.

Insensitive to Gluten

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I’ve seen my mother on the brink of death. It was my first and only visit to El Salvador. I was nine years old.

We’d gone out to dinner at a restaurant that specialized in fruits from the sea. My mother ate a stew of mariscos. Seafood medley in a bowl, essentially. She’d been told she was allergic to shellfish in the past, but one little rash and slightly laboured breathing wasn’t enough to stop her. Shrimp is just that good.

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Khao Swe

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Khao swe. It’s one of those lyrical food words I enjoy most. Like rooh afza, which is a rose syrup mixed with milk or water. Or sashimi and Darjeeling. Khao swe is a Burmese dish made with noodles and chicken in a spicy coconut milk broth. In my family, my mother and her sister make khao swe on special occasions. My mom’s is slightly spicier and her sister’s somewhat tempered, kind of like their respective temperaments. My mom’s is also always more pungent, which is the way I’ve grown to like it. They both garnish it with spring onions, cilantro and green chilies and drizzle lime for some added zest.

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Ghost Men Like Dumplings, Too

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Gold Stone Noodle Restaurant on Spadina has been the source of my weekly Chinese food fix since before I can remember. When I started going there, it was a homely Chinatown hub that served up a cheap abundance of Southern Chinese delights. These days, it’s the same homely hub with the same delights, for only slightly more money. Over the years, I’ve developed that sought-after server-customer relationship: I say “the usual,” she brings me a steaming bowl of noodle soup with succulent Sui Kau dumplings stuffed with shrimp, pork and black fungus, alongside a light green bulb of bok choy and thick slices of barbecued pork and duck.

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