Author: Bill

My sister Joni (who is a talented musician herself, in my completely biased opinion) was thrilled to attend a Bruce Cockburn performance in Nelson B.C. She says:

The guitar work Bruce does is all over the neck.
What inspiration! The beat he makes with his right thumb is crazy.
The traverse picking is so fast. What a talent!
He played lots and was so humble and funny and wise.
I really liked him and was so excited to say to him how much I like his work.
What an honour! What a nice surprise!

It was a surprise, because Joni had gone to Nelson to help a friend and didn’t even know that Bruce was playing, let alone that she’d be listening from a fourth row seat. Nice photo, eh?

Someone has already had fun with the new sign on the condo-to-be sales office at Woodbine and Gerrard. The message on the adjacent corner suggests that the culprit was not Blair the Crack Dealer.

I find the whole thing unfortunate. Not only has the extra bold/extra thin BEACHHILL lettering thing been done to death, the kerning is far too wide for my tastes. And why all caps? When you run “Beach” and “Hill” together like that, especially in all capital letters, you get that silly looking double H in the middle. Surely there should be a space between the words. Much nicer in upper and lower case, too. Beach Hill. See?

Can’t blame this one on Rob Ford. The contact was signed in the Mayor Miller era and we are stuck with poorly conceived public “furniture” for decades to come.
This roadside advertising frame masquerades as a bus shelter but affords no shade and no windbreak from the sides. The black strip is apparently intended to be a public message board but you can see how it is actually used. I hope you can’t see the small, cowardly racial slur that’s there. If I thought you could read it, I would have blanked it out.
“He who pays the piper, calls the tune”, goes the old saying. Clearly, the advertising company placing these poster holders didn’t have bus riders as a main concern, but the City could have done a lot more to gain useful street furniture for the public. Nope. You get what you pay for. These cost nothing and that’s about what they are worth.

I thought “Won’t Be Beat” was a competitive price slogan. Today, it seemed to mean “Won’t Be Beat By Shoplifters”.
A policy of searching customers’ bags, knapsacks and strollers is being implemented by a security guard. “No Thrills” customers are not the sort of people who take such searches quietly. They yell. They return all of their purchases and demand their money back. They resent the suspicion that they are thieves and they let it be known.
I don’t know if the store’s many CCTV cameras are new or more plentiful, but I’m pretty sure the inkjet-printed notice of the store’s “right to search” wasn’t there last time I visited. Grocery costs are climbing and so is pilfering apparently. Belittling your customers isn’t just for airline and record companies anymore. Of course, it’s “all for our own good”, as the checkout girl explained.
Good or not, it’s a lively show at the old No Thrills.

The balmy weather kept Bill and Rebecca out in High Park and on the Lakeshore for over 5 hours this morning. I am fortunate to have received another batch of gorgeous photos such as the one above.

Since you seldom get to see who’s behind the High Park pictures, here are Bill and Rebecca from today’s shots. Bill is doing his trademark “surfing” pose. He surfs Park pathways mostly, but today it’s the shoreline.

It was a pleasant surprise this morning, to find that the oppressive humidity had broken and light breezes were making it very comfortable for getting in some steps. I owed my pedometer a few. It’s been too muggy to log my targeted 10,000 daily steps. More like 8,000, the last couple of days. Today I caught up… 15,962 is what you see on the map.

The red dots represent my McDonald’s trifecta. They are giving away free small coffees this week… not just to seniors, to everybody. 🙂

Danica will be back soon from her annual family visit to B.C. but here she is, looking all tanned and relaxed, in front of the provincial parliament buildings. She’s had beautiful, non-humid weather and lots and lots of things to see and do. I remain in Toronto, rejecting the cattle pen airport and its security theatre. When they fix that, I may fly again.

You probably don’t even know how I kept you from going to prison for manslaughter. Quite simple, really.
As you drove your red car at me in the crosswalk on Dundas East, I saw that you were not slowing down in the least. It was broad daylight and the crosswalk signals were flashing, so I realized at once that you must be a blind person, oblivious to my presence between your headlights. To spare you the inconvenience of killing me, I ran out of your way.
Glad to help, but next time, you might not be so lucky.

Karen Bell emailed a set of gorgeous photos of a new rapid transit car in Paris, made to celebrate the Palace of Versailles. My eyes went immediately to the… PADDED SEATS! Oh, the extravagance. Oh, the luxury. How I remember the glory days of our own TTC, when we we too had padded seats. Sigh.

I always enjoyed hearing Gore Vidal on TV, and this clip is an example of why. It happens to make Dick Cavett look pretty good, too, in contrast with a pugnacious Norman Mailer.
Gore Vidal, dead at 86. There goes one of the greats.
BTW, I was disappointed to see a silly, utterly ernest, young TV news chick report the “news” that Vidal had not gone all religious at the end. This was before the CBC network lost its mind later in the day, feverishly interviewing itself over its regaining of Olympic broadcast rights years from now.
So really, no excuse.