Janetrification?

           

            On Saturday, Parkdale was packed with people coming for the Parkdale Festival. I guess it was officially called the “Spring Into Parkdale Sidewalk Festival”. In the early afternoon I rode past Lansdowne with a garbage bag full of laundry. While my clothing and bedding were taking their bath, I went to the Salvation Army. I still haven’t found any curtains and though I always look through the pants, I never find anything there that appeals to me or if it does it doesn’t look like it will fit. I went home and did my dishes, then went back to put my laundry in the dryer. On the way home I decided to stop at the liquor store to get a can of Creemore each for that night and Sunday night. In the back refrigerated section where the beer is kept there was a guy talking very loudly on his cellphone, “If you don’t take care of me I‘m not gonna fuckin take care of you! What do I need? What I need right now is a hit! That’s where I’m fuckin comin from!”

            After picking up my laundry, I rode back to Dunn and I was waiting to cross the street to my place when I saw Banoo Zan walking on Queen and then not far behind her came Cy Strom. It was Banoo and Cy. It was Banzai! They stopped and chatted. They were out to check out the sidewalk festival and the Jane’s Walks that were taking place around the city that weekend. Cy was interested in the Parkdale walk because it would go into a Tibetan temple. We talked about other neighbourhoods and I suddenly realized that I had no idea where either Banoo or Cy lived. Cy said he lived on Indian Road, which is a great winding tree-lined street with a lot of old houses. Banoo told me she lived at Dundas and Sherbourne. I asked her if she liked it there and her answer was, “I don’t know.” I said, “I’ll take that as a no!” I found it interesting to be informed that Banoo would be moving in with Cy soon, after about a year of them being a couple. I asked Banoo if she was excited, scared or both by this big step. She confessed that it was a little of both.

            This was the first time I’d ever seen Banoo outside of the context of the poetry scene in which she’s a leader, a mover and a shaker. She seemed to me to be like a fish out of water in this case when she wasn’t introducing a poet or reading a poem.

            A Jane’s Walk group came streaming by and so Cy said they were going to follow it and we said our goodbyes. A guy in a Jane’s Walk was trying to get the last people in the line to hurry across as the light was changing, and it looked just like a daycare field trip. It’s a wonder they didn’t have them all hanging onto a rope so they wouldn’t lose each other.

            I wonder if Jane Jacobs’s ideas are the reason Parkdale is becoming gentrified.

            I listened to an episode of Amos and Andy from May 25, 1945. Andy is down in the dumps because his love game is off, while his friend Joe, who’s on leave from the navy, is going out with a different girl every night. He is telling Andy about the figure on the last girl he went out with and he said that he’d pick her over Venus de Milo any day. Andy says, “Listen Joe, you don’t need two gals! How about letting me take out this Venus de Milo!” Joe asks Andy to take his sailor seat to the cleaners for him but Andy decides to wear it to the Harlem Canteen because sailors get in free. The problem is that he turns out to be the millionth customer at the Harlem Canteen and so he wins a prize of having a big party thrown for him on his ship, which of course he doesn’t belong to. The guy in charge of the Harlem Canteen turns out to have been a sailor in the last war and asks Andy to tell him about his exploits in battle. Andy tells him about when Japanese planes were attacking and they were told to batten down the hatches but they couldn’t because they were all out of batting. Andy said he knocked the Japanese planes out of the sky with his ten-calibre machine gun. The old sailor said. “With a ten calibre machine gun you could hit nothing!” to which Andy replied, “Well, I was shootin at Zeros!”

            In the evening the clouds were spitting a bit and the weather report had called for light rain during the time when I would normally take my bike ride. After going out on the deck a few times to look at the sky, I finally decided not to go out. I had some writing to do anyway.