"Smart" Water

            

            On the evening of August 24^th I went for my bike ride. The sky looked like dirty linen. It always seems to be the cloudier days that are muggiest. I rode up Monarch Park until at Sammon, the monotony of the little middle class houses was broken by the Go Go Gas Bar, which looked like it had been there for decades. I went to Mortimer and Coxwell and then south. On my way back down to Danforth I passed over a shiny coin, so I stopped to get it. It was a quarter, but when I tried to pick it up I discovered that it was imbedded in road tar. I tried to pry it out with one of my keys, but it wouldn’t budge. I probably could have dug it out eventually but it would have taken more than twenty-five cents worth of my time, so I moved on.

On Danforth. I decided to go to a different Starbucks to pee, just in case the other one kept whole rolls of toilet paper lying around, but no such luck. I unrolled a couple of meters from their dispenser. There sure are a lot more Starbucks on the Danforth than there were nine years ago. I remember on my last day of classes at the City Adult Learning Centre at Broadview, a bunch of us, including Marine Cusa and Ariel Bihan went walking east, looking for a place have coffee together. We had to walk all the way to Greenwood. Now there are at least five Starbucks along the way, including one near the school.

            I’ve noticed over the last few years, ads with pictures of Jennifer Aniston promoting Smartwater, but this year they are pushing it like crazy, with billboards and bus stops. I assume that it’s not claiming to make you smarter, because if it did, would Jennifer Aniston be a good icon to represent it? It seems that by “smart” they just mean it’s a smart choice. All it is turns out to be distilled tap water with a few added minerals. They claim that it has electrolytes and their plan was to hook the athletes on it, but it turns out it doesn’t even have as many electrolytes as Nestle’s bottled water or Gatorade, so the athletes didn’t go for it. It has nonetheless built up a cult following amongst non-athletes.