THE LIGHT IN FRONT

Off I was to depart the lands of America and enter, however briefly, Canadian territory.

However, there was one small thing I had to do before I crossed the border. I was gonna drive through Buffalo, NY, so it was imperative I stop by for buffalo wings.

Jim in Albany had recommended I choose Duff’s, a spot apparently very famous for their badass wings. The fame was well deserved, these were some of the best wings I’ve ever had, definitely the best buffalo-style. A 12-pack of spicy bitches later, I was off on the road again, to make a quick stop by Niagara Falls before I continued to Toronto to meet yet another Friend from The Internet, and frequent blog commenter (see many of the past posts), Mike.

Mike had mentioned the Falls had a better view from the Canadian side, so I decided to cross the border before I stopped there. All went smoothly, save for the border guard tripping balls over the PR license plate on my car. Apparently, only a handful of cars from PR must have ever crossed this border, cause they don’t even have PR listed in their database; the guy had to write I was from Pennsylvania (PA), in order to be able to log me in their records… not sure how that works out.

So soon after I crossed I headed just next door of the border to catch Niagara Falls. It was packed like a motherfucker, with the closest parking spot about a mile away from the river’s edge, and charging $18 Canadian for it. I said fuck that and parked briefly in a spot that could well have been a valid parking spot if it wasn’t for the half dozen signs that clearly said it wasn’t. It was close enough for me to dart out and get a few quick shots and some slo-mo tests with the new camera. 5 minutes later I was back in the car and on my way.

I arrived at Mike’s in the early evening. Found a suitable spot for the Yaris nearby, and without wasting a second, Mike was out the door with me in tow to go check out some spots around. We walked up Kings/Queens street and checked out some fucking amazing graffiti around… Toronto must not give much of a fuck about graffiti cause there was a lot of it in plain view, all amazing pieces that must’ve taken hours to complete. I’m guessing it was all legal walls cause there was no way there would be so much of it, and of such quality, if it was prohibited.

During this walk I came to the sad conclusion that ATMs in Canada are racist towards PR banks. I was unable to get cash anywhere, and I had forgotten to round some up on the way to Toronto. Mike was all kinds of awesome and spotted me with Canadian $ while I worked the situation out.

Another quirky fact that Mike informed me of was that Toronto was having a garbage strike, and trash cans and dumpsters hadn’t been attended to in about 18 days. Funny enough, I didn’t notice the overflowing trash cans until he told me. Maybe it was cause I’m used to living in a place where trash piles up on a regular basis, and where people have absolutely no qualms about committing fucking atrocities like the Noche de San Juan disaster at Ocean Park. I’m pretty glad I missed that, cause I would’ve fucking exploded if I saw that in person. 6/24/09, Never Forget.

Next up, a quick stop at Poutini’s, where I was to try out the authentic Canadian cuisine they call
poutine, but which I call Bowl of Crazy Shit. Basically, poutine is french fries smothered in gravy and tossed with a large helping of cheese curds. It sounds super gross, and looks even grosser:

…but goddamn if it wasn’t fucking delicious. That shit fell like a ton of bricks into my stomach, and I was surprised to see that my circulatory system was functioning properly and that I retained the basic motor functions required for walking. We then left  to head down the street and find a place adorably named The Bovine Sex Club. Unfortunately, it did not contain fornicating cattle, but it did have an impressive crowd of people who were obviously far cooler than I was. Tattoos, piercings, gravity-defying hair, inhumanly tight pants, you name it. The place itself was awesome, with walls covered in all sorts of craziness like mannequin heads, TV’s, bikes, pieces of plumbing, etc. A rockabilly band was holding it down, keeping the punks and mods moving while we sat a bit back and had a couple of beers. Very rad place that made me feel thoroughly unhip.

We called it a night after that. Mike hooked me up with a hammock he has hanging in his living room (how awesome is that?) and I had the best sleep in days.

The next day, Mike had to go to work (this is a given), and I was set to go out exploring Toronto on my own. Mike however had been rad enough to make me a little map pointing out all the rad shit I could see in a day taking a big loop into the city, as well as pointing out the places to miss (upscale touristy shop streets, overly hipster locations, and an area defined by Mike as “Gaytown”). Both Alan in Albany and Mike had been emphatic about the Art Gallery of Ontario being the #1 must-see spot if I only had a day to explore, so I set a beeline for that and grabbed a bus. I got off a bit early to walk through the graffiti alleys in better daylight (it was evening the day before) and snap a few flicks:

…then I crossed through Chinatown (those that know me would know why), finally found (after about 8-9 tries) an ATM that was mercifully willing to give me money, and finally arrived at the AGO. This place was HUGE. A lot of it was dedicated to Canadian art, which is probably as lame as it sounds (I didn’t check it out), but it also housed some amazing contemporary art collections and had a special exhibit on surrealism. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed unless it was outdoors or an area bathed in natural light, so pictures are scarce. It did have this fucking awesome wooden staircase in it though, one of the apparently 3 things you can take a picture of in the museum:

My time was mostly spent in the top floors with the contemporary art. There were too many amazing pieces to cound, including a series of totem poles made out of golf bags (with animal faces and everything), a big furry magnetic block with “hair” made out iron filings, and an entire bathroom (including faucets) made of string and see-through fabric. My absolute favorite piece though, was “Stretch #1″ by sculptor Evan Penny, and it blew my fucking mind. I couldn’t take a picture of it, but The Internet™ provides:

Now, sure it looks trippy in that image on your monitor, but I can’t even begin to explain how much this thing fucks with your head when you see it in person. The artist (seen standing next to the sculpture) has been studying digital and photographic image distortion techniques for quite some time, and now sets out to recreate these in 3D at fairly large scales. The thing is, these are hyper realistic, with individual tiny hairs making up the stubble and blue veins and capillaries visible under the skin. Whatever angle you approach it from, you see a perfect photographic distortion, like you took a picture of a normal guy and squeezed it in Photoshop… but you walk around the whole thing and the illusion is PERFECT. Your mind stops comprehending what it sees, it wants to believe it’s a 2D image, but depth cues and the multiple viewing angles throw that impression off until your visual cortex overheats; you can almost feel the neurons in your brain struggling to keep up. It registers a very distinct perceptual and psychological impression on you, I don’t think I’ve ever reacted so strongly and so physically to a piece of art. Check out more of this guy’s stuff, it’s fucking unbelievable. Fuck Ron Mueck (guy who makes giant realistic people, you may have seen his stuff in a PowerPoint slideshow your cousin sent you… right after the guy who does the sidewalk chalk illusions), this dude’s on another level.  Peep this page for more pictures and angles of Stretch #1.

Another super impressive exhibit, which I thankfully could take pictures of, was by Giuseppe Penone. This dude basically digs into old trees and finds the young tree within, then carefully carves out the “old” wood to expose it. At first I thought the guy was just carving a tree shape out of the big slabs of wood, but careful analysis revealed otherwise. You know the knots you find in the grain on pieces of flat wood? Those aren’t just cute little oval markings, those are actually cross-sections of branches that existed when the tree was younger. This guy carves and follows the knots to the core of the tree, revealing branches long ago swallowed up by the thickening tree trunk. Super fucking badass, check it out:

Finished up with a tour of the surrealism exhibit, which was a nice bookend to the Dalí Museum I had seen at the beginning of the trip. Interesting to see the other artists in the movement get some shine; Dalí was just too badass and completely overshadowed pretty much all of them, basically making surrealism synonymous with his name.

After the AGO mindblowingness, I went for  long walk to at least catch the Royal Ontario Museum from outside, cause I heard it looked pretty crazy. It certainly did:

It was too late to go inside, even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were in exhibit and I really wanted to check those out. However I had just spent more than 4 hours in the AGO, needed to get some lunch, and needed to find some wi-fi for blog updating. Mike came out of work and met me at a Starbucks, where the poor guy had to wait for like an hour before I finished up (sorry about that dude). We walked down the street, found a camera store where I got myself a cheap but sturdy tripod, then headed back to Mike’s place, where we spent a few hours picking random records from his extensive collection and throwing them on the turntables to see what showed up. My fave was these dudes who exceeded all levels of goofy whiteness, and had incredible song titles such as “Favourite Shirt” (The name of the band escapes me, Mike, if you’re reading this, maybe you can help me out).

I can’t remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went out for a quick beer at a place that had a ridiculous selection of beers worldwide. This is just one side of the beer list:

We were pretty beat that day and decided to take it easy after that. The next day I was set to take off to Chicago (via Detroit), and I wanted to stop by a camping store nearby to cop a better sleeping bag for the cold mountain nights at Yellowstone, and also grab a vastly superior backpack for backcountry camping. We woke up to a pretty nasty thunderstorm that didn’t last long, headed to the store and got my awesome new stuff, then said my farewells to Mike. Mike is a seriously awesome person, who not only perfectly outlined a comprehensive yet condensed Toronto experience, but was also willing to help me out when ATMs were being unfriendly, AND gave me an awesome mini sandbag tripod which is the fucking coolest thing in existence. Big ups Mike, I owe you many.

Many hours of endless Canadian farms rolling past me, I crossed the border back to good ol’ USA (where I was asked nonchalantly if I was transporting marijuana) and entered the decaying ruins of Detroit, MI.

A very special post, the Detroit Apocalypse Tour, is coming up next, so keep your eye out. Till next time.