“Put away your god-damn blackberries you fucking yuppie scum!”
So last night I was suitably bored and decided to get some cash and grab a couple of pints at a local bar. A homeless woman was laying down, trying to stay warm, where the bank machines are in the Scotia bank at Lansdowne and Queen. She asked me for change, I informed her that the reason I was at the bank machine was because I needed money and thus didn’t have any change, but I dug around in my pockets and found 7 cents, which would seem more like an insult than an act of charity. So I gave her the rest of my cigarette instead when she asked for a drag. That’s the Parkdale I know.
Then I went to Not My Dog, which while trendy has reasonable prices and good music. I had a pint of Guinness but found it was served too cold to justify ordering another. I dig the western paintings they have in the place, especially the one where a country girl is kneeing the redneck guy.
So I went to Mitzi’s Sister, which I previously held a longstanding personal boycott against solely because it was my favorite neighborhood bar back when it was the not-upscale Tennessee Tavern. I’ve only been there a couple of times since the change and the accompanying remodeling / gentrifying. The last time I was there it wasn’t very busy and there were no identifiable yuppies, plus the bartender Sean is very nice and gave me samples of some of the different microbrews they had on tap. However, I knew this being a Saturday night there was a high risk of annoying yuppie hipsters being there.
My fears were confirmed when early into my first pint of 10-w-30 the crowd of yuppie-looking people in the bar pulled out their blackberries and started sending each other emails or whatever one does with those things. They were standing right beside each other but instead of talking they were intently focused on their blackberries. They didn’t put them away, period. By the time I had almost finished my third pint (by this time I had switched to Mill St. Tankhouse on the recommendation of a regular-Joel who also lives in the neighborhood and was sitting beside me at the bar) I was getting utterly annoyed by the blackberry yuppies talking / texting to each other on them about their new TV show they were producing or some such shit.
One of them was teasing another yuppie that just moved into the neighborhood calling it “crackdale” and pretending he was smoking a rock. Fuck you asshole, you have to live here, and not by choice because it’s the new ‘cool’, and have to deal with the problems that crack brings to the neighborhood to call it Crackdale - that term is reserved for our use only!
So I yelled the title for this post at them from across the bar we were sitting at. They looked at me half shocked / half scared and proceeded to pretend to ignore me, no doubt texting each other that they shouldn’t respond verbally in fear that I was going to come over, rip their blackberries out of their hands and stomp on them with my work boots.
I needed to get out of there, so I went to Saks where I bought a Jamaican patty and asked to buy a couple smokes. I was duly informed that they didn’t sell single cigarettes, when I asked “Since when? I used to buy them here all the time.” the guy working told me that a couple of weeks ago there was a big problem and they had to stop because “We were just trying to help out [poor] people, we only charged the same amount as if you bought a pack, but some people [read: yuppies] didn’t like that”. Gentrification has gone too far when you can’t buy single cigs at Saks anymore.
Walking back I passed the Wroxeter which looking inside seems like yet another upscale trendy bar to open in the ‘hood. It doesn’t surprise me anymore, Queen St. seems a lost cause with bars like the Golden Circle gone, and Jimmy’s getting its liquor license revoked (as part as an ongoing campaign co-ordinated by our riding’s city councillor’s “problem property task force” to rid Parkdale of anywhere poor people can afford to drink). The yuppies are clearly winning the battle of Queen St.
I don’t think it will be possible to fully gentrify Parkdale given the large scummy apartment buildings on Jameson, Tyndall, and Westlodge. But what’s clearly happening is that they’re becoming isolated pockets of poor people while the neighbourhood’s business cater to a new upscale hip crowd and raise the property value (and rent) of the surrounding houses.
Back at Mitzi’s Sister one of the yuppies let out an atrocious fart, or more likely they shit themselves (it was that bad and long lasting), that I fled to the smoking room and bummed a butt from a local guy who’s lived here for a decade and we talked about how the neighborhood has changed. He tried to assure me that Mitzi’s wasn’t full of yuppie scum on the weeknights; they only come in force on the weekends. An invading army of wanna-bes trying to claim street cred for drinking in Parkdale. Thank god there were a couple of regular non-yuppie locals I could talk to there.
This morning I walked down to The Dufferin Gate for breakfast and to assure myself that there was still at least one neighborhood bar that was between the few remaining dives (where I feel you have to be either under 16 or over 60 to fit in) and the yuppie magnets on Queen St. It was like coming home again, the floor was dirty and the table had old issues of free real estate magazines stuffed under the legs to keep it from wobbling. The service was fast, the home fries were cooked from a frozen bag, the orange juice was from concentrate, the waitress called me “hun” and talked to the old guys sitting at the bar drinking coffee at the bar and the dudes panning outside as if they were old friends (and they probably were) and not as if they were going to ‘bother customers’. I know where I’m going next time I want to grab a couple of beers on a Saturday night.
Finally, yes, I appreciate the irony of complaining on livejournal about gentrification of Parkdale by yuppie hipsters.
Then I went to Not My Dog, which while trendy has reasonable prices and good music. I had a pint of Guinness but found it was served too cold to justify ordering another. I dig the western paintings they have in the place, especially the one where a country girl is kneeing the redneck guy.
So I went to Mitzi’s Sister, which I previously held a longstanding personal boycott against solely because it was my favorite neighborhood bar back when it was the not-upscale Tennessee Tavern. I’ve only been there a couple of times since the change and the accompanying remodeling / gentrifying. The last time I was there it wasn’t very busy and there were no identifiable yuppies, plus the bartender Sean is very nice and gave me samples of some of the different microbrews they had on tap. However, I knew this being a Saturday night there was a high risk of annoying yuppie hipsters being there.
My fears were confirmed when early into my first pint of 10-w-30 the crowd of yuppie-looking people in the bar pulled out their blackberries and started sending each other emails or whatever one does with those things. They were standing right beside each other but instead of talking they were intently focused on their blackberries. They didn’t put them away, period. By the time I had almost finished my third pint (by this time I had switched to Mill St. Tankhouse on the recommendation of a regular-Joel who also lives in the neighborhood and was sitting beside me at the bar) I was getting utterly annoyed by the blackberry yuppies talking / texting to each other on them about their new TV show they were producing or some such shit.
One of them was teasing another yuppie that just moved into the neighborhood calling it “crackdale” and pretending he was smoking a rock. Fuck you asshole, you have to live here, and not by choice because it’s the new ‘cool’, and have to deal with the problems that crack brings to the neighborhood to call it Crackdale - that term is reserved for our use only!
So I yelled the title for this post at them from across the bar we were sitting at. They looked at me half shocked / half scared and proceeded to pretend to ignore me, no doubt texting each other that they shouldn’t respond verbally in fear that I was going to come over, rip their blackberries out of their hands and stomp on them with my work boots.
I needed to get out of there, so I went to Saks where I bought a Jamaican patty and asked to buy a couple smokes. I was duly informed that they didn’t sell single cigarettes, when I asked “Since when? I used to buy them here all the time.” the guy working told me that a couple of weeks ago there was a big problem and they had to stop because “We were just trying to help out [poor] people, we only charged the same amount as if you bought a pack, but some people [read: yuppies] didn’t like that”. Gentrification has gone too far when you can’t buy single cigs at Saks anymore.
Walking back I passed the Wroxeter which looking inside seems like yet another upscale trendy bar to open in the ‘hood. It doesn’t surprise me anymore, Queen St. seems a lost cause with bars like the Golden Circle gone, and Jimmy’s getting its liquor license revoked (as part as an ongoing campaign co-ordinated by our riding’s city councillor’s “problem property task force” to rid Parkdale of anywhere poor people can afford to drink). The yuppies are clearly winning the battle of Queen St.
I don’t think it will be possible to fully gentrify Parkdale given the large scummy apartment buildings on Jameson, Tyndall, and Westlodge. But what’s clearly happening is that they’re becoming isolated pockets of poor people while the neighbourhood’s business cater to a new upscale hip crowd and raise the property value (and rent) of the surrounding houses.
Back at Mitzi’s Sister one of the yuppies let out an atrocious fart, or more likely they shit themselves (it was that bad and long lasting), that I fled to the smoking room and bummed a butt from a local guy who’s lived here for a decade and we talked about how the neighborhood has changed. He tried to assure me that Mitzi’s wasn’t full of yuppie scum on the weeknights; they only come in force on the weekends. An invading army of wanna-bes trying to claim street cred for drinking in Parkdale. Thank god there were a couple of regular non-yuppie locals I could talk to there.
This morning I walked down to The Dufferin Gate for breakfast and to assure myself that there was still at least one neighborhood bar that was between the few remaining dives (where I feel you have to be either under 16 or over 60 to fit in) and the yuppie magnets on Queen St. It was like coming home again, the floor was dirty and the table had old issues of free real estate magazines stuffed under the legs to keep it from wobbling. The service was fast, the home fries were cooked from a frozen bag, the orange juice was from concentrate, the waitress called me “hun” and talked to the old guys sitting at the bar drinking coffee at the bar and the dudes panning outside as if they were old friends (and they probably were) and not as if they were going to ‘bother customers’. I know where I’m going next time I want to grab a couple of beers on a Saturday night.
Finally, yes, I appreciate the irony of complaining on livejournal about gentrification of Parkdale by yuppie hipsters.