Toronto Life: October 2005 Archives

Last night Adam, Rob and I had a night out and trekked up to Paramount Canada’s Wonderland for what I believe is their first ever Fearfest. Fearfest is a clever way for Wonderland to pack the park when it would otherwise be empty by covering it with Halloween decorations and setting up haunted houses all over the park. Originally Marc was supposed to come with us, but he was a big idiotface and decided to take a shift at AE instead of hang out with us.

I’d like to stop right now to remind you who I went with (Adam and Rob), and state that for all their love of horror movies these two people are the biggest pussies ever. Actually that’s not true. They didn’t scream very much, unlike the girls all around us who screamed bloody murder at everything that moved. It’s ok though, because that’s what the point of a haunted house is. It’s weird how I’m the opposite though. Unlike horror movies, which I hate with a passion because I can never sleep ever again after watching them, I love haunted houses so very much.

The way they dressed up the park was awesome on my senses. There were skeletons climbing all over the buildings and two floating on tubes drinking martinis by the waterfall. The whole fountain thing from the waterfall all the way to the flower garden had red lights leaving the water and the trees around it with an extremely eerie look. There were also people dressed up throughout the park jumping out at people from the forest, including one guy with a chainsaw that ran out at these girls sitting at the edge of the forest.

The first area we went to was the MTV Rockin’ Scare, which was two haunted houses and a movie clip setup at Paramount Theatre and behind it (where you get your season passes). The one we decided to go to was the Total Request Dead. It was like every other haunted house; a maze that you had to walk through while things made loud noises and jumped out at you in an attempt to scare the crap out of you. The whole MTV Rockin’ Scare are had some sort of German Metal theme going on that Dom would have loved. I loved it too. Then when we got up to the front of the line for Total Request Dead they had some horrible clip playing that consisted of Papa Roach (barf) screaming ‘Cut my life into pieces’ followed by Britney Spears singing ‘my loneliness is killing me’ with some girl getting hacked up on top of it. If only Papa Roach had cut his life into pieces, I wouldn’t have had to run into the front as fast as possible to escape his horrible music.

The haunted house itself was pretty tame. There was one black room with dots and a girl in a sweet costume that consisted of black clothing and hood and those same dots so she would blend into the corner and then scare people. Then there was a room full of hanging pool noodles that hit you in the face. The highlight was definitely when I got bored and decided to scare the crap out of Adam by yelling really loudly and grabbing him. Even funnier was the fact that I did that and the girl behind us screaming because I scared her too. A close second would be Rob holding onto my sleeve loosely so he wouldn’t actually look like he was holding onto me.

When we got out we decided to skip the Ozzburnes because haunted houses are always the same thing except for there theme, and I didn’t need to see a bunch of cracked out Osborne knock-offs with burn wounds. What I really wanted to see was the stuff they had set up at The Curse of Sleepy Hollow on the other side of the park in Kingswood Theatre. Massacre Manor had a line that was over two hours, so we skipped it in favour of Cornstalkers and Blood Shed, a two in one haunted event with a shorter line. As the names give away it was a haunted corn field and barn and it allowed for a lot of interesting ways to scare the crap out of people. Even better was how the roof of Kingswood Theatre echoed all the screams. This time around Rob had a death grip on my arm and Adam had a death grip on Rob; which was fine for us. It didn’t work out as well for the girls behind us who had everything possible jump out at them on their way through the maze.

Afterwards we decided the lines were too long to try any of the Fearfest events so we went to The Italian Job Stunt Track because Adam and I couldn’t get on it the last time we went. The line was about half as long and bearable right up until we got to the front and my feet were really cold. The ride was pretty sweet, although incredibly short and not at all worth the long line. It did kill some time for us and provided us with an incentive to trek all over the park looking for a hot dog stand that actually had hot dogs. The first place we went by was closed, the second didn’t sell hotdogs and after waiting in line at the third place the guy walked right up to us and said "We don't have any more hotdogs, you shouldn't bother waiting in line." So we had to walk all the way across the park again to the stand that did have hotdogs. It was so well worth it though.

We ended the night with full stomachs and a short clip on Friday the 13th. I've never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies, but let me say: judging by the clips shown those movies SUCKED. I still don't understand why anyone would want to watch a movie like that; never mind the gore, the plot just doesn't make sense. Oh well. I can happily say that by the end of the night it had been proven that I was the biggest man out of three not so manly people. Suck on that bitches!

I boarded my plane Friday kicking myself after I had realized just how little sense my rant about the St. Clair Streetcar project actually made. So I'm going to take this as a perfect opportunity to clarify a few things while my brain (and liver) recover from the weekend.

St. Clair is a street in Toronto. It has one of the busiest streetcar routes in the city. I think it's the second busiest but don't quote me on that. Right now St. Clair has three lanes of traffic in each direction, with the center lanes also having streetcars running along them. These center lanes also act as left turn lanes. If you've ever wondered why you see no streetcars, and then three in a row – this is your answer. Streetcars bunch up because they get stuck behind cars that are waiting to turn left. Unlike buses, which can drive wherever they want to, streetcars gave up that ability for higher capacity, efficiency and a longer lifespan.

Streetcar right-of-ways (ROWs) allow for this to be dealt with by giving streetcars their own designated lanes and traffic priority at the lights. All traffic priority means is that they get to go first because they have separate transit signals. It speeds things up. Harbourfront, Queensway and Spadina already have this. Viva in York Region sort of has traffic priority (there are still a few bugs in it), and they're building ROWs for the unbuses.

What Save Our St. Clair (SOS) has done is proven that a small group of selfish, car-loving citizens can stop a development that will greatly benefit the city. Not that this is the first time a Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) group has ruined something we need. NIMBY groups have already stopped the development of affordable housing, landfills and power stations. I could talk about each of those, but this isn't about those things. This is about St. Clair, and how SOS claimed that a ROW would ruin their neighbourhood.

If you haven't been on St. Clair, I can compare it to Dundas once you get over the 403 and into Mississauga. Only there are stores up on the side of the street instead of in power centers; one big highway-like road. The last time I saw someone walking on Dundas was well over two months ago. It just doesn't happen. Streets like that aren't pedestrian friendly. A streetcar ROW could have changed that.

It would have allowed for better public transit. That is the first and best way to bring more people to and through a neighbourhood. One less lane of traffic would have slowed traffic down, making it safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. I never understood any of SOS's arguments, probably because they didn't make any sense. Better transit means more people. More people means better visibility. Better visibility means more business. So there's the "it will hurt our businesses" argument being thrown out the window. Yes, it sucks that the delivery trucks would no longer be able to double park on the street but I'm sure they'll get around that.

The thing that these NIMBY groups fail to realize when they make the claim that they were the little guy who won a huge battle against the city is that the city is generally working on their side. When you fight against someone trying to make it better for you, that person is just going to drop you off the side of the road like some trick that just didn’t put out.

I need to get this off of my chest now before I forget about it, or it kills me. Those of you who know me know that I have been very excited for a very long time now about the fact that the TTC plans on building a streetcar right-of-way along St. Clair Ave. The other day at work I got a text message from a friend stating that the court had decided to block the project on a technicality because Save Our St Clair (SOS) bitched and moaned until they didn’t want to hear it anymore. Right. I’m not sure how to start commenting on this one.

First of all, I'd like to state and clarify that yes, the court did block this project ON A TECHNICALITY. The court decided that the environmental assessment that the TTC had done for the St. Clair "Surface Transit Improvements" did not qualify for the streetcar right-of-way. Why? Simple: Previous ROW improvements along Spadina and Harbourfront were listed as "Rapid Transit" and not "Street Transit Improvements." That my confused, anti-ROW friends is what we would call a technicality. As much as I love streetcars and their orgasm-inspiring transit abilities, they're not rapid transit. The subway is rapid transit. The Scarborough RT is rapid transit – it's shitty, but it's still rapid transit. If you want to get down to it York Region's Viva isn't even rapid transit, that's why they call it bus-rapid transit right now. But this isn't about York Region Transit or it's incredibly sexy Viva buses. This is about St. Clair, and the fact that a bunch of car-loving whiners got a great public transit project temporarily blocked.

SOS has a website set up that I refuse to link, and discourage you from googling because they don't deserve the traffic. The main concern of the group is that the streetcar ROW will hurt the neighbourhood. They feel that the loss of a lane will cause traffic to move to other streets, making it more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists. Please don't ask me how traffic moving from one place to another will endanger pedestrians or bicyclists, my mind works on logic and this does not fit into logic. Unless SOS is implying that a streetcar ROW will cause pedestrians to run out onto the streets and party like it's 1999 all over again, and cause drivers to suddenly all become angry British motorists playing a ravishing game of "Hit the pedestrian." 100 bonus points for the lady with the walker.

SOS also stated that a streetcar ROW will make the area less appealing to customers from outside of Toronto. I don't know about anyone else, but I NEVER went anywhere near Spadina until they finished the ROW there. Spadina was a mess. I'd like to see them say that Spadina is not busy either. Every streetcar I see when I'm down there is packed, never mind the sidewalks. Good luck walking through Chinatown during the day. It's always packed. I still see bicyclists there too, so I don't know what the big fear is. As for the fear that cultural festivals will no longer go to St. Clair because of lost sidewalk space: I don’t ever remember there being a big loss of sidewalk space in the plan, not that it would matter. Whenever there's a festival on Spadina they close down one direction of traffic and reroute the cars onto the ROW. That actually opens up more space for festivals, not that the SOS wants to think about that. Sometimes I wonder if they think about it at all.

The very same day the court made its decision, a pro-ROW site opened up dispelling the lies that have been spread by SOS and it's supporters. Boycott St. Clair has garnered a lot of support in the GTA blogosphere. I'm sure the fact that it actually provides an educated point of view on the subject has nothing to do with that. Hopefully its pro-ROW campaign will generate enough support to reverse the anti-ROW stigma that has been established. All it needs now is a Site Meter account to show SOS and the haters just how popular it is and a Paypal account so that people can donate to the cause. I probably would. But that's because I'm Mike Haddad, and Mike Haddad is ProROW.