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Toronto snaps

One of the coolest buildings ever is the Sharp Centre (aka "the Tabletop") at the Ontario College of Art and Design. It's a classroom box sitting on multicolored knitting needle-shaped stilts, and suspended high above an existing classroom building. A few years ago, right after it was built, I was at the Tabletop, interviewing a couple passersby about their thoughts for a story I was writing. When I asked one of the guys what he thought about the new building, which was being heralded as the first in a wave of many new structures to radically transform the look and feel of the city, the man said, simply, "it's alright." Indeed public opinion has been mixed.

The other shot is a cool sign at MaRS, the Medical and Related Sciences Centre.

On Saturday there was a huge rally and parade in support of the Falun Gong crisis in China. The never-ending parade snaked up Spadina and across Dundas through Chinatown with a whole slew of fascinating floats, including one pictured below that reads, "Chinese Communist Party Kills Falun Gong People For Their Organs" (replete with a body on a gurney and blood splattered "doctors" surrounding the victim).

Posted by Sebastian / Toronto / May 29, 2006 /

I heart Toronto

Toronto is so underrated, but I love it always.

Posted by Sebastian / Toronto / May 27, 2006 /

Happy weekend!

Enjoy the long weekend (for those of you who actually get one). I've fled northward to the azure shores of Lake Ontario. This is my favourite shot ever of my beloved Toronto.

Below, a flight tracker map especially for my friend David who always loves these. (Aviation timetable/OCD factoid: did you know there are 70 flights each day between New York and Toronto, making it the busiest international route to the U.S. from anywhere?)

Posted by Sebastian / Toronto / May 26, 2006 /

Altar Boyz

Last night I checked out the off-Broadway hit musical, Altar Boyz. The show about a Christian boy band making their NYC debut was absolutely hilarious, and I don't recall laughing so hard in recent memory. The boyz (Matthew, Mark, Luke and Juan, plus the Jewish Abraham) were attractive truly talented singers, belting out fun songs like "Jesus Called Me On My Cell Phone," and "Girl, You Make Me Want to Wait."

For serious fans of the show, like Joan Rivers and Cynthia Nixon, there's even a web site, Altarholics.

Posted by Sebastian / Arts / New York / May 24, 2006 /

Queerty Takes Canada

The bloggers over at Queerty are on an interesting northern roadtrip, unearthing drag queens and lesbian cafes in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton. The best observation from the Dedmonton, aka the City of Subtle Charms? "Who would've thought that we would find the highest concentration of talented drag queens in Edmonton...Up until we left for this trip, we hadn't even heard of Edmonton, which is the capital of the oil-rich province, and we saw more quality drag in one evening there than we have seen anywhere else on our trip."

Posted by Sebastian / Blogs / Edmonton / May 24, 2006 /

The High Price of Addiction

My infamous CrackBerry addict friend, whom I've written about before, dropped his little device into the toilet of a New York City bar last night. What does one do when they drop their phone in such an unfortunate spot? He fished it out to recover the SIM card.

Posted by Sebastian / Technology / May 23, 2006 /

Bay to Breakers

By 2 p.m. today (that's 11 a.m. on the west coast) I had already received two text messages from friends in San Francisco who reported that they were drunk. Such is life in the city during Bay to Breakers, that raucous road race that started 95 years ago as a way to lift the city's spirits after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, and that today is an all-day drunkfest.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a few great snaps. Many cool ones at Flickr, too.

Posted by Sebastian / San Francisco / May 21, 2006 /

'We want Mexico to look like Canada'

Since attending the May 1 Day Without Immigrants rally in California, I've become pretty interested in the topic. The San Francisco Chronicle today reports these staggering numbers: "10 percent of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every 7 Mexican workers migrates to the United States."

"We want Mexico to look like Canada," said Stephen Haber, director of Stanford University's Social Science History Institute and a Latin America specialist at the Hoover Institution. "That's the optimal for the United States. We never talk about instability in Canada. We're never concerned about a Canadian security problem. Because Canada is wealthy and stable. It's so wealthy and stable we barely know it's there most of the time. That's the optimal for Mexico: a wealthy and stable country."

Posted by Sebastian / Politics / May 21, 2006 /

California Dreaming

I took this shot one morning three weeks ago, just as the fog was lifting over San Francisco Bay.

Posted by Sebastian / San Francisco / May 20, 2006 /

Today my life changes

Apple's new flagship store opens tonight on Fifth Avenue, and being the biggest Mac booster on the planet, I can't wait to check it out! I think the open-24/7 store's glass entry is stunning, but perhaps I'm a bit biased: my brother, who works on Apple stores around the world, was one of the engineers who figured out how to make the glass cube work. Apple is predicting they'll do $40 million a year in store sales at their new location, and based on the line at the store already, that looks like an easy goal.

The New York Sun is calling the new space a "triumph of urban design...that carries into the realms of architecture the clean, minimalist perfection that graces Apple's desktops, laptops, and iPods. Just as these physical implements of leisure and creativity conceal all manner of hidden complexities, so the commercial core of the new flag shipexists entirely below grade. Indeed, the cube is nothing more than a grand entrance: You descend into the predictably clean and minimalist retail space either through a glass walled elevator or a staircase that spirals downward along glass steps cantilevered along the elevator shaft."

• BusinessWeek: Apple's new store is pure glass
• NYT: Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue

Posted by Sebastian / New York / Technology / May 19, 2006 /

With Fears Fading, More Gays Spurn Old Preventive Message

Last weekend I was at the Cafe, a bar on in San Francisco, when I was reminded of a New York Times article ("With Fears Fading, More Gays Spurn Old Preventive Message") from five years ago that was about the AIDS epidemic, and that quoted young men at that same bar. I did a bit of Googling and found the article, which is one of the best I've ever read. In fact, the piece was so stirring that it was the impetus for my controversial senior thesis.

It's an amazing piece of journalism that is scary and heartbreaking but ultimately incredibly honest. It caused a firestorm of controversy for Seth Watkins, a San Francisco HIV prevention educator who was featured in the piece and who, despite his profession, admitted to having unprotected sex and becoming HIV-positive.

Mr. Watkins, 24, is an H.I.V. prevention educator and counselor in San Francisco. He knows how H.I.V. is transmitted and how to avoid becoming infected. But like an increasing number of gay men in San Francisco and elsewhere, Mr. Watkins sometimes still puts himself and possibly other people at risk. ''I don't like to think about it because I don't want to give anyone H.I.V.,'' Mr. Watkins said. Yet his lapses also do not draw the concern and censure from his peers that they might have even a few years ago. READ ON

Posted by Sebastian / HIV / SF / May 19, 2006 /

Quotable

I love reading newspaper society pages mostly to check out the often outlandish boldfaced names that grace the city's charity circuit. The New York Sun reported last week on one event at the New York Public Library that turned out to actually be a fairly intellectual affair. "You don't feel like you wasted the lunch with a lot of chit chat," one board member said. "You always leave with an insight."

But the most hilarious observation of the event came from Daisy Soros, who said candidly, "Most of my friends aren't here, which I guess means I don't have many intellectual friends."

Posted by Sebastian / Etceteras / May 18, 2006 /

Bananarama!

Who knew that Bananarama is back? Last night I had the distinct pleasure of checking out the ladies at Borders in Manhattan with my friend Kenneth. His blog has the full scoop.

Posted by Sebastian / Music / May 17, 2006 /

Metro cop convicted of pimping

The Montreal Metro police officer I wrote about two months ago, accused of pimping out a teenage girl to strip clubs in Toronto, has been convicted of the crime. Alan Jean-Pierre met a “shy Asian girl” at a Burger King in Montreal last year and told the teenager that she could make a few more loonies lap dancing and performing oral sex than flipping burgers. He was right: according to today’s Gazette, the girl was “raking in thousands of dollars per week. She handed it all over to Jean-Pierre, who had a network of similarly vulnerable girls working for him.”

Another young woman who had previously been pimped by Jean-Pierre said she made upwards of $20,000 per month dancing. That made for quite a marketing budget: he financed breast implants for many of the girls.

Posted by Sebastian / Montreal / May 17, 2006 /

Spring is here!

The biggest cliche in Vancouver is that you can be skiing in the morning and sailing in the afternoon. It's true, for the most part, and this shot from yesterday shows you how it's all possible. The city skyline is out of view, to the right.

Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / May 14, 2006 /

A Day Without Immigrants

Today in San Francisco I had the unique opportunity to experience the Day Without Immigrants rally protesting federal legislation that would make felons out of 11-12 millions immigrants living in the US illegally. It was one of the largest of the more than 60 rallies taking place in cities across the country today. The San Francisco Chronicle said it was "the nation's largest coordinated demonstration since the war in Vietnam."

The scale of the protest was unbelievable -- it was truly a sea of supporters snaking through downtown San Francisco -- and the sheer gravity of the situation was moving. Standing there among tens of thousands of cheering protestors is an electric feeling, especially when you consider their backstory. It's such a tough issue: there is no disputing that illegal residents got here -- or at least remain here -- through law-breaking. Normally I'd be all for busting on the rule-breakers. But that is illogical in this situation -- can we really prosecute 11 million people? In the past ten years, as the number of illegal aliens has shot up from the 1996 estimate of 5 million, the situation has grown beyond this country's ability to control it.

I don't consider myself soft on the issue of immigration but the 700-mile wall proposed for parts of the US-Mexico (that would cost billions to build) as part of this new legislation also seems like a stretch. The solution? If I knew, I'd be running this country. But as Bill O'Reilly said tonight, we might want to remember that most of the people living illegally in the US are probably good people simply trying to make a better life for their families (and as their protests signs remind us, they clean our houses, toil in the fields, and care for our children). He lays blame on the Mexican government's inability to improve the country for residents, and the US government's inability to touch the political hot potato that is immigration policy.

Posted by Sebastian / Politics / SF / May 1, 2006 /

Where the hell is Louisiana?

According to a new poll out today, one-third of American young people can't locate Louisiana on a map. Half don't know where Mississippi is, either, and a staggering 50 percent can't find India on a map of Asia.

Posted by Sebastian / Etceteras / May 1, 2006 /