Travelling in Style: A Matter of Life & Death

While my betters attempt to imitate their betters by attending things like the Toronto International Film Festival and making the correct sniffing noises at the correct moments of great poignancy, I spent the entire day stuck in a streetcar crawling along The Gardiner Expressway.  Thankfully, as an experienced Toronto commuter, I had packed supplies and a spare Crayon set, and hired a Sherpa from Parkdale to assist my epic voyage to Etobicoke and back.

We foraged for food on the streetcar's floor, kept warm by burning refuse and Metro newspapers, and when the light failed we drew pictures on the walls by firelight detailing our skirmishes deep into the rear of the streetcar, where an urchin kept a jealous vigil over an orange that had rolled into his territory during the steep assent over the Humber River.  Thankfully, I am pleased to announce that I eventually returned safely to Toronto, paid my Sherpa a fair wage (against Rob Ford's advice), and hiked the Pathway to Enlightenment back to my home.

I initially spent time scrutinizing the mass of faces hoping to glimpse some celebrity of note attending the TIFF, but since facial reconstruction has erased any vestige of familiarity in the celebrities that were popular back when I used to pay attention, I took to studying the rich mosaic of chewing gum on the sidewalk instead, until this caught my attention:

I understand suffering for money, but suffering for fashion confuses me utterly.  The impulse to adorn one's bicycle with detachable front basket stems from an urge to telegraph to beholders that "I am a European type of person who goes to market and buys fresh legumes with a reusable an therefore sustainable wicker basket."  However, orienting your brake levers into a drag-inducing, carpal-straining position to accommodate the aforementioned basket just telegraphs to the world that you're an idiot.

Speaking of idiocy and fashionable bicycles, I am concerned to announce that the good dilettantes of Curbside Cycle appear to be short on fatuously fashionable Toronto cyclists to photograph for their blog and, in the tradition of all Toronto cyclists suffering moments of self-doubt and anxiety, have looked to Europe for consolation and reminder, as seen here in this photograph of Christopher (because 'Chris' is insufficiently European):

I am pleased to note that there's very little wrong with Chris' bike, except the inadequately closed quick-release skewer on the front wheel, but since Curbside Cycle eschews modern componentry like the derailleur, the alloy rim, and the battery powered light, I'll give them some slack on the grounds of inexperience.

I will not however cut them some slack for missing gross stylistic errors, such as Christopher's misaligned buttons/belt/zipper, the black laptop bag that screams corporate IT nerd, and the whole lack of colour co-ordination.  That sort of inattention is inexcusable, especially when name dropping Alexander Mcqueen.

Before long, the Common Elite blog will be filled with fashion fox-paws like this foppish art student bobbing furiously along the Pathway to Enlightenment on a crappy mountain bike, every action being equalized by an opposite reaction from his dopey front suspension system:

Yet it is the tendency of all fashions to cycle every 20 years or so, and having counted the rings on Gary Fisher's jowels and carbon dated strands of his facial hair, I fear that a grand cycling of cycling fashion may yet make this sordid combination fashionable.  I fear we may eventually move from the Continental Period of Cycling Affectation to the Colonization Period of Cycling Affectation, when we will be suddenly beset by Eric Kamphoff hawking stump-jumpers designed by 'indigenous' Afrikaners for the rugged gated communities of Johannesburg to Toronto urbanites looking to 'slay' some epic sidewalk in style.

Fortunately fashion in Toronto is, at the moment, turning towards the cooler weather and therefore to warmer clothing, except this Queen St W store:

Looks more like 100% off to me...

The Dutch Oven: Toronto Guilty of Pedalling Foreign Influence?

Dutch cycling lore being all the rage in North America, trend watchers are scouring Dutch urban centres (read 'scraping the bottom of the barrel') for the hottest new trends in Dutch cycling.  This season's must-ape protocol is the advanced locking technique:

The Hollander High Lock.

Toronto cyclists, eager to flaunt their progressive (and therefore Dutch) attitude to cycling, are adding a sprinkling of Dutch Delight to their own locking techniques, as can be seen with this cruiser shackled outside the entrance to University of Toronto's Bike Chain:

So coercive is the allure of Dutch cycling (and so powerful is the sucking vortex created by the gapping vacuum where Toronto's indigenous cycling wisdom should be) that the City of Toronto, in partnership with the Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, is importing Dutch urban planners to assist Toronto in developing dynamically synergistic and integrative 'movementways' in partnership with cautiously optimistic public-private community initiatives on a going forward basis.  In other words, they're going to tell us how to do stuff we're apparently too stupid to figure out ourselves.  Organizers are publicizing the epic meeting of minds as the Toronto ThinkBike Workshop to create the illusion that genuinely reflective thought will be done at the event.

Toronto's Team Blue is tasked with the tasking task of making a network a network to free up Team Orange to tackle the more difficult issue of separated bike lanes, something Toronto has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that it's too stupid to figure out on its own.  Dispensing my usual pessimism, I'm genuinely eager to see the Hollanders' plan.  The Dutch, having mastered dikes before mastering the art of cooking, are also masters of the installation and routing of alternative transportation within urban centres.  I am convinced that Team Orange's system of dikes, sluice gates, canals, and locks will revolutionize cycling in Toronto:

When approaching an intersection, the cyclist will be floated up to street level through a series of locks powered solely by the cyclist's own smugness.  Exiting the canal system at destinations along the route will be facilitated through the use of sluice gates opening onto individual buildings, which will be paid for through public-private initiatives and will create much-needed jobs for local sluice gate artisans (when they've taken up rug-making, you know times are tough).

Given the rich Dutch content of the event, one marvels to see Curbside Cycle's Eric Kamphoff conspicuously absent from the event bill.  Perhaps he'll feature as a surprise guest speaker, ready to embiggen us all with a slide show and lecture on the vast superiority of cycling in Europe, topped off with the de rigueur image of Kamphoff sucking on a pastry:

It wouldn't be European without it.