SLOUVAKI SAVES THE WORLD

It's that time of year again, for one of Toronto's most popular neighbourhood street fests, the Taste of the Danforth. Danforth Avenue, or simply The Danforth, is Toronto's Greek neighbourhood and they've been putting this fest on for over ten years now. To call it popular is an understatement. Over the course of a weekend, more than a million people will be crawling up and down the street, consuming 3 dollar slouvaki and spinach pie and ouzo.

The festival runs Friday night and Saturday and Sunday, normally we go on one of the two days but the weather forecast was crappy .. wow, there's a shock, a summer Toronto weekend that called for rain. I'm getting pretty fucking tired of this, I have to tell you. Last year we had a great time but I didn't need a repeat of our soggy time last year. So this time we went on Friday night, when the predicted weather seemed perfect.

We started off the evening watching a little rock 'n blues with John Dickey and the Swamp Dawgs, a local act featuring John, who is a kind of Toronto legend. Well, if he isn't, he should be.

After listening to John and the boys for a bit, it was time to wander down the street. You could tell that the weather was great. I swear that all one million of the expected guests were there that Friday ... in one intersection. The crowds got kind of out of control. I'm a tad claustrophobic and there were couple of minutes where I have no memory, just this impression of heat and closeness and restriction .. but the minutes passed and we finally made our way through the log jam of people .. and found food.

Slouvaki on a pita may be the best treatment for claustrophobia. Now that I think of it, slouvaki may be the cure to many of the world's ills. How can you think of pillaging and subjugating and giving out short term high interest loans when you have a face full of marinated grilled chicken, pita bread and tzatziki sauce. Seriously. You can't really think of devoiding someone of their basic human rights while chowing down on slouvaki.

After we had first of several gorgings of the evening, we found another stage where a Cuban band was enticing even the typically conservative Toronto crowd into some spontaneous dancing.

I know, I know .. it's a Greek fest and so far we've had swamp blues and meringue ... well, the Danforth is actually a pretty a multi cultural street in the most multi cultural city in the world so, although last year, we showed up at the stages in time for all the Greek events, pretty much the whole world was represented. One of the biggest line ups for food was for Chinese food .. in the middle of the big fat Greek festival.

I really don't know what it is about street fests. I just love them. Part of it is about wandering along in the middle of the road, ignoring the street lights, gobbling your food without forks or knives .. yeh, I'm a rebel. If somebody had given me scissors, I would have run with them, damnit.

As we wandered along, we came across this couple doing the human statue thing. I guess they were supposed to represent Classical Greek art. Take a good long look at this pair, kids. This is what happens to you when you don't have a post secondary education.

After we stuffed ourselves (spinach pie, slouvaki on a pita and enormous pieces of fruit for ten bucks) we naturally began to seek a place to sit down and imbibe. For this weekend the local bars were able to extend their patios on to the street but pretty much all of them were jammed. No problem, we thought, there are beer tents right here in the middle of the road .. um, no. First tent we went to was all wine and cocktails .. seven bucks for a tiny glass. Nope. The we saw the Motts Clamato tent .. well, hell, I could have a Caesar. I like Caesars. At four bucks, all in all, not a bad deal. You'd think it would be a simple thing ... but of course not. I wanted your classic Caesar ... vodka, clamato juice, Wort shire, hot sauce .. they had classic Caesars, but they so badly wanted me to sell me other kinds .. kinds with gin, with cucumber, with rye whiskey .. I just stared the cute young bartender dead in her barely-out-of-highschool face and said "I've been drinking these since before you were born. I'll take two" But I'll give her credit. It was one of the best Caesars I've ever had.

So, we had a great night. As I write this, Saturday actually turned out to be a pretty great day, but there was no way we could handle the crowds. Though it was, indeed, tempting to go down, score more slouvaki and mail it off to the UN. Ah well, perhaps next year.

Here's the video, short and sweet, just a little taste of the evening.

Taste of the Danforth 09 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.