DR DRAW AT TASTE OF THE DANFORTH

The Taste of the Danforth is an annual street fest here in Toronto. The Danforth is largely acknowledged as the hub of the city's Greek community but it's actually a very culturally diverse area. We don't go as often as once we did because I don't seem to have the time to eat souvalki off a stick with a million of my nearest and dearest friend.

Well, perhaps not dear but in that crowd very very near .. way way way to near

One of the things I enjoy about the festival is the entertainment. And not just Greeks dancing and breaking plates and yelling things in strange tongues ... if I want that I can go to a family party.

We have seen many good local acts there and this year was no different. Here is a little video with some shots of the street including a demonstration of thai boxing and featuring the music and performance of Dr Draw, a band featuring an electric violin player. I thought the name Dr Draw was a clever moniker to describe a musician who draws a bow across the strings .. turns out his actual name is Eugene Draw

No matter what he is called, we enjoyed the performance. I was a fan of Jean Luc Ponty, one of the pioneers of electric violin and this guy is just as good, playing an eclectic mix of rock, disco, electronica, sound tracks and classic tracks. His rendition of Elenor Rigby was a stand out

His performance was so high energy he referred to it as his "work out video" Yeh, I had a heart attack just watching him

The video captures a bit of it I hope

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.

OPAH! THE TASTE OF THE DANFORTH

Summer in Toronto is a seemingly endless stream of street festivals. This is a city of neighbourhoods and it seems that every four square blocks now has its own festival. The one that Collette and I always make a point of attending is Taste of the Danforth. Danforth Avenue is the heart of Toronto's Greek town so we are talking souvlaki, tazaki, ouzo and dancing .. so Opah!

This has been a crazy summer for weather in these parts. Any given day can go from warm and sunny, to hail, to funnel clouds, to pouring rain, to hot and humid. There have been tornadoes, there have been high winds and there have countless lightning strikes. The weather dudes on TV call this weather "unsettled" I call it: Build an ark and kiss your ass goodbye.

So that means when we got down to the Danforth it was pouring rain. Collette had brought her boyfriend (the D-80) and I had brought my Canon XL-1 ... a few grand worth of electronics that needed the tender protection of a covered patio .. the fact that there was souvlaki and beer is entirely coincidental.


The best thing about any street festival is that close off the street. The best thing about The Taste is that when you close off the Danforth it becomes magically lined with stalls selling souvlaki, spinach pies and baklava ... oh, it is a good thing there are many blocks to walk, you definitely need the exercise.




By the time we got off the patio the sun was coming out so we were able to wander around in comfort. This is a big festival. They close off something like eight blocks and you can have as many as half a million people milling around in there. The advantage of the weather was that it kept a lot of the crowds at home with the widescreen TVs and Kraft Dinner where they belong.

The nice thing about the Danforth, it is by no means exclusively Greek. There are some good Irish pubs there, a pretty snazzy Tex-Mex place and Allen's, home of the best burger in Toronto. But except for our escape from the rain, the whole point of this excursion was to wander down the center of the road, doing complex calculations that would put the maximum amount of food in our bellies in the shortest period of time.

We came across a dancing/singing troupe of young people from London Ontario ... which proves the brave if not foolhardy nature of the Greek people. I mean ... London .. on maps it says "Here there be people who got lost on their way to Toronto .."




They were pretty good, two girls doing the singing and the rest of them dancing, recreating a "tavernas" experience, which is when they would go out to taverns and sing and dance and flirt .. we call it clubbing .. often done with less clothing from what I can observe.




By the time these kids were finished their performance, the rain was back, reminding us that Toronto has somehow been transported to Rangoon .. and it's the rainy season. So that meant it was time to pack up the gear and go home.

Still, our bellies were full, our ears were filled with music and as the rain slashed down across Greek Town we knew we would be humming the Zorba theme and shouting opah! Only Collette reminded me that we really couldn't break any plates ...

Taste of the Danforth '08 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.