KINKY BOOTS: IT'S NOT THE GIRLS IN THE BOOTS IT'S THE BOOTS ON THE BOY

It was very appropriate that the musical Kinky Boots here in Toronto during Pride Week. Afterall, it features a book by Harvey Firestein and songs by Cyndi Lauper and is a story about cross dressing, acceptance, gender equality and of course, boots

Thigh high, sparkly, red, 10 inch heeled boots. What some of us would call stripper boots. What the characters in the play refer to as Kinky Boots

The play is set in working class England and opens in the shoe factory of Price and Son, manufacturers of fine men's footwear. Fine men's footwear that no one can really afford anymore and that stores really have no ability to purchase.

The Son in Price and Son is Charlie, a young man who's future (as the heir apparent to the factory) has been so well plotted for him by others (his father) that he has never really thought was his future should actually be. Charlie is a wimp, he just doesn't want to think about his future. Luckily his girlfriend is willing to do the thinking for  him and she thinks they should move to London and get into the real estate speculation game.

There is another son in the story, one who could never realize his father's dream for him and who diverges on to a very different path. At the beginning of the story we meet little Simon, a British schoolboy who has altered his school uniform with a pair of shoes; high heeled shoes

Kinky Boots is a about a lot of things, but mainly it is about expectations. Two boys are expected, by their fathers, to follow very specific career paths. Men are expected to wear pants. Drag queens are expected to be overt "sissies" All of which may be true. None of which may be true

Expectation and perception. We first meet Lola (the drag queen who young Simon has transitioned into) as a dazzling drag queen, moving confidently on her mile high boots, hips swaying with sexual bravado, glittered and painted to the point of anime fantasy. Then she begins to sing.

Alan Mingo has a voice that is soulful and rich, capable of expressing sorrow and reflection yet entirely capable of blowing the roof off the Royal Alexandria Theatre. As Charlie, Graham Fleming is a technically capable singer, he makes all his notes, but his voice is on the boy band side of things and in his duets with Mingo, often gets quickly left behind

Kinky Boots does a nice job of mixing the pathos with the humour but mostly, it's about the humour. The messages are there but you're not hit too hard over the head with them. The stage version of Priscilla Queen of the Desert follows a similar stories; drag queens and their fight for acceptance. Priscilla had its funny moments but its tone sometimes veered into tragedy. Kinky Boots never goes there. It is quite happen to make you think as you are bobbing your head to Lauper's well crafted pop tunes

Boots definitely falls into the "feel good" category of shows. Not giving much away to say things end well. And there are some genuinely funny scenes: A boxing match with the most interesting ring girls ever, a fashion show that had the paragons of Milan gasping and some very unlikely wearers of some very kinky boots

Mostly Kinky Boots is a romp, with lots of big ensemble numbers but of course there are some memorable solos. One of them features one of the most individual, jaw dropping comedic performances I have seen in a long long time. Aj Bridel as Lauren absolutely stops the show with her rendition of The History of Wrong Guys. When I wasn't laughing it was because my jaw was literally hanging open, this woman is a force of nature and she quite easily rattled the roof of the old theatre

I was not compelled, after watching Kinky Boots, to don mascara and stripper boots ... well maybe not the boots. Ahem. Moving on. But the tunes stayed in my mind as did some of the performances. And I will never look at a "female" wearing mile high sparkly red boots the same again

FLOORS, AS WELL AS CIRCUSES

So the Ontario gov't and the City of Toronto built the Athletes Village which I drive by every day to pick up a dog and take her to Dog town

The location is right by the Distillery District close to the intersection of Cherry and Front St. It's a massive complex, take up about 80 acres, and several buildings featuring of hundreds of housing units

The cost for the whole thing, over 500 million bucks

There will be future use for actual Torontonians I'm told. A YMCA, a George Brown college residence and "mixed use" housing. Psssst, that means condos

So half a billion to make the thing, they build it, walk around and say Hey, these concreted floors in the common areas are sort of ugly. Let's spend another million and a half to lay down some pretty carpet. We don't want these free tenants we call athletes getting their feet cold

And by the way, here are some pics of actual units, where actual rent paying tennants, are living

But what the hell, we're winning!

YOUR PAN AM GAMES UPDATE

We're winning! We're winning! Europe and Asia are not competing but fuck that, we're winning we're winning!

There is no parking at any of the venues, you dare not even look at the Athlete's Village.

Pan Am buses carrying athletes and officials get their own police escorts that stop and wave them through red lights, tickets for the opening ceremony started at 200 bucks a pop; they took place at the Air Canada Centre which has a square outside of it equipped with a giant video screen that they use for Raptor pregrames but they did not use it for the ceremony. Oh no, that would mean the common citizens may be there in the presence of the Important People. Instead, they put the screen up at Nathan Phillips Square .. that does not have a screen. They had to buy one and pay to have it set up, instead of using the existing one at the ACC

At the Athlete's Village, athletes are given lodging, food, a spa, a discoteque, a nice view of the waterfront. In Toronto City housing in Regent Park and Jamestown citizens of this city who pay rent live with broken plumbing, ceilings falling down, rats and gangsters who laugh at the broken security cameras

But we're winning! We're winning!

THE RIDE YOU DIDN'T WANT

Hey my fellow Torontonians and Ontarioites it genera, don't you feel great? Don't you feel secure? Isn't it lovely have a provincial gov't that has our best interests at heart?

The GTA is crippled by gridlock. It really really is. We need help. We need more and better mass transit. We keep allowing these massive condo complexes to be built (Liberty Village I'm looking at you) and pouring tens of thousands of more people into the city core.

Great life, I suppose if you live and work in the core; you wouldn't need a car, you could bike or transit to everything. But oh wait, SO many people are being poured into the core there are not enough jobs down town to support them. So, um, what now? Oh yeh they have to move daily in and out of the core to find work

People in Liberty Village (and other places) come out in the morning and have to watch half a dozen fully packed streetcars buzz pass before they come jump on one. And that streetcar will take them to the subway system that is clearly falling apart. More and more delays and on one day, a complete shutdown

So yeh, we need more transit

I contend that bicycles are not mass transit. They help those that live and work in the core, certainly. The fact they are so irresponsible as riders that we have to create these divided bike lanes, often cutting off a traffic lane, does not help the rest of us but hey, they are the Downtown Cyclists, bless them all

So, of provincial govt is working hard and spending 100's of millions of dollars to improve GTA mass transit. Street cars, or LRTs, gosh they do love these things. The St Clair dedicated LRT, whereby they created a separate, slightly elevated street car lane in the middle of the street, and took way too many years to finish, well that keeps the streetcars out of traffic but it also forced many businesses to close and has created major safety issues as people try to cross over them

But hey, we love our LRTs. We love that we ordered a whole new spiffy line of streetcars, streetcars that are way behind their delivery date and when they are arrive, our completely subpar in their manufacture. And, oh yeh, we love the streetcars platforms that are too short for these expensive subpar cars

We love that

But have no fear brothers and sisters, your govt is here to save you. The provincial gov't has announced an expenditure of 10 million dollars that will solve our gridlock problems. Bicycles. Not  bike lanes, bicycles. More bikes

Bixi is a local bike share program. They have stations all around the city  where you can stroll up and "borrow" a bike to get you on your way You can buy a membership or a "casual" rider pass that gives you a code that will unlock your bike This started out as a private business that failed after a year; businesses fail when they provide a service that people don't want, just saying

But wait! City and provincial gov'ts to the rescue! The business is failing because not enough people are using it? Huzza! We'll buy it and run it at a loss. Yeh, you know who's money they used to buy it

So now come the provincials. This service that still does not have an adequate usership? We'll expand it, gosh darn it! Spend 10 million dollars to put even more bikes and stations all over the GTA

So, more bikes. But no extra bike lanes. No licensing, no insurance for bikes. Even the intradimensional lunatics of the bike adovcasy see an issue with this. At least the "more bikes but no more lanes" deal. The bike nuts have their bikes, they really really do. What they want is speshul places in which to ride them

Thank you Oh Generous and Omniscient Govt Overlords. Now, when my car is so snarled in traffic that it cannot move, I can take my ten dogs out of the Subaru and put each of them on their very own ride share bike and we'll all peddle over to Dogtown

Yes indeed Wicked Witch Kathleen, me and my little dogs too

NOT JUST ANOTHER WEDNESDAY

Yup, just another Wednesday here in Toronto

Warm, sunny, a light offshore breeze. A perfect day to go down the recently revamped Queen's Queue and stroll around the Harbourfront Centre

Stroll along the docks, admire the vessels, both power and sail, moving across the harbour

This is Toronto of course, a big city and this part of this city is often quite busy during the summer, especially on the weekend. But this is the middle of the week. And there are thousands of people down here, and lots of entertainment, and balloons and bubbles, and flags. Lots of flags

Canadian flags

What the heck is going on?

Oh yeh, happy Canada Day

OK Vimeo are being money grubbing assholes so I'm using Youtube to post my videos, not ideal. Click the Youtube symbol on the bottom right corner and you will get options to view full screen and adjust the output to 1080

THE CIRCUS IS COMING! (AND I DON'T MEAN SHRINE)

Often, it seems, this city is not ours. During the G-8 Summit, with it's fence and its detention centres and its armed guards, it felt as though the downtown core of Toronto had been occupied by an invading force. Even though that force wore badges that said Toronto

The occupation is happening again, this time by some actual foreign invaders. How are we responding? Why, we're building them places to sleep, feeding them, giving them their own traffic lanes to make it easier to invade ...

Yup, the Pan Am Games are coming

Some of it is funny. As in, this thing is costing us a few billion bucks and it seems to be run by bipolar chimps smoking crack and weeping over Donnie Walberg's hair loss.

What's funny: They've turned some regular traffic lanes into HOV (High Occupancy Lanes) that are exclusive to vehicles carrying three passengers or more. They're called Diamond lanes because they have hug diamond symbols painted on them. Well these are temp lanes so they didn't want to use paint. Instead, they put down these huge decals. Here's the problem: The decals come off in the rain. And it's been raining. A lot

What's Not Funny: These new lanes are, essentially, being reserved for the "important" people. The officials and athletes and the local gov't reps whose Games these are. Yeh, their games, not so much ours. Their lanes. Two weeks to go to the games and they are enforcing these lanes right now. Cop cars are perched on medians to make sure none of us plebes are using the royal lanes. Don't worry about the traffic chaos; essentially one or two lanes have been taken from use on some of the busiest roads in the GTA; the DVP, the Gardiner, the QEW, Lakeshore, the 400

What's Funny: The planners of these Games knew how horribly traffic was going to be affected. Not only have they taken away some active lanes, they are not stopping the construction that already brings the downtown core to a crawl. Our govt's solution? Go on vacation during the Games

What's Not Funny: Our govt's solution? Go on vacation during the Games

What's Funny: Many new sports facilities have been built for the Games. These are the supposed legacy. But many temp structures have been erected as well; public parking lots and public streets have been closed off so they could put up these giant plastic quonset huts where the Important People can mingle and guffaw and say how marvelous they all are. Well, it's been very rainy and windy here. And the tents came down

What's Not Funny: Fences. Fences in my city are not funny. During the G-8 a fence was put up around several blocks downtown. Cops stood at the fence and questioned our right to even look at it. Now we have more fences, enclosing streets and areas that are public. Most of the people standing there are not cops, they are Pan Am security but it is clear: Hey, you live in this city, you can't come in here. Keep moving, see this clip board, you are not on this clip board, so get the fuck out of here

What's Funny: The people who are running these games are getting paid lots and lots of money. Lots of my money, lots of your money. When the whole thing got rolling, couple years ago, they hired a very respected manager to be the grand poobah. Turns out he was very good at padding his expense account and paying off people. The Gov't seemed quite content with this till he was exposed. So he was let go due to malfeasance. Here's the funny part: He got a "severence" (after being fired) that was basically his promised salary

What's Not Funny: They hired a new manager. This guy they seem to like. They like him so much that, when he finishes out his contract he will get a lovely party gift of a bonus that will equal what he's getting paid to complete the contract in the first place

Hey, no worries. There's lots of money for the gov't. So much money. It just keeps rolling in

Now, you, the person from whom this money is being taken, just sept back behind that line and keep your head down. These are your Games

PROOF: TORONTO WATERFRONT GOES TO THE DOG

Yeh, ok, that title was too easy. Who am I to make things difficult for me

This past weekend we went back down to the Sugar Beach area of Toronto harbour for the Redpath Waterfront Festival. And yeh, it had gone to the dogs

The dock diving dogs were back this year. Dock diving is actually a variety events featuring, you know, dogs diving off docks. Well sort of. They set up a giant pools and the dogs launch themselves off a stage into the water to retrieve a bait. They dive for distance and they dive in a time trial; the bail is dropped into the exact same position at the far end of the pool and the dogs are timed for how quickly they can get the bait and bring it back

What's great about this event is that it features all kinds of dogs, not just the labs and retrievers and duck tollers one would expect

In addition to the diving dogs there was a dog stunt show. It featured a couple of Boston terriors as well as lab mix. To be honest, it was not the smoothest dog show I've ever seen and not every trick went off without a hitch but the dogs were adorable and they certainly had their talents




Any time you can have a Lab hold a hot dog in his mouth without inhaling it, I'm impressed

The Bostons did their best to audition for Who's Got Talent or whatever the heck that horrible show is called. I much prefer the one we saw

And finally, the one cyclist with whom I will gladly share the streets of Toronto

More dog tricks and more submaining pooches in the video below