June 17th, 2006
Bike Riding at Jane and Finch
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
The American screenwriter Marc Norman once wrote an essay called Bike Riding in Los Angeles and how weird that is. I suspect it's not unlike bike riding at Jane and Finch where the roads are fat and the cars move fast. We walked here once, during the first snow, but today we have already blown one fuse running the Airstream airconditioner.
We're at the Driftwood Community Centre, just up Jane from CP24's favorite intersection, for the Driftwood Community Festival, which is fun. There was a troop of girls on stage doing a choreographed dance that's tighter and more interesting than those big Janet Jackson productions from the early 90s. The bass from the music passes through the trees, crosses Jane and bounces back towards us off the high rises across the street. Now there is a Tae Kwon Doe demonstration. Lots of black belts around. Reminds me of doing TKD back in Grade 8, before I quit (because the Master would come in the change room and pinch our naked sides and tell us we were getting fat).
There is a lots of food around here, and many kinds of curried goat and chicken and things, and all-Canadian hot-dogs and hamburgers cooked up by the local Vietnamese association.
Jane street, behind us, is a big highway, and it just erupted in horns because Ghana just won. Earlier I rode the bike on it in search of non-goat/chicken, and found a generic wrap place at the Jane Finch Mall. While vegetarianism is not a reason to come here, there's a more espresso machines at Jane and Finch than in all of Parkdale, I think, so all is well. The mall is as ugly as Albion Centre inside, again with bad pastel blobs here and there -- but the stores are 90% independently owned, based on the signage, and like Scarborough strip malls, is like a multicultural old-time main street.
Still, without a car, it's a long walk to any store from where people actually live. The scale here is big and airport sized. If you are near by come over and feel the outdoor bass. They're doing the Tae Kwon Doe to some Dancehall-Jungle hybrid. CHRY, 105.5FM from York is also broadcasting live, and the zoo people are hear with live snakes and kids are putting them around their necks, and the MC just said "we won't take the police breaking down our doors at 3am anymore."
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