May 29th, 2006 |
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theWAREHOUSE goes to Toronto!
Two (or three, or five, depending on how you count) representative from theWAREHOUSE recently embarked upon a road trip to our neighbors to the north to celebrate the impending marriage of one of our own. You know what that means! BACHELOR PARTY!!
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It cans be beer time now please, Eric, it cans.
We drove up to Toronto on Saturday in a pair of cars. It was actually my first trip into Canada. It's hard to believe, I know. So I also had my first experience passing customs. It's really, really boring. Basically one sits there like a sheep in a herd of similar metal-and-plastic sheep until a bored and grumpy customs agent has a chance to harass you for no particular reason.
I suppose I expected Canadian grass to be greener, air to be bluer (bluer?), and for there to be Royal Canadian Mounted Po-Po hanging out on the roadsides. Our Canadian forum members may find it amusing to note that I was surprised to see that they have much the same roadkill that we have in "the colonies."
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Anyway, we finally got to the hotel, a small room for $300 a night, but in a great location. We saved money by cramming it full of people. You could say we treated the hotel room like a Tardis. You'd be wrong, but you could say that. Nice view!
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Of course, being the one with the camera, I got more pictures of my buddies than I got of myself, so oh well...them's the breaks. Here we are (minus me taking the picture, of course) heading out to start our night of illustrious drinking.
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Thanks to information from the intarwebs, we had a pretty well defined area of where a lot of bars and clubs were located. All of the streets were broad, most of them had trolley rails, and several had trees. People were trendy, young, at least moderately polite, and no one carried that dour suicidal look - basically not at all like Rochester. Even the occasional kooky crazy people were well behaved.
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One of the first bars we hit was the Elephant & Castle. It was, er, uninspiring. The initial round of drink orders for the guys went like this:
I'll have Beer X
Alright / two minutes pass / Sorry, we're all out
Uh, okay, I'll have Beer Y
Alright / two minutes pass / Sorry, we're all out
The place was out of two mainstream beers. At 7pm. On a Saturday. Not a good sign. I avoided such perils by ordering my standard - whisky (and/or whiskey).
But it was a nice looking place. I bet it's fun to go on a weeknight for a meal for a good couple hours.
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But the best part of the Elephant & Castle was not the bar at all - it was the street performer hanging around outside of it.
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Baghead here was playing when we went in and was playing when we left. Pretty well, too, I think. As Dave remarked, he's like a budget Buckethead.
Moving on, actually back across the street from our hotel, we hit up another bar/restaurant that offered half price appetizers. Sounds good to me! Of course, they were out of their alligator - the one thing we really wanted. What the heck, Canada. Didn't anyone tell you we were coming? We get up there and you're out of half of your stuff? Come on!
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And here I am, savouring my Johnny Walker and taking pictures of myself in the bar mirror. Mmm. Reflecty.
Moving on, we found ourselves at a great little outdoor cafe (well, the al fresco part of a traditional restaurant) where I immediately siezed upon the opportunity to order poutine - basically Canada's national dish. To the uninitiated, it's french frieds smothered in cheese curds and gravy. How could you not love this? Most of the Bachelor's entourage immediately got over their initial reservations upon being presented with the dish. Sorry, it disappeared too fast to photograph. Yes, that fast.
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But I did get a picture of the Bachelor and the friendly waitress. I also left her a note with the receipt to check out this website if she wanted to see her picture. Can you blame me? I was four or five bars in to the night, and that poutine was darn tasty.
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We stopped at another bar down a short flight of stairs. It looked promising, with soccer on the television (sorry; footie on the telly) but all in all it was just obnoxious. The waitress was...unresponsive? She practically ignored us. And not in the "let the boys hang out! What's the rush?" politeness of a traditional British pub. I think she just didn't care. Nuts to her.
Moving on, we hit a bit of a slump upon reaching a stretch of the bar district that was mostly just ridiculously trendy clubs. If they could be seen at all from the outside, it was through slits in doors or gaps in black painted windows. Either that or they all just sucked. Well we finally took a chance on a grimy looking door with thumping music, and I'm glad we did because it ended up being, probably, the best stop of the night.
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The cash register only read zero because our tab was being tallied on the sheet of paper next to it - we got the whole sheet to ourselves.
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This tiny bar - wish I knew the name - was basically just the entryway to a second floor club. We got there before their live music showed up, so it was rather quiet. This was great, however, because Caroline (see above) ended up being our own personal bartender and DJ for at least two solid hours. After an initial round of drinks and a round of Jagermeister shots, we started to settle in and chat. As the drinks were flowing, she was taking our requests on their house stereo system - mostly 80s music. I remember all of us (bartender including) screaming along to Sunglasses at Night, amongst several other songs that other people requested.
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I think I picked a fortuitous time to sneak in a request for a round of Long Island Iced Teas when no one was watching me. Shortly after we finished them (and she hers) the place started filling up, fast. Each person averaged about $55 in drinks here.
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It turns out they charge you $2.50 to check your camera even if you're just going into a strip club to take a monster leak and then leave. I stood around taking pictures in the evening, eating street vendor hotdogs from a woman who didn't, how you say, speaka-de-English very well, and text messaging my wife. Eventually the guys collected me and we headed back towards the hotel. And eventually reached it. The hotel, that is.
In the morning we loaded up on the breakfest buffet ($20 a person! Ridiculous! Good thing it's only Canadian money) and headed out for the border. Just a note: duty-free shop bathrooms are disgusting.
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The End
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