Neighbourhood
Watch: By Jeff Brown
Missives From The New World: by Doc Pickles
NEIGHBOURHOOD
WATCH
PANTALONE TO TEAR NEW
ASSHOLE IN BELLWOODS PARK
As if plans to flood
the neighbourhood with thousands more cars per hour with the Front Street
Expressway is not bad enough, our municipal brain trust, Ward 19 Trinity-Spadina
councillor Joe Pantalone, has given his credence to another city-engineered
car-friendly scenario: turn a walkway in Bellwoods Park into a road.
Dubbed the “Crawford Street Realignment,” the city would like
to see Crawford bend through the north end of the park and connect with
Shaw south of Dundas on the site of an existing walkway, which includes
several old trees. The plan would discontinue Crawford through the north
section of the park to Dundas.
The justification? Pantalone claims that the plan will reconnect the park,
save money in repairing the bridge that currently exists underneath Crawford
that is currently scheduled for costly repairs, calm traffic and increase
park space.
No one disputes the fact that closing down a small portion of Crawford
to Dundas and connecting the park is not a bad idea, but a lot of people
in the area are wondering why it has to come at the cost of paving over
a walkway in Bellwoods Park, thereby deleting any net gain to park space.
The city staff report on Crawford refers to the section of Gladstone that
was removed in Dufferin Grove Park several years ago in order to reunite
both sides of that park. However, this plan did not necessitate compromising
another section of the park to accommodate car drivers who were put off
by Gladstone’s disconnection. They simply had to find another north-south
connection.
An alternative that has been suggested to Pantalone and the city by several
members of the community is simply ending Crawford where Bellwoods Park
begins and creating a cul-de-sac. Traffic could be re-routed south from
Lobb, with the remaining stretch between Lobb and the cul-de-sac on Crawford
turned into a two-way street.
This idea does have precedents in Toronto on at least two other residential
streets in the Yonge and Summerhill area. Both Walker and Alcorn Streets
have widths equal to or smaller than Crawford, have on-street parking
and traffic moving in both directions. Residents of these streets love
this arrangement because the narrow streets are a natural inducement to
calm traffic.
When asked about
these alternatives at a recent community meeting, Pantalone and city staff
refused to contemplate these options, citing the width of the road as
an excuse. When one resident suggested setting up a neighbourhood committee
to explore alternatives, Pantalone bluntly replied that he doesn’t
“work with neighbourhood committees”. Flanked with city staff
committee members on either side, it is quite obvious whom Pantalone represents.
Interesting how Pantalone can claim to be interested in calming traffic
on Crawford, while at the same time supporting the Front Street Expressway,
which will dump thousands of cars per hour off of the Gardiner on to Strachan,
only a block away from Crawford.
Or better still is the notion that the “Crawford Street Realignment”
is a cost-cutting measure, as the Crawford Street bridge will cost several
hundred thousand dollars to repair, while the realignment will cost only
a few hundred thousand. This from the same councillor who is not even
batting an eyelash at spending 235 million of taxpayers’ money on
the Front Street Expressway.
If cost-cutting were the focus of Crawford Street and connecting Bellwoods
Park, then a cul-de-sac would obviously come in at the lowest cost. Money
saved on building a new road could be put into further park improvements,
such as unearthing Garrison Creek, which is currently buried underneath
the Crawford Bridge and is the reason for the latter’s existence.
Exposing Garrison Creek would also save the city money in the long run
as creeks act as natural rain overflow collectors. The city had to recently
scuttle a plan to construct more rain overflow tunnels as the price tag
would have rung in over the one billion dollar mark. One of the alternatives
that is being explored is using the city’s existing grid of buried
creeks and streams, such as Garrison Creek, to provide a more natural
and cost-effective solution to rainwater woes.
Some people argue that Garrison Creek was buried half a century or more
ago because it was polluted and contaminated beyond repair by industry.
The same argument was used against people who wanted to restore the Don
River 20 years ago. Thanks to a very persistent and hard working community,
the Don River is now a restored habitat to fish, birds and native plants
and shrubs.
The community is a wealth of ideas and alternatives that go far beyond
generic models pushed forward by city engineers and puppet politicians.
Unfortunately, the latter is presently the status quo. It’s time
for a change.
Jeff Brown is a municipal
candidate for Ward 19 Trinity Spadina. Contact him at jeffkb43@hotmail.com.
BY
DOC PICKLES
Coast to Coast host Art Bell
retired on New Year’s Eve. For those of you who’ve never had
the opportunity to hear his overnight talk show from the Kingdom of Nye
— broadcast from a backyard hobby HAM radio station near Parumph,
a small desert town in the county of Nye, Nevada — it can only be
described as Out There. Art’s rich baritone could be heard across
North America, drifting out of the cabs of overnight truck runs, security
booths, and from the bedrooms of millions of insomniacs, pontificating
on the status of Chupacabras, crop circles, the nature of the human soul,
ghost stories, and traces of the Earth’s ancient civilizations still
being discovered on the ocean floor.
The format of his show made for great conversation. It was four hours
in length, from 1 until 5 in the morning Toronto time, but when his guests
were priests performing exorcisms in New York with the Vatican’s
blessing like Father Malachi Martin, former CIA scientists who ran the
government’s remote viewing program like Joe McMoneagle, native
North American spiritual leaders talking about a world infiltrated by
“lizard people” like Red Elk, or modern Indiana Joneses discovering
forgotten history of the pyramids at Giza like Graham Hancock, there just
never seemed to be enough time. These are people you won’t hear
from on CNN. Sure, there are plenty of callers out there with rocks for
brains, but Art could handle them deftly. Unlike most call-in shows, Art
Bell never screened his calls. He would just sit there in his little broadcast
shack, and whenever the moment felt right you’d hear him say: “East
of the Rockies, you’re on the air.” Then he’d stab at
one of the buttons on his phone, right next to the ashtray. For a show
broadcast to over 500 radio stations worldwide, I’m surprised to
have never once heard a prank call. It had a comfortable cottagey feel
to it, not the slick sound you’d expect from the second most listened-to
show after Howard Stern.
I was working New Year’s Eve, so I missed what must have been
quite a show. My last memory of Art Bell is a few nights before Christmas,
when he interviewed psychic Sylvia Brown. Ms Pickles and I stayed up late
together and, while drifting in and out of consciousness, were treated
to an exploration of the other side of life that can’t be replicated
on TV. Radio gives your brain the cue, and your imagination takes it from
there. It’s the perfect medium for talking about things that are
impossible to talk about. The tone of the show was intense — you
could sense that he and Sylvia knew the end was near, and they’d
have to pack a lot into a very short time. Callers weren’t allowed
to ask for a personal psychic reading — that would have been boring
— but now and then while answering a question, Sylvia would say
“your patient will be dead within a week,” to which Art would
reply “hoo boy.” It’s hard to explain how his seemingly
inane and hammy banter could bring out so much interesting stuff from
very interesting people who are often unaccustomed to being on the air,
but it did. He had a real knack for settling everybody down and getting
down to the nitty gritty.
What a great template for an indie band. He never once changed his format.
It was his own thing, run out of his own backyard, and people caught on
to it on their own time.
***
This is going to be a difficult year for everybody. I’m sure that
after January 27th, when the US gets its next window of opportunity, the
merciless invasion of Iraq will begin. I’m quite angry about the
injustices that lead up to this. It should be remembered that that marshy
floodplain where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers wind their way down to
the Persian Gulf was where the human race became the human civilization.
That’s where we set down laws, writing, art, culture, mathematics,
astronomy. Before Sumer developed, we had none of that. Sure, we could
farm a little, but life was savage and meaningless. We were slaves to
the elements, barely living long enough to have children before our teeth
fell out and we died.
To see such barbarism in a place where all that is beautiful about civilization
began breaks my heart. The ancient city of Ur, where Abraham came from,
is close to where the US spent two media-free days burying thousands of
Iraqi soldiers — well, children with guns, since most of the adults
had been killed fighting Iran, with both sides being secretly supplied
by the US in the first place. Nothing can convince me that this is anything
more than a coldly calculated power grab.
The US really wants full run of Saudi Arabia. They don’t give a
rat’s ass about Iraq. Once they have finished their business in
Iraq, they will have tens of thousands of troops five minutes away from
the Saudi Arabian border with nothing to do. The tone will change. I think
Osama Bin Laden thought the same thing, but rather than protest against
this peacefully, he basically rented a state, Sudan, then when he was
evicted he purchased a state — Afghanistan — and made a real
mess of things. Bloodshed doesn’t end bloodshed. It’s not
just about oil any more. It’s about world domination. Thing is,
most of us don’t want world leaders. We just want to live meaningful
lives.
This can all be avoided. I don’t know how, though.
On January 18th, Martin Luther King’s birthday, a bunch of people
will gather at Nathan Phillips Square to protest Canada’s involvement
in this mess, and I plan to be there too, to offer support. I invite you
to join me. If anybody has any better ideas, please let me know!
This is Doc
Pickles, Love ya.