i took the 1:30 am bus on tuesday morning, got to toronto at 6:30 sharp, had to blow a few hours, got the first part of the filing done very early, was done serving by 11:00 and got the certificate of service in before noon. i then bought some drugs and went to hang out in the library for a few hours. i couldn't find a seat when i came back in from a smoke, so i was out to the second part of the night earlier than intended, around 15:30. i decided to just go down to the bar a little early for an early beer...
the initial plan was to catch a local guitarist - sean pinchin - play from about 18:00-21:00, have a few cheap beers while i was there, and then go to the bovine sex club for the rest of the night to watch some psychedelic rock bands (headliner: goon), before getting pho at about 3:00 and catching the bus out at 8:00.
but, beer is expensive in toronto. in windsor, beer runs around $3.50-$4.00, cdn. beer in detroit is $2.00-$4.00 usd, which is still only $2.50-5.50 cdn. in toronto, $7.00 cdn is considered cheap, and people don't seem to like it when you complain about it. so, i wanted to go to what i thought was a dive bar to get some cheap beer early, but came up against a $7.00 beer that i just didn't budget for. i mean, maybe there's places in windsor with $7.00 beer, but they'd be full of middle class bourgeois types that i wouldn't like very much and i'd have so little interest in going to them that i don't even know where they are. even that spot across from phog that i complained about is selling tall boys for $6.00, not pints for $7.00. if i walked into a bar in windsor and they tried to charge me $7.00 for a pint, i'd just laugh at them and go somewhere else.
as it is, upon bitching about the price, i was informed by the bartender that i could get a beer for $3.50 down the street, so i took a walk to save a few dollars, and hopefully turn one beer into two. that's just smart fiscal management. clearly.
listen: it's not like i was just being cheap. really. i had a fixed sum to work with, which was down to $43 at this point. if i spent all of my money on an expensive $7.00 beer, i'd just run out of it in a few drinks. then, i'd be stuck in toronto until 8:00 with no money and no alcohol and nothing to do. that's not a question of being cheap, it's a question of being stupid. when you have a fixed amount of money to work with, you have to be smart about how you're spending it - and spending $7.00 for a single beer would just not be very smart. if i was working for the government, i could just print more; i'm not, so i have limits i have to abide by.
but, this bartender at the spot i thought was a dive bar but wasn't....he didn't like me after that. this was a middle-aged white guy with facial hair (and, you know you're special when you hit 25 and still insist on facial hair. lol.) that probably leaned pretty far to the right of the political spectrum, if you can judge a middle-aged white guy by his facial hair, and you usually can. so, my cheap beer at the early show at the dive bar idea failed in a few different ways....it turned out to be expensive beer amidst what was really a rather undesirable crowd of right-wingers that still believe in upholding class (!).
the cheaper beer (it was sill $3.50) was at a place called 'wide open', which started to pick up quite a bit after 17:00. see, i liked the cheaper beer, but the music in the place was truly awful. i'm just not going to want to sit around and listen to bon jovi. sorry.
so, i went back to the not-actually-a-dive-bar, talked the bartender into a $5.50 beer and caught the guy play the first part of his set.
i wasn't actually sure what to expect - it was advertised as a juno-nominated blues guitarist, and i was just waiting for the show at the bovine to start, anyways, so i wasn't that invested.
but, he actually did a lot of finger-picking, and it was broadly instrumental, in scope. so, i found myself enjoying the music in a more detailed way than initially expected, enough that i decided to close my eyes for a bit to float off into it.
uch-o. that's against the rules, apparently. tough guy bartender with the facial hair didn't like that, and asked me to leave for "sleeping at the bar" - an egregiously false claim that anybody in the room would immediately identify as such. rather, i think it's clear enough that he just didn't think i was wealthy enough to hang out there...
so, i sent the guitarist the following message, over facebook, when i got home:
so, i tried to check out your set on tuesday. and, it was a good set, from what i caught of it.
i was in town to do some filing at the court house; i live in windsor. i'm suing the cops for a warrantless arrest that shouldn't have happened, if you're curious. so, i caught the 1:30 bus from windsor in the morning, and everybody drinks on the greyhound, right? i was halfway through a long day full of lots of alcohol and marijuana, and i wasn't going to get home to shower until the next day...
what i said to the bartender was true i am a guitarist (you can check me out by clicking through the links), and i actually have a little bit of training in renaissance classical music, but i'm mostly a psychedelic blues guitarist. so, i like guitar music, and i was enjoying your set. i often enjoy listening to guitar music with my eyes closed, so i can experience it in three dimensions, in the context of the fret board. it's not exactly synesthesia, it's more of a math thing (i also have a math degree), but it's how i dig it. some people wanna get up and clap and dance; i want to close my eyes and space out. that should be fine, right?
but, i couldn't finish your set because they threw me out for "falling asleep at the bar", which is just an empirically and factually false analysis of the situation. i can be drunk and close my eyes and enjoy your set without falling asleep.
but, so what if i *was* falling asleep? beer in toronto is about twice the price of beer in windsor, and that caught me off guard, so i had to readjust my budgeting. i had $40 to get me through the night, period. but, i had bought a beer and was intending to buy another one. you'd think you're entitled to a complimentary nap after paying for two beers, right?
the impression i got from the bartender was actually that he interpreted me as too lower class for his establishment. and, i mean, that's his opinion, if he wants to be like that...
the point i'm trying to make is this: i came to see you play, and the bar threw me out. no, i don't have a lot of money, and, yes, i was kind of drunk, but i was legitimately interested in your art. the reality is that you're a dirty roots guitarist. correctly or not, i may have come off as a poor drunk, but in the sense that that was true, i'm your audience - those guys in suits aren't.
how many other people are going to show up there to see you and get thrown out because they're too drunk or don't want to pay $7.00 for a beer?
so, i'm writing you as an artist to ask you to question whether you think that's a good place to play at or associate yourself with. it's clearly not a sustainable weekly gig. but, are you hurting yourself more than helping yourself?
if you were playing on the sidewalk for change instead, nobody would have chased me off.
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and, i'd just leave the situation at that.
i didn't pay cover to get into this place, and it wasn't my intended destination for the night; i just stopped by for a beer or two, and i was planning on leaving within an hour or two. further, i did catch the first half of the set. so, being asked to leave did not affect my night very much.
i may suggest that the bartender is a bit of an asshole, but there wasn't a lot of point in getting upset about it. rather, my reaction is more along the lines of that i don't particularly want to go back to this place, and would plead with people that are in the neighbourhood to choose to play somewhere else, instead. i would choose to avoid that place by choice, next time i'm around.
so, after buying a $3.50 beer and a $5.50 beer, i'm down to $34, and i'm out of smokes. the cost of cigarettes in toronto? $11. and, i know it's $10 for cover, taking me down to $13 for the night.
it's a good thing i didn't buy that $7.00 beer, right? but, the beer at the bovine wasn't cheap, either - i paid $5.50 for a can, and then had to hang on to the rest of the change in my pocket, in the hopes that i'd be able to get something to eat.
my comments regarding the first three acts are actually the same, namely that they each had moments, in their own ways, that were dragged down by an insistence on returning to a poppier aesthetic. in all three cases, i found myself wondering why they'd go back to the saccharine over and over, when it just wasn't working, but maybe i'm missing a trend, or something, i dunno; i know that that was the commonality here, and i don't actually think there's a lot else worth taking much note of.
the first act were highly impressed by the sound tech's suggestion of turning the amp down during sound check, but i actually think they got quite a bit more grit out of the amp than the monitors would allow for. put another way: the monitors gave them more of a "solid state" type 80s rock sound, which they seemed to prefer over their crappy 90s analog pedals. i liked that creamy, sustained muff tone better than the brittle-digital-distortion-through-fender-jazz tone he fixed you up with, guys. but i kept quiet. *shrug*.
they're just kids. they know not...
sicayda were enjoyable as a gaze act, but, as mentioned, they kept going back to these poppy sections that just left me scratching my head.
and, i'll say the same thing about goon, who were almost an interesting psych act, but just couldn't leave the pop at home, in los angeles.
i will acknowledge that i had what i believe i am correct in calling an anxiety attack near the start of the goon set, which required me to cheat hypothermia in stripping down to my tshirt in order to sweat something out that i had breathed in a few minutes earlier. somebody was looking to kill their joint. i'll always take it if nobody wants it, but it took me up past some thc blood level concentration point and forced me to process it, in the way i know how. then i was fine, as always.
if you were to ask me, i would suggest that goon need to decide if they're a psych act or a pop act, but the kids might give you another story.
the place cleared out almost entirely after goon, but they did have one more act, which was even catchier and didn't really have the moments that the first three did. this was definitely more in a new wave or post-punk tradition, so i'm not surprised to realize that they're a little older. i like this general style, but i need something more abstract than this.
then, it was like 1:00 and they were done.
as mentioned, i had $9.00 on me, and i wanted to save it to get something to eat. i just underestimated the cost of everything. if i had saved an extra $4-5 by paying a little less for pretty much everything, i would have bought another beer; conversely, if i had an extra $20, i would have bought another beer. but, i just misbudgeted, and was kind of stuck.
my options were to go sit in a diner for the next 6-7 hours or hang around at the bar until 3:00, with the hopes that a conversation might open up....and then sit in a diner for 3-4 hours. it seemed like an obvious choice. but, this bar - which i hadn't been in before - was actually kind of a couples bar, after the bands had cleared out; there were lots of people there, but they were pretty much solely in units of two. again, this is abnormal for the kinds of places i go to, which tend to be less about going on dates and more about hanging out. i don't know when i'll be in toronto next, but i'll keep that in mind...
the people were at least friendly. mostly.
so, i was approached by a bassist/singer in a few local bands that seemed intent on telling me bad jokes, and arguing with me over the value of recorded music. and, i won't post her links here, but it demonstrates that the place was friendly enough, even to a stranger from out of town there accidentally on an unofficial couples night.
it wasn't quite 3:00 when i left - i didn't make them throw me out - but it was close. and, off i went for pho...
.....which i knew would be cheap, but how cheap? $9.00 cheap? it turns out, not - it was $11.00 cheap, but not $9.00 cheap. so, i went looking for a sub, instead...
....and, i found one, but i would have had to eat it outside, which i balked at.
instead, i got a sausage from the truck outside for $4.50 and a coffee at the denny's, and hit the internet where i read the news for a bit. but, i didn't want to fall asleep and miss the bus, so i went back to the bus station to type there....
...and learned that they shut down all of the outlets at the greyhound. yeah. well, it didn't click at first - i went from outlet to outlet and finally found one in the basement, before the cops came down and threw me out, for reasons that i couldn't understand.
i had two dollars on me at the end, and went looking for a bag of chips, when it clicked - they've installed charging ports. aha.
it would be one thing for them to install quick charging ports as a convenience for people with fast phones, but it's another thing altogether to actually disassemble the electrical plugs, to stop people from charging. my chromebook is misbehaving, so i can't charge it right now. but, it doesn't have usb charging, anyways. so, they're taking away something without fully replacing it.
and, they didn't have outlets on the bus, either, so i just slept on the way home....
*shrug*.
i was home at about 15:00 on wednesday afternoon, ate, showered and passed out until early in the morning.
next time i go to toronto, i'll need to bring a few extra dollars - or, if i don't have it, reschedule until i do. it was a difference of about $30.
but, i did the filing that i needed to do, which was the point of the trip, and i didn't not enjoy the show, for what it was.
