Monday, January 30 2012
Dear Toronto Standard,
If Los Angeles is the Stingray in front of which Joan Didion exhaled a small, sexy cloud of smoke, in a long dress on a lean frame (or more likely, Los Angeles is a brushed-gray Range Rover, those chic tanks, or more-more likely, a matte black “murdered-out” Prius… yes, that one), what’s Toronto? Forgive me if what comes to mind is Rob Ford’s minivan. (That guy! He was in the Sunday Times magazine today, which I now buy for a dollar.) A bike? I dunno. It’s nice here, and weird, but most crucially I miss my friends.
In a month of living/vacationing/hiding out, the first of a few, the mythos of L.A. has unfolded so many different times. It unfolds every morning. I mean, I have a lemon tree, which is just there, and from which I pick one lemon for every day of the week. They taste and smell literally twice as good as the lemons at home, even though they were grown on the edge of a cracked-in-half sidewalk in Hollywood. It’s bright blue and white hot every day (heat wave!) except for that day it rained, which reminded me of the time I saw a cop guarding a large puddle at the end of a street in Orange County, when I first half-lived in California. There’s nothing like the light in L.A.
The Los Angeles aesthetic is, as ever, not mine: sinew and sunspots and alt-yoga separates, or Beverly Hills boutiquey, silky, drapey things that I don’t understand. In my neighbourhood, there is also a serious ‘80s goth contingent that is far more present, even in greater L.A., than anyone who understands the city to be somehow sophisticated would guess. So much black lace, so many combat boots, so many beads of genuine-issue desert sweat in there somewhere, which is both gross and compelling. Ed Hardy is close by. Melrose, further west, is amazing and amazinger.
Is it cold there? It is. It was fucking freezing when I left Toronto, but whatever. My eleven years there, since day one of undergrad, have been punctuated by long trips to L.A. and O.C., and shorter ones to New York and New Jersey (my oldest sister always lives one hour outside of good cities, which is rad of her), and are just a function of work, friends and family. I’ve always liked that there are more than an incidental number of parallels with Toronto, which is much more like Los Angeles than New York. I think they’re each other’s closest proxies. Both L.A. and Toronto are, after all, preoccupied (or supposed to be) with their position relative to NYC. Neither does as well on street style (see: goths in L.A.; see: the ubiquitotallyeverywhere black parkas shuffling by your window). Los Angeles has better architecture. Toronto has more freedom. The immigrant populations are probably the best part of both, which is good economically and for culture and food. (Oh, so far: filet mignon taco; rib-eye steak taco; fish taco; potato taco. Lemons. Trader Joe’s nuts. C’est ca.) Both L.A. and Toronto are more conducive to general, street-level kindness than New York (are we still on that?), even in its post-Empire hosed-down era, where the Duane Reades of midtown are spreading steadily outward. In L.A., human encounter is infrequent and eventful, and in Toronto the social expectation to be extraordinarily passive and at least sort-of nice is so totally mandated that there, I’m a bitch, and here, I’m an angel. A pale one, with real boobs. (!!!) I know from experience that when I get home I’ll really be there the first time someone slams into me on the sidewalk on Bloor Street, and apologizes.
The inverse relationship between L.A. and Toronto begins and ends with sex, however, or at least it does as far as I can see in just less than a month. The aggressive reservedness at home is lame when it comes to hooking up (my friend Mike, from Toronto, told me that when a cute girl tried to get with him at a bar in Brooklyn he fled, because he was confused), but also a comfort: street harrassment is so tame I can manage it with my eyes and ears closed. Here, the constant (and I say this academically) attention is what I’ve always heard about Italy. I watch other girls blasé through it like they’re just from a place that incorporates sex into the culture, instead of a positioning it as a contemptible rudeness. I’m mean to men, nice ones, who ask me out or just say a friendly, complimentary thing, because I’m sure they’re filthy, bad-fetishy predators, even when I watch them get into those chic tanks where their dog is, while I walk my groceries in the sun to my house. (No car yet. Do I want a Prius? Or a balling ‘90s Mercedes? They’re everywhere, for a dollar.) Toronto is deep into the pushy outrés of app development and social media, and we all ride the subway and cluster into walkable, brilliantly cohesive neighbourhoods, but talking to each other as if both of you have had sex before and will again is an impossibility. Meanwhile, here, men touch your hair (THEY JUST TOUCH IT) in line for coffee. So….
Every time I leave Toronto I immediately miss how malleable and kind to me it is, but I’m nervous that Toronto is so young and too tentative about every single thing. Aren’t the young supposed to be the bravest? My friends here in L.A. are curious about Toronto (“Terr-ant-o”), which is exotic in the same way as Berlin or one of those emerging South American cities that I forget to be excited about. Lately, the conversation has been about where the city is situated in terms of music: the best, or one of, for sure. That’s important, more than TV or movies or whatever self-serious hippie jam was happening at the music video shoot around the corner from me, about which I decided on a time (11PM) when I’d walk over and complain. (So, so bad.) It’s important to know that we’re doing things that are important, to savour our recent history (and those bands, which we can count like prayer beads), to wonder about elsewhere and how we’re doing, because that’s how a young city can start to feel a little wizened, a little old.
It’s midnight my time and three, yours. At nine I’ll wake up (VACATION!) and miss you more.
Love,
Kate
Kate Carraway is a Toronto-based writer who’s written for The Grid, The National Post, Vice and more. Follow her (mis)adventures at @KateCarraway.
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