Where I live is a little oasis on Queen West. To the east, there are only furniture stores and people with no homes to furnish. To the west, there are only condos and clubs, as well as clubgoers who clog the sidewalk and yell at me for no reason. They don’t yell catcalls or insults. Most of the time they just yell observations, like “Yeah, walk that bike!” or “Hey, you have pizza!”
Aside from the little strip I’m on, Queen West is dead to me. Not because of what it has become, but because Queen West is too goddamn expensive, as are College, Harbord, and Bloor. It’s too expensive for me, and it’s too expensive for lots of people I know and like, which makes it difficult to maintain a community of people I like there. We could all move to the Junction, but to get to the Junction you have to board a bus at Finch Station and then take four streetcars that all short turn. Once you get there, and do whatever it is you’re there to do, you have to sleep in a snow bank, because a cab home would cost $80 and cabs don’t even go to the Junction.
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If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. I am bitter that I can’t afford to live in the city I was born in, in a community of people I like. That said, I can get Massimo’s at 4am. I wonder if Massimo’s will give me free pizza for endorsing them on Toronto Standard.
I don’t know about you, but I hate bitterness. It’s counterproductive. The productive thing would be to round up everyone I like and move us to a cheap neighbourhood, like Montreal. Or the east Beaches. Once we get to the east Beaches, we’ll have to make it a community. Here are some ways we’ll do that.
MAYPOLE
Maypoles have been fixtures of community life for centuries. They symbolize everyone’s desire to screw everyone else in the community. Because our community will be made up of people who like each other, everyone will eventually want to screw everyone. But if everyone in our community starts screwing, it won’t end well for us. So we’ll need a maypole.
HAUNTED HOUSE BUT WITH HUMOUR
Since our community will be grassroots, we’ll have to make our own entertainment. A haunted house would be the best way to do that, but if the haunted house did its job, we’d all develop nervous disorders. So our haunted house will be like a haunted house but with comedy instead of horror. Visitors will enter through the mouth of a giant Alfred E. Neuman head and comedians will jump out at them and tell jokes. Everyone’s laughs will be recorded and looped back over a loudspeaker. At the very end, guests will be able to buy polaroids of themselves being humoured.
HOTDOG STAND THAT SELLS PANEER INSTEAD OF HOTDOGS
Societies probably work best when everyone is equal, but there’s opportunity for reward if you’re willing to work hard. If you log extra time at the haunted house, you can get pocket money for our hotdog stand, which sells paneer.
Paneer is the best food in the world, and if more people knew that, maybe they would serve it in novel ways in addition to sticking cubes of it in sauce. The worst is when you order a dish with paneer and they give you little squares of paneer rather than full cubes. I don’t know why, but it feels great to eat a cube.
COMMUNAL JUKEBOX THAT ONLY PLAYS “HANDS UP”
“Hands Up” is the musical equivalent of salt. The body loves it, even though the mind has no idea why. Once I had a bad fever that broke when a Club Med ad came on the radio. If everyone listened to “Hands Up” once a day, it would be like taking a multivitamin.
But you should never listen to “Hands Up” too many times in a row, because then it’ll get stuck in your head, and even if you listen to Danzig, you’ll still hear “Hands Up.” For that reason, I won’t force “Hands Up” on the community. I’ll just install speakers in everyone’s home, hooked up to a jukebox in the village green that only plays “Hands Up,” so people can have it if they need it.
SCULPTURE GARDEN WHERE ALL THE SCULPTURES ARE OF ZIGGY FROM THE COMIC STRIP ZIGGY
Because Ziggy’s form is pleasing to the eye.
TREADMILL CHESSBOARDS
It’s important to live an active lifestyle, so our community will need recreational facilities. Unfortunately I hate sports, because I never made any sports teams in elementary school. I did make the chess team, though, so our public chessboards will have treadmills underneath them.
ROAD WITH COLOUR PANELS THAT LIGHT UP WHEN YOU WALK ON THEM
Because no one I know and like has any police training, conflicts that arise in our community will have to be settled with a fistfight. But those fistfights will have to take place on the road with colour panels that light up when you walk on them, RWCPTLUWYWOT for short. The goal is obviously to get everyone to stop fighting and start dancing, but even if they keep fighting it will be more fun to watch.
MASSAGE BOARD
Massages are great, but if we give each other massages, it could lead to sexual tension. We could install public massage chairs, but we have limited resources and massage chair lineups could create public unrest. A more social solution would be to buy a giant wooden board that everyone could lie on, and attach it to some vibrating mechanism. That way we could all be massaged at the same time, and we wouldn’t have to look at each other’s faces in the throes of a massage.
All town hall meetings will take place on the massage board, so everything will always seem great.
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Alexandra Molotkow writes Toronto Standard’s Minutiae column. Follow her on Twitter at @alexmolotkow.
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