Toronto Trip

Every year on the second to last weekend in January Leigh and I make a pilgrimage to Toronto, Ontario, Canada to pay our respects to the city that allowed us to get married. It's a little different this year because we're separated, but we've remained very friendly and decided to go ahead with the trip and celebrate our "anti-versary" or our "un-iversary." This idea started back in September when Leigh bought us tickets to see The Killers at the Air Canada Centre on January 23, and we were married on January 20. 

Last Friday (1/23) we made the two hour drive to Toronto with plans to hear good music and drink our weight in alcohol. Both goals were accomplished. 

The concert doors opened at 7:30 and our schedule was running a little tight, but the opening act wasn't really our style so we went to sushi instead. 

Waiting for the TTC to the Air Canada Centre.

Closer to 8:30 we took our seats waaayyyy in the back, but these were actually really great because we could relax and enjoy things with a good view. 

Attempted self-portrait at Air Canada Centre

View of the stage

View of the stage- note the palm tree theme

The show itself was truly excellent. While The Killers are not my favorite band at all I do enjoy them a great deal. Moreover, I find them to be consistently excellent entertainers. Their live performance was equally good to their recorded music and the video/light show to accompany the music actually added something to the experience. 

(I'm trying to upload two videos of the concert but seem to be having some trouble. More to come later...)

Seeing as The Killers are a Top 40 kind of band, I wasn't surprised to see a notable amount of screaming teenagers. Normally this would annoy the crap out of me but because we were in Canada, and they do everything just a little bit better, the screaming teenagers were actually kind of funny and I didn't mind them so much. The family sitting directly to my left was actually kind of amusing. I was seated next to the Dad, early 50s probably, who was sucking down Molson by the liter. By the end of the show he and his cute, plump little wife were dancing (badly) to the final set. They seem to have been on a double date with their teenage daughter and her boyfriend and everyone seemed to be having a good time. 

That night Leigh and I went out on the town in the gay village/Church Street area of the city, which was also very near to our hotel. We started at a low key grille and bar type place called Churchmouse and Firkin. The place had a really limited selection of tap drinks, so we bought a pitcher of cider to get things started. The line at our favorite Toronto club, Crews & Tango, was really long and it was unbelievably cold so we kept the evening pretty short.

The next day was frigid, but we were determined to do some walking around and possible shopping at the Fluevog store, which turned out to be a bust. Instead we just wandered around Queen Street and made good use of our TTC day pass by taking the subway and street car around. We got a little lost in the Bathurst Street area but made it fun by stopping to watch a pickup hockey game and by counting the number of people we saw walking down the street carrying a hockey stick for no particular reason.

Toronto City Hall area near Queen Street

 

Waiting for the TTC- also a nice picture of my nostrils while Leigh looks adorable

Tower over City Hall

Random statue in the square near Queen Street. 

That evening we ate Thai food at a really, really gay restaurant with terribly pretentious ambience but fair prices and great curry. Then we hit a lesbian dance club called Slacks, which had a great DJ playing and pretty good drinks, though it was a typical lesbian bar where everyone comes in packs and clumps together. After about 45 minutes of listening to the music we left for Zelda's on Church Street, which served as the model for the Liberty Diner in Queer as Folk. This place must be seen to be believed. The theme is "trailer trash" but the food and drinks are both yummy and well-priced. Leigh and I sat there sucking down a 60 oz pitcher of sangria and took it all in. The boys working there wore next to nothing (one guy was wearing a pair of red briefs and a fannypack for his tips and that was all) and drag queens were running amuck. One drag queen in particular stuck her hand down the back of the bartender's pants at one point and he just let her like it was part of his job or something...maybe it is?

After we were nicely tipsy from the sangria we hit a place called Voglie, which is normally a high end Italian restaurant (meaning we couldn't afford a salad there if we came during dinner hours) but on certain nights it caters to lesbian and otherwise friendly crowds. Saturday night was called "Snatch" night. The place was really cool because it's really just a refurbished victorian era Toronto house with lots of smaller bar/dining rooms that go up and down staircases. The whole experience was more like an after hours party in someone's house. The music was excellent and the room we were in had plenty of loungy seating, an excellent bar tender, and about 30 people dancing and talking and laughing. It was mostly lesbians but there were a few straight couples there too. It was really nice to see the intermingling of lifestyles and the common theme that everyone just wanted to enjoy themselves. 

Leigh and I were completely exhausted after that so we found a hotdog cart that was open at 2:30am (Toronto street hotdogs are the best in the world) and walked back to our hotel. The next morning we ate a great breakfast in the hotel restaurant and headed back to Buffalo for my last week in town before moving to New York City.