Sunday, August 30th
Although this was going to be a day off, in practice, it has resulted in shifts in two booths.
I had been entertaining myself by talking about Yorkshire Burrito on Instagram and Jason Rizzuti, who had employed me last December during the Christmas Market at the Distillery, got in touch to ask if I could man the info booth for two hours and handle bookings for Go Tours. I agreed to that before the schedule opened up at the CNE, so I am a multi-booth dweller on what is nominally a day of rest.
Token selling on the midway has reverted to normalcy. The beer drinkers complain about the lack of beer options (Side Launch and Indie Alehouse are apparently not enough variety). One older lady only drinks stout and is disappointed that there is no stout on the CNE midway in August. I refund her single token out of pocket because we have no facility for refunds and the entire situation is so pitiable.
Everyone else tries a bunch of things and generally has a pretty nice time.
There are two principles emblematic of any festival area in addition to the concept of abstraction I mentioned last week: The Empty Keg Principle and Economic Self Determination.
The Empty Keg Principle (first brought to my attention by Ken Woods from Black Oak) deals with vendor laziness: No one wants to have to carry a full keg back to the van at the end of the shift. If you’re pouring from cans, sometimes you will pour a little extra if the customer is giving you some conversation. “Let me top that up for you,” the vendor might say. In a world with sixteen ounce cans and five ounce pours, a little kindness will get you topped up especially if it’s slow.
The Economic Self Determination is more subtle. Inevitably, the sign on the booth says that full size drinks are 3-4 tokens (12-16 dollars). Sometimes I will point out to the customers that getting four samples is a better value (20 ounces rather than 16). The vendors, for reasons of their own possibly to do with margin or promotional efforts, will call an audible a few days into the CNE and maybe try reducing the number of tokens they are charging. This will inevitably cause the other vendors to panic and enter into a price war. It took longer this year than sometimes.
The Ur-example which brought this to our attention was a beverage called Crawler from a few years ago. They were set up at the west-most point of the area with huge traffic and decided without telling anyone that they would charge two tokens. Six dollars (at the time) for an alcoholic beverage at the CNE. You’ve seen that pile of sawdust and vomit next to the Gravitron? Crawler was part of the problem. Their branding was so indistinct that internally their slogan became, “Crawler: Your Mom Likes It.”
Once the prices are established, changing them causes misinformation to abound and further confuses the patrons. Combine the Empty Keg and ESD problems and we probably pour more than is actually paid for, especially if the vendors are bored. If you had realtime data, it would make a wonderful paper for the Beeronomics people.
Monday, August 31st and Tuesday, September 1st
Tokens move slowly on the day shift, and getting home at a reasonable hour is attractive. If you get to Kibo in Union Station by 6:30, you have the first pick of the 30% off hot dishes. Kimchi Fried Rice with Egg.
The previous week, Dave and I had been trying to get home after midnight on the TTC, which is a misery. Different portions of the Fort York Boulevard stop are festooned with puke any given night and people emerge from the wooded copse next to the stop having been caught short on the way home. On the first Sunday, due to a streetcar short turn, we had shut down the Horseshoe Tavern (which has oddly affordable draught and surprisingly clean lines). We got short turned twice the first week.
Inevitably, we resort to Uber and this year it was prompted by a particular idiocy during the first week. A man walking his quite large dog (possibly a pitbull cross) had been approached by a group of four inebriated people and had used his foot to keep the dog away from them. A dirty blonde girl wearing a cheetah print bodysuit assumed that he had kicked his dog and set the men in the group on him for abusing the dog, which he patently didn’t. The men in the group, possibly due to watching too much MMA, started swinging haymakers and eventually applied what looked like a kata ha jime (Tazzmission), which is potentially lethal, to a man who was just walking his dog. He himself tried turtling and kicking up at them.
This inevitably prompts passersby who are feeling a bit tasty to get involved in the fracas and before you know it, every damn mark has worked themselves into a shoot and the dog’s in the middle of the street with sporadic traffic. None of them are Ken Shamrock and one of them is actively windmilling. Eventually the man recovers his dog and gets away with some assistance from a passerby who backed the group down. It’s worth noting the dog did not a damned thing to defend its owner. As we waited for the streetcar, you could hear the initial group of aggressors congratulating themselves, but on what exactly I couldn’t tell you. I just drank my roadie and looked on bemused.
I grant you it’s not exactly Rashomon, but everyone in that group thought they were right. No one bothered to ask, “then what?” Were they going to steal the dog? Lord save us from well intentioned idiots.
On the bright side, Uber was a lot cheaper this year.
Wednesday, September 2nd
For the second week in a row, Germans from Stuttgart want to see the sights, so I hie them around town and manage to find them satisfactory snackage including a tart from Uncle Tetsu’s before depositing them at Sankofa Square.
They have questions about our relationship with America, given the hydronym.
It’s worth remembering that our relationship with America has always been contentious at intervals. We blew up Zebulon Pike when they tried to take Toronto without a plan to keep it (rather like the situation described above, what would they have done with it?). The alcohol tariffing situation is not new either. McKinley threw 50% tariffs on us in 1890 to end the Barley Days, and George Gooderham still gave us Toronto Dominion Bank with the whiskey money. The only thing that did was change our laws to age the whiskey three years. Didn’t work for Monroe. Won’t work for Trump. Napa Valley is down half a billion and stills are decommissioned in Kentucky.
This too will pass, but probably more like a kidney stone than a summer’s day.
The evening shift in the booth drags a little, and the 18,000 steps I put in earlier in the day now feel somewhat punitive.
Thursday, September 3rd
Southbound on Line 1, the alarms start blaring. I don’t remember having seen a red weather alert previously and somewhere above ground, the skies have opened and torrential rain has commenced. In Mississauga, there is apparently hail that would cause serious injury if you were crazy enough to be caught outside. Two inches in diameter. That’ll buff right out.
I text the work chat from the streetcar platform at Union to ask if they’re sure I’m needed. “Ok. Inbound.” I arrive at 5:45 PM to all of the vendors on the midway having shut down. The air is completely calm, which suggests that we’re in the eye of the storm, but that shouldn’t be a thing in Ontario. There are visible waterspouts over the lake. I had texted Mom the previous day that any rational person should be terrified by advection fog so thick you can’t see Toronto Island. The lake shouldn’t be this warm.
The team is at the Wine Bar at the Enercare centre and there’s not much to do except wait and sample the Collective Arts lineup. I visited the specialty British snack vendor and purchased odd flavours of Walker’s crisps for the group, which in retrospect was my sole contribution on the day. Prawn Cocktail is surprisingly good. By 7:00, we were shut down and by 8:00 the entire park was shut down. “Ok. Outbound.”
With nothing to do, Dave and I went to Left Field in Liberty Village for some dinner and to try their new Oktoberfest beer, Mr. Oktober. It’s good as usual with that little extra malt depth that lends a hint of caramel and bread crust. At 5.4%, the spicy noble hop bitterness is well judged and while I’m sure they’ll have a couple of other features (sometimes they do a Berliner Weiss), their hot dog heavy menu has set them up for seasonal success.
Friday, September 4th
A rare and welcome day off. The intention to do laundry is thwarted by exhaustion. Around noon, I find myself disassociating in the shower as I attempt to come up with a list of things to do with the day. I never quite manage to slip out of neutral.
Looking at the calendar for the last several months, I note with some interest that I have probably had five days off since the beginning of May. Many of those days are longer than ten hours and several of those include double duty between bureaucracy and performance. As a result, I have solved a large number of problems in my life (including getting into the black for the first time since about 2007), but this has come with unanswered questions and I think of the streetcar altercation. What are you going to do with that pitbull now that you have it?
I manage to prevent a case of the running leaping screaming Now-Whats with an impulse purchase of Spicy Dill pork rinds. Some day there will be proper groceries. For now, at least it’s keto friendly.
Saturday, September 5th
I’m dragging myself down to the Hilton for a two and a half hour tour and there’s the indignity of turning up to a group of young ladies from New Orleans in your cleanest dirty shirt, but I manage to turn on the brights and charm them a little saying we may not have beignets, but we do have butter tarts. They’ve chosen some tremendous restaurants including some Michelin options like Sunny’s. I point them at Yummy Yummy Dumplings, which seems to be the rage at the moment because of Clement Leung. He and Mark Wiens went to Yueh Tung, and that looks like a great idea to pass along.
If you have people who are from coastal regions and are foodies, you have to try them out on the Malpeques at the St. Lawrence Market. I usually get a couple of varieties and get them to try them as nature intended without lemon or hot sauce just so they can taste the difference. Goes over great with the group and I walk them through the farmers market before leaving them at the C’est What beer garden with Dominion City Sunsplit and Fairweather Donna.
On the way into the CNE grounds in full denim gear, I’m baffled by the presence of a sea of people in white shirts with black ties in sunglasses and bald caps, and I’m beginning to wonder whether the Scientologists have branched out when I’m reminded that Pitbull is on at the Amphitheatre with Lil’ Jon. I didn’t realize that cosplay was so important to the makeup of Pitbull’s audience. Come to think of it, I don’t know anything about Pitbull except that he seems to be big in Miami and that’s generally an indication that I’m not the audience.
We shut down at 11:30 and I’m leaning on the shipping container at the main bar in the centre of the festival area watching hundreds of people in flesh coloured swimcaps and nearly identical outfits swagger by as if on a mission reciting, “Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn,” at each other with the unwarranted confidence of an internet hype beast. They travel in packs of five or more, seemingly genderless under the trappings of a South Beach svengali who moves in a tax bracket they’ll never make. On the street, they lean out of the windows of their Uber XL’s and Uber Blacks and the chant continues. Big Bank Hank didn’t see that one coming.
It seems like a cult, but then so did BTS.
Sunday, September 6th
The morning shift sees heavy tips and it seems to be Sunday Funday out there on the midway. I never get a chance to update the diary because people are hell bent on enjoying themselves.
Maybe having a plan is less important than having a direction. Maybe the secret is to relax into life, buy a bald cap, and start a streetfight.
Sure it is. What do I know? I just sell tokens.