It all began as Brick, red Brick.  They won the war with France, but they haven't won the war with boredom.   If only Leonard Cohen had lived there, he might have become a Christian.  Funki aside, TO is a good place to visit, to lift up a frosty bottle, to wine and die with friends.

Then Leave.

Go back home, wherever you perceive "Home" to be, and forget the whole incident.

Queen Street . . . (and what other name could we possibly imagine?  "Lloyd Robertson Boulevard"?  I like it.)  Ontario is so much the home of "Queenyness" that some of the back alleys are actually dressed in drag.  Like this one >> !!  Shocking, pink and wholesome.  And not only that: "approved".  By the government, by the people, and by the drug addicts playing "hacky saki" in their ample spare time along these hallowed corridors.

These bombs leave nothing to the imagination.

One evening at Sunset Time, I stopped and Queen and  Spadina.  Had a herbal tea called "RooBoos".  Fell in love with it, almost with the waitress that pronounced it.

Sat outside and watched Toronto go by.  Terribly distant, terribly close.  People in clothing whose labels were washed in the dryer and dried in the stormy streets.  Toronto is like a flattened New York that was put through a "slice and dice machine" (you've seen it on TV!) that makes everything square, and everything made of red brick.

It's not totally un-cool, it's not totally bad.  In fact, the older buildings are quite romantic.

So, you'll notice "brick" everywhere you look.  It's a brick shit-house. It's the home of "Tim Horton", and its not-quite-as-good-as-Starfuck's coffee.  Fry your intestines with Saturated Fats and Donuts, but no one will care, not even the bored South African MD's working overtime in the "walk-in community clinics".

Got a drug problem?  Well you do now.

The Greek Food is worth writing home about.  Thai follow suit. I had the best chicken coconut lemongrass soup in the world one day when I followed my nose in Toronto.

I also had decadent, chocolate, go-to-confession-next-day type of dessert at some long-forgotton leetle cabaret in one of the myriad pleasant neighborhoods that compel.

Take your rolaids, take your camera. Something for every habit.