stuff to do in toronto canada

so we're going to toronto for xmas, leaving thursday and staying w/ a friend. itt lamp, clemenza and others give me good advice

q's:
- things to do if it's really cold?
- long walks?
- nice streets?
- cheap food?
- places to chill and people watch?
- what kinda transit pass do we buy for a 5 day trip?
- is the underground area downtown just like a big mall?

staying somewhere between little italy and little portugal.

haha you are staying in my nabe

= coolest nabe

it probably wont be that cold tbh. any of the 'major' east-west streets are nice to walk, bloor and queen are probably the best for getting a sense of what each of the neighbourhoods are like dundas might be cool for you cuz of ~urban development issues~ college is sorta yuppie but there are some good places to eat/shop

i wish there were more good/cheap places i cld rec - theres a taco place in kensington on augusta that you might like and another at manning and bloor. there are a lot of really good restaurants in toronto but they tend to be kinda $$. if you have specific stuff youd like to try i can give you recs idk

you can buy weekly passes but i dont think theyre that worth it cuz on the wknds you can buy a $10 daily pass that covers two ppl maybe just use tokens the rest of the days?

yeah downtown is p gross and theres not much to do if you dont work there imo

is there anything especially 'toronto' when it comes to food?

is downtown just 'generic north american financial district' that clears out at night?

I think I'm getting paranoid about the cold only cause everyone I talk to is like "omg it's gonna be so cold" - my friend who we're staying w/ says it's not much different from ny.

having lived both its actually been warmer than nyc ime like yesterday you didnt even need a winter jacket outside

there are a bunch of p cool/cheap bars around where yr staying esp on dundas and ossington but queen as well. these can be fun places to people watch. you can also get some decent food cheap at lunch - terrazza on harbord has a p sweet lunch special where you get two menu items for i think $12 & its a really nice room. pizza libretto on ossington just south of dundas has good lunch specials as well but its v v busy.

i feel like 'brunch' is really big deal here even more than other urban areas. there are some places that do cdn cuisine but they all tend to be pretty $$$ theres also lots of good italian food

w/o really knowing much abt what you and yr girl like its sorta hard to recommend specific things to do? idk

we mostly just like walking around and eating? ideally to see as much as possible and leave w/ the sense that we know our way around. I like looking at old buildings and she likes looking at clothes (sometimes). we do like brunch very much tho sunday is the 25th. amazing food's not super important tho and cafes are prob more our thing than bars. tho my friend bartends, I dunno where, but that might get us out at night.

I used 'tho' 3 times in the last two sentences

if your up for it lady marmalade on queen east in the beaches does a really good brunch/breakfast. you could take the streetcar out fri/sat morning and then walk back along queen. it would take a p long time but youd def see a lot of the city. but saving grace on dundas @ like... euclid, i think, is nice for breakfast as well. friday might be kinda nuts just cuz its the 23rd tho

(also which bar? is it in that area? my partner is a bartender and they all seem to know each other)

haha I'll ask him

that looks pretty good, prob can hit it up on a non-sunday if it's closed xmas

well, Dec 21, you can see the parade of torches, etc in Kensington Market. Pretty fun stuff.

wait today is december 21st

starts at 6pm

ah, but you're not here until Thurs...sorry!

There may be debris.

we will check out the debris

any other tips?

Since you mention liking looking at old buildings (and, in Toronto, we tend to pull most of ours down pretty quickly), you might like the Distillery District, out east of downtown, just south of King Street. It's, as advertised, a big old area that used to be occupied by a distillery (key early industry here, 'cause what else is there to do in the winter, etc), and is now lots of little shops and such. There's a christmas market there, some art/craft studios, some decent food and a good brewery (Mill Street). Oh, and some great chocolate at Soma. And a sake brewery, too, with nice tasting options.

Kensington's still nice for wandering around. The Art Gallery of Ontario (just east of Spadina on Dundas) is good if it's cold out...only free on Wednesday evenings, though, sorry. Some outta town friends told us there seemed to be lots of used/independant bookstores in Toronto. Maybe that's true. If you like that kinda thing, there are quite a few in the area you're in. Balfour on College near Bathurst, Type on Queen near Trinity Bellwoods park, The Monkey's Paw on Dundas west of Ossington.

Check out Parkdale if you wanna see gentrification in action.

I'm all about gentrification in action

Pinball at Unloveable (Dundas / Dufferin)
Pho at Xe Lua (Dundas / Spadina)
$ Meat at Black Hoof (Dundas and something)
Best cocktails at Cocktail bar, across from Black Hoof
Hot Dogs? Steamies at College and Manning
Best plate of vegan food? Hibiscus in the Market
Cheap sushi? New Generation or Oishi Kada
Expensive sushi? Hiro or Ema-tei
Fancy Toronto food: Woodlot, Foxley
Monday night? Mescal at Reposado.
Little Italy secret best meal: fish burrito at The Fish Store
Musical instruments: Moog Audio, Paul's Boutique
Coffee: Manic for Intellegentsia, Lit for Stumptown, Ideal for local roast
The weeklies (Now and The Grid) are reliable sources for things to do

Don't go to the underground area downtown unless you're specifically looking for a German-style board game, there's a good one of those
Transit: subway coverage is sparse, take buses, avoid streetcars. $3. Don't take cabs.

I'm interested in the underground area mostly just 'as a place', like it seems inneresting even if it's crappy and basically a mall?

i spent like two weeks in toronto last year and i lost my passport but the police found it before it got reported to the embassy which was lucky but also unlucky in the first place i guess. there was an agnes martin show in the AGO which was mainly why i wanted to go but there was also a julian schnabel retro which was p lol and also a museum guard told me about how the bernini acquisition. i was there for an indian summer so i have this v warped idea of the weather as well. i was put off by how expensive the public transport was and i ended up walking until my feet were in really bad shape and had to buy a pair of shoes one size too big until the swelling went down. around church and wellesly people kept thinking i was a hustler including the doorman of a bar with a cowboy mural on the side. there was a shop for short men which i'm short enough to shop in, which i decided makes me officially short. i imagine you will have a v different experience but i really like toronto even if everybody i met who lived there said it was really boring.

I found the subway coverage mostly fine, but then my longest trip (nine days) was almost exclusively for the Film Fest.

Went to this really good Thai place, but that was 2004 probably!

http://www.greenmango.ca/

great brunch: Gayley's Cafe at Dundas and Gladstone, and they have soy milk if that's a thing (which it is for me.)

oPal: where are you taking buses in those neighbourhoods you mention? They're practically all streetcar-fed streets! :)

I live WAY UP NORTH (St Clair - it's not really, but people act like the lands are covered in fire north of bloor) so I don't bother too much with the core. Spent my time there inmy early 20s, now I'm old and into homebodyism.

I double the recommendations for the Distillery District, Kensington and Parkdale. I may have missed a Saturday/Sunday morn recommendation of the St Lawrence Market? Big food building with many fun things and lots of bustle.

The underground area pretty much has random drug stores, some expensive but mostly lame clothing stores (it's under our 'wall street' area), an LCBO or two and a bunch of garbage. Eaton Centre is our big mall, Dufferin Mall is its cheaper little cousin, Yorkdale is the mall that has your Holt Renfrews and Louis Vuittons and whatnot, and is significantly further north.

food places I like:

College Falafel at College and Ossington has some yummy shwarma
Mezzetta on St Clair near Christie has great tapas, which are maybe $2 a plate on Tuesdays
Sneaky Dee's is our gross dive bar with amazing nachos

oh and Honest Ed's is fun! LOOK INTO IT.

I have only traveled to TO for soccer matches but I really liked the Duke of Gloucester pub, the Chinatown area, the hockey hall of fame (mega touristy but I'm a nerd), and a lot of the bars around our hotel, the names of which I will never remember. TO is like a more cosmopolitan Chicago, I liked it a lot.

this will be a dorky question but what would you say are the boundaries of 'a human being would want to walk on foot in this area'. outer limits of the toronto area gets pretty car-y, right?

Yeah, not to grumpily pull rank on any Torontonians but the people who say "Toronto sux" don't travel much. Toronto is definitely in my top five cities. There are other places I'd live (Montreal, Lisbon) but not many.

I live north and commute into Kensington or Ossington area via bus. Most places I recommended are walking distance.

Green Mango is bad imo. Apparently there is worthwhile Thai at Adelaide and John, but it's new and I haven't tried.
Considering Toronto boasts the finest in Vietnamese (Xe Lua, Golden Turtle), Korean (Buk Chang Dong), Japanese, West Indian, Ethiopian and so forth, I would recommend any of our typically sub-par Thai restaurants. Same goes for Chinese (except one place, shh.)

For a typically Toronto meal it's a roti. Get it with spinach and potatoes at Bacchus, Gandhi or Vena's.

(I wouldn't recommend, not would.)

Toronto is a cool place to live but it's not really a great tourist city in my experience

Truest words ever.
I try to be a good host to visitors cause it does take some time living here to "see its face"

Toronto's a walkable city (there are cool things everywhere) but pretty big? I would say you could walk from Bloor to Front on a meandering afternoon - I've done Queen to Bloor along Yonge many times. Unfortunately, the places suggested are not necessarily walkable - Distillery District kind of in an out of the way, eastern part of the city - but if you *did* have a pass, you could hop on and off any streetcar, subway, bus etc as you please.

prob can walk like 7-8 miles a day? depending on weather and gf's mood.

is there a good toronto map/transit iphone app?

also toronto is super fun if you have read lots of jane jacobs because you keep recognising places she talks about. there is even a plaque for where they didn't build the spadina expressway or something

transit app is called Rocket Man (heh). There's a website called myttc.ca which is unofficial but good for like 'How can I get from this address to -landmark-' if you don't have an address.. pick up a copy of The Grid from the free newspaper boxes, it has stuff to do inside. Bloor to Front street is only about a mile and a half, turns out, so you should be fine with walking.. if you ask a conductor inside a TTC station, they usually have maps IIRC with the subway and streetcars on them.

I live on a street that would have been paved for the Spadina extension! Heh. Guess I'll need to check out this Jane Jacobs, who I've never read :P

If you're going to be in Little Italy/Portugal, my suspicion is you're around Ossington so I would walk to Oss and College, along College to Augusta, then take Augusta to walk into the Kensington market area, which borders Chinatown (Spadina ave). I'd walk south on Spadina to Queen street and check that area around a bit too. That's kind of all the west-end stuff in a fun lump - Distillery district, St Lawrence market etc maybe for another day.

here is a map of my suggestion

http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=ossington+and+college&daddr=augusta+ave+and+nassau+st+to:dundas+and+spadina+to:queen+and+spadina&hl=en&ll=43.653031,-79.409566&spn=0.026145,0.037165&sll=43.652907,-79.409566&sspn=0.026145,0.037165&geocode=FfkcmgIdHBtE-yn1WMWg9zQriDEbkfXmijQYNg%3BFUQgmgIdv2pE-ymtjnAFwjQriDH_hX0hfmvrkg%3BFS8XmgIdAHtE-ynJF5V3wzQriDHMU3tUmQITqQ%3BFcwGmgIdhYFE-ylXGdNv2zQriDHGGtKvkKR03A&vpsrc=0&dirflg=w&mra=ltm&t=m&z=15

then I would walk back to Ossington along Queen because there's lots of fun stuff in that strip, and you'd be home-ish.

also toronto is super fun if you have read lots of jane jacobs because you keep recognising places she talks about. there is even a plaque for where they didn't build the spadina expressway or something

haha yes this is very much what I'm hoping for

v much in character

Expensive sushi? Hiro or Ema-tei

have you been to sushi kaji?

I'm interested in the underground area mostly just 'as a place', like it seems inneresting even if it's crappy and basically a mall?

its mostly a series of underground pathways (its called PATH i mean) that connects the big mall w/all the office towers and the subway. like its less a mall than just corridors that let you get from the stock exchange to the mall to an accounting firm's hq to the king subway all w/o having to go above ground?

Toronto is a cool place to live but it's not really a great tourist city in my experience

yeah this is super otm, theres not really that much stuff to 'do' but its a p sweet place to live

also i thought abt it more and since your there anyway most of the little north-south streets btw ossington and bathurst are kinda neat to walk along, some really nice places. im kidna biased cuz its where i live but each street sorta has its own character and fun discoveries

yeah I think we'll be okay cause we're not really 'do' stuff people, just like to wander arond and see how people live. I haven't left the nyc metro area for 2 years so it'll be nice to be in a small town again.

oh that's not a very nice way to endear yourself to helpful Torontonians who made google maps and shit. "small town." :*(

if you proclaim it quaint about your return I'm mailing you anthrax

about=upon, I have holiday fog in my brain. and fierce loyalty to my beloved city.

it was a joke :(

will irl torontanians not appreciate that joke, I was planning on using it a lot

depends, ever take a punch from a 6'1" woman? hehe. might come off better IRL with 'joking' inflection in voice, etc etc. But honestly Canadians get slagged off by the USA so often I'm always on the defensive.

the puncing was a joke too :(

this is becoming a diplomatic crisis

the part of toronto yr staying in sorta is like a small town, thats what i like abt living there

is there a 'hipster' neighborhood?

everything south of bloor imo

kensington market, queen street - I sent you on a hipster crawl really

okay good just making sure

lol kensington is all crusties and new immigrants

the stretch of ossington btw queen and dundas used to be a hipster stretch but now its just pseuds and yuppies

the real hipster nabe is dufferin to landsdowne around bloor st. and parts of north parkdale ime

Torontonians have a notorious inferiority complex, and probably will get offended at that, as I would have been if I hadn't scrolled up to after reading "it was a joke"

I don't know anyone that's ever willingly spent time in the PATH. The idea of someone visiting it as part of trip is kind of incredibly ridiculous, unless you're really, really excited about, like, small-scale shoe repair places and mediocre foodcourts.

'it used to be.. now it's just..' spoken like a true hipster, Lamp ;D

If you go to the Distillery District, which is worth doing (especially to see a play), and want to balance the yuppie gloss of it, head up parliament for a more authentic, mostly unglamorous stretch of the city, and while there go to Suko Thai, which is the best Thai food, and some of the best food, in the entire city, and is also cheap.

Hey, that's great. I'll catch up tonight with what's already been suggested...Try to get to the Lightbox for a film. Any chance of meeting up for lunch? I'll give Herman Cain a call, see if he can make it too.

for sure, pm me, we're free all days at this point.

have you been to sushi kaji?

I haven't. I wouldn't consider mentioning it to anybody but a rich kid with a car. I hear it's amazing? But Hiro is half the prize and all the once-yearly omakase I could ever ask for.

+1 on that Googlemap. Looking good.

If you're interested in "shows", like, gigs, you'd normally look here http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/listings/ or pick up a copy of "Offerings" 'zine. Yes, you can see Mary Margaret O'Hara w/Miss America-guitarist Rusty McCarthy tomorrow night.

Lamp, your assessment of Kensington market is correct but that's why it's so recommended

also, kensington market is just streets with shops i have no idea how it is supposed to be a market

Because the shops are tiny and falling down, there's a heavy emphasis on vintage clothes, furniture, produce and foodstuffs, there are no chain stores.

I haven't. I wouldn't consider mentioning it to anybody but a rich kid with a car. I hear it's amazing? But Hiro is half the prize and all the once-yearly omakase I could ever ask for.

oh yeah i wasnt recommending it for iatee, i mean for two of them itll be like $400 and a 90 min bus + subway + bus ride but it is by far the best sushi ive had & was just curious if you agreed. hiro is good but tbh i almost never go east of young for anything tho so i forget abt it. also now i want to go to suko thai

for actual shopping i think kensington is sorta meh but its neat to walk through, i thought? probably more so in the spring/fall i guess.

Is there an The Official Toronto Kids in the Hall Tour of On-Location Shots? I'd hop on that bus.

xp Really? If I have a day off in the city, that's usually where I go. Besides having my favourite coffee and record stores, it's got Hibiscus, Oishi Kada, El Trompo, Akram's, Xe Lua and [secret Chinese restaurant], which are my favourite cheap meals. Good groceries.

I'm moving this month, actually, to be closer to that area (without actually living in it).

...on your left, you'll see where "this guy died, died died died died" that's right it's the cemetery feature in the "Terriers" musical number.

Kensington market took the market part from when there were a lot of immigrants who made the area very market-like, fruit stands on the streets, etc. I'm far too much of preppy capitalist for much actual shopping in KM nowadays, but it's a fun place. Blue Banana probably a cool place to find a little Toronto tchotchke or two.

Yonge street, not young, ugh! I hope we can blame an iPhone for that! :)

who is judith and opal usually? I'm so confused.

el trompo is the taco place on augusta @ oxford, yes? if so thats the place i was rec'ing upthread for iatee

curious what yr favorite record store is i think most/all the places in toronto are really terrible tbh, which sucks, i can buy everything i want online but its nice to browse.

i mostly meant for vintage, i think the places in kensington are p lackluster, or maybe i just have bad luck. i keep meaning to try akram's but havent yet. being that close to the butcher would be nice tho. i would never live in kensington but certainly north of the market is nice if overpriced

for all your KITH needs: http://torontoist.com/2011/03/kith_map/
I don't think there's a tour. We do have a Hippo Tour - a bus that drives on streets and then floats in the harbour. Exciting! Not very exciting.

oh yeah I can't do vintage shopping, I'm built like a male drag queen, there's nothing out there for me ...except maybe vintage drag. :P

this thread has me inexplicably, desperately wanting to find those old RunTO Nike ads 'hey queen street west, too cool to 10K? - parkdale' etc. sigh.

i spent forever with a female friend of mine in this vintage shop in paris getting increasing bored as she flicked through the racks complaining that everything there were too big for her before we realised that we were in the shop you are looking for. im p sure i could remember where it is if you ever want to know.

found some of the ads. yay! http://www.flickr.com/photos/vasta/tags/runto/

did you mean me, for vintage shops? paris is a bit far, but I appreciate it! (my main gripe is I am 6'1" and a size L/XL, not that I am actually a secret drag queen.)

well no that was a joke, it turned out to actually be a tranny vintage shop (one with a curatorial slant that was v tattered laura ashley and LA throwaway and p desirable at that exact point in time)

hahaha. actually come to think of it - I bought a dress for a wedding once at this small vintage shop just south of yonge and bloor, and the guy told me he mostly sells his stuff to drag queens! FAVOURITE DRESS EVER.

Thanks for the KITH map link! That's great. I knew something like that must exist. There's the actual cemetery I was joking about! And I never thought "STEPS" was some actual steps! In my memory it looks totally like a stage set.

The Toronto Hippo tour looks a lot like our Hot Springs, Arkansas, Duck tour. Except our "Ducks" are WWII-era amphibious jalopies and those Hippos look kinda nice. A Duck took on water and sank in the lake in like 1999. Several drowned.

there was also a julian schnabel retro which was p lol

Ha, I didn't notice this before, but yeah, pretty much this. I actually walked right by Julian Schnabel after seeing that exhibition, too. Actually, I was thinking about that a few days ago actually, specifically about why it didn't occur to me to yell some heckling comment at him from afar.

omg i was so obnoxious at this bc i wanted to like "scoff" at everything. like bits of a car stuck to a canvas. and why is everything so big. let me measure your dick please.

printed out your map r&r!

how's toronto's parks scene?

High Park is our biggest, Trinity-Bellwoods is The Hipster Choice (and if you follow my itinerary, on your way home from Queen and Spadina back to Ossington), and we have little ones sprinkled throughout! Enjoy!

Don't know if you're much for cheap books and/or DVDs, but I'd recommend both the BMV store on Queen (there are a couple of other BMVs that aren't as good) and a fantastic temporary clearout centre at Queen and Spadina. Toronto used to be great for second-hand record stores, but obviously most are long gone by now. Sonic Boom at Bloor and Bathurst is pretty good.

iatee i emailed you my # btw

underrated park is christie pits imo everything is just sorta soggy and dead atm

If you're looking for books/records there's definitely good options, just depends on what you're looking for.

ughhh you know what is a shitty time to lose your wallet? 5 hours before you leave for another country. :( :(

still goin n'all just really gd annoying

Don't forget, it's paradise up here. Just let one of our banks know, and they'll give you free money.

For the record, I once got free money from a bank in Montreal after I lost my wallet and had almost no identification...

why hasn't anyone told me about the canadian fox news wannabe station

also that canada was cold

to be stereotypically canadian for a minute: "sorry". Applies to both of the above. Toronto was cold today, yes. First time this winter. Still, it's a dry cold, eh?

it's okay I bought uniqlo heattech gear just for the trip, Japanese technology will keep me alive

I liked Kensington market. kinda haight ashbury. def getting a San francisco vibe here so far.

Lawl.

no? Victorians, streetcars, Asian people...maybe it's just due to where we've made it so far. wider streets here tho.

It's obviously not clear by my statement but I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think the comparison is kind of funny (as in ha-ha funny). It's definitely pretty hippied out and, you don't get much crustier than there. I've never thought of it vis-a-vis h&a is all.

that's interesting, it was def the first thing that came to mind for me

digging how walkable/bikeable this place is. all the major streets have been pretty nice walks. way traffic control than any comparable American city. amazed that bike lanes are even controversial here, maybe there's more traffic outside of the holidays?

transit pretty expensive tho

ps is drake named after the drake hotel

Vice versa.

I went to the same orthodontist as Drake. At this clinic they take your picture when you get your braces off, and apparently they kept his, because someone told me they now have a kind of shrine for him there.

lol @ braces drake

we did the streetcar to lady marmalde today! super good. then walked to the distillery district (dumbo-esque?) then downtown through king, eventually queen, eventually college til we made it back to little portugal. had pizza at this great place on ossington then bar hoped. I like ossington.

I am not ashamed to say that I'm happy you're enjoying Toronto. Considering how often one gets a "so when you moving to NYC?" question.

xpost: Was it at Libretto!?!? (Best Pizza in the city, no question).

yes! my friend really wanted me to try it so it wasn't just a coincidence we had the best pizza in the city.

also I saw a poster advertising a screening of a Jane Jacobs documentary which woulda been the perfect film to catch but I missed the last screening and am leaving tonight. sucks.

also woulda loved to try the bikeshare but I figured it's too cold to make the gf ride a bike.

did you see the spadina expressway plaque?

can you believe they were gonna build a highway there

yeah I did! I can see how that road could have 'made sense' as a freeway tho it would have really destroyed the heart of the city. a few days ago I walked down queen west til I hit the beach and then walked from there to high park and so I got to see the bleakness near the gardiner.

w/r/t that walk, parkdale is pretty interesting in that the gentrification seems to sorta sandwich a non-gentrified area

Yeah, it's been moving westward incredibly quickly, and in an incredibly homogenous fashion. I've been told, though, that because of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, there's an offsite slot for housing for people who go there that's fixed, or something like that, and hence will keep part of "that" "element" there. (Historically, I'm told, the area became kind of shabby partly because so many people coming off drug addictions or who had mental health issues (i.e. the typically unemployable) would naturally set up shop around CAMH. I probably got most of that wrong, though.

In any case, Queen West gentrification is sort of a whole beast unto itself.

most of south parkdale is still p 'non-gentrified' i guess? at least that seemed to be my impression when i was apt hunting. i think part of that is the community housing keeping rents low but idk.

south parkdale? that's me!

i am ashamed i did not notice this thread until just now.

sorry guys.

and yes - me rent is reddonk cheap - with view of the lake!

yah a friend of mine had an apt in one of the buildings on king just after the bend, you could see the lake from her balcony and it was really cheap but p skeezy

I didn't see the king area of parkdale but it makes sense that it would be sketchier. had lunch w/ clemenza at sneaky dee's and then went to greektown (that whole part of town is very astoria-queens-like. sorry for comparing everything to ny) and st lawrence market. that's prob it for our trip cause of the rain and all. we def had fun and my friend who we're staying w/ wants us to come back for some stuff in 2012 so it's not totally unlikely we'll be back. yay toronto.

sorry i missed you i slept until 1:30 and then just lazed and read and ate leftovers all afternoon but im glad you had a good time.

ya no worries, you should hit me up next time you're in ny