*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Monday 3 June 2013

Toronto... alas.


Here's a telling article about Toronto:

Why, in diverse Toronto, do different generations barely mix?

I'd add nobody socializes out of their caste there, however self-identified.  My sister-in-law pointed out  to me that all North American cities are like this, though I think she meant all Anglophone North American cities.  (She's also lived in New York).  And she added that it is worse outside the urban centres, by which I think she meant the suburbs: people mix across ages in the rural areas as there is nobody else...

She may be accurately damning English N. America by saying Toronto is no worse... Tokyo people stay in their own niches too, unless out drinking, which people do much more in Tokyo than Toronto. Come to think of it, people go out to drink and eat much more in Montreal also, and have wider circles of friends, and Montreal, like Tokyo, is an interesting city.  Toronto never will be. That's it, Anglos: drink more!

This thinking falls down, so to speak, when you know that Torontontians get falling-down-drunk only with people of their own tribe: jocks, Italian immigrants, whatever.  It reminds me that at every pub I have been to in England someone struck up a conversation.  Granted, I was a thirty-year-old travelling with his mother, which is odd, our accents were different, and it must have helped we are white.  Torontonians uniquely suck, even drunk?  True enough.  Maybe it is the lack of common 'social drinking', of which there is more in Montreal, Europe and in Japan - Japanese cannot hold enough for it to be more than 'social drinking'.  I am inclined to think this is it.  Torontonians are frosty, and aren't lit enough, often enough, to break the ice with any charm before they are so drunk to be belligerent or bores.

5 comments:

  1. This has got me thinking about how people socialise here. I guess working together and socialising after work with different generations. Also hobbies and sports you'd be hanging out with a whole bunch of different people.

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    1. I have had that, even in Toronto: work and sports friends. Don't find they become lasting.

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  2. I've never been to Toronto, but I did spend a week in Ottawa recently and managed to make a day trip to Montreal and found it quite amenable for a North American city. Based off my (admittedly limited) experience, if someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose a city on that continent to live in, it would be at the top of my list.

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    1. If you can find work, whereas there is more in Toronto. It's the problem with cities: you want one with gainful employment, a low cost of living, a decent social-welfare system (so the US is out...), access to nice countryside, great transit and plenty of diversion. Choose three of these six, if you are lucky.

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    2. I used to live in Berlin, which is a great city in all respects except for the lack of gainful employment... (also the winter there sucks).

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