Sunday, March 28, 2010

Margin Notes: Selling Out, Red Robin, Gelato


A sign with a very strange message was found on Dundas Street West in Toronto, Ontario on 17-March-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I have to admit I never really understood the phrase "keeping it real," as "real" is just too hard to define. In light of the above sign seen at an art gallery on Dundas Street West here in Toronto, I think I've lost all hope of understanding what it means to anyone.

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Maybe my sanity would have been intact had I taken the subway home that day instead of walking. A subway train I was on yesterday on the Yonge-University-Spadina line apparently had a new automatic stop announcement system, using a male voice instead of a female one, that included the street names on the University stations, announcing, "This is Osgoode station, Queen Street West" instead of "Arriving at Osgoode, Osgoode station." It didn't seem to be a live operator doing the announcements. I like the idea of including the street names, but if this proves to be a permanent change, I will miss the more pleasant old voice.

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Residents of Seattle are mourning the closing of the original Red Robin restaurant near the University Bridge. I never actually ate there, but I found it refreshing that while the chain is closing that location, they solicited memories of the establishment and are quite forthcoming about its origin as a tavern on their history web page. For a family-friendly restaurant, that's pretty honest.

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After eating a burger, it's time for dessert, and increasingly across the world, that means gelato. People keep encouraging me to go back to school but I don't think what they had in mind was Gelato University. Yes, there's actually a university in Italy for learning the business of gelato. Unfortunately, I think the market for gelato in Toronto is close to saturated.

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