Photos: Honda Indy Toronto

The ever-popular Danika Patrick in Indy car #7 raced Justin Wilson in car #22 out of the pit area in Toronto, Ontario on 16-July-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's update to my photo site goes back to the heat of July and automobile racing. For a day of testing and qualifying on 16-July-2010, Honda Indy Toronto opened its gates for free, affording the opportunity to watch the NASCAR Canadian Tire series and various other stock car classes as well as the stars of the show, the North American Indy Car series.

Margin Notes: Population, Harvest, CBC, Ross

The population of Hamilton, Ontario was "you" according to this public art noted on the MacNab Street South pedestrian underpass beneath the Canadian Pacific tracks on 28-September-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Sometimes, an idea appears that it's hard to believe hasn't been seen before. I had a feeling like that after encountering the above piece of public art during a brief visit to Hamilton, Ontario--the idea of the population of something being "you" (or, in the case of Toronto, you and 2.5 million friends) seems so obvious, but I could not remember seeing it before.

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A horse-drawn cart was offering rides inside High Park in Toronto, Ontario on 3-October-2010

Closer to home, when I took the above photo during the Harvest Festival in Toronto's High Park, I couldn't decide if I liked the bicyclist that got in the frame. Was the contrast between modern clothing and technology and the horses interesting, or had a picture out of another era been ruined? I honestly don't know; maybe readers will weight in.

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It was easy to answer a question on an employment questionnaire this week. Asked to rate the desirability of various activities, I encountered a listing for "operating a merry-go-round at a community event." Considering that I had spent the previous afternoon giving rides on a 1929 historic turntable for visitors to the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre, analogous in many ways to a merry-go-round, that one was easy: "Very satisfying."

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As explained at length in a previous post, I no longer find the Dave Ross Show on KIRO-FM satisfying, and looking at the logs (I didn't actually listen) last week, there's another reason why. A main reason to tune in had been the regular guests David Sirota, Thomas Frank, and Carl Jeffers. All three of them seem to have been canceled in favor of lifestyle talk.

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While not as fatal as programming decisions at KIRO-FM, sometimes programmers at the CBC mystify me. In the fall schedule for CBC Radio One, I can't figure out Saturday morning. Both the new show "Day Six" (airing at 10) and "The Irrelevant Show" (airing at 11:30) offer a lighter take on the world. Yet, programmers have scheduled "White Coat, Black Art," a serious show on medicine, in between at 11:00. Especially since I imagine much of the audience of "White Coat, Black Art" also tunes in to the serious "Quirks and Quarks" science show at noon, why in the world isn't the order "Day Six," "The Irrelevant Show," and then "White Coat, Black Art" and "Quirks and Quarks"? There's a reason I'm mostly listening to these shows by podcasts these days!

Radio Pick: Hossein Derakhshan

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick comes from CBC Radio One. Sometimes getting the right guests can bring an obscure story to live. I happen to think the case of Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been under-covered, but CBC's The Current found people that knew him to include in their coverage, creating a compelling twenty-six minutes of radio.

Listen to streaming MP3 of The Current "Hossein Derakhshan"

Media: Remembering i107.7

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Usually, the music radio station of one's youth helped define one's personality. It might have defined one's social group in middle school or high school. It might have guided rebellion against a parent's musical tastes, or even challenged their musical tolerance. Above all, it probably occupied one's listening habits for years. This was not so for me. When I think of the defining music radio station of my youth, I think of a station that only existed for about one year--i107.7.

Clearly, I must have listened to popular music on other stations for many more hours than I ever listened to i107.7. I'm old enough to remember contemporary music on AM--in Seattle, on such stations as KJR, KOMO, and even KVI before it went to the then-innovative "Oldies" format. FM, though, was already dominating music. I remember KUBE before it played rap when it was competing with the limited-playlist "K-PLUS" (KPLZ), which morphed into "Z 101.5" in a clever re-branding using the same call letters.

A station I didn't listen much to was "Magic 108," call letters KMGI, at 107.7 on the FM dial. Apparently going on the air in 1985 (I was oblivious), it played what programmers called "Gold" music--the top singles of the past decade. Not just easy listening (that was the realm of KSEA 100.7 in that era), but any "adult contemporary" music. I barely knew the station even existed; I wasn't interested.

Then, in 1990, a suddenly re-branded "i107.7" sponsored an unlimited hydroplane as part of a massive advertising blitz. When I first saw the advertisements, I was unimpressed, as choosing the last letter of one's call letters as a new image seemed old hat after the K-PLUS/Z 101.5 transition. But, as a loyal hydroplane fan, I decided I had to at least try out the station.

For the first time, I was introduced to a true "Hot Adult Contemporary" format. Not just pop hits of whatever genre, i107.7 had a "sound" that was reasonably consistent. However, it didn't put me to sleep like KSEA or even "K-LITE" (KLTX) 95.7, a "soft rock" or "Soft Adult Contemporary" station. It had real rock music, but no rap like KUBE or Z 101.5. In the summer of 1990, I very rapidly adopted it as my favorite radio station.

For the next year, I would listen to hosts Ron Harris (the regular DJ from 6 pm to 8 pm) and Angie Good (8 pm to midnight) on many evenings. It was not uncommon for me to just put the radio on i107.7 and let the music play for hours on end as I worked on homework, especially if I was on the computer. I grew to live by its hourly "clock," knowing there would be just a short commercial break around twenty minutes after the hour, another about thirty-five minutes after the hour, and the longest one around fifty minutes after the hour. This allowed for "ten in a row" by skipping the first commercial break on certain hours in the daytime and the weekend. My musical tastes for the era were largely defined by what i107.7 played, which included Madonna, Phil Collins, Roxette, Gloria Estefan, Richard Marx, Amy Grant, Extreme, and even artists I didn't favor much like Michael Bolton and Mariah Carey.

I rarely listened to the "iGuys" who did the morning show (if station management had exceptional foresight, they would have trademarked i-Everything and pre-empted Apple's later product naming), but pretty much any other time of day that I wanted music, I would put the dial on 107.7. I remember riding to a state math competition and the driver punching up i107.7 and the Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" soon started playing, and that became an iconic moment in my high school experience.

Then, I remember getting out my radio after bicycling down to the Wilburton Trestle to wait for the daily local freight train to go by one day in the summer of 1991 and realizing something had changed. The bumper music was the same, the hosts were the same, but suddenly the station was "Magic 107.7" not "i107.7" and the music had returned to the "adult contemporary" format of the old Magic 108. I couldn't stand it, and drifted off mostly to "Mix 100.7" (the former KSEA) which had gone adult contemporary and would soon become true hot adult contemporary.

On 23 August 1991, it was all over. After several days of stunting, KMGI was officially no more, and "The End" (KNDD) took over 107.7, starting by playing REM's "The End of the World As We Know It." "The End" would prove to be the premier alternative music station in the premier grunge city in the world, Seattle, and exists in an iteration of that format to this day. My favorite Ron Harris stayed with the station for some time (he would later move to eastern Washington state), but I wasn't listening. I would mostly turn to "Mix 100.7" for music until it became KIRO-FM in 1992, and then mostly turned to KLSY 92.5, which by then was an interesting hybrid of "Adult Album Alternative" and "Adult Contemporary" formats until I went away to college.

Yet, to this day, "my" music station is still i107.7. If I could tune in and hear Angie Good (who has since moved to California) introducing Firehouse again, I would. i107.7 may have only existed for a short time, but it had a big impact on my life.

Culture: Shocked! Elitism in US?

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Right about a year ago, I cut out an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor by Em Powers Hunter. In it, she described how staying in a "ritzy" hotel in Washington, D.C. with her 13-year old son caused her to question whether the American Dream was dead. The key moment? "After taking photos of the hotel, he noted that all of the people had the same expression: disgust." The disgust was directed at their tourist clothes--"my rumped sweater, Wal-Mart jeans, and $11 tennis shoes."

My first thought was "Duh?" Did it really take her forty years and taking a teen-aged child to an expensive hotel for her to realize that there was elitism in the United States? While I will be the first to propose that the issue is more obvious and pronounced in the northeast region than the rest of the country, even in places like Seattle, Washington, or Austin, Texas, it is not hard to pockets of elitism. Ever tried wearing "tourist" attire to an opera, or an expensive restaurant? Ever tried getting an audience with one's Congressperson at their local office? How about attending a Rotary Club meeting?

I'm mystified at the level of idealism that must be involved in thinking that class doesn't play a part in the United States. I say "class" rather than "money" because while it takes a certain amount of wealth to be able to afford to go to certain restaurants or to be able to throw around $20 bills like pennies at a Rotary Club meeting (I suppose it's $50 bills by now; I haven't attended one in almost twenty years), I've known plenty of financially well-off people that did not behave in an overtly elitist manner--sending their children to public schools, funding public events when corporate sponsors disappeared, volunteering, etc. One might call these people the ethical rich--and for the record, the Rotary Club was full of them. And, on the flip side, I've known people that likely had lower net worths than I did complaining about how they were not given special treatment by government bureaucrats or the police, trying to play an elitist card.

Does that mean, as Hunter questions in the piece, that "the spirit-stirring Lincoln Memorial with the powerful words etched on the walls and Lincoln himself looking down into our eyes [is] a hoax? Were all these monuments just propaganda tools?" Of course not. There has been a certain hypocrisy in supposed United States ideals right from the start, made most obvious by things that have been modified over the years like the end of slavery and granting women the right to vote. That hasn't meant that people and even the country itself wasn't striving toward these ideals.

People in the United States seem to have a major tendency to assume that either something is in its ideal state, or it is irretrievably broken. It's white or black, never gray. If there's a crack in our idealism in the form of elitism, then the idealism must be a farce. Life is rarely that simple. There's plenty of gray. Elitism does exist in the United States. That doesn't mean it isn't striving for ideals of equality, or that it's hopeless for someone wearing "Wal-Mart" attire to became a "great man." Perhaps that person will become great by helping to chip away at the unjustified elitism, and will eventually join the ranks of the ethical rich.

Media: Still Anti-Streeter

TORONTO, ONTARIO - While long-time readers of this blog are probably tired of references to past posts, it is undeniable that I have long railed on this blog against the practice of "streeters," or man-on-the-street interviews, in news programming. Most notably, I heavily criticized CBC Television for the practice about a year ago. Someone asked me if my opinion would change if I actually heard a new idea from a man-on-the-street. I doubt it, but haven't written anything in case that scenario actually took place, since maybe it would.

I still haven't had that happen (whereas new ideas come up fairly regularly on quality talk radio programs), but an interesting "streeter" aired and forced some exploration of the topic anyway. In this Global Toronto piece about taking down portions of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, the man-at-a-gas-station forty seconds into the piece just happens to be someone I know. Amongst his lesser-known credentials are successful letters written to the city about traffic flow issues resulting in the city making suggested changes. As an enthusiast of sailing vessels and railways, one might call him a transportation expert.

It made me wonder if, by virtue of the greater emphasis on ideas in Canadian culture, Canadian "streeters" might actually be of greater value than "streeters" in the United States. Whereas the "man-on-the-street" in the United States would be more likely to express emotion, the "man-on-the-street" in Canada might be more likely to actually make an argument of some value. (Of course, the "Jaywalking" phenomenon on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno of finding absolute idiots on the street in California might over-emphasize such a distinction.)

Yet, I think this case pretty much seals it for me that the "streeter" is always a waste of time. In this segment, Global got lucky--they stumbled upon a guy who could probably argue the case for keeping the Gardiner Expressway as well as any traffic engineer, and communicate it in more vernacular terms ideal for the television audience. So what do they choose to air? "Tearing it down is the dumbest thing in the world." Trust me, it's almost guaranteed that he said something more specific than that, even than the next sentence that they aired, though I haven't asked him. They chose the most controversial sentence to air--it's that simple.

It reminds me of a time during a teacher's strike when I was in middle school. One of my teachers, who had traveled to the state capitol for a big protest, talked to a reporter there for about ten minutes about what they hoped to achieve in the strike, what some of the concessions might mean in the classroom, and how they thought the strike could end quickly. What made it to television? "I'm just really discouraged right now." In that case, the actuality wasn't even representative of what she had been saying--it was just what the reporter wanted for his story.

So, I'm back to my standard themes on this topic. "Streeters" are lazy reporting. If reporters want an opinion expressed, they should find an expert that voices such an opinion. Man-on-the-street interviews add nothing to a news broadcast, and they should not appear in a hard news broadcast, even in Canada. Period.

Culture: Don't Use Bright Colors in Canada

TORONTO, ONTARIO - According to Genetic Personality Type theory (which I prefer to call Meridian Personality Theory, but I guess the experts define the language), people from the "thinking" world, one of four basic worlds in theory, do not especially like bright light. Sure enough, most of the "thinking" type people I know keep their lights, even reading lights, pretty dark by my standards at night, and are mostly likely to wear sunglasses for practical (as opposed to cosmetic) reasons.

Canada, as I have argued on this blog before, has a "thinking" type culture, as exemplified by its relative emphasis on ideas and debate relative to its southern neighbor, which has an analogous emphasis on image and emotion. It somewhat surprised me upon moving here, though, to realize that the tendency of thinking types to avoid bright colors also exists in Canadian culture.

One of the first things of this nature that struck me was the packaging for Sun Chips. At the time (2006), in the United States, plain Sun Chips came in glossy, dark blue bags. In Canada, the color was somewhat lighter, and the bags were not at all shiny. Of course, since then Sun Chips packaging has become more subdued than either design on both sides of the border, so there is no longer a difference. At the time, though, I started to wonder: Does bright stuff sell in Canada?

In the United States, there are plenty of brands with bright color schemes incorporating screaming yellows, from McDonald's to Pennzoil to Hertz. While those foreign brands seem to do just fine in Canada, I had trouble finding Canadian brands that used bright yellow. Rona, for example, uses yellow, but it's subdued and almost gold. The only two I saw in the Toronto area were No Frills--which even there is pretty limited, as the yellow mostly colors the banana with no buildings painted all yellow--and Pizza Nova. Within months of that observation, Pizza Nova began a makeover to a green and red image as part of an "up-scaling" initiatives, but I had to wonder if the yellow hadn't been holding them back.

How about "day-glow" colors, such as the orange found on Winston cigarettes or even just the fluorescence added to the pastels of Arizona Iced Tea? Telus tried a neon green for awhile before backing off to a more grassy green and purple. I can't think of a single additional example. While there's plenty of red to match the flag (Canadian Tire, Air Canada and Tim Horton's, for example), it's never a glowing shade and there's nothing overtly bright and in one's face. Most Canadian brands are quite subdued, like the blue and orange of Mark's Work Wearhouse, the almost-pastel orange of Pizza Pizza, or the blue and green of WestJet.

Somehow, marketers must have figured out that they were dealing with a "thinking" world culture where flashy colors weren't going to help them very much.