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We assume this is what's meant by "mood-lit cabin" (Image: LWY)
Virgin America announced yesterday via Twitter it would soon be offering daily flights from Toronto to California’s west coast. The flights on the airline (a brainchild of loopy British billionaire Richard Branson, though mostly owned by Americans) will begin June 23, departing from Pearson and making stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles. One-way fares will start at $212.
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(Image: Paul Sherwood, from the Toronto Life Flickr pool)
Sure, there’s some good news in the latest Toronto Board of Trade report: Toronto is among the most prosperous of global cities, we’ve attracted the highest percentage of immigrants, and we have some of the best-educated people living here. But who cares about stuff like that? Not the press. Despite these more upbeat angles, every major paper in the city focused on the traffic snarls.
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Bowlful of money (Photo by Terren)
• Some dentist offices in the U.S. are offering a Halloween candy buy-back program to encourage trick-or-treaters to take it easy on sweets. The dentists pay around $1 per pound of candy, and some are giving away freebies, like toothbrushes. The bought candy will be shipped to U.S. soldiers serving overseas, who are presumably responsible enough to avoid any cavity-inducing overindulgence. We’re hopeful that dentists north of the border will eventually join the effort, lest American children gain an advantage in the field of bribery. [Baltimore Sun]
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San Francisco's Blue Bottle Coffee Company comes recommended by GQ (Photo by Roshan Vyas)
• In its November issue, GQ travels the States to pick America’s best coffee shops. Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco scores high marks for its siphon coffee (it should—the machine costs $20,000), along with famed L.A. and Chicago coffee house Intelligentsia. Bizarrely, the article ends by negating everything it has already stated, telling readers to simply “shut up and drink it.” [GQ]
• In the wake of the Ruby Restaurant closure, BlogTO questions why the guidelines for the city of Toronto’s DineSafe program are offered only in English. The garbage disposal calendar comes in various languages, as does the city’s official newsletter. Even the TTC offers 70 languages on its switchboard. What gives, DineSafe? [BlogTO]
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Picking the perfect wedding dress is arguably the most important fashion decision some women will ever make. Los Angeles–based stylist Jessica de Ruiter (a former Vogue editor and Toronto native) pulled off an enviable mix of timeless and contemporary for her big day. We caught up with the newlywed—pictured here with her husband, artist Jed Lind, outside their reception at the Gardiner Museum—to get the scoop on stylish simplicity and why wedding conventions were made to be broken.
(Photo by Jon Barber)
As a stylist, you must have been imagining your wedding dress for years. How did you decide on this one?
I was never one of those girls who dreamed about her wedding. I started looking in L.A., where I live, after we decided to get married. I went to Saks and found some amazing Oscar de la Renta gowns. Turns out the only other place to find his wedding collection in L.A. was at a tiny trunk show in the Valley, so I went there, which is where I found the dress. I took Jed to see it.
You took the groom to see the dress before the big day? Isn’t that against the rules? Read the rest of this entry »
I know, but I trust his opinion so much, and from the start we’ve been doing everything together. I decided to buy the dress in Toronto so I wouldn’t have to worry about shipping. I went to White in Yorkville, and it was the best experience. The ambience was perfect: they serve cookies and champagne. There is nothing like that in L.A.
Spotted outside The Windsor Arms today was the Degrassi squad: Adamo Ruggiero, Nina Dobrev and a couple of buds fresh from the IT Lounge on the second floor. They are tiny people, all of them, and make us feel old (but not as old as we feel next to Degrassi alum Shenae Grimes—the new 90210 vixen was born when we were well into grade school).
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The celebs may rest their weary heads at the Four Seasons, but in the daytime they are marched through Yorkville by irate L.A. agents and no-bull Toronto publicists to endless media interviews at the InterContinental Hotel. Once hidden behind closed hotel room doors, the famous begin an onslaught of demands and exasperated complaints: • “I’m parched like an overworked mule, and I am experiencing tingling on my entire left side!” • “Don’t you have a vegan menu? I’m lactose intolerant.” • “Is there no way we can make this room feel less like a prostitute’s lair?”
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I spent last week working in L.A.—an experience like no other, one that could make even the most deluded dreamer crave Toronto’s low-ceilinged ambitions. On Monday, seeking to inoculate myself against the general lunacy abroad in the land, I attended a sober Memorial Day ceremony at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. And while even this event had its share of native nuttiness (among the colour guard was an outfit called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, complete with period costume and a confederate flag), I was still struck by the unironic and severe atmosphere that is central to such American commemorations. During the Pledge of Allegiance, every person present (save the odd interloper) enunciated the national creed loudly and clearly, right hand draped over heart: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
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What started as a tedious prologue transformed, in a flash, into a testy rough-and-tumble drama. The shift in tone was undeniably due to today’s introduction of Peter Kofman, Livent’s contractor, whose job throughout the ’90s was to renovate and build the theatrical palazzos that housed various Phantoms, Showboats and Sunset Boulevards. In a mood that might best be described as somewhere between abysmal and exasperated, Kofman testified on the Crown’s behalf regarding Livent’s accounting practices—practices that would have put a blush on even Max Bialystock’s face.
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David Mamet’s Redbelt offers more of the same stilted dialogue and convoluted narrative for which the playwright-director is famous. Again Mamet takes a classic noir conceit—here, the boxing film—and makes it contemporary (Redbelt is about jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts), configuring it both as a parody of Hollywood brass and, consequently, as an allegory for the struggle of the principled individual against the capitalist system.
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Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna) is about a pressing, contemporary topic—illegal migrant workers in the U.S.—yet treats it with an old-fashioned sentimentality that would make even Dickens blush. Carlitos (Adrián Alonso) is the film’s Little Nell, an adorable, down-and-out Mexican boy who, after the death of his kind grandmother, goes in search of his mother, Rosario (Kate del Castillo), a maid in L.A. (She’s trying to save up enough money to get him smuggled to her, natch.)
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I’m in New Jersey at the moment, preparing to gorge myself on a revealing slice of the American political pie. Before I get started, though, I thought I’d try a Canadian appetizer—a phenomenon affecting in a minor key the political scene down here. I speak of Sheila Heti, the whimsical Toronto novelist and all-around cultural entrepreneur whose blogs I Dream of Barack, I Dream of Hillary and I Dream of McCain have generated a mountain of press down here. Heti transcribes, more or less verbatim, the nocturnal imaginings of her readers and turns them into blog posts describing dreams of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. These dreams are not of the political variety—or at least not as “politics” is conventionally understood. To wit:
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A Toronto newspaper recently kicked off 2007 by listing best buys under $10, and, although well intended to cater to drained pocketbooks, it struck me, with a couple of exceptions, as a dreary line-up. Can’t we get beyond $10 when taste actually matters? Jump to $15 as your median for buying good everyday wines and you will find many wines that are correct, show their varietal and regional character and attain good balance. They may not have the nuanced complexity, finesse and length of finish of more expensive wines, but they should be satisfying and problem free. January is the time to bargain hunt at the LCBO’s Vintages stores, and a few good under $15 bottles were released on Saturday. Here are 10—listed in decreasing price order—all showing availability at www.lcbo.com as of Monday morning, January 8. By the way, we are now providing LCBO product numbers to speed and narrow up Internet searches for wines at stores near you.
One of the great joys of this profession is finding individuals who are involved with wine beyond what makes apparent sense. Enter Nick Nobilo, the new king of gewürztraminer. Nobilo is one of the most recognizable names in New Zealand wine circles. But since Nick’s family sold the 40-year-old business to Hardys of Australia in 2000, Nick has marched to his own drummer into the warm, humid Gisborne region to found a winery called Vinoptima. It makes only one wine—gewürztraminer—that sells for about $50 per bottle. “It is the most underrated of the classic vinifera whites,” he said. “It is capable of great complexity and depth. As the wine market matures, aromatic whites are coming on, and gewürztraminer will be at the pinnacle of that movement.
So here it is—a tiny little corner of the blogosphere to call my own. The gracious folks at Toronto Life have been kind enough to admit my cine-soapbox under their well-fortified roof. For that, thisfilmmaker aspirant is immensely grateful. A clean well-lighted place to be sure.
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