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Sure, the fact that Bell Canada and Rogers have teamed up to purchase Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment is old news now, but the full implications of the deal remain to be seen. For our part, we’re wondering if the Toronto Maple Leafs will be slapped with absurd roaming charges on the road, or whether fans will have to purchase beer by following a series of annoying prompts on their cellphones. Of course, there’s also the tricky matter of whether or not the $1.32-billion purchase will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing for Toronto sports teams—and, by extension, their fans—when it comes to the business of winning and losing. We round up what the city’s sportswriter corps is saying on the matter, after the jump.
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Reaction roundup: What the city’s sports (and business) writers are saying about the MLSE deal
Destination Munkistan: A look at Peter Munk’s new Adriatic playground for the super-rich
The latest project of the gold magnate Peter Munk is a seaside resort and tax haven for fellow billionaires in the post-Soviet backwater of Tivat, Montenegro. A delirious tour of a world of champagne-drenched parties, supersize yachts and the recession-proof Ultra-High Net Worth Individual
Captain Fantastic: Peter Munk on his 40-metre yacht, the Golden Eagle, which has a full-time staff of five. (Image: Jim Ross)
There are birthday parties, and then there was Nathaniel Rothschild’s party this past July. The financier, scion of the prominent banking family and future baron was turning 40 and spent £1 million on the weekend-long extravaganza. The venue: Porto Montenegro, a newly developed luxury resort and marina in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, on the southeast side of the Adriatic Sea. It was the sort of gathering that marks the end of an era or the birth of an empire—and in a way, for Europe’s youngest and smallest democracy, it was both.
Four hundred guests arrived at the village airport on private jets or stepped off the fleet of super-yachts that washed ashore from the world’s most glamorous tax havens—the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Grand Cayman. The attendees were described in the Guardian society pages as “200 ugly rich people and their poorer but more attractive partners,” or, as one guest more generously put it, “plutocrats and the women who love them.” A number of the partiers were so fantastically rich they could bankroll whole armies (which the birthday boy’s family, in its heyday, once did): Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who arrived on his £70-million yacht, the Queen K); the wealthy Egyptian Sawiris family (who have embarked on their own Montenegrin development nearby); King Leruo Molotlegi, ruler of a tiny, platinum-rich part of South Africa, who hit the dance floor in a fabulous dashiki; British politician Lord Peter Mandelson; Jimmy Choo honcho Tamara Mellon; the historian Niall Ferguson and his Dutch-Somali partner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critic of Islam. There was a healthy smattering of European royalty, as well as members of the Guinness and Goldsmith clans.
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Meet five Bay Street escapees who left six-figure jobs to work for themselves
They left six-figure corporate jobs for the queasy uncertainty of self-employment. Tales of emptied bank accounts and the elusive but oh-so-sweet gratification of running your own shop
The Candy Man
Tim English, 46
Then: Bay Street lawyer
Now: owner of Chocolateria
I started my Bay Street career as a labour and employment lawyer at Filion Wakele Thorup Angeletti in 1991. Then I moved to Ontario Power Generation for eight years, and after that to Direct Energy for about a year and a half. I had a high salary, about $250,000, and was on the cusp of moving up into the executive ranks, but in the back of my head, I’d always wanted to run my own business and work for myself. In the summer of 2009, when I turned 45, I decided it was time.
My first step was to study every shopping district in the city, to figure out what kind of business appealed to me and which neighbourhood was booming. I realized chocolate is really hot right now. I had taken baking classes at George Brown College for fun and enjoyed it. So I set up a production kitchen in my house and rented a candy kiosk at the Downsview farmers’ market for three months last summer. I wouldn’t call it a hugely successful apprenticeship: the chocolate melted in the summer heat, and I ended up giving most of it away. Also, Downsview doesn’t attract a demographic that buys quality chocolate and pastries. Read the rest of this entry »
King State of Mind: When did the once-cool King West strip descend into a mess of stretch Hummers, drunken bachelorettes and last-call brawls?
Scenes from a never-ending party
2:45 a.m., Cobra
“Let’s get drunk and fuck! Let’s get drunk and fuck!”
I’m at Cobra, a King West club in a sprawling basement underneath a 19th-century warehouse. In this neighbourhood, the best parties are either deep underground or high above in a rooftop bar. Cobra is decorated like a gothic funhouse, with a wall of glowing skulls and lots of black. The get-drunk-and-fuck directive bleats from a techno remix as coloured lights, inducing a kind of electric synesthesia, pulsate on the basement ceiling. To my left, two girls make out and topple over, knocking down their bottle service glassware. Guys eagerly watch from the sidelines, plotting how to make their move. My teeth chatter from the vibrating bass. I down a shot that’s half Sour Puss and half vodka, proffered by a human Barbie doll bartender. Read the rest of this entry »
Gerrard Street East Guide: our nine favourite places along Little India’s main drag
The shop lights on Gerrard Street East stay on till nine—a late-night tradition that started out with the old Bollywood movie house that originally brought Indian merchants to the strip. Now sari shops, glowing neon signs for Kashmiri tea and sidewalk stands selling spiced corn on the cob keep the area filled with Pakistani Canadians from nearby Victoria Park, South Asian families in from the burbs, and residents from the slowly-but-surely gentrifying side streets. The retail bustle is creeping west of Jones, where several new businesses are revitalizing a dreary stretch of empty storefronts, noodle houses, laundromats and hair salons.
Start the Gerrard Street East tour »
Good Stuff Cheap: Three unbeatable go-to spots for home improvement
Addison's (Image: Lorne Bridgman)
BATHROOMS
Addison’s
See it on Castlefield Avenue, buy it at Addison’s. The rambling, one-of-a-kind decor mecca is outstanding for bathroom, heating and plumbing goods. Among the vintage gems: deco-ish repro faucets, antique claw-foot tubs and pedestal sinks (each from $200), replacement toilet-tank lids ($25–$40), chrome towel bars (from $25) and cast iron hot water radiators ($100 and up).
41 Wabash Ave., 416-539-0612.
LIGHTING
Paul Wolf Lighting and Electric Supply
Beat big-box prices at Paul Wolf, home to all-hours service and hundreds of light fixtures, bulbs, dimmers and switches. Call the shop’s 24-hour emergency number if your lights fizzle, and they’ll get you what you need.
555 Eastern Ave., 416-466-9957; 425 Alliance Ave., 416‑504-8194.
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Victor Gallery
Find rows of solid ash or basswood frames and shadow boxes in black, white and brown stains, as well as hard-to-find dimensions, with nothing over $120. In the rare event that you can’t find a size, a member
of the Mitic family (the owners) will customize a piece in a week.
636 Queen St. W., 416‑504-1659.
Introducing: Aravind, an authentic south Indian restaurant in Greektown
Ontario meets the subcontinent: a local fish wrapped in a banana leaf (Image: Jon Sufrin)
Set in the midst of gyro-heavy Greektown, new Indian restaurant Aravind is something of an anomaly. It stands out by serving Keralan and southern cuisine (the curry-and-cream dishes of northern India are way more common downtown) and for utilizing Ontario-sourced ingredients when possible. Aravind, which opened last month, is not a bargain joint by any means—mains here range from $14 to $21—but owners hope the local ingredients, dedication to service and the concise, VQA-heavy wine list make up for it.
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Introducing: The Abbott, yet another coffee shop in Parkdale
“Coffee shop opens in west end”—it’s a story we’ve been able to write not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times in November. And now, number six: The Abbott.
The latest addition to Parkdale’s caffeine scene is truly a locals’ coffee shop (and shouldn’t be confused with this Abbott or this Abbott). The owners and the manager live within walking distance, and they opened the café to give their neighbours a place to hang out in the ’hood besides the seedy bars that line King Street west of Dufferin. The space, a former dry cleaner, is tucked around a corner on Spencer Avenue. “I saw the space, and I thought it would be silly not to open something,” says co-owner Fadi Hakim.
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Rogers might buy MLSE, somehow make Leafs fans even more depressed
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The blockbuster news of the morning, broken by the Toronto Star, is that telecom goliath Rogers is looking to buy a majority share of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for more than $1 billion. The deal would give Rogers control over the Leafs, the Marlies, the Raptors and Toronto FC, as well as MLSE’s TV channels. This is the rare kind of business deal that alters pieces of the city’s DNA—hockey and the Rogers clan—and would effectively unite the means of communication with the very things we communicate about. It would also allow Rogers to come close to cornering the market on pro sports in this town (it owns the Blue Jays, but not the Argos).
Salad King coronation pushed back to January; Ryerson students still hungry
Crumbling empire: Salad King's old location on Gould Street suffers from partial wallessness (Image: Matthew Fox)
Hungry Ryerson students are going to have to suffer through yet another exam period without the aid of cheap yet nourishing Thai. Salad King, that improbably tasty staple of downtown cheap eats, won’t be reopening until at least the end of January 2011, according to a thorough report by the intrepid SK watchers at Torontoist. It seems owner Ernest Liu had underestimated the amount of time it would take to convert the sports bar above the Foot Locker across the street into a new palace of stainless steel and satay.
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Introducing: The Slow Room, a coffee shop that dares to open between Lit and The Common
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With new indie cafés opening in Toronto every month, it takes a lot of gumption to jump into the fray—especially if the new spot is located between java havens Lit and The Common. Yet that’s just what Roberto and Sandra Mandarino, the co-owners of The Slow Room, have done. “We want people to come for the coffee and stay for the sandwiches,” says Roberto, who hopes his menu of locally sourced food will give him an edge on java-heavy College Street.
Introducing: Thor Espresso Bar, which has “the coolest espresso machine on the planet”
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There’s more to making good espresso than having really cool gadgets. That’s why Patrick Tu—who opened Thor Espresso Bar on Wednesday with his partner Tom Junek—is pretty excited that the company roasting his beans is Richmond Hill’s Social Coffee and Tea Co. The folks there helped Thor come up with its house blend, a mixture of beans from Brazil, Panama and Ethiopia. Still, Tu, a former IT professional who taught himself how to pull espresso shots on a machine at home, does have some pretty great tools on hand. He can’t help but show off his Versalab M3 grinder, which produces an impossibly fluffy, fine grind, and the Slayer, once dubbed “the coolest espresso machine on the planet.”
Former Vertical chef Tawfik Shehata brings locavorism to new downtown bowling alley
Chef Tawfik Shehata was supposed to be taking it easy after he threw in the apron at Vertical, but the ambitious owners of The Ballroom—a new leisure complex opening in mid-December in the former Montana’s space on Richmond—made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. They want him to create a menu of local, sustainable, serious and seriously whimsical bowling alley food (yes, there will be actual bowling, too). We’re talking suburban classics, like hot dogs and burgers made from cuts of local beef, all ground in-house.
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19 months later, Ossington merchants too busy to hate on the moratorium
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From the outside, there’s been little more inherently confusing, even maddening, in the last year than the moratorium on liquor licenses along the stretch of Ossington between Dundas and Queen. At the behest of Joe Pantalone (who proceeded to run for something, we hear) the city stopped approving liquor licenses for the strip and then passed a by-law shrinking the allowable size of restaurants and bars. For this, Pantalone was named one of Torontoist’s villains of 2009. The evolution of Ossington slowed dramatically, and at least one spot, Salt Wine Bar, was closed down for licence infractions.
Toronto’s best Korean food: Chris Nuttall-Smith makes his picks
Move over, sushi. Now there’s something sexier. The new Korean cuisine is exciting, modern and worth crossing town for
The seafood stew at Tofu Village (Image: Ryan Szulc)
National cuisines, like drunk-driving starlets, get the reputations they deserve. Korean food—dependably rough-edged, cheap and fiery in Toronto’s first-wave Korean restaurants—has suffered a serious perception problem since it first appeared near Christie Pits in the early 1970s. Korean expats ate Korean food. Starving, steel-gutted U of T students ate Korean food. The rest of humanity got along quite happily without it.
That started to change about 10 years ago, when South Korea launched a sustained and successful campaign to become a major cultural exporter. What began with film and TV—including several food-obsessed soap operas that drew massive audiences across Asia—soon trickled down to dinner, and as a new, more cosmopolitan generation of Korean chefs began to refine the cuisine, the gastro-weenies of the world took notice. In London, Korean went high-end, and in New York, David Chang, of Momofuku fame, created a hybrid Korean–French–Southeast Asian style that has become one of the most influential forces in the business. Over the past few years, this culinary renaissance set down in Toronto, too, hidden—or hidden to non-Koreans, at least—in plain sight between the all-you-can-eat bulgogi joints and bibimbap houses where serious foodies would never have dared to dine. Read the rest of this entry »
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