The Huffington Post has declared Toronto the “
Capital of Cool,” without once considering the fact that I actually live here and might not agree with the author’s criteria for coolness. For instance, she praises our incessant summer festivals and our all-too-public art events, where all I see are kitsch and crowds and queues . . . and really, is there anything cool about standing in line? She says that visitors to our latest trendy neighbourhoods are “buzzing” about the overwrought restaurants, the custom-clothing boutiques, and the speciality stores, when surely they learned their lesson in high school that cool’s not something you buy.
Photo from
Tourism Toronto (really).
Added to dVerse Poets Pub—Oh, the Places We Live!
ReplyDeleteyeah..cool's not something to buy.. and think if you live in a city you see it much different as someone from outside does.. so what do you love about toronto?
ReplyDeleteI've lived here so long that it's no longer about visiting the CN Tower—to cite one tourist icon—it's about remembering how it was watching them build it; the people I've grown up with; the places still worth going to as often as you can, before some gentrification effort closes them down.
DeleteSometimes it's hard to see beauty in our own hometown.
ReplyDeleteYou've got me wrong, Laurie. My problem is that the Huffington post entirely missed the steak in their race for the sizzle.
DeleteDo you love Toronto? I visited there many years ago and I was impressed.
ReplyDeletePamela
smiles....they capture the touristy stuff and miss out on the real stuff eh? cool is def not something to buy...guess you have to look at who they are writing to as well...tourists...
ReplyDeleteThe greatest 'cool' Toronto had to offer was the ice rink in my view.
ReplyDeleteBeing starved of skatable ice in upstate NY, it was a godsend. Hopefully it is a little larger and better kept these days.
Yeah you can't buy cool, and it's certainly not cool to be standing in line...then again I am impatient.
ReplyDeleteSo who defines "cool" anyway and what right does a journalist have to decide if something or some place is cool. Ha! Loved this tongue-in-cheek narrative poem.
ReplyDeleteThe exact same thing happened after I moved to South Beach, Miami-- it became "cool" and immediately lost every unique quality that had made it special in the first place to throngs of khaki-clad tourists. ~Jason
ReplyDeleteCool post (hehehe).
ReplyDeleteYour post actually reminded of my Meme's funeral. The guy giving the eulogy missed what was remarkable about my grandmother. It would be (cool) interesting to read how you would have written the article. What did the Huffington Post miss? I've never been to Toronto.