Raise the Hammer

Ah, youth. For me, 2015 seems like yesterday, so routine and dull has my life become, while for Ms Bunjevac it is medieval times, two whole years ago, when all was "barren" downtown. However, without getting uncool about it, I think I would actually push the date of Hamilton's rebirth back as far as 2014, when Collective Arts announced that they would start making beer again at the old Lakeport building at the foot of Wellington.

Seriously though. Reading this rhapsody gave me some insights into what is going on behind some of the fresh young faces you see down on James. It is sobering to be confronted with the fact that I have spent most of my adult life in, well, a wasteland, devoid of Toronto chefs and even visiting Burlington teens.

We simply did not know how poor and deprived we were. What with going for olives and bread at Pan del Sol or one of the four or five Portuguese bakeries we had on rotation, or the Barn for fruit and veggies in monster bins, or the Cheese Tower for taleggio or the farmer's market at the Centre for bushels of tomatoes etc or downtown for Jantzi's seven year old cheddar and that place on King East for the buckets of pitted sour cherries and so on, I had no idea how impoverished we were. Even today, when I have the heaven-sent opportunity to pay twelve dollars for four tacos that wouldn't hardly give you the strength to make it back to the car, I still struggle to give up the Old Ways – although I have learned to compromise a little. Now and then I will pick up a couple of those sticky-rice pyramids in the banana leaves from the Kim Hoa /GoldLion on Cannon, or some of them deep fried stickleback from the steam table at Alves on Macnab, or a custard loaf at Pan del Sol or even real made-from-scatch-today doughnuts from Grandad's at James and Burlington . . . Mm. . . Wonder who's open today. . . ?

Anyway. . . Thanks for writing this, Nada . Please persist. You may want to revisit that notion of the emptiness that was Hamilton the day before yesterday. Nor is all change for the better for everyone, especially artists and musicians. It's more interesting than that, and at times more painful, IMHO.

Comment edited by Selway on 2017-04-14 14:54:31