City
Morning Brew: May 28th, 2007
Photo: "subway riders" by blogTO Flickr pooler ayndroid.
Your morning news roundup for Monday May 28th, 2007:
Two 17-year old teens have been arrested following last week's fatal Jane/Finch-area high school shooting. Classes are also to resume today at the school. More details are sure to trickle out in due time.
The city wants to take a closer look at the impact of panhandlers on tourism, and will launch a 2-month fact-finding study in an attempt to identify income and health issues amongst beggars and work with business owners and police to understand the financial and safety implications as well.. On Friday, a man was assaulted by a panhandler after refusing to give spare change.
City Council voted 21-9 in favour of moving forward the $5.5million conversion of the downtown club Fez Batik into a homeless shelter, despite the many controversies and anticipated problems the location may pose. We'll likely be hearing many "I told you so's" in the not too distant future.
Parkdale residents celebrated the opening of the healthy organic Parkdale edibles (HOPE) community garden this weekend. Some community garden projects are much better than others.
Today's Crossroad Puzzle after the jump...
We've seen 29 Crossroads so far, and covered a lot of ground. This week, all 5 Crossroads are meant to challenge your knowledge of areas outside the core, and in some cases outside of Toronto proper. How well do you know the outskirts?
Recognize this location in/near Toronto? Post your answer in the comments, and check for the answer in tomorrow's blogTO Morning Brew.
Friday's answer: Lawrence & The Allen.
Scroll down for today's comments...
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Discussion
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First - up here in Weston, there's plenty of people in need of money, but it's unusual to find them actually asking for it (or, at least, asking politely) but recently I've found more people seem to be doing it... and people are approaching me asking for like toonies, like explicity toonies. I don't even like to ask my friends to lend me $2, and I'm expected to be handing them out like sticks of gum? Some of the poor people up here seem pretty spoiled...
Two - downtown, like Queen W and the Annex, I've been finding less and less standard panhandlers with simple requests and more and more people working some kind of a shtick. The "spare change for weed" signs are old news, but some people actually have fairly elaborate street characters and stories that they continually use, and others really ham up the street comedian routine. I suspect that, if one guy on the block decides to go the acting route and starts netting all the cash, everyone else pretty much has to get on the bandwagon or move to a less-desirable area.
Some patterns I've noticed. The passive pandhandlers rarely seem to get involved with alcohol or drugs, while the aggressive ones are often seen with LCBO bags or asking for cigarettes. I suppose the aggressive nature is necessary to support their habits.
Now when it comes to the weekend homeless, there seems to be a portion that aren't homeless at all. Often well groomed and clothed. Teenagers wearing brand name sneakers and jeans.
I had one guy ask me for change on a subway platform. He was dressed in clothes that probably cost more than mine. I told him sorry as I took out my cellphone to start up a game to play for the ride home.
"Oh, you get a signal in here?" He says as he pulls out his own (RAZR) cellphone to check his bars. "What provider do you have?"
Also there is one panhandler who normally works Spadina from the Gardiner to Queen St. who I once saw later in the day on Bathurst wearing a new set of clothes that were clean and didn't look all that cheap. That said, however, I'm pretty sure he's now using some very hard drugs like Meth, his face looks like one of those <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/olive/view_gallery.ata?g_id=2927";>public service ads</a> showing meth use over time.
Recently on the subway there was a woman who just shuffled up and down the car asking for money, it was very painful. I appreciate the theatrics; in the New York and Paris subways I've seen mariachi bands, rappers and even comedy acts! That sort of thing I don't mind giving money to, even if all they do is use it to buy booze or drugs, but at least I got something out of it. Perhaps a selfish way to look at it but in this city I wonder how many panhandlers honestly really need my money and how many are just on the streets by choice, because surprisingly there are a lot who choose to do that.
That rail facility is so big that you can see it on the map above (right where it Concord is labeled).