City
The New York Times Discovers Cheap Toronto
In an article in today's New York Times, intrepid travel writer Matt Gross takes a Porter Airlines flight north of the border. His mission? To discover whether the rise of the loonie means Toronto still has enough cheap eats (and cheap thrills) to make it an affordable destination for Americans.
To save you the suspense the answer seems to be a resounding yes. He likes our cheap hot dogs (more expensive than New York's but with better toppings), cheap vintage in Kensington Market and cheap motels (The Travelodge on King West).
It's actually a surprisingly well written article and features a lot of places we've pimped here on blogTO like Golden Turtle (best pho), Soundscapes (best music store), Aunties and Uncles (best brunch) and Sydney's (one of the best places to buy a suit).
But the best part about his take on Toronto is definitely the accompanying video. There's no embed code, so you'll need to click over to the New York Times web site to watch it. There's some pretty fun exchanges with activists protesting the Island airport and Habs fans looking to buy (and burn) a Leafs jersey in Kensington.
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I got the distinct impression that he never got further east of Union Station or north of College Street.
The majority of the video was about Kensington Market
and that's hardly representative of Toronto much like
Riverside Drive is representative of New York.
If it brings money to our city, why not? I was really thinking that the Drake could use more drunken Americans to really spice up the douchey flavour there.
Alright, now that the snark is out of my system. It's hard to be a resident of a city and not point out the flaws and glossing over any tourism article will most likely present. The neighbourhoods the author visited (in trendy dark framed glasses and American Apparel henley) are meant to appeal to a young and affluent New Yorker looking to explore something more than Williamsburg. If advertorials like this help keep newspapers alive then so be it.
(Note - who cares if overnight tourists never go east of Union or north of college in a single weekend? 99.9999% of visitors to New York for two days never see Brooklyn or go north of 59th Street. Big deal.)
The fact is, Toronto might seem like a boring stodgy place but it is an easy city to live in. People may seem friendlier in other places, but that sometimes that becomes a burden when you live there. People are polite and keep to themselves here. We aren't as judgemental and are not subjected to the classism I found in the UK. I enjoyed it but I was happy to come back.