City
Morning Brew: Omar Khadr's Fate, Adam Giambrone is Ready, The Dirtiest Hotel in Toronto, Guns 'N Roses Show Late But Riot-Free, Windows Fall From Skyscrapers
Photo: "Traffic on University Ave." by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
We're expecting to learn today whether or not the Supreme Court of Canada will uphold or overturn previous decisions in lower courts that mandate the federal government to apply for repatriation of Toronto-born Omar Khadr. Khadr has been held in US custody in Guantanamo Bay, without trial, for more than seven years now. A federal level court has already found that Khadr's rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been breached, but the government wasn't ready to let the courts have influence on foreign policy.
Adam Giambrone is in training. He's "ready" to be cute and do pushups on Youtube. He's ready to throw a party on Monday night. And if he doesn't finally announce his mayoral candidacy at that party, I'll buy and then proceed to eat a February Metropass and post the video here.
TripAdvisor says that the dirtiest active hotel in Toronto is the Howard Johnson Inn and Suites in Scarborough, but undercover Toronto Star reporters found it to be not all that bad (for the price) when they visited to investigate. So... are TripAdvisor user reviews not accurately assessing hotels, or did these reporters have low standards? We'll probably never know, because we're not all that inclined to see for ourselves.
Guns n' Roses lived up to their reputation last night, making a massive crowd at ACC wait until 11:35pm before they hit the stage (the show was supposed to start at 8pm). At least this time there were no riots. With the show ending at 2am, the Blue Night bus on Yonge must have been nothing like a Paradise City.
Strong winds pulled three windows off the 27th floor of a skyscraper on King West yesterday, forcing road closures but thankfully not causing serious damage or injury to anything or anyone at street level. This seems to happen too often, doesn't it?
And the AGCO has doled out a stiff 45-day summer liquor license suspension to the Muskoka-area Lake Joseph Club. Staff served four patrons a total of 31 drinks before they left, and three of the four died when they ran their car off the road.
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Where you goin with that beer in your hand?
I remember going to the Howard Johnson hotels when I was a kid, and they were great! I'm really sad to hear how horrible the franchise has become... I definitely will never stay at a HoJo going forward.
And to the Owners/Operators of these hotels, shame on you! Have some pride!
You've added yet another scar to Tourism here in Toronto...
- Giambrone and the TTC -
Giambrone must really be in "magic fairy land" to actually think that he has a chance of being the next Mayor of Toronto.
Is he really that dillusional???
You know, the fact that he truly believes he can win, gives us great insight into his Strategic Decision Making abilities and definitely explains why the TTC is in the shambles that it is...
Hopefully after his Mayoral campaign fails in the most embarassing way possible, he'll disappear never to be heard from again...
I mean, we all know the TTC would be far better off without him!
http://jackandcokewithalime.blogspot.com/
-Service is subjective. Some people have incredibly high expectations that really can never be met. Sometimes even people with modest expectations can view service as crappy if they happen to be in a bad mood for whatever other reason. If a negative review focuses on bad service (regardless of what score they give the other things, because often people with 'bad' experiences with service will rate food, rooms and cleanliness lower as well) while most people seem to think the service is fine, then disregard that particular review.
-Racism is sometimes an issue. You'll often see people complaining about workers that don't speak English that well (when chances are all they had was a heavy accent). Sometimes you have to read between the lines with these as well, but they need to be disregarded nonetheless.
-People will read other reviews before posting their own and are likely to skew their ratings towards popular opinion. This is just human nature. If they read a review that had a lot of negative reviews regarding the food and THEN still go to the hotel, they will even expect to get bad food and feel as if they did have bad food regardless of the quality. For example, I'm staying at a hotel tomorrow that I know has gotten particularly bad ratings in the way of service and fully expect it. And even though I'm aware of the confirmation bias, I know I'm going to notice crappy service that I normally would have been oblivious to. (This works the other way as well. You'll be less likely to notice crappy service at a place that you've read has excellent service)
-Numbers are -everything- when it comes to overall ratings. I wouldn't trust anything under 50
-As mentioned above, people will take other shitty parts of their vacation out on the review of the hotel. I'm looking at booking a vacation right now and some reviews will have nothing negative to say about the hotel itself, but complain about the weather, or their flight or their travel agent, or things that happened when they were someplace outside of the resort, or the exchange rate, and the list goes on. They will then give the hotel a bad rating when really it did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Disregard these as well.
What trip advisor needs to include is an option to hide certain reviews (which would be unique to each account) and adjust the scores accordingly.
While the original members have all been replaced, the new guys are very good musicians, capable of playing all of Slash's parts, and then some.
All in all, it was a good show. Despite the farce that GNR became after 94 or 95, you will be hard pressed to find a better, more balls-out hard rock show.