City
Morning Brew: Giambrone Skips Town, Sam the Record Man Transformed, Vaughan City Officials Living Large, G20 to be Disruptive, No Strike?, Air Canada Returning to Island Airport?
Photo: "Eglinton Drive home from Duplex" by PJMixer, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
There are reports that the troubled Adam Giambrone and partner Sarah McQuarrie have left the country on some kind of vacation, amidst a flurry of news, including George Smitherman calling for his resignation from the TTC. Unlike serial cheater Tiger Woods, Giambrone won't be able to hide out forever, although it would be rather funny if the vacation was to the same Mississippi sex therapy centre Woods is reportedly holed up at. In any case, way to tackle problems head on, Adam, it's that sort of leadership and judgement Torontonians need.
It may not be as salacious as Mr. Giambrone's fall from grace but four City of Vaughn employees are regretting a nearly $1000 lunch with developers. This is not the first time corruption in Vaughan has made the news. It's also not clear what the disciplinary measures are, but I hope part of it is an education on how to tip servers: $100 is not enough on an $850 tab.
Blue Jays fans and Pride participants are getting pushed aside by the G20 summit in June. The unofficial word is that the Metro Toronto Convention Centre will house the G20 which means the security zone will be maximally disruptive. Pride organizers are already planning to push most activities back a week, and although the Jays aren't exactly the biggest ticket draw, the two games affected are against the Phillies, the defending National League champs who also have a long history with the Jays. That, coupled with the games being part of interleague play, means that they'll be among the season's better attendances. Too bad Christie Pitts probably isn't on the list of possible relocation venues.
Air Canada wants to operate out of the island airport again - guess they noticed it's working out pretty well for Porter - and has sued in federal court for that right. I doubt that will make Air Canada very popular with Island residents, but the extra competition should be even better for flight prices.
Sam the Record Man went through its deconstruction (and even a last hurrah), but now the nail is even more firmly in the coffin as Ryerson Universty president Sheldon Levy has announced plans for a new student learning centre that will consume the former Sam space. With high end architects and a bold vision to remake that strip of Yonge Street, I'm sure we'll have something to talk about in a few years. Less certain is whether Torontonians will like the new look.
It seems a strike has been averted. Maybe. Possibly. OK, we don't know yet. 51% of union voters went for the deal on the table, but with a margin of 210 votes and 300 mail in ballots to count, union officials won't call the race. I guess students can breathe today... if not quite a sigh of relief.
Discussion
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Like the article in the National Post said, hopefully we won't have to wait for him to step down as TTC Chair, as a vote of no confidence at next week's TTC meeting would do the job!
That way he can stay out of the country forever (it's not like he does anything positive for his Ward anyway!)..
Not to mention that that would be the successful completion of Step 2: "Get Giambrone to resign as TTC Chair.." This is the critical one. We all knew he didn't have a chance in the run for Mayor anyway!
And Howard Moscoe continues to show that he's a moron..
"Councillor Howard Moscoe (Eglinton-Lawrence) defended Mr. Giambrone’s work on the TTC, saying he has done a “reasonably good job.”
“The TTC has no more or fewer problems than they had last year. It’s because the media has decided to focus on the TTC’s problems,” he said.
I wonder what magic-fairy-land Moscoe lives in these days!
The TTC releases a report that the number of complaints skyrocketed from last year to this year, and "the TTC has no more or fewer problems than they had last year"???
Idiot.. Why he thinks anyone cares about what he still has to say at this point, is a true mystery to me...
Overall, what a great week! Giambrone gets exposes for the lying cheating scum that he is and the next day he drops out of the run for Mayor.. And he could be tossed from the TTC Chair as early as next week.. Progress!!
http://jackandcokewithalime.blogspot.com/
And shouldn't Moscoe be sitting on his ass collecting his pension already? Yeah, how dare the media focus on the TTC's problems? If they'd done that years ago we might have a better TTC by now.
Do you have a copy (link) to this report?
Secondly, maybe the server sucked, you don't know.
We've been seeing this stuff going on in the US since Clinton. If a politician they already don't like goes and cheats on his wife, they use it as an opportunity to oust them. It's not relavant and it's not the society I want to live in. Just like you shouldn't be fired from your job if you're caught cheating on your spouse (unless, of course, if the escapades have led to something illegal or dismissal-worthy).
Not that I'm a fan of infidelity, but let's face it - we all thought this guy should be fired LONG before we found out he was cheating. Even public servants get to have a private life.
And can we PLEASE stop using the word "partner" for heterosexual significant-others? It's confusing and kinda creepy. If you you're not ready to commit to being engaged or married to them, maybe they're not really your "partner" after all! Use boyfriend/girlfriend, significant other, or what I called my fiancee before we got engaged - "my special lady friend".
2 The 100 bucks might have been on top of an automatic tip (i.e. party of 6 or more getting dinged for a mandatory 15% tip thing) If not, then yeah, someone is a cheapass.
3 How did Liddy and Donofrio know to be at the restaurant to take the photos? Were they just passing by? Were they tailing one of the people in question?
4 Liddy and Donofrio don't even know who they were having lunch with? Nice detective work.
5 So who the fu*k paid for lunch? If the city employees did, then bring on the sh1tstorm. If the - well, we don't know who they had lunch with - did, then it's a different much smaller kind of sh1tstorm.
2 - sleeps with 19 year old girl repeatedly
3 - either 'forgets' pages of his speech or is too overcome with emotion to continue and flees press conference
4 - leaves country
This is the behavior of a boy with a 20 year old mind. This is not the behavior of a developed man.
Aydin on February 11, 2010 at 9:56 AM
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1 That you're too immature to talk like the rest of us adults is not our problem.
2 Marriage is required to prove a relationship is solid or permanent? What hilarious bullshit.
Not to mention the question of whether a hardcore NDP guy can be counted on to resolve the obvious union problems at the TTC in the first place.
That's weak. Ordering expensive wine is not an excuse to go cheap on the tip. At most the difference would be a couple of bucks to get to 15%. Quibbling over that just makes you look cheap.
If you can drop $100 on a bottle of wine, you can afford to pony up a proper tip for the service. If you can't afford to give a proper 15% tip on your meal, then go to a less expensive restaurant - there's plenty of them in this City.
Also, a straight woman's girlfriend is not the same as a man's girfriend is not the same as a queer woman's girlfriend. So yeah, "girlfriend" is problematic term.
That statement is factually incorrect. He would not have had that position to fall back into, because he would not have had a council seat (and therefore no way to be on the TTC, and therefore no way to chair it) had he not been elected mayor. Perhaps you objected to him not stepping down while running for mayor, in which case "fall-back position" does not mean what you think it means.
And as for "women != girls", are you saying that it's not appropriate to refer to an adult woman as your girlfriend? Do women prefer the term "womanfriend" or perhaps "special ladyfriend" these days? That's news to me, but again perhaps I'm out of touch with modern lingo.
Speaking Smitherman... One thought, eHealth.
Not to mention the fact that the series against the Phillies marks Roy Halladay's return to Toronto.
If you can drop $100 on a bottle of wine, you can afford to pony up a proper tip for the service. If you can't afford to give a proper 15% tip on your meal, then go to a less expensive restaurant - there's plenty of them in this City. "
This.
I'm saying that many adult woman don't like being referred to as girls. Not unrelated to this is the situation where adult men and women in long-term relationships feel that boyfriend/girlfriend connote a too-childish or otherwise less mature relationship, and so they use some other term as a result. I didn't say girlfriend is not appropriate, I'm pointing out why others may find it so. When someone opts to use "partner", that's their choice, for their (or their partner's) own reasons. I don't think that people who use "partner" are necessarily being prescriptive or are forcing anything on anyone else.
What if a table of 4 orders many small and cheap dishes wouldn't they be obligated to give more than the 2 people who ordered less but of dishes that cost more? Where is the logic?
"Partner" lends connotations of equality of status and permanence that you don't really get with "girlfriend". If Giambrone and Whatsherface were in a long-term live-in relationship then they may also be Common-Law spouses. In which case "girlfriend" doesn't give the proper impression of the relationship. I think all that makes "partner" a more politically attractive word.
Now that the Toronto Sun has published a story alleging that Giambrone is, ahem, bi, how long before someone Photoshops him with the sleepy TTC ticket collector? Specifically, the 9th photo from the top
http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/01/ttc_sleeper_gets_the_photoshop_treatment/
http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/02/10/12830791.html
She's doing a great job sleeping her way to the middle
Oh and to make it worse, the Jays vs Phillies series will include the return of Halladay to Toronto...
True, but that rarely includes the term "girlfriend", which is still far more commonly used to refer to hetero female non-married significant others than "partner", regardless of age. Even in the media coverage of this, she's as often referred to as his "long-term girlfriend" as she is his "partner", and even in the latter case it's fair to say that they're just following his lead.
Regardless, no one's saying he's trying to force the term on us or anything, I'm just saying it's odd to hear it used by a hetero couple, and that your implication that it's less offensive to women or more modern or politically correct or whatever doesn't hold up. That's all. And this conversation has gone on far longer than it deserved to.
I know this is a discussion about words, but it would help if you didn't put them in my mouth. Any implication about modernity or political correctness outside of any specific couple. You asked if it was an adult/non-adult thing, and I responded to the effect that yeah, in some cases, that's what it is, and gave the reason why. I'm not sure how why you need an explanation that "holds up" just because someone's choice of terminology doesn't match your own.
And I'm not even in the "partner" camp myself. It's just that I'm capable of taking up another person's point of view.
What still blows me away is that I saw Giambrong at the Sheraton Centre lobby a week and a half ago. He was sitting there deep in conversation with a young, pretty, dark-haired lady I assumed was a student reporter from Ryerson or U of T. Only after the you-know-what hit the fan did I realize she was "the other woman."