Haydain Neale, 1970–2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
Peeve Patrol
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
On the west side of Dufferin Street, just south of Bloor, is a Wal-Mart. It is (currently) the only one in the former City of Toronto.
On the other side of Dufferin is Dufferin Grove Park. It is the very antithesis of Wal-Mart, a collective community creation that is an exemplar of neighbourhood engagement—public space of, by, and for the people.
Tonight, the Toronto Public Space Committee and Friends of Dufferin Grove Park invite you to contribute to this Hegelian dialectic by coming out for a dinner and movie screening under the stars (or, at least, trees). From 6:00-7:30 is the park's usual Friday Night Supper: "Meal payments are by donation: main plates are $6 and soup/dessert is $2-$3, but no-one [sic] is turned away." At dusk (8:30 or so), will be a screening of the 1971 NFB short The Men in the Park, followed by the feature documentary City Park: A Little Music For The Soul. The latter film, about Parc Lafontaine in Montreal, will be enjoying its Toronto premiere. Both movies will be projected from the Sumkidz Schoolbus, the engine of which is powered with waste vegetable oil and the projector and sound system of which are powered with solar energy. "The screening is FREE but we are asking for donations of $5 or PWYC."
This is what summer in the city should be all about.
Jonathan Goldsbie is a member of the Toronto Public Space Committee. Photo of Dufferin Grove's Cob Courtyard by orbz on Flickr.
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I bet the Walmart is a much bigger draw than the park, Hegelian dialectic notwithstanding.
Not entirely sure how the gratuitous Wal-Mart bashing fits into the scheme of things, unless said store was built upon a verdant, under-utilised city park that was appropriated by the nefarious OMB (during the Harris government, natch) and kittens and puppies were sacrificed to sanctify the site before the construction began.
For movie event it might make sense to mention (as TPSC does in the last paragraph on their event page) that yes, popcorn is available from the alternative-fuel bus. Movie about public space + screened in public space + alterna-fuel-powered popcorn = good message. Movie + Wal-Mart 5-minute-hate, not so much.
I don't see how what I wrote is Wal-Mart bashing. It's just an observation that Wal-Mart is pretty much the diametric opposite of Dufferin Grove Park, something far removed from the concepts of "collective community creation," "neighbourhood engagement," and "public space." Which is not to say that it's bad. (I mean, Wal-Mart is bad, but that's almost beside the point.) It's just not my thing.
And those are all fine things, Jonathan, keeping in mind that the people who actually live in the neighborhood might need something more than "collective community creation", "neighbourhood engagement" and "public space" to put on the table and on their backs when they trundle off to school and work.
People don't shop at Wal-Mart because it's more exclusive than Holt Renfrew, they shop there because 1) it's cheap and 2) it's relatively convenient. Your argument ought to be with Canadian retailers for failing to compete successfully in the discount end of the retail spectrum.