Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Partly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Partly Cloudy
22°/18°		 It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 27, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
22°/15°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 28, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
24°/14°

15 Comments

news

Corporate Waterfront Potentially En Route, Bye Charlton Heston, and Feist Cleans Up

By Christopher Bird

harbourfront.jpg
Waterfront Toronto considers corporate naming scheme. On the one hand, yes, it’s a travesty. On the other hand, does anybody call the Skydome anything other than the Skydome, regardless of what Rogers wants us to call it?
Feist sweeps the Junos, winning all five awards for which she was nominated. Feist wisely kept everything in perspective, explaining in her victory speech on Saturday (yes, the Junos, like all Canadian awards shows, stretch things out over two nights because we care just that much) that getting to appear on Sesame Street is a much bigger deal than winning five Junos. The sad part is that she’s completely right.
Charlton Heston dead at 84. Although right now most are remembering him for Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green, the Heston triple threat of awesome low-budget 60s/70s sci-fi, Torontoist chooses to remember him for being awesome in Touch of Evil, the Orson Welles classic.
Liberals consider “green mortgages” for next election. The mortgages will offer financial incentives for for retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient, and potentially also let people who buy homes near public transit borrow at a lower interest rate. Which all sounds great. Of course, the Liberal Party then quickly pointed out that some banks already offer green mortgages, and the last thing the Liberals want to do is get banks angry at them, so maybe it won’t happen after all. Anybody remember when the Liberals had spines?
Signs of a slowdown in Toronto’s housing market. March marked the second straight month of double-digit percentage decrease in number of homes sold. However, home prices have not dropped, because come on, that shithole in Parkdale is totally worth four hundred thousand dollars! At prices like that how can you afford not to buy it?
And the Raptors got pounded by the New Jersey Nets. If you want to be positive, tell yourself that they are saving all their win-nosity for the playoffs!
Photo by plastictaxi from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Filed under: , , , , , , , ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • Doggiez

    “One, two, three, four, you’re music is a friggin’ bore”…

  • davedave

    I like that none of the sushi places have changed the name of the Skydome Roll.
    Rogers Centre Roll? Blecchhh.

  • Ben

    Where is this “Rogers Centre?”

  • WannaBinToranna

    Corporate Naming:
    “Hey, listen, these fuckers, they gotta buy, you know what I mean?!”
    -Frank Rizzo

  • Miles Storey

    I couldn’t believe the arrogance of a company like Rogers to rename something so iconic as the Skydome but, over time, it sinks in. I was on a Spadina streetcar over the weekend, sitting behind some excited out-of-towners. As we passed the ‘dome’ they leaned over excitedly and went, “oh look! The Rogers Center.”

  • Doggiez

    All – The rumour is that Rogers spent almost $1 million to come up with the name “Rogers Centre” in February, 2005. As someone who used to work for the company, I believe this to be true. Their policy was, and is, “throw enough money at a problem, and it will go away,” as opposed to actually solving the problem.
    Mind you, I wasn’t exactly crazy about the O’Keefe Centre/Hummingbird/Sony Centre for the Performing Arts bullshit name change. This is exactly why Toronto landmarks SHOULD NOT be named after or by large corporations. It is confusing. Imagine what would have happened if a street was named Bre-X Avenue?!

  • Apricot

    Thanks for linking to the real estate article! The comments on it are excellent … also funny because the commenters are congratulating themselves so much on their own excellence. lol
    Seriously though, I can’t wait for the housing market to stabilize.

  • Skippy the Magical Racegoat

    Weird, the only thing I can remember about Charlton Heston — whether by choice or not — is the whole gun thing.
    The, um…”awesome” gun thing?

  • Marc Lostracco

    Well, Heston’s most recent famous quote was the “cold, dead hands” one at the NRA convention…and now it’s true.

  • spacejack

    Heston really only had one political cause: civil rights. I think it’s unfortunate most people only remember him for the hatchet job Michael Moore did on him.

  • Marc Lostracco

    With the exception of his zeal for guns, Heston’s civil rights enthusiasm dulled greatly as he got older, as he became a significantly right-wing and outspoken arch-Republican. His public civil rights support was revolutionary for someone in his position at the time, but later in life, he made many statements about feminists, Hispanics, Afro-Americans, abortion, and gays that some feel were malignant.
    He’s made speeches bemoaning the loss of what is essentially white privilege (the characteristic cliché of how people who have privilege don’t see it), and didn’t address many of the problematic elements of the hardcore gun lobby in the States, from wacko militia groups to fundamentalist white supremacists.
    I must note that I’m not accusing him of being any of what this assumes, but he wasn’t the same man he was in the Civil Rights era, and shouldn’t be canonized as a tireless crusader for equal rights without acknowledging some of the dumbass things he’s said that indicate how he could still be a crotchety old coot.
    Still, he deserves the honours of a distinguished career in some pretty amazing films. I’m sure his funeral will be a madhouse! A maaaaaaadhouse!!!

  • spacejack

    He was opposed to affirmative action programs, which is consistent with his uncompromising belief in civil rights: the right to say what you want, to buy whatever gun you want, and opposed to any kind of racially (or otherwise) preferential legislation.
    He’s one of the few celebrities whose views remained constant (once he reversed his stance on gun control early in the 60s, as a result of hearing about how oppressed groups like Nazi-era Jews and black neighbourhoods in the US used guns to defend themselves.)
    That he stuck by his beliefs even when he found himself unfortunately on the same side of some issues as white supremacists only makes me respect him more – I seriously doubt he was a racist. He was no intellectual lightweight, and it is intellectually lazy to discount him as a crazy old coot.
    His main failing that I can think of is perhaps some comments about gays in the military. Even then, it’s important to make a distinction between what he thought personally and what he advocated in a legal/political sense. (How many of us can honestly say we won’t have some archaic opinions on things when we’re 80?)
    On the other hand, I can easily appreciate how bitter someone like him might become after seeing the civil rights movement that he was at the forefront of polluted by trendy leftist ideology, much of which was the exact opposite of what he was fighting for.

  • elliot

    Appearing on Sesame Street is one of my life goals. seriously.

  • WannaBinToranna

    I’d give anything to be on Sesame Street…how fun would that be?
    Or even yell, “Hey, You Guys!!!” for “The Electric Company”.
    Now, pardon me while I unpack my adjectives: – )

  • rek

    SkyDome forever!
    We should start a petition this summer to get them to switch it back officially.