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Weekend Newsstand: June 23, 2012

It's Saturday time. It's day trip to IKEA for new cushions and meatballs time. Also, news time: Mayor skips Pride flag raising, The City radio show takes a summer break, unanimous vote against selling parkland to Rob Ford, and food trucks continue to not exist.

By • Illustration by Brett Lamb

Pride is officially getting underway, and in what has become the worst Pride tradition of all time times a thousand, Mayor Rob Ford announced he will not attend the Pride Week flag raising on Monday. The event kicks off Pride celebrations and happens mere steps from the mayor’s office, on the roof of City Hall. But the mayor won’t be there because he has other mystery commitments, which are, of course, the kind of commitments you make when you’re being really wrong about something.

So we don’t know where the mayor will be on Monday, but we’ve come to know where he is on Sundays: in the booth at Newstalk 1010 hosting his radio show with brother Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North). But this Sunday’s show will be the last before the pair take a summer vacation from the airwaves. What are we all supposed to do on Sundays now, huh? As if we had better things to do on a Sunday in the summer.

And in a final piece of Rob-related news, the mayor’s application to buy some parkland in order to build a new security fence has been rejected. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority board voted unanimously to refuse the request. So there.

Moving on to food now, food trucks are still not allowed to be a thing in Toronto. Though the City is considering adding items to the menu at existing food-cart vendors (some oranges and almonds with your street meat?), the big food-truck dilemma is still far from solved. The mayor says anyone should be able to sell anything, Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) and Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) are on Team Truck, and Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) is making some classicly bizarre Mammoliti-esque comment about how food trucks don’t pay property taxes and therefore don’t deserve to exist. Mammo is also claiming that exisitng brick-and-mortar restaurants will be unfairly threatened by their wheeled counterparts. All in all, the food-truck thing has become like the Big Shiny Tunes of typical city-councillor commentary: it comes out on a regular basis and always sounds the same.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Dale 1
    Ford 0

  • Anonymous

    Note the day and time, but for the first time ever, I have some sympathy for Mammo’s position. Food trucks will be infringing, by definition, on public space, and yet will not be contributing *anything* to the city by way of property or business taxes.

    • Anonymous

      Contributions would include (but are not limited to):

      Licensing
      Insurance
      Permit(s)

      Mammo’s other point is ridiculous from a conservative:

      ” would represent more competition for restaurants”

      Yea, this fucking free market — how does it work?

    • Anonymous

      They need permits and licenses to operate in public space – and, at least in cities where such trucks are allowed, have to feed the meter if a parking spot is occupied – so how is that “infringing” on anything?

    • Anonymous

      On the other hand, they employ people who then pay taxes.

      (Also: cars infringe on public space and they don’t pay property taxes…)

  • Dave_kates

    Do they still put out Big Shiny Tunes? I was under the impression that was a 90s thing.

  • theZube

    Food trucks can exist without being on any restaurant’s turf. Some other cities regulate how far away trucks have to be to restaurants so if he wanted to support food trucks and appease brick-and-mortar food joints he could call for those same rules.

    • Anonymous

      The problem with that model is it effectively bans food trucks from most of downtown and denser areas beyond.

  • Anonymous

    I think that Giorgio Mammolitti might be an idiot. Food trucks and restaurants both sell food, but they aren’t in direct competition. Unless by restaurant he means McDonalds.