Photo by Joel Charlebois/Torontoist.

Last night—or rather, in the very early hours of this morning—a rumour popped up on Reddit that the infamous, infraction-prone, supposedly shut-down-for-good Green Room was open once again. A call today seemed to confirm this: we spoke with an employee of the Green Room a few moments ago who answered their regular phone line and told us that the bar is open from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.; longer hours may be forthcoming soon, and all further questions were met with an “I’m not sure.”
The circumstances which led to the Green Room’s apparent reopening remain very much a mystery. As noted by OpenFile Toronto editor David Topping, who originally began covering the Green Room story for Torontoist last fall, even the bar’s ownership is not yet clear:

No new business licence is yet publicly listed for the Green Room. (It being the Sunday of a holiday long weekend, the Municipal Licensing & Standards offices, which handle such things, are closed. So are Toronto Public Health’s.) There are no licences listed as being in Dat Nguyen Au’s name, or in the name of either William Pham or Noc Elissa Pham, the father-daughter team that the City long suspected of being the Green Room’s real owners.
Ian McPhail, the lawyer who represented Au at the tribunal hearing is no longer representing the Green Room’s owners, he tells OpenFile, and so he doesn’t know, either. “I was retained for that hearing, but that was all.” Did McPhail have any involvement after the October 14 hearing? “None whatsoever.”

As we reported back in October, the popular Annex bar had been having grave and consistent problems adhering to health and food safety regulations:

On September 22, Toronto Public Health shut the Green Room down. For the fourth time in two years, the popular Annex hangout had failed its health inspection—two times more than any of the sixteen thousand other restaurants, bars, and “premises” that fall under Toronto Public Health’s purview…
Since December 23, 2008, the Green Room has amassed no fewer than eighty-six cited health infractions from Toronto Public Health’s Food Safety Program, all collected in their DineSafe Establishment Inspection Report. Of that staggering number, fifteen infractions are in the “critical” category, the most severe and serious; these cover things like “fail[ing] to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated” (in the Green Room’s case, twice), “fail[ing] to prevent a rodent infestation” (also twice), and “fail[ing] to wash hands when required” (once).

A few days later, the Green Room lost its licence in a hearing held by the Toronto Licensing Tribunal.
Since then and until this weekend, all had been quiet on that stretch of Brunswick, with no word about what would happen to the location or what its owners were up to.
A quick check of City records this morning turned up this DineSafe inspection record:

The DineSafe inspection record for the Green Room as of February 20, 2011.

After a conditional pass on February 15—with a range of minor and significant infractions noted, including a failure to provide adequate pest control—the Green Room was re-inspected on February 17, and passed.
Thanks to OpenFile Toronto for sharing excerpts of their story with us. You can read their complete article on the Green Room here.
[First published, February 20, 1:20 PM; updated, 4:28 PM]

Illustration by Brian McLachlan/Torontoist.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—Toronto’s very best and very worst people, places, and things over the past twelve months. From December 13–17: the Villains! From December 20–24, the Heroes! And, from December 27–30, you can vote for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Toronto-based charitable organization GlobalMedic was a pretty easy pick for Hero this year. The group was founded by Toronto paramedic Rahul Singh in 1998 as a tribute to a fellow emergency worker who lost his life, with a stated mission of being “an efficient aid agency that delivers the maximum amount of aid with a minimum operating cost.” But that dry corporate statement doesn’t do justice to the work GlobalMedic does.
GlobalMedic teams routinely fly around the world and put themselves in harm’s way to help people who’ve been hit by catastrophe, both natural and human-created. Since 1998, GlobalMedic has sent teams of volunteer EMS workers (typically using vacation days from their day jobs) on more than fifty missions to disaster areas across the globe, including war zones in Sri Lanka and Gaza, post-earthquake Haiti, and parts of Pakistan devastated by floods. In keeping with their first-responder roots, they’re often among the earliest aid agencies on the ground, where they set up field hospitals, water purification facilities, and other basic resources to keep people alive. Equally importantly, they train locals in the tools and techniques of disaster relief and emergency medicine, so that the effort can be sustained after GlobalMedic leaves.
When not globe-trotting to places where Sandals hasn’t yet set up shop, GlobalMedic also does work closer to home. Along with other emergency workers, they collected and delivered clothes and household items to residents forced out of their homes by the massive fire at 200 Wellesley Street East back in September, and they also work with other charities to give toys to low-income kids during the holiday season.
Founder Singh and his organization have been widely recognized for their work, receiving awards from Canadian politicians as diverse as Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty, and David Miller. Earlier this year Singh was named in the “Heroes” section of Time‘s “100 Most Influential People” feature, sharing the list with luminaries like Bill Clinton and Serena Williams. In true hero fashion, a self-deprecating Singh talked to the Star about the honour, crediting team members for the group’s success. “I’m… going to a gala next week in New York to be honoured. This is not wing night at the local pub,” he said. “I’m in a little over my head.” And that, for a man like Singh, is saying a lot.
In addition to donations, GlobalMedic is also in the market for all kinds of supplies, from communications gear to uniforms to emergency medical equipment and medicine. If you want to help out, a more exhaustive list and contact information can be found here.

Illustration by Matthew Daley/Torontoist.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—Toronto’s very best and very worst people, places, and things over the past twelve months. From December 13–17: the Villains! From December 20–24, the Heroes! And, from December 27–30, you can vote for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

Like clockwork, every year, pedestrian injuries peak in winter and early summer. In fact, we’re likely just coming down from one such peak right now—the switch back from Daylight Savings Time has been blamed for triggering it. But January of this year saw a much worse rash of traffic collisions, which at one point killed ten pedestrians in eight days. The police response? A widely publicized “pedestrian blitz” that handed out tickets for jaywalking, which in many cases is not, in fact, an offense.
For one reason or another, pedestrians end up bearing the brunt of public scorn for collisions. In the typical absence of conclusive evidence of fault, it’s all too easy to write off collisions by deciding, as the Star’s Christopher Hume put it, that “pedestrians are naughty children who must be protected from themselves.”
What we’re not asking is why we tolerate so much danger on our city streets, and so little action to against it. Especially when everyone, from the Shawn Micallefs to the Don Cherrys of the world, is a pedestrian sometimes.
For three years in a row now—2008 [PDF], 2009 [PDF], and the first quarter of 2010 (no newer statistics were available) [PDF]—Toronto has had more traffic collisions per 100,000 people than any other city in Canada. On average, 2,220 pedestrians are struck in reported collisions every year, of which only one hundred escaped unharmed. Typically, twenty-eight victims die, but this year, fourteen died in January alone—a record-breaking number of fatalities clustered in central Toronto. The city’s latest official statistics [PDF] show that only twelve percent of injury victims were ruled to have been “inattentive” at the time of a collision, a percentage that has remained virtually unchanged since 2004 [PDF]. Vastly more often than not, pedestrian victims were in a normal, attentive state, had the right of way, and were crossing in good road conditions.
Unfortunately, pedestrian victims have few natural defenders. In discussions about traffic safety they tend to get lumped in with cyclists, which dooms things for several reasons. Being mentally filed alongside cyclists doesn’t actually give pedestrian victims any dedicated representation, for starters, and the two groups have different (though sometimes related) needs, and use different parts of the roadway altogether. Moreover, this puts pedestrians squarely in the crossfire of the so-called “War on the Car.” Furthermore, while Toronto police generally make great efforts to warn against rushing to lay blame (this year’s pedestrian blitz aside), this strategy can easily backfire. In a climate where conventional wisdom—not to mention mainstream media—hold that pedestrians struck in traffic weren’t adequately protecting themselves, a well-intentioned neutral stance enables commonplace biases towards assuming that dead or injured pedestrians were to blame for their own misfortune.
Ultimately, the situation is alarmingly counter-productive. Because pedestrian injuries and deaths seem to be translated instantly into anecdotal evidence of non-drivers’ carelessness, public attention is diverted from the need to address systemic road safety problems, glossing over the role of infrastructure in promoting or undermining pedestrian safety, and broadcasting an everyone-for-themselves mentality incompatible with the life of healthy communities. The sad results are dangerous roads that stay dangerous, year after year.

Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains—Toronto’s very best and very worst people, places, and things over the past twelve months. From December 13–17: the Villains! From December 20–24, the Heroes! And, from December 27–30, you can vote for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

They’re baaa-aaaaaack! Or, well—they never actually went away.
Once the innocuous subject of a childhood saying where “night” rhymed with “bite,” bedbugs have become a physical and psychological pest epidemic, capping their reign of terror on Toronto last year by making it as a finalist for our Supervillain of 2009. Not content to settle for less than the best, the little apple-seed-sized jerks went ahead and got even worse this year.
In fact, in 2010, bedbugs seemed inescapable in Toronto, peaking this summer with an almost daily barrage of coverage from the dailies and TV and radio broadcasts, to say nothing of the foreboding furniture-lined curbsides citywide.
Things got creepiest in July and August, when the very public infestations of stores and movie theatres that we’d heard of in the faraway land of New York City started popping up in Toronto; first, in hospitals, then, as though the pests were battling last year’s Superhero, marking their territory in various Toronto Public LIbrary branches, and ending the summer with a bang by crawling their way into a near–public relations (and just plain public) disaster when a Scotiabank Theatre customer reported a suspected bite just before TIFF was about to roll into town. Who would save the celebs? And, um, what about us?
Well, no one, yet. Lasting solutions seem dire still—not to mention the stonewall caused by inadequate extermination preparation and the cost of removal services (often leading to the discarding of furniture, clothing, and other belongings). Toronto Public Health forged ahead with its Bed Bug Project (which had received 1,076 calls for assistance by July 31), attempting to educate with bigger hopes of reducing some of the stigma, including the anxiety and isolation that bedbugs can cause. In September, MPP Mike Colle held a Bed Bug Summit at Queen’s Park, later supplemented with recommendations and an action plan focusing on provincial coordination on all bedbug eradication efforts.
But around the same time, the province denied the City of Toronto a $2.8 million dollar bedbug-combatant proposal, a motion put forth by long-time bedbug-battler Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) and endorsed by the Toronto Board of Health. Ontario’s Minister of Health Deb Matthews told the Star that though that proposal was a no-go, they “are continuing to work with our public health units.” Work harder! We’re itchy!
Bedbugs, you make living with mice look good. You nerve-wracked, deflated, and consumed the city far too much this year—even, often, without a direct experience with you. Just die, already.

Photo by spotmaticfanatic from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Reader Stephanie Abba asks:

Has there ever been any thought to banning food and drink on the subway, as they have done in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere?

TTC Chair Adam Giambrone says:

Many years ago, the TTC tried to ban food on the transit system, but was taken to the Ontario Municipal Board by people who were required to have food for medical reasons (such as diabetics who are required to maintain a certain blood sugar level). The Commission determined that issuing specific exemptions would be difficult and could cause issues with stigmatizing. Therefore, the TTC considers the issue closed, as it is unlikely the OHRC would rule differently.
I would also add that many people spend upwards of two hours a day commuting on the TTC, especially if they come from parts of Etobicoke and Scarborough. Much of that time is during prime meal-eating periods. If the TTC is going to be part of people’s lives to such a large extent, we need to expect that they will want or need to consume some food and drink from time to time while on the transit system. All that we ask is that riders be respectful of their fellow passengers, and put garbage in the proper receptacles to keep TTC facilities clean.
In addition, the TTC encourages people to make sure they have had enough to eat and drink before getting on the system. A major cause of delays is people fainting, and according to Toronto Emergency Medical Services (EMS)—which has a partnership with TTC to place paramedics in the subway—the most common cause of fainting is from low blood sugar balances and heavy, tight-fitting clothing. So according to EMS, while eating a proper breakfast at home is preferable, it’s better that you eat breakfast on board on the go than not eat breakfast at all.

CORRECTION: NOVEMBER 2, 2010, 3:06 PM This article originally said that it was an Ontario Human Rights Commission ruling that preventing the TTC from banning food; in fact, it was a July 2, 1987 ruling of the Ontario Municipal Board.

The Green Room’s façade (top) and food safety inspection notice (bottom), on October 9. Photos by Joel Charlebois/Torontoist.

On September 22, Toronto Public Health shut the Green Room down. For the fourth time in two years, the popular Annex hangout had failed its health inspection—two times more than any of the sixteen thousand other restaurants, bars, and “premises” that fall under Toronto Public Health’s purview. It hasn’t reopened since: a sign tucked in the alleyway entrance says that “Green Room is temporarily closed for renovation,” and a manager says they’ll be back on October 15. But they might not, ever. What’s more, the owner (current or former, depending on who you ask) is nowhere to be found—not at the Green Room, and not at any of the other downtown restaurants thought to be associated with him. For now, he’s a ghost, and soon, his restaurant might be too.

Since December 23, 2008, the Green Room has amassed no fewer than eighty-six cited health infractions from Toronto Public Health’s Food Safety Program, all collected in their DineSafe Establishment Inspection Report. Of that staggering number, fifteen infractions are in the “critical” category, the most severe and serious; these cover things like “fail[ing] to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated” (in the Green Room’s case, twice), “fail[ing] to prevent a rodent infestation” (also twice), and “fail[ing] to wash hands when required” (once). The City of Toronto has taken legal action against the Green Room several times for those violations: the restaurant’s fines since the beginning of 2009 now rest at $6500, a total that’s likely to rise as a result of the September 22 inspection, which resulted in seven court summonses.
Over the last two years, the Green Room’s infractions have netted the restaurant three Conditional Passes (a sort of probation, which sees the restaurant re-inspected shortly thereafter) and four Closed notices by order of Toronto Public Health. One particularly bad four-day stretch, from February 3 to 6 in 2009, saw the Green Room receive a Conditional Pass, fail its subsequent inspection two days later and be forced to close for “fail[ing] to prevent gross unsanitary conditions,” and then, a day after that, while they were closed, fail another follow-up inspection, be issued another Closed notice, and be cited for even more infractions—including one for failing to properly display their food safety inspection notice from the day before.
Mary Margaret Crapper, the manager of media relations for the Food Safety Program, told Torontoist that restaurants are closed only when there’s an “immediate health hazard”; to reopen, they have to be re-inspected and pass.
What Toronto Public Health can’t do by itself, no matter how bad a restaurant gets, is close it forever. But what they can do in the most serious cases is what they’re doing right now: make a request to Municipal Licensing and Standards, and take the restaurant to the Toronto Licensing Tribunal to challenge its licence to serve food. On Thursday, October 14, at some point after 9:30 a.m. at the East York Civic Centre, the Green Room will face that tribunal. It could be re-opened, but with certain conditions—that they must have pest control come in a certain number of times a month, to give one example. It could see its licence suspended. Or it could be permanently shut down.
Jim Chan, a manager of the Food Safety Program, chooses his words carefully when he says that it only came this far because the Green Room “have not changed their attitude towards running a premises to be in compliance.” Usually restaurants that are closed once aren’t closed again; usually they change the way they do things to prevent it. “Very few” close even once, since most people “change their attitude to food safety” if they receive a conditional pass, continues Chan. And of those that close, “very few” ever do a second time.
So before the Green Room faces the tribunal that could end its life, we try to find its owner.
We call the restaurant. No-one picks up, and a voicemail message isn’t returned.
So we try that string of restaurants long thought to be run by the same owner, with similar or identical menus and prices.
We call the Red Room, at 444 Spadina, and ask the young woman who picks up if the owners of that restaurant are the same as those of the Green Room. “Yes and no,” she says, hesitantly. But she can’t give out their phone number, or their name. (“I wouldn’t have any information about that.”)
At Java House, at 537 Queen West, another woman says of the owners that “they don’t let us give out numbers”—especially not to reporters writing stories about them.
At Nirvana, at 434 College, another woman answers the phone. The restaurant’s owners are the same as the Green Room’s, she says, but there’s no phone number she can give out. (“We don’t have access to that information.”) Later, a manager calls back at the number we leave, and she tells us that “I’m not supposed to give out that information.”
At The Last Temptation, the young woman who answers the phone says she recalls hearing something about the Green Room having the same owners, but she isn’t sure. We leave our number. Then she passes the phone to an older woman who doesn’t give her name and says, curtly, that “we don’t know over there and they don’t know over here,” referring to the Green Room. “Don’t call here, because we don’t know anything,” she says, and hangs up. We get a call back a few minutes later from a man who says his name is “Anthony.” (“Do you have a last name?” “No.”) He’s a “friend” of The Last Temptation, and says that sixteen years ago the Kensington Market restaurant was owned by the same person who now owns the Green Room, but that’s that. He hangs up, too.
There’s one name we start to hear when we hear about the owner, though, whether it’s from current employees or ones long-gone, whether it’s from people who’ve worked at Nirvana or at the Green Room: William. And we keep hearing the same thing about him: he won’t talk to us.
The business licence for each of the restaurants is no help: the Green Room, Red Room, Java House, Nirvana, and the Last Temptation are all registered to different people or companies, with no Williams among them. The Last Temptation is registered to a “Hoa Thi Nguyen”; Red Room to “Le Le Cafe and Restaurant LTD”; Java Cafe to a “Anh Ngoc Tran”; Nirvana to a numbered company, “1746438 Ontario LTD”; and Green Room—in a licence issued on the same day it was shut by Toronto Public Health—to a “Dat Nguyen Au.” Over the course of the past year, none of the others have had health infractions on par with the Green Room’s: Nirvana, Java House, and The Last Temptation have each received one recent Conditional Pass from Toronto Public Health, but no worse, and each passed their subsequent inspections. The Red Room, meanwhile, has passed the two inspections this year, on April 29 and August 18, that are listed on DineSafe. (A change in ownership, Jim Chan explains later, is usually the reason why public reports seem to be missing earlier inspections; new owners start with a clean bill of health.)

The Green Room on September 30, one week after being closed by Toronto Public Health. Photos by Andrew Louis/Torontoist.

So we try the Green Room again. This time, a woman picks up. She gives her name as Tina Nguyen, and says she’s the store’s only manager. She gives the details of the renovations: “we just need to fix the floor, do some painting, and some other stuff as well….they close us, so we use this time to do the renovations.” She explains that “mostly, we [are] done right now.” She says renovations would end on October 14 (the day of the tribunal), and the Green Room would be open again on October 15 (the day after).
When we ask to speak to the owner, she refuses. “You will get the same answer if I talk to the owner.” When we ask for the owner’s name, she won’t give it. She says she isn’t able to answer questions about the owners—just for them. “I’m not sure about that,” she says, when we ask if there’s one owner or two. She speaks softly, but she has her orders. “He’s really busy right now. I don’t think he can talk to you.” “At all?” “At all.” Can we meet him? “I don’t think I can arrange a meeting.” Not sounding particularly optimistic, she adds: “maybe after we are open.”
We leave a phone number for him (her? them?). Tina Nguyen takes it down. No one calls.
So on a Saturday afternoon, we try our luck one last time and show up at the Green Room’s door, tucked away in the colourful alley between Brunswick and Borden south of Bloor. It’s the day before Thanksgiving Sunday, and the Tranzac, which the alley runs beside and which has troubles of its own, is as non-descript as ever.
Outside the Green Room’s entrance are all the trimmings of renovations: pieces of concrete, a shovel, mops, buckets full of murky-looking water, a stumpy white refrigerator. It’s quiet, save for the whir of powerful fans pumping air into the other businesses and homes that huddle close together at the southwest corner of Bloor and Brunswick. Small groups of friends sometimes show up in the alley and turn the corner towards the Green Room before they stop, see the sign, and disappointedly head back in the direction they came.
A van’s parked right in front of the entrance when we arrive, with a young, twenty-something Asian woman inside it, clutching her phone. We ask, through the open window, if she has anything to do with the restaurant; she says she doesn’t. But she does, and there’s a reason her voice is familiar: it’s Tina Nguyen. We find that out when, after she makes a few phone calls, two men approach us from the alley to ask who we are and what we’re doing. Neither man gives his name; one, who looks to be in his fifties, will concede only that he’s a “relative.” Both men don’t want their picture taken.
And then, somehow, the relative invites us in.
The Green Room’s the same, but different, as it ever has been inside: there are the same couches, chairs, tables, and patio. Its aesthetic is still the absence of an aesthetic, an effect only heightened by the messiness that’s the result of the work being done. It looks, appropriately, like it’s either on the verge of starting over or in the midst of a slow death. There’s a can of something called “SPRAY KILLER” near the door, but the most conspicuous thing is the new tile floor throughout. It’s different: gray and dull like a cafeteria kitchen. It’s sterile, which is the point; the relative says they had to do it, and doesn’t pretend to be enthusiastic about the change. (Torontoist’s exclusive photos from inside the Green Room, taken that Saturday, are here.)
The relative keeps saying that he’s “afraid of the institution”—by which he means Toronto Public Health—but won’t go further, or say more. He does say, though, that the Green Room is a family business. And Tina says that it’s under new ownership, as of September. Is the owner’s name Dat Nguyen Au—the name on the Green Room’s new business licence? Yes, they both say. Who was the previous owner? A woman named Elissa Pham, Tina says. Was there a William? Yes, William is her father. Was William the owner of the Red Room, Nirvana, Java Cafe…? “We don’t know.”
Eventually, the relative tells us that the new owner wants to meet with us after all. We’ll get a call no later than Tuesday, we’re promised a few times over, so that the whole truth can finally be revealed. We leave a business card. By midnight on Tuesday, no one calls.
At the Thursday tribunal hearing, inside the East York Civic Centre some eight kilometres away from the Annex and the Green Room, someone will have to step forward to defend the Green Room and its dozens of health infractions in less than two years. Someone will have to mention the new floors, and convince the City that that’s only the beginning of the restaurant’s transformation. It might be the new owner who’s there, if there is a new owner. It might be William, or Elissa Pham, or the “relative,” or Anthony, or Anh Ngoc Tran, or someone from 1746438 Ontario LTD. Or it might be no one at all.
STORY CONTINUED, OCT. 15, 2010: How the Green Room Got Closed for Good

Illustration by Brian McLachlan/Torontoist.

One of the trickier parts about TIFF is figuring out how to harmonize it with the doldrums of your day-to-day, non-TIFF life. You could be seeing as many movies as possible on nights and weekends. Or you could have booked a block of vacation days so you can really lose yourself in the festival whirlwind of screenings, parties, and celebrity-sightings over the course of ten days (well, eleven if you count the electric eve before TIFF as a day of TIFF-mas, which we do). Whatever the case, we’ve prepared a handy-dandy guide for making sure your family, friends, and loved ones don’t think you’ve disappeared or been body-snatched and replaced with some glassy-eyed, film-going space zombie.

We’re sympathetic to how myopic you can get during the festival, but try and stay in touch with your friends. If you have buddies going to the films, make sure to pencil in time to grab a drink or some food (speaking of which, here’s our guide to restos in the TIFF vicinity, in case you missed it). If your friends hate movies, you should probably consider getting new friends. Alternatively, you can just make an effort to stay in touch with your existing network of philistines. Fire them a text with a mini-review (i.e. “OMG black swan is totes ballet Showgirlz!”), a celebrity spotting (i.e. “OMG James Franco is totes just as handsome in real life!”) or some other message that proves you’re still alive (i.e. “Happy Birthday, Mark!”).

There’s obviously a good deal of gltiz, glamour, and other razzle-dazzle swirling around TIFF. But if you’re seeing forty movies, there’s a tendency to, well, dress for comfort. Again, we feel you. There’s something perversely satisfying about buying a brand new pair of grey track pants and then proceeding to burn through them in ten days, wearing them so much that the ass wears right through, the fibres of the drawstring start fraying like those of a rickety rope bridge in an Indiana Jones movie, and the polyester/cotton blend starts to bond with your flesh in some sort of weird Cronenbergian transmutation. But come on, class it up once in a while. It’s nice to look “red carpet–ready” for at least a few screenings. Try sporting a shirt with a collar, or shoes with laces. Bust out that clip-on necktie. Leave your fanny pack full of Visine, multivitamins, cigarettes, and Mallomars. There’s no better way to trick your brain into believing you’re not some sort of dumpy bum than dressing to the nines. Or at least the sixes.

If you’ve ever watched that Cheaters show, then you know that no matter how discreet you think you’re being, you’ll always get caught sneaking around on a spouse, partner, or significant other. Sure, you think you’re being all clever about it. But then one night you come tip-toeing into the bedroom and WHAM! The lights flicker on and your spouse/partner/significant other sees the smear of clarified popcorn butter on your shirt collar and flips out. “Oy! Where you been the past eight days, eh? Sneakin’ around with someone else, are we?” (This scenario presumes that your spouse/partner/significant other talks like some bellowing shrew from an Andy Capp comic.) To avoid such scenes of domestic unrest, make sure you prep your loved one for the festival. Explain that this is your Fashion Week. Your NXNE. Your Monterey Pop, Bonnaroo, and Woodstock ’99 rolled into one. And be sensitive, birdbrain. Don’t say stuff like “Babe, I love you. It’s just that I love movies more.”

This goes without saying. If you grew up heeding Mr. T’s proxy-parenting raps, then you know well enough to treat your mother right. Give her a ring during the festival. Do you have any idea how excited and proud parents get about stuff like this? For people living outside of the city, the media tends to present TIFF as if it’s just throngs of Clint Eastwoods, Matt Damons, and Michael McGowans bustling about the streets. Celebrities pouring off the streetcars in droves and riding up and down in hotel elevators just to give you the chance to spot them. So call your mom. It’ll make her day. And if for whatever reason you can’t call your mom, call some other loved one whom you can gush to (grandmas are also built for this).

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s
Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.