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Newsstand: December 15, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s a December Wednesday and the brass monkeys are wearing heated boxers. The news is a little cheerless too, with Toronto getting poorer, an arrest made in the Vincent Dang slaying, and another of Queen West’s old guard passing.
New research suggests that the economic and cultural divide in Toronto is bad and getting worse. A paper being released today by researchers from the University of Toronto says that the middle class is rapidly disappearing and leaving a city of wealthy residents clustered along the subway line, surrounded by increasingly poverty-stricken suburbs with poor access to transit and jobs. According to the study, the percentage of Toronto residents classified as “middle class” has fallen from 66% to 29% since 1970, the number of low-income earners has jumped from 20% to 40%, and very low-income earners from 1% to 14%. The poorer groups also tend to be disproportionately immigrants and visible minorities. Good thing the War on the Car is over so all these people can start driving to work again.
An arrest has been made in the murder of Vincent Dang, who was intentionally run down by an SUV near the Entertainment District on November 27, following an altercation between two groups of club-goers. Twenty-seven-year-old Naveen Ariaratnam was taken into custody Tuesday at Pearson Airport as he returned from what’s described as a “not preplanned” trip to Sri Lanka. If convicted of this particularly stupid and senseless crime, Ariaratnam likely faces another “not preplanned” trip of considerably greater duration.
The times they are a-changin’ in the Entertainment District. Former supernightclub Circa is set to become a discount clothing store. U.S. retailer Marshall’s—owned by The TJX Cos. Inc, the same company that owns Winners—plans to open one of their first stores in the GTA on the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot site on John Street sometime in 2011. Marshall’s sells discounted name-brand goods, which isn’t as sexy as a nightclub, but on the other hand if you’re clubbing and puke on your Ed Hardy T-shirt you won’t have to go all the way home to Mississauga to change.
The Star reports on a Toronto Police Service recruit who’s being forced to choose between his twin dreams of being a police officer and a Mixed Martial Arts fighter. Sean Pierson has been training in MMA since 1999, and finally made it to the show last weekend when he was called to substitute for another fighter in UFC 121 in Montreal. Pierson won his bout, but on returning was told he would have to defer his first shift as a cop while being investigated to see if the fighting constituted a conflict of interest with his police work. We’re not going to make a G20 reference here, because Newsstand always takes the high road.
It’s sad days on Queen West. In the same week in which Cameron House co-owner Paul Sannella passed away, Larry Guest, founder and co-owner of Peter Pan Bistro, has died of cancer at age sixty-eight. Peter Pan has been a Queen Street landmark since the mid ’70s.