06-19-2007, 09:00 AM
>I just spent a year living in Toronto and I have to say that it is a very safe and welcoming place to live. Of course, some areas are better than others, but I can honestly say, without exaggeration, that there is not a single street within a five mile radius of the downtown core that I wouldn't feel completely comfortable walking at any time, day or night. I've spent most of my life in Vancouver, and I have to say that I actually felt safer in Toronto.
The key points for me is like you say, the area. Without rehashing my whole beef with Moore's methods, the not locking the doors at night bit was one of the things I found bizarre.
Anyway, it's been a while, so don't quote me on this exactly. About 2 years ago me and my friend was walking off a couple of beers, at around 2 AM. This was near the Zanzibar strip club area, the Dundas areas I believe.
I was smoking a cigarette and walking along the street with my buddy, when someone from across the street ran across and asked me for a spare cig. I said this was my last, he then proceeded to ask for a drag. Me and my buddy proceeded to act calm and obliged him (as calm as possible with more than a few drinks in us anyway). After a brief chit chat with this guy, he asked if we're interested in buying any coke. I don't mean the drinking kind.
We politely declined, and just started walking away. Nothing violent happened, he didn't pull a weapon on us or anything like that. But let's just say even though we're both inebriated slightly, the guy didn't 'smell' like a narc. He gave a vibe that yes he really was offering coke for sale.
Now I spent about 2 weeks near that area, because I had to curate an art show. And I remember during daylight hours, there was a pretty eclectic atmosphere to the neighbourhood. At night however, it wasn't uncommon to find crack pipes (and crack heads) littered near the building complex I was in. Break-ins, theft, and squatting by crack addicts were not unheard of. This situation didn't develop overnight obviously.
Was it as 'bad' as some of the neighbourhood I've been in like Washington DC, Buffalo NY, or some places in Asia though? I'd say no. But it's still pretty far from the picturesque ideal I saw on screen. And I could very well be wrong, but some of the landmarks seems to be edited to give a false impression that it is all one area, but from my own experience at least they are iirc actually span a far larger area. Ie: Some area looks very out of place for a downtown core, it seems to be more likely somewhere in an older area or something like Rosedale.
I understand that this visual compression can happen when you edit something in any film, but that's not what bothered me. What bothered me was it seems that it was a broad composite picture that was presented as one seamless location.
>Compared with any of the Northeastern American cities of comparable size, Toronto has not got a single "bad" area.
In that sense, I agree with you. I find the 'bad' area at least nowadays, tend to roam a lot more and move into the suburb areas.
ps. Just to give a sense of perspective of my own view and biases, I've spent about 10+ years in Toronto. Before my family settled down in Canada, I grew up in Asia and briefly spent some time in the states. Out of all the places I've been, yes Toronto is still relatively safe. Key word of course, relatively speaking. As for welcoming, I'd say Toronto is perhaps more polite than say, some places in New York. YMMV.
One thing I do like about Toronto even after all these years, I can hear many different languages being spoken everytime I take the subway, well when passengers are not hooked up to their white Ipod earbuds at least.
And I'd say T.O. is has a lot of beautiful women. There are times when I'm walking around downtown and I seriously wonder is there some sort of hidden femmebot factory that churns them out? The only thing IMHO that can seriously rival TO in the fairer sex department is probably Montreal. But that's my personal bias and I'm sticking to it.