Young and Eligiblah ...

This is not what I should be writing right now but I can’t help myself. I left the house in order to get some proper work done and my fancy has been caught by this neighbourhood.

Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks, across the street from a Starbucks, and just down the street from a Starbucks. Its effing ridiculous but I am here and have thus lost the high horse from which I normally judge others.

Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods. Everyone can find somewhere that feels like home, or they can adapt to make a home out of where they live. My area is fine. Here I am on the poverty-stricken end of the spectrum but in reality I am far from poverty-stricken (well, not that far but far enough).

This intersection is shiny and the lights I can see on the ceiling of the Silvercity remind me of Studio 801 circa 1988. The Imagination Creativity and Inspiration signs featured prominently on the wall of Indigo entice enlightened shoppers to check out the latest in chick-lit (which I am certain is a genre created by the devil himself). Earlier tonight I passed a man who had pulled his BMW over to, literally, read his chequebook. And I think I will crack at the sight of one more milf pushing a stroller in perfectly tailored lululemon pants.

But I’m not really complaining. Right now I am wearing jeans that were engineered to enhance the shape of my bottom (unless I am sitting down, at which point they serve only to expose my bottom) and shirts presumably stitched by small-children for the equivalent of no money. I am drinking Zen tea, eating a free cupcake, and trying to eavesdrop on people at the nearby tables. And I guess I am trying to write some sort of social commentary. Well, trying to write social commentary while checking out guys walking past the window. Wow, I am almost ludicrously shallow … sometimes I surprise myself.

I suppose this all contributes to why I quasi-love the neighbourhood I live in. Sure, it’s full of rich people that can, at times, seem so surreal as to be their own caricatures. Someone on my street drives both a Mustang and a Prius (in my head they balance each other out and become a Camry) and the local used bookstore has a No Cellphones sign like at Luke’s in The Gilmore Girls, although no-one really pays attention. But it’s young and its safe and if you look hard enough beyond the glare of lycra and over-sized sunglasses you might just find one or two people that don’t fit the mold and make things interesting. And somehow it seems right that I do what I do here.