An Upside Down Week-End in TO

We came back yesterday around 5, went to eat grillades on Prince-Arthur, and after unpacking the van we went to bike for more than an hour, after driving six hours straight to come back in town.

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Sunday was quiet at The Clothing Show.  Apart from a giant spider web - where a giant spider lived - that was found in the ladies bathroom and that horrified every girl that went in, nothing much happened.  I hung around with the Oligarchy fellas and read my New Yorker outside, sun bathing the best in could in this cold ass Toronto weather.



When the taking down of our booth was done with and the van was packed, we went downtown to get some sushis.  We got an enormous wooden boat full of 'em.  They were nice, especially after being on our feet the whole day, and the night leading from Saturday to Sunday, where we vainly tried to catch some sleep.

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The first day of the expo was nice.  The girls went there first, because they still had some things to set up, and I stayed in my bed for one more hour of sleep.  Mr. Beach Club knocked on my door at 10 and we went to get coffee, and then tried to find a supermarket.  We were instructed to follow a real ugly road and finally got to some kind of poor man's grocery store.  I don't remember what it was called but it looked as if Dollorama was going into the food market.

We still managed to buy some crap, and headed to the National Trade Centre's Automotive Building.  The girls were glad we brought breakfast.  The attendance wasn't exactly as dense as hoped, probably due to the sun shining outside, but there were still cars lined up à l'infini in the parking lot.  Lots of mother / daughter teams, lots of cute stylish TO chickies, and some guys.  I spent the day helping as best as I could, here and there.  When the show closed at 8 we headed to La Bifthèque where I ate the world's biggest burger - a burger I ended up not finishing.

We headed back to the hotel and decided to go for a swim.  There were only three baby boomers chilling in the jacuzzi, so we took control of the pool and swam under the big dome a bit.  We were in the jacuzzi, at around 10 PM, when some kids started pouring in the pool by small groups of 4-5.  They would push the door, start screaming, run and jump in the water without any further intro.  Turns out they were brats from Calgary, in town for a hockey tournament.  Tournament sounds a lot like torment and we would find out a little later that the two almost always go together.  Miss Bijoux & Miss 514 Connexion decided it was time to leave the premises due to an overload of screaming kids, so we went back to our rooms, had a few drinks and went to sleep.



Only to be awaken fifteen minutes later by the hotel's fire alarm.  What the fuck ?  We waited a bit, and a message came on, asking us to stand by, that the alarm was "under investigation".  After fifteen minutes of loud blaring, another message came on : the situation had been settled, but the message got cut and the alarm kept on ringing.  I don't know if you've ever experienced a hotel fire alarm but man, this is fuckin' loud, and quite UNBEARABLE.

It turned out that one of the fuckin' kids had pulled the alarm, and that the hotel staff was way too retarded to have it stopped.  It kept on ringing for an hour.  An hour that felt like eternity.

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We left Montreal around 8 AM on Friday, and stopped to eat something only once we were deep into the Ontario plains.  I went to have a wizz in a bathroom stall with a grafitti that proclaimed : "Madona was here".

We only got to the hotel - the Renaissance, located just next to the Pierson airport - around 3, and left almost immediately, since we had to be at the Trade Centre at 4 to build the booths.  We couldn't possible have guessed that a surprise was waiting for us...



The guys at the security gate, before we entered the building, asked us if we had "safety shoes" on.  We most certainly did not.  So : we couldn't get in !  We went to seek an explanation at the front door, where two Clothing Show employees were standing in a booth.  They told us that due to a new bylaw, all trade centers were now considered "construction sites" and that, thanks to that, they had to follow "construction safety rules" and make us wear steel toes for setting up our booth.

So here's what we had to do : either rent some steel toes at 5$ a pair - the rental booth was empty even though there was only about 40 persons setting up their stuff inside, so this option was out of the question - or buy some at 30$ a pair in Mr. Safety Shoes' truck, coincidentally parked just outside.  Which is, if you want to know what I think, a fucking scam.

We eventually bought the shoes (two pairs for Miss Bijoux & me = 60$) and went inside.  Only to find out that most people were walking around in regular shoes, and that some persons even had tongs on !!  Some girls that arrived way earlier told us that nobody mentioned safety shoes to them at the entrance.  We were pissed.  An asian lady came and asked us if she could borrow a pair from us for 5$. She went for some change - with the shoes - and never came back. So on top of having to buy these fuckers, a pair was stolen from us.

An hour later or so, they even stopped enforcing this "law" because Mr. Safety Shoes got the hell out of there - he ran out of stock ! That was so fun.



After setting up Miss Bijoux' booth, we helped the others a bit, and we were out of there around 9:30. We went to eat at Boston Pizza, just across the highway from our hotel, and we got to the rooms it was too late to go in the pool. So we just kicked back, and slept early. With a plane landing on our head every ten minutes. To be fair, it didn't keep me from sleeping like a baby with my baby.