The residents of North Slope, or High Park as it is formally known, are an outspoken people. They wear their politics on their bumper stickers, hang them in their windows, and sometimes even scrawl them out on public structures.

Some of their theories are more…controversial than others.

And sometimes they express more personal entreaties.

And sometimes they simply furrow their brows and engage your sense of disgrace.

Let the finger-wagging commence!

This will hopefully be the final installment of the Hellhole Apartment Series. We have officially moved into our new apartment and tonight will be our Farewell to the Crack Den Party. Then I hope to never see that building again. So, in the spirit of Official Farewells, some more things I will not miss about our old apartment:

The management’s habit of stating the obvious:

And all the really positive language (and by “positive,” I mean “obscene”)
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Queen West is mostly a nightmare of gentrification, but in between the clubs and boutiques you will find it is still full of relics of the old city.

You don’t see many phone booths at all around town anymore, let alone these receiver-shaped phones.

And you know it’s an oldie by the price—most phone booths have gone to 50 cents by now. I remember when they switched to 35 cents in 1998 and I was pissed.

The Big Bop closed this last January after 25 years on that corner. The building is historical and won’t be knocked down for any developments, barring any mysterious fires like the one that coincidentally occurred just after a strip of buildings wanted for condo redevelopment had been designated historical landmarks in 2008 (which the police took all of one afternoon to investigate…hmmm). The Big Bop was a cornerstone of Toronto’s club history. You can learn more about it and the historical context it occupied with this little video farewell to the place.

Serve Canada Youth.