28 - Volume Two - The Rex Oct 16 2009

On Friday, October 16th I headed over to the Rex to hear Artie Roth and his trio du jour. I sat at one end of the bar and enjoyed the music and the people-watching. A couple of guys came in and asked me very elegantly if the two chairs next to me were free. They spoke beautiful Spanish to each other and they both ordered Creemore. I immediately thought to myself that I liked these guys! It was pretty easy to strike up a conversation with them. I found out they were from Bolivia, one of them had been working in Toronto for four years and his buddy had just arrived in Toronto about a month ago.

The four year guy was introducing the "new" guy to The Rex, which he agreed is one of the best things about Toronto. The "new" guy was already in agreement that Creemore is one of the best beers he's ever had in his life.



The four year guy gave me his buddy's number on a yellow stickie, since he could get his number again. His nickname is Chelo (his name is Marcelo).

27 - Volume Two - Scotland 2009

In September of 2009, my two sisters and Stephen and I went to Scotland for two weeks. I didn't have a lot of opportunity to get something from people's wallets - only 3 entries.

We did the Balvenie whisky distillery tour, one of the Speyside whiskies. Balvenie is not found in bars very much around Toronto, but it sure is good! Most distilleries in Speyside that offer tours charge you about 10 pounds and give you a one hour tour, part of which can be a video. The Glenfiddich tour, for instance, had about 30 people on it. Balvenie, on the other hand, allows only 8 people at most and gives you a much more detailed tour that lasts 3 hours, and concludes with nosings and tastings of five of their varieties (10 year, 12 year, 15 year, 21 year and 30 year). They charge 25 pounds for their tour, but the generous ounce of 30-year whisky is probably worth about 10 or 15 pounds on its own, and you don't often get a chance to drink such fine scotch. A bottle of 30 year is about 300 pounds (about $600 Canadian).

This entry is from the German couple who were on the tour with us. He is working in Inverness and his wife visits now and then. Balvenie is her favourite Scotch so he was treating her to a tour on this visit. She didn't speak very much English, but he was a really nice, funny guy.

This next entry is from our tour guide. As he notes, I asked the German couple and our tour guide (Rob, a retired Balvenie employee) after we had done the tasting! We are pretty sure that Rob does the tours so that he can get to drink the 30-year whisky. He said it's his favourite of all of them, but he can't afford to buy it. Crafty.



This last entry from Scotland I will post in two images. This comes from Mr. Galloway who greeted us as we pulled up to the Linlithgow Union Canal Society docks to tie up our canal boat and take a stroll around the town. We ended up spending more than an hour talking to him. He was very proud and knowledgeable about the canals and the history of the boats and the business of the canal. He didn't have a wallet, so he gave me one of the brochures from the Union Canal Society. Mel Gray, who has since passed away, worked very hard to make the Union Canal Society what it is today, and to preserve a lot of the history, and also to build a little education centre for visiting school groups.

There is a reference in his entry about the "centre of the universe" which has a bit of a story to it. When we were tying up the boat, he welcomed us to the "centre of the universe", which we found funny since Toronto is the centre of the universe (tongue planed firmly in cheek). He asked us where we were headed and when we replied that we were going to Edinburgh and back, he suggested we just stay in Linlithgow, and take the train into Edinburgh for a visit and back. There's plenty to do and see in Linlithgow, no need to go on to Edinburgh by canal, he said. Turns out, I think we would all agree that he was right!

For anyone planning a trip to Scotland, we highly recommend renting a canal boat. They have converted the old narrow boats that used to carry coal, into house boats that are very comfortable and indestructible. Linlithgow is a place that we should have spent more time in.

26 - Volume Two - The Rex August 15

Another wonderful Saturday afternoon at The Rex. Went to enjoy Laura Hubert sing old jazz standards. Sitting next to me was a woman who regularly participates in the Wednesday night jazz jam at Chalkers, another jazz club that I must go and check out sometime (maybe this Wednesday). She gave me an Indigo gift card, complete with the little paper envelope they always come in, and the receipt showing the balance ($4.44). This is a first - a little complete package added to the journal.



On the other side of me were Stan and Pamela (my sister and I call her the Ella Fitzgerald woman, or the Dionne Warwick woman - she is a very striking lady). Stan and Pamela each made an entry just a short time ago (in the blog entry #22). But after getting Jacky's entry, they had taken the book from me and were putting this in. Very sweet. It's fascinating to me that people give thought to what they want people to see of what they put in here. Total strangers that - for the most part - they will never meet; they want them to read something important or meaningful.



Sitting at a nearby table was another pair of regulars, the couple we refer to as the Scottish couple (even Stan and Pamela call them the Scottish couple). They live here now, but they have wonderful thick Scottish accents. Stan grabbed the book and told them that they had to be in the book. He went over to sit with them and explained the journal to them while I continued chatting with Jacky. It was very funny to me that other people are recruiting new entries for me.



Also love the fact that there is a theme to the two entries provided by this couple.



Oh, and .... a bandaid! Another first.
Stephen made the funny observation that a small bandaid would suffice after almost cutting off her finger.

25 - Flashback - Volume One - Kerri

So .... Kerri's over at my place the other day and we're talking about the blog. And she points out to me that her page is not on the blog. She made her entry when we were in Daytona together. I get Volume One, the actual journal, and ...yup, there it is. But I searched the blog site and ... nope. So, long overdue, here is Kerri's entry.


I think it's ironic that her opening line is "Holy crap, I'm finally in the book".

24 - Volume Two - Toronto Beer Festival

Beer Festival, or as it is officially known, Toronto's Festival of Beer.
August 8, 2009

Went to the Beer Festival with my friend, Kerri. It was in a new location this year - the bandshell park part of the CNE grounds. Most people seemed to think it wasn't as intimate as Fort York, but Kerri and I liked it just fine.

Didn't get a lot of entries at the Beer Fest, but we hung out at the Steelback booth for a bit, talking to Jonathan, the owner of Steelback who was working the taps. We also got to chatting with one gregarious guy. He said he was in the business of ideas, so I asked him for something from his wallet. Very unique entry idea ... a game of hangman. He had us play hangman to guess the name of the movie he had rented on this card.


The movie is a documentary about Wilco, and he highly recommended it. He was very impressed that we guessed the movie with only one wrong letter.

Since I'd started the ball rolling, I asked Jonathan for something from his wallet. Although I normally object to business cards, getting the business card from the owner of a brewery is pretty cool. For more info on Jonathan and Steelback beer, check out this blog entry by the beer blogger guy: Meet Jonathon Sherman: Owner Steelback Brewing Co




After Beer Fest (which, by the way, is a time warp zone - six hours goes by way too quickly), we headed to "The Brazen Head" in Liberty Village. The group at the table next to us were having a lot of fun and got to talking with us. Here are a couple of entries from a couple of them.



The reference to "Puma guy" in the next one is because I had complimented him on his hat. It had the pouncing cat logo of Puma on the side of the ballcap, and the legs of the puma are the guy's side burns. Pretty cool visual.

23 - Volume Two - Big Music Fest in Wiarton

Big Music Fest, Wiarton - June 27, 2009

The musical line-up: The Spades, Arkells, Sam Roberts Band, Tragically Hip

The good: Arkells totally rocked (as always) and had a fun little autographing session after their set

The bad: waiting in lines to get to wait in lines to get to wait in another line to get a beer

The ugly: on the shuttle bus to the music festival, one incredibly drunk young man didn't quite hold the liquor he'd had before boarding the bus (ew!)

There were between 15,000 and 20,000 people at the event. I was there with my friend, Kerri and her sister and brother-in-law. In a crowd of 15,000 people, with line-ups for everything you ever wanted to do (drink, eat, pee), you can imagine how hard it is to keep track of each other. So while separated from everyone else at one point, I was walking through the crowd when a woman yelled out to me that she liked my shirt. Excited to have been found by a fellow Dan Griffin fan, I walked over and started up a conversation, only to find out that they were a group of people who are big fans of birds and they were impressed by the owl on my Dan Griffin shirt. They didn't even know who the Arkells are ..... Anyway, after I got over that, I spent a lot of time hanging out with these guys and they were a lot of fun and really cool people.

This entry is from Pat, who is a photographer.
Pat Fowler Photography

Excuse the legibility. By this time of the night, much beer had been consumed and it was quite dark.



Though the three of them (Pat, her husband Charlie and Pat's best friend Cynthia) didn't have their wallets, Pat sacrificed parts of her carton of smokes.

This is Cynthia's entry. it reminds me a little of an entry from "6 - Volume One: Post-Dublin (cont'd) "

22 - Volume Two - Stan and his gang at the Rex

Stan is a guy I see all the time at The Rex. He is ALWAYS there when Godboo and Rotundo are playing (the case on this date), or Swing Shift or Laura Hubert or Jivebombers....

On this particular Saturday, I showed up at The Rex around 1 pm to stake my claim on a good spot for Godboo and Rotundo at 3:30. Stan was sitting at a table, seemingly surrounded by empty chairs with half-empty glasses of beer in front of them. He told me later that he had ordered a beer for every spot he was saving so that people would stop asking him if they were free. By the time I got to chatting with him, he'd probably had the equivalent of about 5 beers. Okay, maybe not that many. But it was funny.

Three of his seats were actually free so I took one of them, and another familiar-looking couple sat across from me. They're from Georgetown and they frequently drive into the city and spend the weekend, hitting up The Rex when one of their favourite acts is on. We had a great chat about downtown condos and bidding wars and living downtown. The only thing that Steve could free up was this Starbucks card with $10 on it. If ever I am down and out, I can get a thing here and there just from the contributions to this journal. :-)



One of the Stan's seats was being saved for his son, who didn't show up until the second set. A friend of Stan's sat there for the meantime, a man who is a beer judge. A beer judge! How do you get a job like that?? I need to talk to that man some more sometime.

When Stan's son showed up, Stan accosted him for something from his wallet. Since he didn't have anything, Jason very subtley tore the label from his shirt and offered it up. Another first!



About a week later, I was back at The Rex to catch "Michael Herring's Vertigo featuring David Binney" and ... there was Stan (he was there for the preceding show, the Jivebombers). He was happy to see me and this time, he had his wallet with him. I think Stan gets the award for the prettiest hand-writing by a man.

Normally I block out emails and addresses and phone numbers, but I will take a cue from Stan's entry and I will leave this man's info displayed in case anyone out there needs some home reno work done.


Sitting beside Stan was a woman I have also seen many times at The Rex. My sister, Lynn, and I call her the Dionne Warwick woman. She looks a bit like Dionne Warwick, or maybe Ella Fitzgerald...??? In any case, she is a very beautiful lady and we remark on her every time we see her. As soon as Stan started asking me if I brought the journal with me, she wanted to know what was going on and before you know it ... she's fishing through her wallet, too.





On this evening, I almost felt like it was getting to the point that I would walk into the Rex and people would be approaching me about submitting something from their wallet. Many times, people who have watched other people make a contribution tell me they will have something the next time they see me, as was the case this evening - a woman named Linda was sitting beside me and promised to have something the next time she sees me. She thought the whole idea would make a great book and that one day I will be on Oprah and become a gazillionaire.....

Maybe one day .....

21 - Volume Two - Stanley Cup Play-offs 2009 - Game 7 of 7

It was a Friday night, the last weekend of the Luminato Festival in Toronto. It was the last night that Raoul was playing upstairs at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was the day that a Bosnian musician (Goran Bregovic) had more people packed into Yonge-Dundas Square than we'd ever seen before, and ... It was Game 7 of the Finals in the Stanley Cup Play-offs. Penguins versus Red Wings. Stephen and I decided to watch the game on the big flat screens at the bar of the Hard Rock Cafe, so we'd be able to just walk upstairs to enjoy Raoul once it was over.

Sitting at the bar, we met Wanda and Eric, and had a great time cheering for the Pens (well, except for Eric who's a Wings fan, for some reason). I hit them up for something from their wallet, but they had just shoved some cash in their pockets. But! Wanda was a trooper and she peeled the prescription off of her Ventolin inhaler (same one I have). It's a first! Love it.


Standing at the bar next to Eric was another Wings fan. He was wondering what was going on and before you know it, he's looking through his wallet. If there really is $50 on this card, then that would be the largest amount of all the cards that have been sacrificed from peoples' wallets. Oh, and he is from Grand Haven, MI, home of Dan Bylsma, coach of the 2009 STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS!

20 - Volume Two - funny old men in bars

Stephen says I have a knack for attracting some real characters. Here are two great examples back to back.

One Saturday afternoon, I picked up my Mom and met Lynn at The Rex to see Abbey's Meltdown and then the Swing Shift Big Band. At some point during Swing Shift, Lynn took Mom back home. Stephen showed up. Also going and coming back was a very gregarious funny guy named Jo from Washington, DC. He was there enjoying Abbey's Meltdown, sitting next to us, and then he had to leave. We couldn't believe he had such a great seat lined up for Swing Shift and he was leaving! He said he could come back in time to catch the second set, and we offered to save his seat for him (if you have ever seen Swing Shift at The Rex, you know this is a big favour to offer!) Sure enough, he did come back. My Mom had been replaced with Stephen in the meantime, and I hit him up for something from his wallet.

The following week, while I sat at the bar at Quotes (I was there solo, since Stephen had a race that night), I got to chatting with Merv. Merv is at Quotes every Friday for lunch and stays for the afternoon, catches the 7:30 train back out to Burlington. Merv is a 77-year-old retired lawyer with a great sense of humour, even though he is cantankerous (which just adds to the humour, in my opinion).

Merv's comment is hard to read, so I will interpret. It was a snippet of our conversation from that evening.

Merv: "Can I buy you a drink?"

Lee: "You can, if you must"

Merv was disgusted at my response. Young people today ... mutter, mutter...... "you can if you must"...what kind of a response is that ...mutter, mutter, mutter....


While I was showing Merv the Something From Your Wallet journal, he mentioned Jazz FM. I was just in the middle of showing Merv the entry by Jaymz Bee when .... Jaymz Bee walked in. He felt compelled to add an update to his previously journaled entry.

I thought it was kind of funny when I grabbed him as he walked by to say what a coincidence it was that he should walk by just when I was showing someone his entry in my journal and he said "oh THAT'S what happened to that picture!"

19 - Volume Two - Olive

One Saturday afternoon in April, I walked over to the Rex. Don't recall at this time, who I was going over to see, but it was likely to catch the Swing Shift Big Band.

As is often the case, The Rex was fairly packed. There was one free chair near the stage, so I asked the woman sitting across from it if it was in fact free, and it was. We got to chatting. She is a fascinating woman and we had plenty of good laughs. She lives in the neighbourhood and is at The Rex quite often just like me.

I told her about my little project and she offered up something very special that she has been carrying with her for years. Her grandson's fish tank was against a blank wall, and Olive figured it could be jazzed up a bit. So she painted this backdrop for the fish tank. She had been carrying this photograph of it with her and now it is in my journal.

This is one that I suggest double-clicking to see it in more detail.



Within a week, Stephen and I were at our usual Friday night after-work locale, Quotes and .... sitting just a couple of tables over....is Olive! She was there with her husband, and her daughter and a friend of her daughter's. Her daughter, Toni, offered up a (hopefully expired) membership card for the AGO, and she also had with her the print-out from having ordered tickets to see La Boheme by the COC. My sister, Lynn and I were going to be seeing La Boheme within the following week, coincidentally. Toni created one of the types of entries I really like: an expression of what the journaller feels very strongly about.



A week or so later, I snuck in the back door of The Rex on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, saw an empty chair, snuck over and sat down, looked up and .... there across the table from me was Olive! She had apparently grabbed something and put it in her purse to add to my Something From Your Wallet Journal the next time she saw me, so she pulled it out and asked me if I had the journal with me (which, of course, I did).

It is a very heart-warming story about a snippet of her childhood. Olive and I had discussed the fact that she and my Mom grew up in the same era, and lived through the same challenges of being a youngster during the Depression, and then as a teenager, staying at home while all the men went off to war. Olive is a couple of years younger than my Mom. If my Mom still had her wits about her, she and Olive would have gotten on famously.


Here it is unfolded: