electric relaxation

These are going to start adding up quickly. Maybe I should come up with better titles. Also, it makes more sense to just track both advantages and disadvantages in the same series so that’s what I’m doing.

• 24-hour/late-night stuff
  I just bought a ton of groceries at 11:45PM. I know I can do that in San Francisco if I live right next to a Safeway, but that’s like three places in the entire city, and they all kind of suck. Pizza-pizza, which I’m sure I’ll get sick of quick fast but for now is plain delicious, stays open until at least 1 or 2AM from what I can tell, and they are everywhere. This isn’t so much of a win for Toronto as it is a horrible, horrible fail for San Francisco, but it should still count.

• Tap water
  San Francisco is the clear winner. This one wasn’t a huge surprise. Toronto tap water isn’t disgusting like NYC, but it isn’t delicious and laced with LSD or whatever it is they put in the San Francisco stuff. Hey maybe that’s what my taxes are paying for – that’d be sweet. Anyway the Toronto tap water is bad enough that I suspect it’s why the coffee I made keeps tasting like shit. I bought some bottled water today to test this theory.
  
  
• The liquor situation
  This one is probably more complicated and will need to be revisited, since I think bars here maybe stay open later or something?Or at least 2AM last call means for real 2AM last call, not 1:30AM like in San Francisco? Anyway that’s not what I had in mind, I mean the whole LCBO thing. I’m not a big beer drinker but it’s annoying that I can’t just run downstairs and grab a six pack if friends are coming over to watch a basketball game for example. Also wine is more expensive for good stuff from what I can tell so far.
  
  
• Coffee and Coffee Shops
  There are surprisingly fewer coffee shops around compared to San Francisco – though Portland and Seattle are still playing in a whole different league.The ones that are around haven’t impressed so far; I’m going to go ahead and claim that Peet’s is decidedly better than Second Cup. I hate fucking Starbucks but I don’t seem to have a whole lot of options.

  Meanwhile, there are definitely a few frou-frou coffee houses with wifi kicking around but not like seven thousand billion of them like there are in the Mission. I couldn’t find a good one (i.e. not a Starbucks) in a three block radius of my house anyway. I know there’s one on Spadina but that’s far and it be cold.

Ok, I was going to do one about food since I had lunch with Ranjani at Nota Bene today, but I think I want to hold off on this one for a while. Anyway I’ll definitely split that one up (low, medium and hi-end) and it’s way too complicated and I’m starving so I’m gonna go eat some of my midnight groceries.