Top 10 Alley Oops for the 2009 NBA Season

I don’t care, I still hate Vince Carter.

My old local pub is for sale (or, you can’t go home again and expect to have a good time)

Word that the Old York Bar and Grill is up for sale gave me pause earlier today. It was my pub for about 5 of my 8 years in Toronto and a source of a lot of good times during those years. Now I know how Obi Wan Kenobi must have felt when Alderon got Death Starred.

If you’re going to install a hangover,  you should do it somewhere where the people are cool, the music is good and you’re not constantly surrounded by  douchebags. The Old York didn’t always offer all these qualities – but for a long while I lived across the street from the place which forgave the odd surly bartender or “smooth jazz” performance.

I guess it was inevitable. The bar owner said she didn’t know what she was going to do when I told her I was leaving town – unless we could work out some sort of barimony payment arrangement. If only I had socked away all the cash I spent on pints at the place, I’d probably be able to afford two of them.

Of course, the place isn’t gone yet. In a period of recession, owning a bar is like having a license to sell gold-plated skinny jeans to hipsters.

Hard times call for hard alcohol, as I like to say.

Not only that, the place has a lot going for it.  Situated a few blocks off King St. West near downtown Toronto, it’s in the heart of a pretty choice neighbourhood. It’s got one of the best patios in Toronto -  as long as you can stand the stench of death that emanates from the abattoir across the road every now and then, or the occasional sewer backup on rainy nights. And it’s now surrounded by condos that are chuck full of transplanted suburbanites from the 905. Sure they’re douchbags from places like Burlington and Pickering, but their pockets are lined and they rarely ever sit at the bar.

This isn’t an obit for the Old York, but I do fear for what could happen to the place if it falls into the wrong hands.

Old York Tapas and Tea Room. Ew.