The Queens Are NOT Fierce!

Well, the first stop on our world tour has been pretty cool. We arrived Tuesday afternoon (10/14) in Toronto where we stayed with Andrew, a fellow couchsurfer. With this being our first couchsurfing experience, I think Andrew set the bar pretty high for any future hosts.  He's a great guy, very knowledgable about the city, and very generous and accomodating.  Andrew has an awesome downtown loft in the Old Town section of the city, which turned out to be a perfect location for walking to everything.  And we've certainly done a lot of over the past few days... from 5-10 miles everyday we're been here. I can tell already that I'm going to be in much better cardiovascular health by the time this trip is finished. Anyway, I don't think we could have had a better experience with living arrangements.  Andrew took us on a walking tour of the city and even treated us to dessert at Richtree, a really nice restaurant downtown with a beautiful atrium and cool, relaxed atmosphere.  He also had lots of great advice and insight into all things Canadian.    

 

Toronto seems to be going through some kind of building boom.  There are construction cranes and sites all over the city, kind of like San Diego a few years ago.  While a lot of the sites seem to be condos and lofts (with signs noting up to 80% sold; unlike San Diego), they also have a couple of what appears to be new office towers going up downtown.  Apparently, the Canadians have managed to isolate themselves from the current world economic crisis because they seem to be doing just fine here, at least financially.  Politically, they have their own issues with their government, although I'll remind all you Canadians, it could be worse.  Canada actually had national elections on the day we arrived and it was really interesting to watch the news and hear commentary on the complete and utter waste of time and money the whole process was.  But as the barista in the coffee shop told me the morning after elections, "Hey, at least it's not as bad as the US".  I don't think he realized I was American, lol.  

 

We did check out a number of the gay bars here in Toronto.  Wednesday night, we went to the Barn for College Night, which was exactly as it sounds... a bunch of young guys dancing to Happy Fag music.  The crowd was decent, but the layout and what I assume were fire code restrictions contributed to a really fucked up situation in which Sean got stuck upstairs and couldn't come back down to the main floor because they were at capacity.  I'm sure Sean will blog about that since he was more affected than I was so I won't go into drawn out details; I will just say that I was disappointed in Sean's reaction to the experience.  I'm sure we will have plenty of unfortunate experiences and frustrations on this trip, especially in the less developed countries.  It will be important for both of us to just let things go.  Whatever the case, if you ever go to the Barn, just don't go upstairs to the third floor. 

 

We also met Miles and his boyfriend Kevin at the Barn.  Miles, a guy we met in Cancun earlier this year, is a great guy too and it was nice to hang out with him again, even if the music wasn't necessarily what any of us are into. By the way, Miles has amazing handwriting!!  He gave us a really nice postcard and wrote a really special message on the back that really meant a lot to us.  Thanks Miles!!  We also checked out Woody's, the Black Eagle, and Play, which I learned is the bar with drag shows almost every night. We did watch a few of the drag performers Thursday night, and most weren't very good.  Actually, they were even worse than the drag queens in San Diego.  I am constantly reminded of the shows in Detroit and am slowly realizing that drag queens in most cities would get eaten alive back home.  The Detroit drag queens (or female impersonators/impressionists, whatever they call themselves these days) are truly FIERCE!  I know, I hate that word too, but it's the perfect adjective in this case and, unfortunately, not one I would ever use to describe the Toronto drag queens.

 

By the way, I've been using Skype to make calls to regular phones for a few days now. I can't tell you how convenient it is to be able to make calls when I need to.  Granted, I can't take my computer with me everywhere so I'm still getting used to not having a cell phone, but the call quality with Skype is surprisingly good, especially with the headset.  It's not always perfect and background noise on either end can reduce the call quality, but even with that, I find it amazing that people back in the US can call a San Diego number and reach me even though I'm in another country.  I even got a surprise call yesterday from my cousin, Chubby, back in Detroit. I love technology.

 

Okay, enough for now. We're off to Lima later on today and I still need to take care of a few things before we take off.  I will also try to blog more regularly so my posts don't end up being so long.

 

Cheers,

Ozell

 

P.S.  Throughout the trip, I'll list the local prices (converted to USD) of some things I normally buy at home to give you an idea of what the travel costs are for each particular city.

 

Toronto's COE (Cost of Essentials):

Large Coffee from a Coffee Shop: $1.85

Pack of Cigarettes: $8.50

McDonalds Value Meal: $7.00

Domestic Draft at the bar: $5.00

Six-Pack at the Grocery: $13.00