Pale facsimile of a vibrant city.
My salad fork is a jumbo toothpick — no utensils. I stab a baby tomato that skitters off into the gutter.
My table for one is virtually on the street curb — vying for space with a parked Harley.
My waitress arrived with a menu, a squeegee bottle, a request for my phone number — should contact tracing be necessary — and a warning that I must not linger for more than an hour.
I lower my Batman face mask to guzzle almost the entirety of a pint of beer in one giant slug.
Beer always tastes lip-smacking better at a patio on a lovely summer afternoon.
Dispense of the Stella, move onto a Bloody Caesar. Which, for the past three months, I’ve been making for myself, spicy rim seasoning and all. If I’m only allowed to smoke outside a restaurant, on the sidewalk — pre-pandemic and foreverafter bylaw — can I now fire up a dart from where I’ve been socially distanced on the pavement along the Esplanade’s pub row? That would be a no. I once punched a mouth-hole out in the burqa I was forced to wear in Kandahar, for the purpose of filling my lungs with tar and nicotine, while wandering through the bazaar. But the smoking Taliban in Toronto allow no such exceptions. But that’s another story.
Really, like most everyone else, I’ve had it up to here with public health warnings, scoldings, admonitions and zigzag advisories, from masks are useless to masks are all that stands between us and COVID-19 2.0, a second-wave disaster.
Somewhat to my surprise, Toronto’s great unshackling amounted to a mere meh on Wednesday, as patios and restaurants and malls and salons and splash pads were permitted to throw open their premises again (with restrictions) at the dawn of Stage 2 adjustment, beyond takeout and curbside pickup.
Over lunch, I fill my appointment book with bookings: pedicure, colour-and-cut, teeth cleaning, physiotherapist for the wonky knee, tax accountant. Should probably add Weight Watchers and begin to address my personal COVID-19 weight gain.
To be honest, the lockdown was not something I’d been observing, still out and about doing my job, reporters deemed essential workers, most days meandering around the city, masked and carefully, ping-ponging between longterm-care homes, testing clinics, in-hospital interviews, shelters, homeless encampments, homicide scenes, just about everywhere the coronavirus is most likely to lurk. Even hosted a dinner party for my bubble of friends, greeted at the door with sanitizer and a cocktail.
I have acquaintances who’ve literally not stepped foot outside since mid-March, ordering their groceries online, madly disinfecting every box and bag that came into the house. This struck me as wildly over-vigilant, but who am I to judge paranoia? The flip side of anal would be the whistle-bythe-COVID-graveyard flouters converging on mass for bush parties and beach-fests. Although it should be noted that the predicted positive jump from that infamous bust-out at Trinity Bellwoods Park on May 23 never actually happened. All that wasted shaming from the righteous commentariat. On Wednesday, Day One of the sweet hereafter — Toronto kept on pause when most of the province reopened a week earlier — felt only mildly different from the many weeks before.
The great divide — pre and post urban stillness — had more existentially occurred over the Victoria Day weekend. The hush that had descended on the locked down city began to disperse around then, people emerging from solitude, traffic again clogging the roads, and winding queues outside supermarkets, even as Toronto’s chief medical officer, Dr. Eileen de Villa, continued her daily media briefing hectoring. (Seventy-three new positives reported Wednesday as the curve hereabouts flattens nicely.)
There are some 1,400 restaurants and bars in the city with patio licences and the city’s CafeTO program provides quick-step application for those without, allowing establishments to expand social distancing space onto sidewalks for the summer months and waiving fees. Mayor John Tory says more than 200 applications have already been received.
Navigating the logistics requires some thinking outsidethe-box ingenuity. While some patios have erected actual partitions between tables distanced for reduced seating capacity, most have opted for a virtual separation. If they get it wrong, surely the bylaw boffins will cut them a little slack until we all get the hang of this new normal. (Canadians have racked up some $13 million in bylaw infraction fines during the pandemic, according to a new report by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is a honking huge whack to fill civic coffers.)
While a handful of Toronto saloons opened up at 12:01 a.m.
— first call rapidly segueing to last call — there seemed no undue rush to welcome back customers as proprietors scramble to call back staff and implement health protocol measures.
Maybe the populace is still wary of mingling and gathering. At the Eaton Centre, it was hard to spot much difference, with most of the stores still closed, if planning to start up within days, and security personnel directing perambulators to follow the walk-thisway arrows and stand-this-farapart floor stencils. Only select entrances open, sanitizing stations throughout, lots of scrubbing crews and food court still open only for takeout.
I bought Birkenstocks because even the feet got fat.
The only queues encountered were outside barbershops and I considered taking a chair at Gents on Sherbourne Street, but too many shaggy-haired men lolling about.
We remain, in Toronto, a pale facsimile of the vibrant city we’d been. I want live music and dancing. I want to catch a movie on a big screen. I want to dine-in at my favourite restos and stand at the bar.
I want baseball. Which seems a reckless possibility, despite the MLB announcement of a 60-game season launching in late July, as several Blue Jays players and staff (unidentified) who’d been treading water in Dunedin have tested positive.
How much risk can we live with? How much infection is tolerable? Where’s that damn vaccine? The economy has to crack open to recover, people need to work. Seniors and the disabled in long-term care continue to bear the burden of forced isolation from family and friends, so many safety provisions to be observed. And all of us pine for our small pleasures.
A cold beer on a patio is a tiny grace note.
I’ll have another.