Holy Pretentious

One of the coolest gifts I got at Christmas this year was a subscription to Toronto Life Magazine. Every year my brother and I get a magazine of some sort in our stockings. When I was younger it was Teen or Seventeen, then for a while I was getting Cosmopolitan, and then in recent years they gave me Fitness or Women's Health (they may have been trying to give me a hint there). However, this year it was Toronto Life. The December issue featured a cover story, The Secret Life of a Bay Street Hooker, which I had seen in the window of a magazine shop a few days earlier and had been super curious about. An awesome added bonus to the present - my parents got me a year subscription!

I'm really excited to be living in Toronto, but I'm still trying to get a handle on the city. I'm trying to understand the politics, figure out the nightlife, and avoid missing out on cool events. This magazine may help with this, but it also might be presenting a Toronto life that is just way out of my league, a league I don't even know if I'm interested in ever joining. Don't get me wrong, it is an awesome (and well written) addictive read, I love it and can't wait for the next issue. However, it is pretentious as hell. Proof: Just as I talked about yuppies and their love of fresh pasta in a previous post, the magazine has an article listing the top five restaurants in Toronto that make their own pasta on site. I believe the article (entitled Best House-Made Pastas) starts like this; "Factory-made linguine and penne just don't cut it anymore. These days, it's all about making it in-house."

Best quote however is in the Homes or actually Great Spaces section where there is an article on "Toronto's artsiest power couple" and their recent renovation of a beautiful three story Victorian home in The Annex. The article comes complete with many colour photos, on the photos are little black numbers pointing out specific architectural and decorative features, the numbers correspond to lists of little descriptions. After reading this my jaw dropped at the extravagance of it all. (Hey, we all love excess, I just spent New Years in New Orleans for goodness sake, however this is just ridiculous.) "The floors are white oak from Austrian forests harvested by Benedictine monks." Are you fucking kidding me? I actually do hope it is a joke.