I’m officially a jaded city-dwelling university student. The longer I live here and the older I get the more high school students and non-Torontonians seem to stick out. And nothing proves you’re bitter more than when people’s enjoyment of things you don’t even notice anymore becomes irritating.
A couple months ago I was in Kensington looking for hipster sunglasses to wear to the Scotty Dynamo show when I saw a bunch of high schoolers there on a field trip. I must have been wandering around for close to a couple hours, and not once did I see them step away from one of the shitty stalls with the piles of colored wayfarers. Zero exploration. Not even to a smoke shop, which I would think would be pretty fascinating for a suburban teenager, I mean I remember walking around Queen Street when I was sixteen and being freaked out by Friendly Stranger (and moreso The Condom Shack.) They didn’t even go to another plastic Taiwanese sunglass shack, the existence of the one shack was enough to amuse them for 2 whole hours.
Today watched a bunch of high school scenesters (can you be a scenester past 18 anyway?) freak out over the fact you can legally cross at Yonge & Dundas diagonally. I mean it, it was like Craig Owens floated down from the sky and offered to autograph their neon Nike high tops. They were that amused. They were standing in the middle of the intersection dancing around, so overcome with joy that they all forgot they were standing on a road and 30 seconds later were in front of several lanes of oncoming traffic.