I love livin’ in the city

Payday was neither a success or a failure. The DJs did an excellent job, and although we didn’t have a huge crowd, the people that did come out had a lot of fun. I think I’ll gladly file it under “pretty promising for our second night out” and leave it at that. Many thanks, of course, to those of you who came out to join us.

I dropped into the Lakeview on the way home from the club tonight. One of our DJs had left his Serato discs behind, and I knew he’d be there with a few friends, so I figured I’d stop in and hand them off. We hung out for a little while, but not before I bumped into a few friends who had been to another show that evening; I spent some time at their table later on.

This was all after running into Fadi, one of the Lakeview’s new managers, who I used to work for back when I was spinning at the Chelsea Room. He mentioned that the Lakeview will be celebrating its first anniversary a week from tonight, and I promised I would definitely be there. And all of that took place before I ran into a couple of friends on the way out, both of whom were waiting for a table and a very late dinner indeed. And let’s not forget about all of the old and new friends I’d hung out with at Augusta House earlier in the evening.

If I didn’t have to get up in a few hours to go house hunting, I would have stayed much longer. I don’t get out as much as I used to, but I have to admit that nights like tonight make me wonder why I don’t get out more often. I had planned to drop into the Lakeview for thirty seconds to drop off some records and head home to bed, but it didn’t remotely work out that way, and I’m glad it didn’t.

Those of us who live in Toronto too often feel compelled to justify ourselves in terms of cities like New York, London, Paris and so forth. We too often feel like we have to live up to the “world class city” standard, but deep down, I know I can’t be the only person in town who would love to smack the person who first started throwing that slogan around. The truth is that something as simple as a very late night at a reinvented diner where I can’t move ten feet without bumping into a friend is more than enough to make me feel like there’s nowhere I’d rather live.

Tomorrow, we’ll get up and look at a bunch of houses in neighbourhoods other than our own – by which I suppose I mean neighbourhoods where we can actually afford to buy instead of rent. It’s easy to feel like we’re leaving something behind by moving out of our current neighbourhood. But I think the more you see of the city, the more you realize it’s actually not as big as it often looks, and the easier it seems to maintain the relationships that matter. Knowing that has a way of making the search seem all the more exciting.

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