Parkdale

[danaeris]

If anyone has a few moments to look at this stuff about Parkdale, I'd appreciate it...

thespian, valdyra, you two in particular would be helpful, but if you're not free to do this tonight/before 9 a.m. tomorrow, don't worry about it/bother. :)

The questions I need help on, in order of importance (i.e. if you have limited time, please answer the first ones first):
1. How do people interact with each other?
2. Are there any issues with media coverage? Give an example.
3. Some communities get characterized by others in way that can stereotype, marginalize, exaggerate or otherwise upset people who live here. Identify them.
4. What is the mood?
5. How does the community define itself? (as opposed to how others do)?
6. What are the various gathering spots?
7. What are the concerns, challenges and issues that people talk about when they gather? Identify any specific issues that are ongoing, on the horizon, or happening right now.
8. When there’s a crisis, or a celebration, or an important issue affecting this community, how is it dealt with? How does consensus get reached? Who seems to take leadership?
9. Is this community cohesive or are there factions?

The first two are the only ones I have NOTHING for; all the rest I have varying quality of information. And of course, there's at least as many questions I haven't bothered listing because I have everything I need for them.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

1. Parkdale is both the friendliest and the unfriendliest neighbourhood I've lived in. My neighbours and superintendants in the building were incredibly friendly; they brought me food, the thought of me, they invited me in for coffee and asked after my health, and were genuinely interested. When I went next door to Luke's building, the supers and his neighbours were suspicious and occasionally rude. *However*, they were very caring and looked after *him*. Each apartment building along Jameson was very tribe-like; you were good to the people you knew belonged, and you kept a close eye on anyone who didn't.

2. I'm unsure what you mean about 'issues with media coverage'; If you mean 'did they overfocus on the crime issues' or something like that, I don't think so - Jane and Finch and random white girls being shot downtown meant that Parkdale did not have the 'bad press' of earlier years. It was, in several ways, over covered in other fashions; I think of the fact that Cory Doctorow, when he is in Toronto, lives in Parkdale, and was REALLY ANGRY about Sam Bulte during the last election - I found myself explaining myself to misunderstanding Americans during that election *constantly*. In addition, there was a little bit of an attempt to make it the 'next fashionable district, by emphasizing that Atom Egoyan, Kevin Hearn and Tyler Stewart of BNL were living there, Chris Landreth (2004 Oscar winner, best animated short) ate at 'Easy' every Sunday, etc. No one seemed to be buying it, because well, the neighbourhood, love it as I do, is still pretty skeevy.

3. My mother has pointed out that she didn't think I was in danger in Parkdale because 'the only people who get shot in Parkdale are involved in drugs.' Parkdale has a weird rep that you only get what you bring upon yourself there. This isn't always true, of course, but it comes out.

4. Helpful. Lots of people on the street a lot. It always felt very lively to me. I used to do those 'Man on the Street' interviews for the Parkdale Liberty, and they are surprisingly easily done in Parkdale.

5. I think it doesn't. Which is to say, nost people living and working in Parkdale simply don't have time to turn around and say, "Let's work on how the community looks to the world!" You find that sort of self definition in more educated or more middle class (not always the same thing) areas, like Church St. Community groups work more on just patching holes rather than creating a vibrant community.

argh. I'm sorry; I was just about to go to bed when I saw this post. I'm nodding off, though I should be up again around 8ish. I'll try to answer more then.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Thank you thank you thank you!

If you don't get to the remainder, no worries. You filled in some really important points for me.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

6. There are no gathering spots; which is to say, I lived in south parkdale, on Jameson, near the river, all three times I've lived in Parkdale, and EVERYWHERE is a gathering spot. On a summer day, Jameson is *covered* in people; hanging out in front of the two schools, in front of all the apartment buildings, on the street, down at the lake where it's a little cooler, up by the No Frills at King & Jameson, etc. I hung out at Easy (the brunch place on Queen), and at The Gladstone. The crowd at both was younger and less immigrant than you'd get on the streets (not 'less ethnic', but whatever race the person was at either, the chance was they were more likely to be second generation Canadian, like myself)

7. Personal issues. People don't care deeply about the health of the community when they're more worried that they might not have rent this month. This was changing, slowly; the articles I did for the Parkdale Liberty were arts related, and more, when I did the Man on the Street things, people had more of an interest in community, but I often got brushed off my people who simply needed to concentrate on much more basic things than the beginning arts community. When wading pools were closed, it wasn't bemoaned because a gathering place was lost, but because so many children needed access to the pool to stay cool during the day because they lived in apartments with no AC in an area where you couldn't leave a window open. The perspective is different.

8. Cory Doctorow? I say that facetiously, but seriously, the really sad thing is that most of the 'Parkdale Leadership' seems to come from outside Parkdale - even the former High Park/Parkdale MP, Sam Bulte, lived outside of the area after she won her first election. Even now, in talking to you about this, I have this nagging feeling that I am doing the same; I love Parkdale, and I will *always* return to it (because I have every other time I've moved back to Toronto!) but you're doing a project on this and soliciting information and input, and I'm simply a frequent resident, not a long-term one. The non-residents seem to have more time to put into that sort of leadership work than the residents themselves do.

That said, within my building there were people who had a lot of input into people's opinions - I was one of them. People tend to turn to other people. A lot of the people in my building didn't really understand the issues in the last election, and they would often ask me to explain the candidates because they knew me as more of an authority on this than they were. They also asked my next door neighbour, who had been in her apartment for 17 years, and so was well known as a neighbour. In many ways, this seems to reflect on the fact the place is about 80% immigrant - you don't look to some guy you never meet, you look to the person you know and can talk to directly; the personal interaction is more relative to you than some guy who speaks at the library.

9. I did not get the feeling of factions, but I wonder if that's more that factions require too much energy - if you need to work to save a park, or deal with the fact that drug dealers are using the primary school's park, you have more important things to do than factionalize and fall into politicking the way say my mother's neighbourhood council in Tillsonburg did

(btw, the eventual response to the use of Queen Victoria School's park was *extremely* grassroots; what I heard was that someone from the neighbourhood watch went to 2 of the known drug dealers who were a little younger, one who had a kid at the school, one who had a younger brother there, and asked them to get their competitors/fellow distributors to deal elsewhere. There was a very small amount of violence after that when one or two dealers ignored this request, and then it just came out that the school yard was to be left alone. That was a while ago, and I don't know if the safety has been respected, but that tends to be how people in Parkdale handle things, and it's part of why, even though it's certainly NOT a crime free area, it's not nearly the gunfire magnet that you get up along Jane/St. Clair.)