I spent the morning in the High Park neighborhood of Toronto, first on a run and then later walking through the main boulevard in search of produce. I noticed is how everyone ogled my tattoos. The stares were blatant. Not necessarily in appreciation. The more I looked, the more I noticed that no one else seemed to have any body art. It raised my suspicions so that when I went back to my AirBnB, I immediately searched “tattoo Toronto.” I worried that to expose your ink in Oh Canada was blatantly gauche, but I also harbored the question, could it be that no one in Toronto had tattoos. Of course not. I was relieved to find that Toronto did support a healthy if not booming tattoo industry. That industry just had yet to enter the neighborhood where I was staying. Per Google Maps, the closest parlor was over a km away, but it was the next closest at 2.5km that drew my attention: Jinks Art Factory. Jinks is uniquely positioned as the perfect neighborhood store: it is both a coffee shop and tattoo parlor. This I had to see.
I opted to walk about 2km of the trip down a street of shops that seemed a bit worse for wear – but still Canadian clean and groomed – before veering off onto residential streets.
Mural – note the mowed grass
As I grew closer to the shop, I grew more comfortable with the neighborhood. A few folks with small tattoos, a rainbow Canada flag, folks walking big dogs, several Amazon delivery trucks. Eventually walking down Queens Park Way, people with full body art. The transition from the High Park neighborhood to Queens Park Way was a bit like walking from Cow Hollow in SF to the Western Addition. Without the homeless, the streets in need of repair, and the litter strewn about. (Did I mention how well kept this town is?!)
Mural – notice the landscaping out front and the sliver of the hanging basket on the left?
Interestingly, even in a neighborhood full of people seemingly like me, no one connected eyes with me on the street. It was a reminder that people in big cities are indiscriminatorily discriminating. Whether they are like you or not like you, no one wants to engage someone they don’t know or at least don’t know their specific interest. In smaller environments, where the “want” is understood, certainly. The folks at Jinks were as friendly as at the grocery where I had bought my cucumbers earlier that morning. But on the street there is safety in not engaging folks with unknown needs and wants.
Exceptionally, I will confess that the runners on the High Park trails and roads did smile back or give a hearty “Good Morning” to my beleaguered grin as I hobbled and jogged along the wooded paths. But that’s not at all surprising. I’ve found that many hikers and runners say hi – regardless of where you are. Clearly, anyone who runs in the woods are a bunch of idiots with no regard for their own safety.
Another idiot in High Park