United on Wright closed today... But there was a picnic!

No lunch, no dinner, picnic at noon, rain or shine!! And of course I forgot to post it when I found out, and screwed myself over too.

Central/Western Toronto's Sunday Free Dinner Circuit

Free meals are like old cars. Sometimes you need a few of them to make one good one.

So here's how you can get one really good dinner, and maybe a midnight snack, by hitting up this sequence of Sunday evening dinners. You will need a bike. Don't try to do this on the TTC.

1. Hit either the church at Roncesvalles and Wright, or Evangelhall, at 5:30. You can't do both. Hey, if you do, put in a comment at the bottom and tell us how it's done.
2. Hit the 6:30 dinner at the building that looks like a community center, in the park on the south side of OCAD and the AGO. If you happen to go between the end of May and the beginning of November (or is it October?), you'll have to sign up as an overnight guest to get the full dinner. Otherwise, they'll send you packing. Packing a bag lunch, that is. But no, you want the dinner. Who knows what it's like to stay there, probably better than Seaton "Satan" House. So anyway, sign up to stay there and grab the dinner.
3. And if you can make it, nab a (probably) nice dinner at the church across from the firehall, at the corner of College and Bellevue. And a ton of coffee and sweets. And show up early for an interesting sermon. It's interesting to see what Christians want to tell the poor just before feeding them. Same thing with the first place mentioned in Step 1.

Here's the bike route. It starts out in the center of Bellevue Square Park (the big park in Kensington Market), for no good reason other than to recommend Dundas instead of College or Queen for Sunday evening cycling. Unless you're one of these people who likes to bike slow next to the parked car doors that could open at any time and kill you. In that case, use the death trap bike lanes on College. Hey, if you're one of those people, don't try to make it out to Ronces. Just go to Evangelhall.

Lawyers Serve Up Great Sunday Brunch

Check the photo: you're looking at a 2-inch thick omelette with cheddar and mozza on top, backed up by some palatable fries on the side, and what you didn't see in the photo was the vanilla ice cream. The line clocked in at about 15 minutes, maybe 20.

Good Shepherd Breakfast... Pretty much worth it!

It's hit and miss at the Shep in the morning. But those who showed up on time got some crazy stuff! Burgers, Vietnamese rice paper wraps... So yeah. Show up early.

Luckily, Evangelhall came up with something somewhat more substantial than bagels and peanut butter. Not much more substantial, but somewhat: Eggs and crackers.

St. Felix pulls out all the stops!!

What a great lunch at St Felix today!!! Amazing sandwich, amazing soup, great eggs with potato bits... And as if to say "we forgive you for freaking out at us last time and feel bad about how we acted," they hooked me up with a double-sized double double!!

I even managed to ignore the guy who was offended by my sweatiness! So nice to be able to ignore people, because I know how incomfortable it makes me feel when someone ignores me, especially when I'm trying to antagonize them! Thanks to wednesday afternoon Kung Fu at Masaryk Cowan community centre!!! It's the only thing that's relieved me off constant fear of attack that's oppressed the living daylights out of me. Hey, when we make jobs that offer people unsupervised access to children, an then make sure that they can't call investigations on each-other, we should expect it to be magnet for criminals. And we should expect to see a generation of people like me, who can't get through a meeting with the boss without picturing him or her throwing a punch, right out of the blue.

"Have you eaten yet?"

That's what the priest asked us as he was tending the Good Shepherd lineup, 20 minutes before closing time, when there's usually no line-up at all.

The line goes all the way to the street corner. All I've eaten today is a bowl of soup. The rest of the Scott Mission lunch is inaccessible without a spoon, but it IS in my bag. So far, two instances of sexual harassment have died in their tracks because I managed to act like I didn't notice.

This is the last meal program that is open today. So after this, them dumpsters had better be full. Maybe they've been plundered for the same reason this place is being oversaturated. Maybe they're empty because the stores were closed today. Maybe it's all gone bad in the heat. This could be the first evening in weeks where I actually regret making it to the rehearsal that conflicted with the three other meals I needed to go to today. I know you're not supposed to try to do anything planned when you're poor, but I'll break the law to make the appointments that will take me out.

In the end, the line was only 15 minutes long. No seconds today though, and it's the fact that they usually let you go through as many times as you want that got me all the way across town for this anyway.

Inside, the mood is surprisingly subdued.

Hopefully you found what you needed to stay fed and out of trouble. Happy Victoria Day. God save the queen.