PARC is back on the calendar

For several month, PARC has been missing from the calendar. It's back.

It's getting serious

The calendar gets about 400 views per week. The article about ODSP payment dates gets about 7,000 views per week. That's pretty brutal. That's actual soup kitchen users and actual ODSPers looking for food. Looking for their money. Using the 'net to do so. And yet service providers, from TDIN to your corner church and their meal program, generally don't publish their actual mealtimes to the public. TDIN's not making their holiday meal program guide public this year. No announcement, no particular reason, they just never did it.

The holiday closures totally outnumber the extra holiday meals. Absolutely dwarf them. Those closures are not expressed anywhere online. There's no brochure about them distributed through the system, there's no real notification system at all. If you're not going to these programs on a regular basis, and checking up on their holiday schedule, you have absolutely no way of knowing about closures. Well, except for this website. Where it's accurate. This year won't be so bad. The calendar is mostly up to date. A lot of closures have been flagged. Some of them are pretty major. St. Felix said no more holiday closures, and changed their mind. Good Shepherd said no holiday closures, and changed their mind. Sistering and 416 Dundas are going strong, so women are covered. The ones who are close by or can travel, anyway.

We're heading into this winter with fewer shelter beds than we had last winter, not more. Way fewer. Hundreds less than we had a few years ago. Good luck out there! You'll need it. All three levels of government, and society at large, definitely want all of us dead or in jail. Or at least, totally starving.

The holiday meals, and the calendar

So... the holiday meals list from TDIN is out. And it's been LEAKED!!!! Oh my god oh my god oh my god! They stopped publishing it online, so there is absolutely no way to view it on the internet except, of course, on this site. Because somebody uploaded it to their google docs and posted it. And then it got compared to the Calendar page on this site, which got heavily updated. And then it got embedded below:



There are some clear discrepancies between this schedule and the regular mealtimes of a lot of these places. So there are some details to clear up, but the calendar is much more accurate than it was six hours ago. Many, many disappointing closures have been marked, so hopefully some heartbreak can be avoided./

It's worth noting that there are way, way more closures than extra holiday meals. Way more. Way, way fucking more.

The other thing, this is silly, but Sistering and 416 Dundas, the two major places specifically for women, weren't on the site at all, and now they are. It's pretty startling to finally be able to add a couple of programs that are just two meals every single day, at the same time. Not a few days a week at three different times, not every third and fourth sunday of some bullshit, but every single day of the week, at the same times. And the hours of the drop-in are: 24/7. It's like a whole other world, especially for women. Where you don't have to go all over the city every single day, where you can go to the same place for two or even three meals each day. And you can just go there anytime you need to. That's absolutely amazing. That must be wonderful. It makes a lot more sense why men in poverty are so much more visible: they have to stay on the move, and the women are all hidden away at the women-only programs. There's only one breakfast and lunch program that's open every single day, and includes men, and it's the Good Shepherd.

Please, share your meal times info... the calendar is out of date

The calendar hasn't received major updates recently. And the special TDIN holiday meal listing is so incomplete, it's hard to use it as a guide. They've also been sketchy on the accuracy of the listings in the past. The calendar is supposed to be reliable, but it's not. Not really. There's been some good feedback on meal program specifics so far, and that's been awesome. Please - keep it coming, and we need more. At some point, the calendar will be replaced with one that's easier for the public to work on without logging in and something. Like a wiki calendar, wiki map, that kind of stuff.

Trying to keep the calendar up to date, without actually using the meal programs, leads to a lot of dead ends like these:

What's the deal with Masaryk Cowan? Does anybody know if they're still doing breakfasts, or whether they have any extra holiday meals or closures? Their answering machine is full. Is there an email address for them?

The Salvation Army's Gateway website doesn't exist. They're also really bad at publishing their contact information, and promoting their meals. 211 thinks they have a saturday dinner program. Is it saturday, or is it every 2nd tuesday?

Et cetera, et fucking cetera. Every org does not communicate with its users. Exactly why this site exists. Ask soup kitchen staff why they find publishing to the net so impossible. Go ahead and ask them. They could use Blogger, they could use Facebook, they could use the sites that they already have, but no. It's all just too difficult. It's too much. Too much hassle. Too much co-ordination. I mean, the only reason they have flashy websites that are hard for them to update, with blank calendars that have never been added to by staff, is that they need a placeholder site in order to get funding. That's what it's there for. All the meal programs info that we do see, or any content aimed at their users, is a generous fucking afterthought, and one that cost them extra money.

So please, users, share your research. Share your schedule! Please. It matters right now more than usual because it's the holidays, but really, it's going to matter next month much, much more than it does this month. It's gonna matter during January, where we have to go six weeks between payments instead of four. So we're 50% poorer in January. January's the craziest month because of the lack of money, December's the craziest month because of unexpected holiday-related closures. So between those two problems, This site becomes more important than it is during the rest of the year.

The 519 finally goes LGBTQ-only

It's always tough, that time you show up where it's the first time you can't be there. Either because the program's ended, moved, changed times, or like in this case, you became not the right demographic.

It's especially tough when it's the only place you can go, and you're already hungry, and you've come a long way. That's what many people are going through at the entry to the 519's sunday breakfast and lunch programs. We used to be greeted with an open door and a lineup... now there's a sign-in desk.

Hopefully this improves things for LGBTQ soup kitchen users. As it was, the 519 was a place where they could share a meal with their straight buddies. So this won't just impact a lot of people's food security - it'll impact friendships as well.

It's sad, too. Apart from The Stop, the 519 is the only place where the staff actually know what's in the food. And maybe PARC. And maybe 40 Oaks? And why the change? Was it a matter of their funding being diluted? Was their program just becoming too popular to manage? Were they unable to keep the place safe and secure, with straight cis people included? Was it just too much of a gap to bridge?

It was probably because it was just too fucking crowded.

The Stop's vegan meals a critical daily lifeline for Torontonians with special dietary needs, and without grocery budgets

They're calling them "veggie" meals. But they're actually vegan. If you mean vegan, say vegan. So, if you can't eat dairy, or you shouldn't eat dairy, or you eat meat but not pork, or not beef, or whatever... this is your lifeline. This and the TVFB (the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank). And you can get it once a day, several days a week, at The Stop, on Davenport, a few blocks west of Dufferin. So you might not be able to get meat without also getting dairy, but you might be able to avoid hunger, without getting dairy. Or you might be able to avoid hunger, while being vegetarian.

So, their lunch is guaranteed to have a vegan option, every time. Their breakfast, not so much. More like sometimes. But they plan their meals out in advance, so notwithstanding a few changes here and there at the last minute, you can get an idea, from week to week, which breakfasts you can go to.

Replacing one out of four meals a day (what, you only need three meals a day? that's awesome) can yield a tremendous amount of savings that can go into hard-to-find items. Like nuts, fruits, spices etc. You know, the stuff that the free food scene omits. I mean, we get lots of nuts. As long as they're peanuts. As long as those peanuts are in peanut butter. As long as that peanut butter was the cheapest available. Which means it's also got icing sugar in it. Yay. People with cognitive issues love that stuff. Yeah. We fucking adore it. And, let's see, we get lots of fruit. In cheap canned form. So that's great. For their budget. Not so great for our bodies, or our brains. In fact, it's that kind of packaged food that's being eyed as one of the primary causes of many of the mental health issues that have pushed us all to actually read articles like this, almost to the end, or even worse, writing them. And coming back to edit them. And rewriting them. In between meeting up with friends to apologize to them about not looking for work. Because that's what friends are into. You're either talking about how shitty your job is, or you're talking about why you don't have a job. It's wonderful to not see job postings at food banks and stuff.

Can The Stop take the lining up out of lining up?

The Stop is trying something monumental. They're trying to innovate their way into a more convenient food bank experience. They're trying to hack one of society's most evil necessary evils: the line. And they might have succeeded.

So here's their scheme: they just don't throw people's tickets out of the stack if they're not around when their number's called. They just keep calling everybody's numbers, in order, until they're at the end of the list, and then they start over. Apparently. This is the before-actually-experiencing-it article. So the idea is, you decide when you want to come back, and whenever you do come back, your wait time will be quick enough that, overall, you're spending less time waiting, and you're not waiting until significantly later in the day to complete the task.

The schedule, as of late 2015, is:

10am hand out numbers for the food bank
11am food bank starts up
noon: lunch in their meal program
Food bank numbers are called all afternoon. They're called in sequence, even if they've already been called and the person hasn't been there. So people can bail out and come back whenever they want in the afternoon, and whenever they come back, their place in line has basically been held.
3pm they close, so you can show up at 10am and then go do some other stuff, and come pick up your food in the afternoon. So you can avoid the entire lunch scene, if you want.

Everybody be warned and tell your pregnant or breastfeeding friends that Wednesdays is on reserve for them. If you're not pregnant or breastfeeding, don't come Wednesdays.

And they're not doing the food bank on Tuesdays anymore. So it's just Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Also, men really should consider going to the monday men's cooking program. Because apart from learning cooking stuff, you get a meal during the program, and at least another meal to take home with you, so that's two meals just for learning some kitchen stuff.

Director Employment & Social Services annual salary: $154,254.81 + $4,493.55 in benefits

Don't worry, the person in Toronto who's in charge of us only makes between thirteen times and eighteen times what we do.

Over the past ten or so years, benefits for those who receive them have been slashed by anywhere between a third to half, depending on how you calculate it. That, plus the fumbling of people's affairs by government staff, has cost each of us somewhere between twenty and fifty grand over the same time period.

How did all this happen? It sort of started in 1995 when PC premier Harris took a fifth out of our income. So that's 22% gone. The Liberal premier that followed slashed our benefits repeatedly, in sort of roundabout detaily ways, so the public wouldn't notice, while raising benefits rates by 3% in 2005, and then 1% when Kathleen Wynne took office. So, both the conservatives and the Liberals have taken their best shot at our budget, and each of those parties and their politicians have eroded our already perfectly shitty benefits rates.

So, that's where it came from. Politicians decided that poor people should be poorer. That's simply what happened. And the public let them get away with it because they're easily fooled and willfully ignorant, and also because they totally hate us. I mean, poor people who are making middle-class money are doing it by doing jobs that middle class people aren't willing to do (because the labor code is being ignored, usually), and they're hyper aware of how much the government and middle class people look down on the unemployed. It's understandable that their work ethic is built upon an attitude of total subservient desperation. These are the people who end up dying of workplace related ailments, and just barely make it to retirement age without succumbing to all the sicknesses that their jobs have caused them. While they're still working and their illnesses haven't caught up with them yet, they have to make sure to shun anybody who finds any excuse not to work. So they have to work in solidarity with the middle-class people to minimize the money that we get, because they can't be seen as being supportive of the unemployed. So that's kind of the deal behind that. It's a combination of ignorance and hatred. But they really want you, and me, and all of us, dead or in jail, through suicide or grocery theft charges. Or the one where an officer knocks you out and then charges you with assault, that's a popular way to go down. I know personally, if an officer beat the shit out of me and then tried to sell that story to my family, they'd totally believe the officer. They'd completely buy it. Because even to my own loving family, who do totally love me, I don't have any credibility, because I don't have work, and I haven't for awhile. So... basically anybody at all can win in a he-said-she-said against me.

Think about it - would your family and/or friends stick up for you? Or would they just give the good officer the benefit of the doubt? Especially since you've been a little sketchy and a little skinny lately and you know what that means... addiction. Of course, hunger causes that too, but no. Poverty causes hunger, too, but no. It has to be drugs. If you're poor, you're on drugs. And you're fucked in the head, too. Must be. There's no other way that Canadians can become poor, ever. And if somebody does become poor like that, there's no way to help them except to teach them through suffering that nobody cares about them, and they should stop being such a pussy and bust through. So that's what people do. They man up or woman up or whatever, and become drug dealers. Because like, taking charge doesn't mean you suddenly have options. It just means you're taking options you wouldn't have before. So that's where our career criminals come from. They realize they're being edged out of the world of the healthy living, and they're like, "Oh, not only does my government hate me, but my society hates me, too... collectively, they do hate people who are like myself... that's incredible... so I'm basically at war with my own society... so, okay, if that's the way it is, I guess I'll be a pirate instead of being a civilian casualty or a soldier. Pirate is much better."

Who knows why Kathleen Wynne and Harris hate the poor so much. Their parents probably taught them to fear us. I mean, my parents taught me to fear the poor, homeless, the crazed, and of course anyone who's unemployed. They taught me that they'd steal from me. But instead, my employers and my government stole from me. Every employer I had broke the labor laws in how and why they ended employment, and most of them broke the law in how they hired me, too. Government employees lied to me in order to avoid releasing funds, and in order to suspend funds that would otherwise be released to me. Poor people haven't really stolen anything from me. Even when I wasn't poor, even when I was rich, because I was, for awhile... poor people didn't steal shit from me. The only people who stole anything from me were always way better off than I was. And they'd all done it using systems they'd set up and used on other people over and over again. Systems they'd perfected as part of their profession. It's truly been a totally shitty experience in the workplace. In all the workplaces. In the employment landscape.

Poor, artsy Toronto Youth between 16 and 29 years can finally chill: Sketch is back, with meals!

The new space at Artscape Youngplace is finally, finally, finally ready. And they're serving their first lunch this Tuesday, September 22nd.

The map and calendar on this site have been updated with the new information. If you're between 16 and 29, and you need food, check this out. If you're into making art, stick around after lunch.

Sketch can be sketchy, but its food standards have always been ahead of the pack. That's because from sourcing to serving, they're not afraid to integrate and innovate: integrate the community and innovate to solve problems. So this is an important event for Toronto in terms of food security, but even more so in terms of social change and cultural development.

Meals are an important part of the Sketch program, because they enhance the health of their participants, but they're also critical to enable access to the rest of the programming. Young poor people can't go somewhere to do something unless there's a free meal involved. That's just a fact of life. But Sketch goes beyond that and provides substantial, healthy meals. At least, historically. So only because the food works, and wakes everybody up, then you've got a ton of youth who can engage in a unique artmaking opportunity. That's what brings Sketch beyond this industry that we have of using twenty bucks of funding money to deliver five bucks' worth of food to somebody who's just traveled for an hour to get there, and employ a bunch of people in the process. The Sketch crew actually have an excuse to get paid, beyond the fact that the public is more willing to make money by providing services to the poor, than they are to just give us the money we need to take care of ourselves. Simply put, people who aren't poor don't trust the poor. If they're going to help us out, they want to get something out of it, and they want it to be on their terms, in the form of programs. We use programs to get everything. Programs that cost more than the amount we'd need not to need the programs. But some programs are actually unique, and provide a useful social service while addressing a pressing need.

So it's good to see that Sketch is finally back, with lunch. Hopefully it's good lunch. And dinner.

Scott Mission and St. Felix info corrected on the Calendar

So there's this problem these days with Google Calendar, where repeating events are disappearing. If you notice any problems with the calendar, please leave a comment on one of the articles about it.

In this case, Scott Mission's lunch program was missing from the calendar for some period of time. It's unclear when it started.

As for the St. Felix lunch program listing, it was incorrect since St. Felix changed the timing of their lunch program. They shaved a half-hour off of it, and shifted it an hour later, so it starts at noon instead of eleven in the morning, and ends at 1pm instead of 12:25. So you can't use St. Felix to prepare for something that starts at noon anymore, but you don't have to sprint quite as fast to get there in the morning. So if you're doing the Scott Mission / St. Felix crawl, the timing is a bit better.

The sketchy bathroom situation at Fort York Food Bank

So... the toilet paper and soap dispenser are at the top of the stairs, and the bathroom's at the bottom of the stairs. That's pretty fucked. And of course, there's no soap in the soap dispenser.

This is a pretty basic thing. Bathrooms need to have toilet paper and soap. In the bathroom. The actual bathroom. Not in some other room.

So the idea is, presumably, you're supposed to know all this in advance, and grab your toilet paper on the way to the bathroom. And then afterward, you're supposed to go up the stairs, put some soap in your hand, if they ever do put soap in there, and then go back downstairs, wait for whoever's gone in after you to be done, then use the sink to wash your hands.

Look, us poor people already know that we're worthless, and don't deserve the basics. We get the memo every time we try to do anything. Even basic things. We don't need another reminder when we're trying to use a bathroom. Come on, Fort York Food Bank, please don't remind us how little dignity we deserve in this way. Use other ways!

The New Vegetarian Food Bank

A vegetarian food bank for anyone who claims to be vegetarian or "trying to be" vegetarian. The next opening will be their third. Their first two were positioned on a funny date of the month: right after ODSP comes out. In a way, it was a good idea: reward people for their good planning, remind us that we're gonna run out of food money anyway, might as well get started with the free food early in the pay cycle, and maybe showing those who receive no benefits a bit of a break. But still, it was a bit confounding. Now they're planning on having it on the third saturday of each month. So... right when everybody's hurting real bad and it's hard to get anywhere or do anything. They're gonna get fucking swamped.

It's at 270 GERRARD ST. E., mercifully late in the day between noon and 4pm. It takes forever to get screened and wait for the food. But it's a big haul. Bring a big backpack or something. Bring bags full of bags. They've also been serving some great soups.

The site is http://tvfb.ca/, not http://www.vegfoodbank.ca/

RIP Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre (CONC)

It's impossible to tell when this happened, but CONC is gone. It happened sometime before October of 2014. Apparently they're just temporarily gone. Nobody has any reason to believe or disbelieve this.

Their website is still up, and still listing their old address on Bloor St. West, and still listing their meal programs, like today's lunch:

No mention is made of the closure. The company responsible for their website is called The Wire. Maybe someone should contact them and let them know to change things. But they've most likely been out of contact with CONC since first designing their site, back in the day, whenever that was. This problem is typical of these multiservice agencies, and the sketchy relationships they have with those who do their web design. In general, they can't allow clients to work on their websites, since clients can't be trusted, and since nobody who has the keys to the site can afford to spend any time on it, and since communication between any of the parties involved is impossible. So, service agencies like CONC, when they're applying for funding, or when they have funding, find some web design agency that needs to do some charity work, or needs to do some portfolio-building work, they spend a month or so creating some evil monster that's impossible for the soup kitchen staff to maintain, and which they'll never have the time or the budget to touch again, and there you go. It floats in space forever. Telling people to show up at the abandoned storefront, every week.

Here's what the abandoned storefront looks like now. Notice the complete lack of any signage about where the new location is or what the new schedule is. The two things that are tacked up there are about a youth employment program, and a music event. Beautiful graffiti though.

This is typical of temporary or permanent closures. Users are not notified. The website continues to deliver inaccurate information. And sometimes, some other agency steps up. In this case, it's the Salvation Army. As famous for their discrimination as they are for their substandard food, this omnipresent charity superpower has picked up where CONC left off.

So now, instead of the best-quality food in the area, in a super cramped spot, where you can also go downstairs and book a recording session (if you're young), or laundry use (if you're organized), or get vegetarian food (if you're a vegetarian or a liar who wants to avoid meat), you can go a few blocks away, except on weekends, no more weekend meals, and get what you're a bit more used to. Something a bit more in line with what you'd find at the average soup kitchen. In the case of today's meal, it was bacon, a chunk of what is probably spam, undercooked potatoes, and salad. Or rather, lettuce.

To be precise, the new location is the dreaded Salvation Army, at 789 Dovercourt. And the new times are: Breakfast from 10am to 11am, and lunch from noon to 1pm. And the new days are Monday to Thursday. The only advantage is that Salvation Army's space is substantially larger. The crowd is still fairly sketchy, but there's more buffer space between people.

The Stop changed its hours!

The food bank now starts distribution at 11am, and they start handing out tickets at 10am. They also dropped their Tuesdays, and replaced it with their Good Food Market program... basically a popup grocery store every week. So yeah, that does cost money. Sucks for someone showing up at noon and finding only the meal program open, or showing up on, let's say, the last Tuesday of the month, and finding only food that costs money. But that's your problem for being desperate. Remember, one of the main rules of survival is: buffer your supply... as in, always get more before you run out. There are no guarantees. And don't pretend you're not in survival mode.

It's about time we had some food bank listings on this site!

Yes, of course, it's silly. It's stupid. It's actually completely fucked. There haven't been any food banks listed in the calendar. A ton of these places that are on the goddamn calendar do have food banks right in them... and of course most of them, you'd never know it, if you're just going there for meal programs. And then there's other places that don't do meal programs, so you're not going to know about it. There's been a few articles about the food banks, complete with schedules, but the schedule info hasn't been added onto the calendar. Because why would it be, right? The editing process behind this site isn't subjected to all of the bullshit that results in the sketchy listings situations that we see with meal programs, but it is kind of subject to some bullshit. Its own special, silly kinds of bullshit. And that sucks. Because there's actually some pretty ok food banks up in the GTA. Or at least, in the downtown. The GTA at large is a mystery to whoever it is that's writing this. But the downtown, and especially the central and western angles of the downtown, is pretty clear. Who knows what the situation is outside the core. No, seriously, who knows? Disclose the fucking information. Disclose it using the comments section below, which can be logged into but doesn't require login and does accept anonymous submissions. This whole fucking site is anonymous. Is it a team of authors? Is it just one solitary weirdo? Is it a intelligence agency logging everybody IP addresses to round up the poor for some sketchy scoop later on when things get absolutely shit bananas crazy? God, some bananas sound great. Doesn't that sound awesome? Actual, fresh bananas. That would be fuckin great right about now, not even halfway into the absolute worst month of the year to be poor. We are literally the only people who do not get a fucking bonus this time of year. Even if you're fucking begging on the street, even if you're busking, even if you're a goddamn dumpster diver, you get some kind of extra shit because of the season. But if you're just outta work and on benefits, nope. Computer says no. You get your payment early, which is bullshit, and you get the same amount as ever, which is also bullshit. No fucking bonus. No extra food, no food vouchers, no gift cards from the government, no fucking thing. If you're on welfare, you get somewhere between $200 - $800 no matter what, and if you're on ODSP, you get the same $600 - $1000, maybe more for whatever your chore, that you always do. Go fuck yourself. Or more like go fuck a stranger for money. Which also hasn't gotten any safer or easier with the recent changes in prostitution laws. And hey, why not close a shitload of shelters and jail anyone who tries to open up a DIY emergency one? If you're reading this, the state probably wants you as dead meat on the street. If you're housed, this is the best time of year for them to edge you out. Or maybe a month or two ago. If you're in the shelter, this is the time of year when you come back to find your bed's been reassigned, or, surprise surprise, budget cuts and they're building a brand new fucking sports field. That's awesome. The children will finally have a place to play. How wonderfuckingful.

What's the two best places downtown with the least amount of hassle for getting food, like, soon? The Stop and the Fort York Food Bank. Both a huge pain, both sketchy as fuck, both totally not what and when they say they're going to be, and they both provide a mix of total impressive surprise and disappointment. So, do it up.

What's the next two best places that require a bit more organization to access but are totally worth the trip and goddamn consultation and all the sketchiness and waiting around etc? The Salvation Army thing on River street... um... north of Queen? North of Dundas? Or south of Dundas? Whatever? Something. And Oasis Dufferin. It's the least bullshit one, really. Their initial intake interview is like... ooh, this is weird. And then every time you go after that, they do this super brief one, after you wait just long enough to fill your mouth with cookies and coffee, and then they hook you up right away, you bring back whatever you can't eat, they replace that with other stuff you can eat, you go over to the next spot where they hook up the fresh food, and you're outta there. So goddamn quick, but it's only open once a week and it's early. And the location is just... it's so easy to show up there just barely too late. Or when they're having an unannounced, unexpected closure. No note on the door, type thing, just locked. Big fuck you. But hey, worth it the rest of the time, worth the occasional disappointment. Don't break down the door. Don't mark up their building with a bunch of angry tags. They're nice. They're just a bit fucked, like all these other places. Okay, too much info about that one place, but that's basically the procedure at most of these spots, it's just Oasis is the only one that's fast as fuck as you get the fuck out of there pretty quick. No huge hassle. It's just... some of the... well, you'll find out.

What's the one with the actual best food, some of which is organic, fresh, and locally-grown? It's The Stop, of course. Now when we're talking about The Stop, we're not talking about the first result that pops up in Google, the one that's actually marked visibly on the street, the one where you go there and they're like "what are you talking about, food bank, no way, get out of here, crazy bum" ...no. We're talking about the sketchy place that they provide food to but don't know about, that's got a street address on Davenport listed all over the place, but you can't see shit in terms of signage from Davenport. It's just an apartment building, what the fuck, we all have screaming in our heads the first few times we try to check it out. Yeah, it's behind the apartment building. Why would they put a nice big sign on the front? That would be way too fucking respectful and we obviously need every reminder that we are worthless and our time even more worthless. It's at Davenport, between Symington and Perth, a couple blocks west of Lansdowne. Yeah, so if you're on your way up there from the Scott Mission or some common shit, have fun with the commute. And for fucks sake, make it to breakfast. Because their food is actually good. It's like, wow, now I remember what food is like, after all these years of eating edible garbage at all these places. They actually use real food, and cook it up right there, and serve it up and they're still kind of a messy mix of rude, dismissive, nice, whatever they are at the moment, whoever you're talking to at the moment, and the coffee line is still a huge pain, and they cannot deal with the concept of cups, of course, seriously they cannot get their cup situation together in even the most basic way, but still. Damn fine breakfasts. You be like holy fuck, actual breakfast. That is some crazy shit. So definitely, do breakfast, then do the food bank, then do lunch. They only do the food bank on certain days. It's probably not the days that they claim it is. You want to get there an hour before the food bank opens, because of course they don't need to tell anyone that they start handing out tickets for the food bank an hour before it opens up. So that's another reason to do breakfast. Also, yeah, if you go for the food bank and it's lunchtime, you'll be so tempted to jump ship on waiting, and then you'll lose your food bank place in line, or rather sitting around at the tables all sketched out by everyone, super hungry, and that sucks. The whole place is so goddamn sketchy even though it doesn't look like it's going to be. It's just one of those things. They like doing the thing where they'll let some crazy person start accosting you and get all threateny, and of course you're not allowed to understand a word they're saying, and then the staff will come kick you out for provoking them, pretending not to have seen any of it. And then the person goes on to bully someone else. So it's weird. But yeah, best fucking food in the whole scene.

And some other sketchy leads to get you wondering... there's this thing somewhere along King between Dufferin and Lansdowne... or maybe it's Queen? North side of whichever of those streets it is. That's weekly. Yay, how useful is that mention. Okay, then there's the one that they built into the Upper Room, that place that's open every second saturday during summer, but every saturday during winter, on the north side of Queen, just west of Bathurst. Oh and by the way, nobody remembers what that place is called so you're fucked to track it down. It's an evening thing and they also have a clothing bank, and the whole thing is so crowded and sketchy just don't do it when you're not feeling stable of mind, ok? Not worth it. Nice sermon though. It's an urban church. The pastor can rock a six-string and if he wanted to, he could do a pretty good Bowie impersonation. But he doesn't seem into it. Big dinners at that shit, too. And then there's... what else is there? Seriously, who knows what else there is?

As for special-access stuff, like vegan stuff, organic stuff, women/men only, family-only stuff, no clue. This website is bad at that. Very bad at tracking the special access by demographic type stuff. Trans-specific stuff? That'd be cool. They pretty much avoid the food banks because what's the point when you're going to get threats of violence for an hour while waiting and all that? What is the point. Or really are you going to bring your family to one of these other places? Fuck no. Better to eat them. Just eat your kids. That'd be a better experience than bringing them along with you. Much better. Probably better food than most of what you'll get as well.

Here's a list of foods that have never, ever been seen at any food banks in Toronto:

• nuts

That's it. Just nuts. Everything else, you'll see a little bit of. Absolutely no nuts though. Okay, maybe you'll get some like... shitty little bag of peanuts? Ultra-stale? Yeah, not helpful guys. No cashews, no almonds, there'll be almond milk once in a blue moon but no almonds, yeah. So don't expect that. You'll find nuts inside the sugar-encrusted crazy packaged "snacks" ...but fresh nuts with actual nutritional food value? No. Nope. Why would they do that. That's fat. It's awesome, wonderful fat, the kind that actually helps your body lose weight, and makes your brain go boing boing boing... but no. No nuts. Ever. If you spot nuts in a soup kitchen, take a photo of it and post the URL in one of these comments sections. That would be like seeing a fucking UFO. It would literally kill every single one of the staff member at any of these agencies for them to put nuts in the shit. They'd magically drop dead. That's why they don't do it. Superstition. They absolutely will not bring nuts.

Here's a list of stuff that you rarely see at food banks in Toronto:

• fruit that's not either canned or spoiled
• food that's not made by Monsanto, as in, it's almost all genetically modified, pesticide-laden bullshit that everybody mistakes for food
• dairy alternatives, so, almond milk, soy cheese, whatever
• organic anything at all, except at the Stop, sometimes
• fresh produce, like root veggies, leafy greens, you know, what people who aren't fucked in the head from growing up in North America in the 70s, 80s and 90s, would consider food
• meat, especially fresh meat
• non-processed cheese, so, cheese that's not more chemically similar to plastic than to dairy cheese
• milk

For fucks sake leave some tips in the comments below about where more food banks and stuff are and about how erroneous and out of date this info is, this is crazy how sketchy it is to find free groceries in Toronto. There's tons, but still! Oh my god.

This place sucks: st Stephens in the fields Sunday morning breakfast

Coming up on the third if what's sure to be a long series of articles about Toronto's soup kitchens and the special ways in which each of them brings us all to a new low every time we use them... and it's time to shake down st Stephen in the field.

So the theme of their breakfast is finger food. They have one bathroom for each gender so there's always a line, so there's no chance to wash your hands. Just like the shepherd we got hard boiled eggs, peanut butter sandwiches, a bit of fruit... and apparently they would have to break the law in order to provide a hand washing sink in the dining room. Whether it's true or not, whether they believe it or not, that's what they're telling people. That's hilarious: the government making sure it's hard for soup kitchen users to wash our hands.

Apparently they'll renovate their bathrooms soon. In the meantime, maybe they'll start trying to force us to use antibacterial gel on our way in... you know, the toxic kind that destroys the olfactory system of anyone in a the meter radius. Makes it easier to ignore the taste of the food, I guess is the idea. United on ronces and Wright is pretty famous for being total Nazis about that, even though they're the only place where it's dead easy to wash your hands on the way in.

The other thing is, of course this is generally true for all these places, there is no signage effort on the building. It's like they're trying to keep it a secret, or make it so people don't try to come alone when it's their first time.

And then of course it sucks that it's cramped, and there's always some one sketching out, tweaking out, whatever it is, all over the place and staff can't do anything to keep the space chilled. The runoff from our society's whole human sewage system gets dumped on these poor Christians who just want to do something nice and maybe raise some money for their church. We get dumped on them because government workers sent us to them. There was never an effort to determine and provide a food budget to people in their benefits packages, and there's no plan for us eating all our meals at these sad, sketchy, far flung spots.

CONC temporarily relocates to salvation army, suspends its weekend meals

Without posting any notice on the front of the building, no note on the website, no updated phone number... even 211 had to hear about it from a caller!

They're renovating, and in the meantime, their weekday meals are apparently happening at the salvation army location at Dovercourt just north of bloor, except the weekend programming, which is cancelled (and 211 now knows to stop sending people to that.

All this happened in like August. So for the past three months, this website has had the wrong listing for those meals.

In September, as if to compensate for the new shortfall in service, the salvation army also changed their weekly meal to Saturday instead of Friday.

CONC will be removed from the map and the calendar until it reopens, and the meals at the salvation army will be under its own listing.

The salvation army also failed to post any notice on its own building about the changes. So anyone who hasn't been going to these programs regularly leading up to the renovations had no opportunity to find out that they would have to make other arrangements.

This Place Sucks: The Good Shepherd

In this, the first of what's sure to be a long and wonderful series of themed articles about different soup kitchens in town, we look at our beloved Good Shepherd, and what makes it suck. Just to be clear, they're all terrible. They're mostly bad in the same ways, but each of them is their own special mix of awful. They are here to remind poor people that we are worthless and don't deserve safety, decent food, or dignity. What we need, each time we eat, is disappointment, anxiety, and inconvenience. It's the only way we'll ever learn to smarten up and turn our lives around, right? Right. Sure. Yeah. Why not. Let's just go with that. Otherwise, why would we have a massive prison-themed soup kitchen across from a school on Queen east? And why would we be told to go there by government workers when we ask why our benefits don't include a food budget? It's like, ok, shelter, yeah, basic needs, yeah, ok, where's the food budget? Oh it's part of basic needs. What? No it's not, nobody spends that on food and everything else. Well, that's what it's there for. And in case it's not enough (I love how they say that, in case), there's this handy list of places where you can get a free meal. And then you descend into the rabbit hole. You go into that hole and eventually you'll land at the Shepherd. It's brutal. They let you go through as many times as you want, but so many times, you won't want to. You won't even want to go for a little walk and come back a half hour later. And you could: they have two-hour servings. But you'll be so over it you'll just want to get out of the neighbourhood entirely. The whole area is haunted, anyway. You do not want to hang out there.

You know what you have to do in order to wash your hands before eating at this place? You have to either take your food with you into the bathroom before you sit down, or you have to do one of the following, and have the line get like ten people longer by the time you're done: A) go in the front and ask to use the washroom... you'll be escorted over there, or; B) go past the line, telling everyone as you go that you're just going to the washroom, and then do it, and leave, and come back at the end of the line, and hope nobody just randomly punches you or something. So there's that. And you can try to get someone to save you a place in the line.

If it's breakfast and you actually managed to get your hands clean, make sure you show up in the first half hour to get any protein that's not peanut butter or milk. That means getting in within the first half hour. That doesn't mean you can show up at 9am and expect some love. Maybe, maybe not. They have hard boiled eggs at the beginning and they run out right away. Nice. Try cracking into one of their eggs with dirty hands. Nine times out of ten you'll end up just eating the yolk.

Actually, their breakfast is so ghetto, they officially call it a snack instead of calling it breakfast. If you're into pastries and peanut butter, have at it. It gets old fast.

There's absolutely no way to tell whether or not the peanut butter you're putting on your bread has been smeared with fifty different hobos' used spoons. Yum. There's always a bunch floating around in there.

Anywhere you sit, some crazy must mutter at you. Or shout. Or start with muttering and slowly build to shouting. They need you to keep wondering whether they're talking to you, and also make out just enough of what they're saying to be afraid of them. Go ahead and change seats. There'll be another one waiting for you.

It's full to the brim with thugged-out thugs, thugging out another thugged-out day, yelling at each-other about violence stuff, brushing up against you and then yelling "don't touch me bro," and generally intimidating everyone, including the staff. The staff are so unprepared to deal with security issues, that the whole place just feels like waves of static are always going through it, ready to build into a shock. And it does. Some pretty bad flip-outs in there. It's so bad when you're right next to it, or in somebody's path to the door. It's so, so bad.

It looks, feels, and tastes like jail.

The washrooms are so cramped it's like they were designed to cause conflict.

If you eat there too much, your feces turns orange. Enough said.

Wow, this site gets used a lot, comments are going unanswered, and the calendar is sketchy

Wow, this site gets used a lot. 78 pageviews yesterday. Over a hundred today. Most visits to the site start with a search like "free food in toronto" or "food banks in toronto" or something like that.

But the comments are going unanswered. It's bad. Comments from a year ago are just now getting responded to. They got lost in the shuffle. Nobody was paying attention, but that's changed.

The calendar is sketchy. Google's Calendar cloud software has a weird bug with repeating events. A permanent solution still hasn't been found! So that's bad.

Great. The lunches at Evangel Hall and Good Shepherd disappeared off the calendar.

This sucks. Google Calendar has been betraying us all. It has this known glitch that removes repeating events randomly. So... who remembers what their EHM lunches are all about on weekdays? It's at 10:30am, monday to friday right? Because of course their calendar only lists when the drop-in opens and closes, not when the meals are served. DOUBLE SIGH.

Good Shepherd, of course, is easy to remember. Every single day from 2pm to 4pm.