Sights and Sounds at the Distillery:
 
I went to the Distillery District on Sunday to check out the pre-Beaches Jazzfest scene.  I've said this before, but the Distillery District is my new favourite place.  Yes, it's become touristy and expensive, but it's one of the few cool places in the city that's all 19th century but not "look don't touch".  The jazz was pretty good, the weather was not.  But every time it rained we just ducked into another art gallery.  A few things I noticed:

• While I was sitting in the Sandra Ainsley gallery, I noticed a woman who had all the appearances of being blind (the dark glasses and the white stick kind of tipped me off).  However, she walked to each piece and stopped.  She even asked a by-stander how much the giant rotating glass cube cost and when he couldn't find the price tag she helped him out by pointing to a tiny square on the floor.
• Outside the bakery there was a one-legged pidgeon.  The bird just hopped around on the one leg, eating the stuff under the picnic tables, flying off if people got too close, but always came back and hopped around again.
• I saw the skinniest woman ever.  She had to have been something like 4 and a half feet tall, but her legs were nothing but skin-wrapped bones.  Well, I couldn't tell with one of her legs since she was hobbling around in a cast.
• There was a Chinese girl with Down syndrome that passed me a couple of times.  Even though, statistically, Down syndrome effects everyone of any racial background equally, I still think it's rare to see it in someone of Asian descent.
• One of the great things about the Distillery District is that it's incredibly clean.  This is largely thanks in part to the boys they hire to walk around with garbage bags and tiny rakes to clean up all manner of crap on the ground, even the small blue water bottle lid that one of them saw near the bench I was sitting at.  As he walked away I finally saw what was written on the backs of the red shirts they wore:  "Don't Litter".

"Come one come all into 1984"