Today it is pronounced Spadina, but that was not always so. An expression I learned from my dad who learned it in the 1940s: “Spadeena if you like it; Spadina if you have no choice.” People who lived in the nice areas north of the Dupont hill/raised shoreline tended to call it Spadeena, whereas people who lived between the Dupont hill/raised shoreline down to the lake tended to call it Spadina.
In the 1980s, my frat bought a place on Spadina below the hill from a cult group’s drug rehab that had shit caked on the main floor bathroom’s ceiling, walls and floor. Yes, ceiling.
The closest laundromat was known for people from the native friendship centre across the street striping down to their underwear while the rest of their clothes were in the wash/dry.
The residents of the halfway house beside our place routinely stole our bikes to ride to the subway station.
As you might guess, we always pronounced it Spadina.
Thank you but I did not play the “Shoe”. I was the tour manager and FOH guy for an artist that did. Having spent quite a bit of time in Canada, I knew it had to have a dark underbelly somewhere, I just did not expect it to surround the place the the Stones apparently use to warm up for their North American tours.
Aside from the ceiling shit, on Spadina I have been hit twice by cars while riding my bike and once while driving. The first time I was stopped on my bike at a red light. A car came up beside me, stopped, and turned right – right over my bike. The second time I was riding along and a person in a parked car opened his door. The third time a geezer turned left into my car while I was sitting in traffic – he wanted to turn into his drive, but it was blocked by traffic (me) and several schoolgirls walking on the sidewalk.
And a few blocks north on Spadina from the Horseshoe is the El Mo – as in the Stones playing there and the prime ministers wife playing with the Stones’ Wood’s wood, about the same time that Richards was busted in the city for heroin.
The Elmocambo on Spadina near college – back then it was a dive bar that attracted great bands. In 77 the Stones played there as a surprise gig (hell, over the decades just about everyone has played there). That was when Maggie Trudeau was being boned by Charlie Woods (she was at the El Mo concert as well), and it was about that time when Keith Richards was arrested for having heroin in his hotel room, eventually leading to a conviction and a couple of CNIB benefit concerts in 79.
He looks Black to me. Admittedly we don’t get a great look - all shots are from a distance or jumpy up close, but his skin is noticably darker than the others around him, he has the observable pale palms vs dark back of hands. He has a gray haired beard so it’s hard to make out from his face. No close ups, but he looks Black to me. Not merely dirty.
There’s a shot of his face in the action at 56 seconds. He may be Mediterranean, East Asian or Indian/Pakistani, but he does not appear to be of (mainly) black African descent.
I have studied that clip in detail, and freezed the image at 56 seconds. It just isn’t a clear enough image to really tell, though from the features we can see it does appear more likely he’s as above.
