Just the recent wanderings

About a week and a half ago I went with a couple of friends down to the nude beach on an overcast, drizzly Friday. It was a nice trip. The water was a little cool, but a good opening to the summer season.


Taking the ferry over, first to Ward's Island, and then to Hanlan's point.


This is Blockhouse Bay, where the marina is. It's often full of the most pleasant sailboats.


The boardwalk leading from the grassy area of the park through the screen of trees to the beach...


This is the end of the boardwalk onto the beach. It enters just the clothing side of the fence. Cross the fence and you can really frolic in puris naturalibus al fresco. :)


This is a high dynamic range image compsed of three infrared images of varying exposures (pardon the pun); what I call "HDR IR". This was taken just inside the fence that separated the clothing optional side of the beach (where I'm standing) from the fabric side. The sign warns that you must be dressed on the other side of the fence.


Another HDR IR image. This looks north over the fence towards the Humber Bay.


This is a panorama of the beach, looking south (hi, Rochester!) from about where you enter the nudist side of the divider.


On the way back to the city from the islands. A stereotypical, but I think still lovely, shot of the skyline with a ferryboat in the foreground.


This is where Yonge Street, "the longest street in the world" according to Guinness, actually begins... a couple of yards behind the person standing on the sidewalk are the waters of Lake Ontario.


Looking up Yonge Street from its very beginning. From here, you can drive all the way to the Dakotas, as memory serves. Along this stretch of sidewalk are mileage markers that tell how many kilometres to various Ontarian cities and towns along Yonge Street.

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Last weekend I went down to the Distillery District with a couple of the guys to listen to blues music and drink organic beer. Yeah, it's that kinda town, what can I say. :)


HDR IR image of the Canary Restaurant to be found at Cherry Street (along which we're standing) and Front Street. As I understand it, this corner has been featured in any number of TV shows and movies for its rather authentic 1940s aspect. This restaurant is, amazingly, still a going concern.

An incidental note: I took the photo about five minutes after we were witness to a minor accident at Cherry Street and Eastern Avenue in which an SUV rear-ended a van at the intersection. No real harm done, other than that the van shed about 10 pounds of rust, I nearly shed 5 pounds of brown stuff in my jeans (I was standing less than ten feet from the vehicles at the time), and the guy riding shotgun in the van bailed clutching his neck and yelling "Whiplash!" That at least got a chuckle out of the guy in the SUV. They all seemed to take it pretty well. :)


This is how the downtown looks from Cherry Street, but didn't not that long ago and won't, again, soon. The block was, till lately, an industrial site. It's been torn down to make way for condos. That's the fate of pretty much all the industrial lands downtown over the past 15 years or so. I suppose there are worse fates for a downtown than replacing over-carbonating heavy industry with over-oxygenated Yuppie hothouse flowers...


This is the entrance to the Distillery District on Mill Street (for which a still-resident brewery is named). I'm reliably informed that these gates appeared in the movies Cinderella Man (the looking-for-work scenes) and X-Men (the scene in which Magneto, as a boy in Poland, bends the steel with his mind).


As we entered and made our way down the central drag, we passed the main band shell, where some blues musicians were tuning up. This is an HDR IR image.


This is an HDR IR shot of an alleyway inside the District. It takes three shots to make an image like this; a woman entered the scene in the final shot. She comes out as a ghost in the left foreground. Kinda cool, actually. I still consider it rather ignorant to deliberately enter the field when someone is obviously compositing a photograph, however.


From where we were seated, this was the view of the first live band, who were the self-proclaimed Lester McLean Band. They were just the thing to accompany a warm late spring afternoon and quality brew. :)


Speaking of quality brew, here it is biting the dust.


My friend P-Doug consented to hold still long enough for my infrared camera to collect the requisite three images to compose this HDR IR portrait, which I believe is actually my first.

The Naked and the Fed

And so, off we went again to Hanlan's Point, where Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run, which lies to this day in the waters of Lake Ontario just offshore in Toronto.

P-Doug was teasing me on Monday about the warm temperatures both in the city and in the waters around it, offering me pity that I didn't live and work closer to the lake. I told him I was merely a subway ride away, and could venture down there whenever the mood suited either us both, or me in particular. So Tuesday night, he called me up and invited me down after work.

I wore my wandering clothes to work under my business clothes on Wednesday, and drove down to the depot to catch the subway after work was over. I stripped off my workplace veneer in the car and stored it in the trunk, and then, comfortably beach garbed, caught the subway to head down to the ferry docks.


Crossing Lake Shore Blvd.


Lining up westward down Lake Shore for the Gardiner

I arrived around 6 PM, which was comfortably within the 6:15 departure time for the ferry. P-Doug was waiting. I bought my ticket and, not seeing the usual attendant at the gate, dutifully tore my own ticket and put it in the collection box. It was drizzly that day, and as we sat waiting for the ferry, I took out the Kodak CX7330 refurb I bought this week and filmed the rain falling in the centre of the marshalling area. When the ferry came in, we went to board, and I realized to my dismay that the tickets were being gathered by the ferry operators! Luckily for me, the man collecting the tickets took me at my word that I'd paid and sacrificed my own ticket already like a good little Canadian... that little tiny bit of stiff-upper-lip British do-right attitude that still remains among us runs deep.

At this time of year, the ferry to Hanlan's does triple duty. We sailed across to Ward's Island first. Ward's Island, as you'll recall, is where we accidentally ended up last time, and had to walk clear across the islands to the eastern side to get to the beach. It's also one of the two remaining inhabitied islands in the archipelago (the other is Algonquin Island).




Algonquin Queen II at Ward's Island






Looking back at the city from Ward's Island


A cozy home on Ward's Island

After we disgorged some people at Ward's Island, the ferry headed over to Centre Island, where the restaurants and amusement park are. I don't remember if anyone got on or off there; if so, there weren't many.


City view on the way to Centre Island


Island Paradise restaurant at Centre Island



We arrived at Hanlan's Point around 7. As we headed for the beach, we walked along the path this time instead of the grass. This gave me an opportunity to photograph the sailboats moored at the jetties on Mugg's Island as we passed.


The yacht club on Mugg's Island

When we got to the boardwalk that leads out to the beach, I let P-Doug go on ahead. I used the new camera to video my walk to the beach. It ran about four minutes, along the boardwalk, to the beach, through the barrier and then past P-Doug right into the water to test the temperature. It was quite warm... warmer than the last time we were there. Much calmer, too, though it was drizzly. Here's the best part. There was not another single soul on the beach. It was like it belonged entirely to us. Made me feel kind of let down that skinnydipping was allowed! We could have gotten away with it anyway.


This one's for Kat :)

I waded back out of the water with the camera still rolling while P-Doug undressed. I started humming The Stripper, and then cut the camera to let the man undress with some dignity. He did so, and headed in, beating me to it for once. We must have been in the water for an hour, just enjoying it, chatting away during the sunset and after, as the beach grew darker and darker. Off to the southeast, it was so inky we couldn't tell where the lake ended and the sky began. But in the west, it was still quite clear. Finally we started wondering what the time was, and headed in. By then it was 8:20; the next ferry back was at 9:15, so we decided we should get going by ten to nine to make sure we made it. Till then, we wandered around, letting the air dry us off. I remember clearly standing near the end of the beach, gazing off into the distance, and catching sight of traffic racing to and fro on the Gardiner Expressway, and marveling at the idea... there I was, standing legally naked on the beach in line of sight of one of the busiest urban stretches in North America. It was a powerful realization.

Just before we left, I dashed off into the dunes for a few minutes. No real reason, other than to be bold and to be able to say I'd been in the dunes at Hanlan's Point. What I remember about that was glancing back at my footprints and seeing them almost glowing in the dark. The wet sand at the top was unusually dark, and so when it was disturbed by my feet, it yielded the light-coloured dry sand underneath. In the gloom, the subtle constrast was oddly more striking than it would have been in daylight, I think.

So then we dressed, and set off. P-Doug decided to stop at a picnic table, dry his feet and put on his socks and shoes; this ate up about five minutes. You know me; I'd brought my sandals but I wasn't about to wear them on the way back. Not with the last of summer's warm puddles left waiting for me. :) So as it turns out, the ferry was waiting when we got there -- in fact, within seconds of leaving! We had to run, just like last time, but we made it. We walked to the same LCBO as last time, and P-Doug's wife G swung by to pick us up. We all went to the Three Monkeys to eat. Couple of pints, two bowls of all-you-can-eat chili (it was all I could eat), and then off to slumberland at our respective homes. First time I've been to the beach on a day when I had work the next day. Slept like a log. I don't imagine I'll get to Hanlan's Point again this year... autumn will soon be upon us, and even if the air stays warm, the lake's going to steadily cool. But there's next year. And P-Doug has sworn he's going to be down there a lot, seeing as how he works downtown and all. I waited eight years since the city turned it back into a nude beach to go, and then waited till the end of the summer when I finally did go. Well, I'll sure make better use of it next year.

Wearing the wind

Yesterday (Friday), I made arrangements to meet P-Doug downtown after work to go out to Hanlan's Point and splash around in the altogether. Won't be warm enough to do this much longer. So, about 4 PM I set out for the subway.

I didn't have my Rebel XT with me this time, but I decided instead to bring my Aiptek Pocket DV II. It's just this little 1.3 megapixel still camera-slash-video camera that I picked up on a whim about a year ago for $70. The images are fairly low quality, but it fits in your pocket and I've found it useful a hundred times for taking a quick picture of something funny or scenic I wanted to remember and show other people, so I can't complain.

Also, I took my MP3 player with me. I could have brought a book to read on the trip, but I found more comfort in the warm, droning, and informative voice of Al Franken reading his recent best seller Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I picked this up last weekend at a used book store for $14; it's an 8-CD set that, when converted to 128 kb/s MP3s, nicely fits on a single disk. In this case, I transferred about 128 MB of the end of the book to my player, and listened to the balance of the book on the trip. Man, it's astounding the amount of wool the right wing has pulled over American eyes... but I digress.

...Okay, more digression, since this is my blog, right? :) When I was a kid, I really didn't like Al Franken. He was doing that "Let's call the 1980s 'The Al Franken Decade'" bit on Saturday Night Live, and for some reason, that really got up my nose and I wrote the guy off as a pompous jerk. Now to be fair, I was 12, maybe 13 at the time, and I guess spotting self-deprecating humour wasn't my long suit yet. Anyway, years went by, and then he showed up on SNL again, this time as Stewart Smalley. I can't explain why, but my attitude changed. Stewart's a frustrating character and his neuroses are essentially impenetrable, but he's appealing somehow and I guess it must have dawned on me that to create a personna like that, Al Franken had to be someone with a keen sense of observation and a fair amount of compassion... both of which are fairly extroverted traits that put the lie to the "Al Franken Decade" self-absorption. Anyway, I started listening to the guy, and now I think he's great. There you go, Al. Some jerk you don't even know in a different country likes you. Bet that made your day. :)

Now then... where was I? Oh, yes, on the subway. Well, I got to Union Station just before five, and I headed down Bay Street to the ferry terminal. Along the way I passed a guy playing the bagpipes. I discreetly took out the Pocket DV and started to video him. Or so I thought. The damn thing was in menu mode, and I got nothing. I was too embarrassed to give it a second pass, so we're all SOL on this one. ...Of course, given it was the bagpipes... maybe that's just as well.

I made it to the terminal just after five, bought my ticket, and sat down to wait for P-Doug. P-Doug had assured me earlier in the day that one of the trips to Hanlan's was leaving at 5:30. I listened to Al Franken talk about the ramifications of Bush's phase-out of the inheritance tax, and the minutes ticked by. 5:25, no P-Doug . I started thinking, well, do I go, and wait for him on the beach, or just sit here and we catch the next one? But of course, as scripted, the man arrived at the last moment, and we caught the ferry. I had noticed that the gate this time didn't just say "HANLAN", but "WARD HANLAN". I mentioned this to P-Doug, remarking that a well-dressed woman we saw in our line-up holding an HP printer seemed an unlikely sojourner to a nude beach, but he seemed unconcerned, which reassured me, and we caught the same ferry as last time.

Which promptly headed for Ward's Island.

P-Doug noticed it first. Me, I was content to take the ride. You know, picture your dog with his head out the car window, panting, as you speed towards a tornado or something. I was still waiting for the ferry to make its turn when he started cursing and drew my attention to our route. He voluntarily blamed himself because he'd misread the schedule, but I personally don't hold it against him. It was an easy mistake to make, and even having spotted the confusing sign, I was happy enough to board the wrong boat, so I can hardly point the finger.


The way we weren't

Anyway, we arrived at Ward's Island about twenty to five or thereabouts. Ward's is one of two harbour islands on which people still live (the other is Algonquin). Well, there was really nothing for it but to start walking. You know, they don't look like much on the map, but the Toronto Islands really are a sizeable little archipelago for a lake. Using a photo I took last time of a map display at Hanlan's Point, I can show you where it all happened. The red number "1" is the ferry terminal. "2" is the landing at Hanlan's Point, where we wanted to be. "3" is the landing on Ward's Island, where we actually wound up. And "4" is the sanctus sanctorum of the in puris naturalibus set, the nude beach. The red line drawn from "3" to "4" is the route we had to walk. I actually measured it out on a map this morning. As the crow flies, it's about the equivalent distance of walking from Parliament Street to Bathurst Street. But in actuality, because it's not a straight line, it's more like the distance from Bayview Avenue to Bathurst. More concisely: about 4.3 km. That's just a little shy of three miles. It took us 45 minutes, but we saw some really beautiful scenery along the way. The people who live on the islands have to really bust their balls to get back and forth to their jobs, shopping, movies... anything, really. But it's worth it, obviously. They're living in a Norman Rockwell painting (except the flags have the maple leaf instead of the stars and stripes).

One of the things we passed was the Ward Island fire station. The clock was extremely interesting. It features human faces at the cardinal points. Some of them, maybe all of them, look aboriginal. Toronto was a meeting place (supposedly, that's what "Toronto" actually means) for various native tribes long before the British made it their colonial capital. The people who lived hereabouts before the Europeans, Africans, and Asians arrived were of the Algonquin and Iroquois linguistic families, and there was significant conflict between them from time to time. Control of the trade here has always been important, as long as humans have lived in the Americas.


Ward's Island fire station

Eventually we got to the east end, and nearing the beach, P-Doug pulled me aside on a short cut that also took us past the Gibraltar Point lighthouse, where I got this shot. I'm surprised and a little disappointed to realize, in reviewing my shots, that I didn't photograph the lighthouse itself, just this plaque. Oh, well. You've probably seen a lighthouse, and I doubt I'd be mentioning it at all if not for the sensational story attached to it. As P-Doug tells it, the lighthouse keeper in 1815, J. P. Rademuller, was also a bootlegger. The story goes that one night, two soldiers from the nearby barracks showed up in hopes of procuring some. Supposedly, he told them he had only one bottle to sell them. They didn't believe him, killed him, ransacked the place, and it turned out to be the case. So, they buried the body nearby. Eventually, the assistant keeper discovered a patch of disturbed earth, which yielded the late Mr. Rademuller to the authorities. The offenders were court martialed and hanged, so I'm told… buzz on the sites I’ve seen is that aside from the keeper’s disappearance, the rest is likely apocryphal. But it’s a good story. So these guys actually killed someone to get booze. Now I don't feel so bad for driving 10 minutes out of my way to get to an LCBO that actually stocks the rum I like.


A story of light, liquor, and losers

When we got to the beach, it was very windy. Cloud cover was skating in from the north. The water was very active; lots of tall breakers. I stepped in right away, and the water was pretty cool... nowhere near as warm as last weekend (incendentally, you can learn a lot about the water temperature of Lake Ontario as time passes here; turns out it was 58 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit while we were there).


The weather started getting rough... the nudist beach was toss'd...


Not bad for a $70 P.O.S. camera, eh?


Trust me, there is a cityscape in there somewhere...

We decided to head south along the beach, and I made the journey wading at the water's edge. I noticed the warmth of the water picking up as we went. We finally stopped at a picnic table near the water at the north end of the beach. There was hardly anyone on the beach... it was a Friday, 6:30 in the evening, so we mostly had the place to ourselves. I stripped off and headed in. It was, I guess, about the same temperature as the first time I was there. Took a little getting used to. Out past the first sandbar, it was cooler (but I really didn't notice that till I retreated to the sandbar later). P-Doug came in too, and we splashed around and talked while watching the clouds, the sunset, someone flying a kite, and a guy parasurfing. As time passed we made our way back from neck-deep to the sandbar, which is knee-deep and where the water, I noticed, was considerably warmer (after 15 minutes, my fingers had started getting numb). We both sat around on it for a while, letting the surf crash over us. I guess we were in the water somewhere between half an hour and forty-five minutes. Finally went in, dried off, and just lounged on the picnic table, watching the sunset and the guy parasurfing. He actually passed right in front of us at one point, and I took the opportunity to video his approach. As he passed us, his sail came within about ten feet of smacking into us. I'm hoping to convert some of the frames into stills to illustrate this. If I can't, you'll just have to take my word for it. It was a pretty interesting moment. I think I can safely say that it is, without a doubt, the most thrilling event I have ever filmed while sitting naked outdoors in public. At least so far.





Sorry, no blood spurts. :)

It was around 8 PM when we decided to get going. I was really hungry by then, and it was beginning to get dark. We missed the 8:15 ferry back by about ten minutes, and were forced to wait till 9. I was in shorts and a t-shirt, and the wind was just cool enough to make it slightly unpleasant. In the meantime, P-Doug used his cell to call his wife, G, and arranged for her to meet us at the LBCO down on Queen's Quay (this is a coincidence... we are not colossal boozehounds, I swear).


Eerie green open Skydome, spooookyyy!!

From there, we headed uptown to Satay On the Road for Thai food. That was my own suggestion, partly prompted by a recent recommendation I made to a commenter to my previous Hanlan's Point posting. I had the hot and sour soup, to which I added chili oil and soy sauce... fiery! and curried beef and rice. It was delicious. The bill for me came to just over $18 with tax. I put down a $20, expecting change; taking the loonie and putting down a toonie would have put the tip over 15%. But the girl never brought the change. She just assumed this was her tip. This was unfortunate for two reasons. One, it pisses me off. What it had been a $50? Would she have assumed her tip was 31 bucks and change? I hope not... so which assume that in this case? Secondly, since there was no opportunity to make change for myself, I had no way to leave a more substantial tip (at least, in a range I felt justified). And at that point, I was hardly inclined too. So I look cheap, and she's out a fair tip. Her presumption shames us both. Sorry to end on a sour note. Ah well, when you add it all up, it was a nice evening.

Naked Truth: the Return to Hanlan's Point

Last week, I visited the nude beach at Hanlan's Point with my friend Dave, visiting from Rochester. I kind of casually asked my buddy P-Doug if he wanted to go down there this weekend just past, and to my surprise, he did. We made plans for Saturday morning, but when I noticed (thanks to an NOAA java applet P-Doug sent me) that Lake Ontario was actually at his warmest about 9 PM, and that that would let us take some fantastic sunset shots to boot, he agreed we should head down in the evening instead. As it turned out, Saturday had lousy weather, so we postponed to Sunday evening.



Winner 2005 Worst Poster Design

We parked downtown at a cheap lot P-Doug knows and took the subway the rest of the way to Union Station. Opposite us was this TTC poster about new buses, that someone had deemed "Winner 2005 Worst Poster Design". If you agree, you can (according to the sticker) register your accord at i_hate_this_ad_too@hotmail.com.



City from the water


City from the boat

We caught the ferry at the terminal just as it was heading out. Actually, our timing was split-second and impeccible the whole evening, though we were forever under the gun. These are a couple of shots looking back at the downtown as we departed. Most notable are Skydome and the CN Tower.



Approaching Hanlan's Point


I'm right behind you, Ned

About the first thing you encounter on arriving at Hanlan's Point on Centre Island is the statue of Edward "Ned" Hanlan himself. He was a champion sculler of of the 19th Century, possibly the greatest ever. He was born, lived, and died in Toronto, and was, for a time, one of its aldermen. His family lived on the island roundabout the point that subsequently carries their name.



The Dream Shot

Last time I went to the nude beach, neither Dave nor I had our cameras. On our way back, we both stopped simultaneously and spontaneously at this spot, struck by the framing of the CN Tower in the trees. I swore that the next time I made it back, I'd take this shot, and here it is.



Wow, they're naked!


They're still naked

When we arrived at the beach, it was about 6:30 PM or so. There were two or three dozen sunbathers still down there, but their numbers thinned out relatively quickly. I stripped immediately, took a couple of shots, and then made a beeline for the water. It was far warmer this time than it was last, when Dave could not bring himself to indulge. At some points between the shore and the first sandbar, it literally felt like a lukewarm bath. It was absolutely wonderful.



Dog day ending


Goodnight, sun


Silver sunset #1


Silver sunset #2


...Breathes an air of gathering gloom...

Seeing as we both had cameras, P-Doug and I took turns splashing around and sitting with our belongings. During one of my swims, the sun really began to set. I came in, and we photographed a really beautiful sunset over Mississauga to the west. P-Doug headed back into the water while I stayed ashore and experimented with some moody black and white shots. For all of these, I attached P-Doug's polarizing filter to my lens. It really brought out the contrast in the sky. I'm really pleased with these shots.



Caught in flight

At one point, a large flock of seagulls passed around me, wheeling and cutting through the air. I did my best to follow their motion, and was rewarded with a couple of nice shots of the birds in flight. This is my favourite of the bunch.



The Cruel Sea


Rush

While P-Doug was swimming around, I decided to take a risk with my new camera and waded out about waist deep. I wanted to get some really dramatic water shots. I got some really nice stuff, but ironically, the shots I like best were ones I took right at the water's edge.



Garbed in an anklet — as a hedge against nudity

The lone primate in his natural state... as much as I'm willing to inflict upon you, at any rate. Probably more than you wanted to see as it is. :)



The Edge of Night

The first ferry back after the sunset was at 9 PM, so that was our target. Since neither of us was actually wearing a watch most of the time, we had no firm idea of the time. At one point when there were only about a half-dozen others left on the beach, I chanced our stuff being stolen and went in to join P-Doug in the water. When I asked, he reckoned the time to be about 8:20. About ten minutes later we went ashore, only to find it was actually 8:45. We dressed and really hustled to catch the ferry, making the trek in a mere ten minutes. Both in keeping with my habits this summer and to speed the journey, I went barefoot. P-Doug was concerned for me, since the path is asphalt, but I've taken several four-mile walks on streets and sidewalks to the East Don Parklands this summer, so this was nothing to me. Besides, I could never have run the last hundred yards or so in my sandals; they have no ankle bracing. We made the ferry with just moments to spare, and I spent my time at the bow, photographing the city. I was taking shots at 1/5 of a second at ISO 800. Most of them are shaky and worthless, but this one came out spectacularly, I think. It reminded me of the title card to the old soap opera The Edge of Night, so that's what I've called it. I think the purple-lit rim of the Skydome is what really makes the shot.