Celebrity in Toronto & nerdy t-shirts
I went to the post office to pick up a package the other day and bumped into Ron Sexsmith, which made me think about Torontonians and celebrity. I understand that Ron Sexsmith may not be as well-known as, say, Bono or the Prime Minister, but he’s a very well-known Canadian artist who has received lots of attention from Canadian mass media and international music critics.
The staff at the post office must deal with him regularly, as they addressed him by name and were quick to get him exactly what he needed. Mainly, it made me wonder what would happen if someone like this would stroll into a post office in, say, Munich, or Miami. One of the many charming characteristics about Toronto is that we’re not obsessed with celebrity. Yes, we like to stop for a few minutes and watch a movie shoot in progress, and we tell all our friends when we bump into Courtney Cox walking her dog on a Sunday morning, but in general, we exhibit a very laissez-faire attitude, which I assume is why celebrities enjoy coming to Toronto: they’re allowed to be real people – no bodyguards, no screaming bands of teenage girls.
In all fairness, had I remembered I had my iPod on me at the time I probably would have asked him to autograph it for me. Alas, maybe next time.
And what did I pick up at the post office? My new podbrix/Tomi ‘Wozwear 6802′ t-shirt. It’s one of just 300 made and depicts a lego figurine styled to look like Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) holding an authentic, magnetically attached CPU idential to those used in the Apple II (as well as the Atari 2600 and a number of other great gizmos).
It’ll definitely be popular with the crowd when I line up to be one of the first inside the new Apple Store’s grand opening at the Eaton Centre, just as I did for the Yorkdale opening. Mac nerds rule!
