i caught a jazz band in detroit last night that included jimmy chamberlain. i was expecting percy jones in the band, but he wasn't there.
my reviews tend to focus more around scenarios, and leave actual analyses to one-line statements. the band was kind of lackluster, really, but i enjoyed the show enough anyways (for other reasons) that i'm glad i went.
but, the narrative last night had mostly to do with the camera, and the truth is that i've already stated everything on camera that i would normally type in a review of this sort. rather than repeat myself, i'll post the vlog.
i doubt that this will be the new normal. in fact, i expect that i'll start writing reviews before i post vlogs to ensure that it isn't - i like writing these reviews. but, for tonight, because that's entirely where my head was, that's what i have - and i don't see the use in writing out what i have on film.
vlog:
concert footage:
this is a late review, but i'm adding it to ensure i continue with it. i have a large collection of reviews, now, and don't want to have this fall into disrepair.
i hadn't been to this venue previously, and had forgotten to write down the address; i knew it was on a sidestreet behind woodward, between the park and the fox, so i just turned left blindly - and luckily found it very quickly.
it was no more than fifteen minutes past doors; it seems as though they started immediately. this might be cultural. i mean, does the opera say "doors at 8", then wait until 9:00? or is it on at 8:00 sharp? i can't say; i've never been. i'm just so used to "doors at 8 and the opening act some time around 9" that it didn't even cross my mind that the time on the ticket may have been a start time.
so, i paid my entrance and walked up near the stage. this venue was a restaurant, and a fairly nice one, so it had servers moving food out to tables and no space at the front. there was a bar stool with a good view a little to the right of the stage.
i get a tap on my shoulder...
"what can i get you?"
"that depends. do you have cheap beer?"
"$3 pbr."
"yeah, that's good."
the first set laid down the tone, which was that we're mostly in for some jamming for the night. there were some standards, but most of what got played was based around solo parts and cycled around. the piano played a solo, then the bass played a solo, then the sax played a solo and then sometimes the drums did a solo. this basic formula was followed by almost every song that wasn't a standard.
i noticed something in the intermission. there's a guy standing right in front of me, with something in his ear. i had to say something...
"dude. is that a j in your ear?"
he laughs.
"no. it's just a cigarette with the top twisted."
"k. 'cause, i was thinking you probably forgot it there and should put it away."
he laughs again.
"hey, want to take a walk out front?"
so, the second set had a hazier, looser feel to it - this is jazz after all, and i was channeling satan after the excursion outside. jimmy seemed to relax a little in the second set, when he realized he was mostly playing for old pumpkins fans rather than stuffy bourgeois jazz people. the hooting and a hollering may have been frowned upon by the bar, but he definitely fed off of it in terms of dynamics. i explain this at the end of the vlog.
walking back to the bus stop was a little strange, as i remember this feeling of avoiding being run down. every car was in on it and needed to be avoided. a kind of game of paranoid gta, in real life.
i get on the bus, and hear it from the driver.
"you're baked."
i shrug.
no problems getting through customs. and, frankly, there shouldn't have been problems, either.
i allowed youtube to "fix" the shake, and it made a mess, so i've reuploaded this.
i won't post these here daily. if you want to follow it, follow it on youtube.
well, i blew the day learning how to edit videos. it should be a
faster process, moving forward. it turned out to be fairly intuitive.
but, it was also a learning process regarding a few things. the camera
jitter was more than i expected; it turns out there's an easy fix
("stabilize"), but i should be more aware of it. also, i recorded today
at 320p because i wanted to conserve memory card space on the way to the
store to get a bigger card, and i don't think it's quite good enough.
exposure in the basement is bad, but it turns out i can fix it in
editing. the audio on the device is fine. all in all, i think i can work
quite well with this device. today's upload is going to look pretty
amateur, but hopefully that will resolve itself in a few days.
this is really just an introduction, i'm just laying down the setting.
it works, at least. maybe not so well. lol. well, there's lots of settings to play with....
i'll take it out tomorrow, to start.
it seems to be the plug, but i'm not done testing yet.
it got better when i set the exposure, but it seems to require a lot of the light for the video part. it's going to require a few experiments, clearly.
it's giving me about an hour on the 2 gb card. i'm going to want five or six hours, at least, so one of the things i'll do tomorrow is get a new card....
jessica
first, i should apologize for sending you faxes and emails; i don't have a phone.
my
name is jessica parent. i saw you about a year ago regarding
transgender hrt. you carried on a prescription i had been on for four
years and have now been on for five years. at the time, we agreed that
you would continue to prescribe the hormones from a distance, because i
live in windsor and it's very difficult for me to commute to london.
however, when i went to renew the prescription, the pharmacy received
back a note that you need to see me.
i really can't
afford to make the commute. i'm really not quite sure why it is that you
need to see me, given that we agreed it was unnecessary. do you need a
blood test? could you schedule one at a clinic here in windsor, and have
the results faxed to you?
i'm exploring further
options, here, but they're kind of bleak. i have an appointment with a
family doctor on nov 17, and i'm hoping that works out. i'm also
communicating with an endocrinologist, but he's put a condition down to
attend a workshop in toronto with a year-long waiting list, and that's
kind of a non-starter. i may be able to convince him to waive this, but
it's up in the air right now.
if it's just a blood
test, i can do that. but i would really like to avoid the bus fare; i
could do it, if it's my only choice, but i live on odsp and it's going
to be tight up against my budget.
if you require
regular visits, i suppose i understand. i think i've been on hormones so
long, that it's just a question of a check-up, and i do feel healthy
enough that i think it's probably superfluous, but i realize there are
due diligence issues, as well. but, i can't commit to that.
in
the short run, i'm hoping maybe you could give me another 3-6 months to
allow me to exhaust options here. again: if it's just a blood test, i'm
more than willing to do that. if not, and you're ok with another few
months, i'd ask you to let me know so i can ask the pharmacy to fax
another request.
i know this is not ideal. *i'm* the
one that's struggling to find a doctor, here, that's at a reasonable
distance. i'm not quite sure why this is proving so difficult. but, it's
obviously kind of frightening to come up against the idea of not being
able to find hormones, after already transition fully for all functional
purposes. i hope that the urgency is understood and the difficult
situation is accounted for in your decision.
london clinic
Good morning Jessica,
Thanks
so much for your email. We can absolutely empathize with the difficulty
to get here for an appointment with the distance and financial
constraints. I showed Dr. Martin your email and he came up with a bit of
a compromise, I hope this can work. He has agreed to extend the
prescriptions until June but in the meantime, if you could find a way to
make it up here for an appointment that would be very important before
we are able to give more beyond this date. The issue is just with the
due diligence, for him to be able to be accountable and act in a
medically responsible way while prescribing medications it is essential
that we see you in our office for follow-ups. Hopefully the extension
will make it a little easier to find a way to get here at some point
between now and then. Let me know that you would be agreeable to this
plan and where you would like me to send the refill for you
medications. If there is anything else I can do to help, don’t hesitate
to let me know.
jessica
probably the easiest thing to do would be for me to fax the refill request from the pharmacy. does that work for you?
extending
it to june will give me more than enough time to figure things out
here, so that is ideal: thank you. i will know if i need to make another
appointment within a few weeks, and if i do i will call you near the
end of november to make it. if i don't, i'll let you know as well. london clinic
Hi Jessica,
I'm so glad to
hear this plan will work. You can for sure have the pharmacy fax over
the refill requests and I will fill it out and fax it back to them :)
Monday, October 19, 2015
so, why am i doing this? what are my motives? what are my goals?
the cynical assumption is no doubt that i'm looking to cash a check, but in fact i live very happily on disability and have no real incentives to generate income. i mean, i'm not going to turn it down if it comes. and, sure, i'll pay a little bit back. but i'm simply not desperately trying to charm myself out of wage slavery, because i'm actually not in it. i made a decision several years ago that i would not live under the goal of profit maximization; i've held to it fairly well to this point and i don't plan on reversing myself on it.
that's maybe something to grasp about me, overall: i need real motives, not just monetary ones. it's the dour existentialist in me that sees the society around me as disparagingly absurd. i just don't find capitalism motivational; this is the real reason that i have not been able to survive without state aid - i become hopelessly depressed and unable to function when forced to work to exist. i mean, look at how much writing i do for free. i'm rambling with an aim. i need that. methods to madness and whatnot. i don't even mirror with an ad space; and while i do plan to mirror, i don't plan to put ads up. call me a fool if you'd like, but understand that the feeling is mutual.
that said, i do plan to monetize these videos and that is a definite difference. i have not and will not monetize any of my music videos. i'm comfortable with monetizing this, so why not? but it's not a motive, so much as it's just possible gravy. i'm happy as i am, but could think of plenty of activist things to do with a larger stream of income.
the primary reason i'm doing this is to act as a gateway to the music. when i first put up my other youtube channel, i had no real expectations for it. but, i learned quickly that the commenting system could act as an effective means of promotion so long as i was consistently being interesting or provocative - which are things that i'm naturally good at. i found my hits growing relatively quickly, and on a fairly steep curve, as a consequence of posting insightful, witty and/or challenging comments on other people's videos - or, from time to time, just being a good troll.
over the last few months, youtube has taken steps to hurt "spammers". was i spammer? well, it depends. i was certainly advertising, but it was through the stealth approach of posing interesting questions rather than the obvious approach of pushing links in your face. i might suggest we're all better off for that and it's a kind of fair game type of spamming. but, purposefully or collaterally, i was caught up in the anti-spam shifts and have seen hits come down dramatically. as i understand that this is systemic, i realize i need to take further steps.
now, a vlog can only act as a frontend for something else if it is actually interesting, and can actually hold an audience, and the fact that i think i can do this is a big part of the point. on the one hand: merely look at my comments. look at the arguments, debates, discussions. i'm obviously able to generate interest. it's more than that.
i think the primary reason i'm of interest is that i can offer a worldview into a "real life" transgendered person. by that, what i mean is a lower class transgendered person that neither lives a celebrity lifestyle nor has had any plastic surgery. the media is complicit in this perpetual, brutal stereotyping of transwomen as these passive little barbified bimbos that spend their whole lives fantasizing about becoming porn stars. i don't wear fishnets. i don't have a boob job. i don't talk like rupaul. i'm really rather shockingly normal. i think that this kind of realness is what is missing from the conversation, because so many of us are so shy and so unwilling to draw attention to it. i can walk into this space fairly freely; i openly identify as specifically trans and will actually correct you if you suggest or imply otherwise. i have no social aspirations in either gender for this kind of open discussion to interfere with. hopefully, by presenting the perspective of a "normal" trans person, i can help break down stereotypes of the shallow, materialistic porn star or model wannabe transfemale. did you know that transgendered people are actually statistically of greater likelihood to be of above average intelligence? it's a condition that is actually correlated very strongly with bookishness, aloof intellectualism and sometimes crippling levels of introversion. very few of us want to be porn stars. most of us would prefer to spend a saturday night in the library than at the club.
the second reason is that i often find myself walking over long distances and mentally putting aside thoughts to write down somewhere later. as i spend a lot of time walking, i spend a lot of time thinking. i think some of these thoughts are worth sharing. this goes back to the same political motives i have in ranting everywhere. i suppose this is more of the traditional vlog, right: the webcam in the bedroom. but, i won't do that. if i'm at home, i'd actually prefer to write it down - i think more fluidly when i'm typing. rather, a substantial part of this blog is going to be me talking into the camera as i'm walking around in the wee hours of the morning, ejecting scattered thoughts and various insights.
that brings up another point: i'm a single person. this is by choice, by desire and without any reservations. i couldn't imagine not being single. but, what that means is that this is an exercise in introversion, rather than a display of social behaviour. as an outlet, that might be healthy, for me.
i also think it will be good for me to need to have a greater incentive to focus on how i present myself. as i'm single, and live on disability, i can go through rather long periods of personal neglect. if i need to be on screen every day, or every other day, that is going to make a big difference in how i treat myself, which will have consequences in terms of self-esteem. i think this will be good for me.
so, these are the social and personal goals i have in running a vlog. they may not always be obvious, as you're following me to a concert or watching me make lunch. but, i hope that i'm able to use this vlog both to build awareness and to help myself deal with various issues - as well as to draw attention to myself as a working artist.
in fact, i wish i had launched this three or four years ago. it could have caught me hitch-hiking, or maybe caught a few things from occupy.
vlogs are largely trivial. it's what a vlog is. sometimes, you'll have to watch me make spaghetti or something. but, i go for long walks, too - routinely. not just in windsor, but also in detroit. concerts. recording. overall, i'm probably considerably more exciting than you or most people you know are, even if i'm essentially always by myself.
what i'm thinking is that it might act as a reasonable front-end for the music production. i was using the comment system to great effect for a while, but youtube then went and changed the way the system works in such a way that it almost seems designed to explicitly prevent me from doing what i was doing. they sell ads, right? if i'm using the comment system for free advertising, i'm breaking their model. so, they've done several things - i could list 5 or 6 - to make it harder for people like me to do what i was doing. i got a little touch of exposure, anyways - enough to make me think restrategizing is worthwhile. but, it's clear that they've broken what i was doing. they've crashed me from 200 hits/day to 10 hits/day.
this seems to be a better advertising strategy for right now. we'll see how it goes.
i bought a $50 camera from best buy. it should be here in five or six days. expect this to launch saturday; i'll be posting daily updates here, as well.
yeah.
i just ordered this cheap little guy:
i'd normally go and pick it up because shipping is half the price of the object, but this looks like it's last gen - that they're trying to get rid of it, really - and so it's free shipping.
the key point is it's cheap. but, it's also waterproof, which is....i'm not going to go swimming with it, but i don't want to worry about it in the rain, either.
the actual truth is that i'm really not well-versed in the language of megapixels and digital video. i'm going to guess that the differences in video quality past a certain point are largely trivial. and, you know, i don't know how long i'm going to do this for. i'm not expecting pristine quality, but i'm maybe not requiring it just quite yet, either. i'm sure it'll be fine - or better than fine, really.
i've got plenty of rechargeable batteries, although i'll have to experiment with how much power the device uses. i'll have to figure out how much storage i'm going to need for an average ten hour adventure and get the right sized sd card, as well. i suspect my old 2 gb card for pictures is too small.
the actual reality is that this device was probably ten times the price ten years ago. this is how i operate with technology - i wait, i get the last gen when it's falling into obsolescence and then i actually use it to it's potential. i'm lucky enough to be living through the period where technology is plateauing, allowing for what is truly high end technology to sell for basically nothing, in order to drive the market. i actually probably fluked out on that.
should be here by friday.
yeah. decided. if i can find a usable camera for under $100.
i'm thinking about starting a vlog.
all the popular vlogs are families. it's great and everything, from a certain perspective, i guess. i think i have something a bit more unique to offer - single transgender canadian that is a total loner and is right on the us border and that is often on foot, heads to concerts, etc.
i guess a lot of it is going to be kind of trivial, but it's what a vlog is, right? a lot of it it's going to be me walking around by myself and talking into the mic.
i think there's some other upsides to it. i would be comfortable monetizing a vlog channel, for example - i won't monetize the music channel. it could maybe create exposure for the music, and possibly even income.
i'm sort of wishing i'd vlogged some of the more erratic moments of the last three or four years. hitch-hiking from ottawa to windsor, through toronto, would be great to have on tape; i tried to document it through writing, but it only gets you so far. and i'm sure i'll have more than a few more crazy moments.
in fact, i suspect halloween could be a bit of a ride, with deafhaven early and probably hitting a rave later. it's going to depend on the weather, though - i'm not floating around detroit all night if it's snowing.
Friday, October 16, 2015
i've been over this before. they expect me to show up dressed like a prostitute. and i think a part of it may be trying to get them to understand that i'm 35 years old. i don't look it. i get that. but the truth is that i'm old, and i dress like i'm old, which is to be expected. i don't have any patience with this "35 is the new 25" stuff, and this refusal to grow up. i don't want to be 25. i'm happy to be out of that headspace. i don't want to walk into a doctor's office and be analyzed like a piece of meat.
it's dehumanizing.
these doctors - they're creepy old men. i'd mostly rather they didn't touch me at all, kind of thing. to have them evaluate your gender based on whether they find you attractive is - there's something wrong with this. it's like, "i'm wearing a sweater because i don't want your creepy ass ogling me, you sonofabitch.".
they honestly seem to expect me to walk in in fishnets and heels and laugh provocatively when they speak. it's really disgusting.
it's this base archetype of patriarchally enforced "femininity" that they want reflected back at them.
i had one ask "what are you, some kind of lesbian?".
like as though that might disqualify me, if it were true. (i'm asexual. just no interest in sex.)
i had another frown and clearly write me off when i claimed i was a feminist. as though transwomen being feminists is some kind of contradiction, and disqualifying.
it's 2015, guys. i know you're in your 60s. but, you could try to keep up just a little.
that week just zoomed by...
i've had some running around to do with doctors. again. they're such assholes. and often surprisingly averse to evidence-based reasoning, in favour of rigidity to strict protocol. you'd think you're dealing with the military half the time...
they've got me in this ridiculous loop. the same people that just rediagnosed me with gender dysphoria want me to go through a training program in toronto for people that have yet been diagnosed. this is ridiculous; i could be teaching the program. but, i'd do it if it's a day program and there's an easy end to it. but, it's a months long program with a year long waiting list. and, here's the bizarre part: there's an open letter on their web page requesting that doctors do not send people through this program and just assign hormones themselves.
so, they won't represcribe until they send me through a program that is telling them to go ahead and prescribe already. it's just rigidity to a set of protocols, oblivious of anything resembling independent thought or adherence to logic.
you can imagine a far side cartoon at a school for the gifted with a star on the floor beside a christmas tree and a child frowning - because there's no instruction manual.
so, i'm calling more doctors. and more doctors. until i can find one with some common fucking sense. surely, it's inevitable, right?
i mean, it's not an option to go off hormones. i can't detransition. i'm already done. i'd sooner kill myself than put myself in that kind of state. and, if i do, it will be in their front office.
i've got some things done, though, and am ready to sit down for a few days.
i'm going to take a shower this afternoon and should hopefully get some more troubleshooting in tonight.
Monday, October 5, 2015
something i was able to determine yesterday is that both the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj records sound outstanding through the mp3 player.
i'm going to be getting back to work today. i'm at least convinced that i haven't been hearing things, that there are really serious differences on playback.
about a year ago, detroit's famous punk rock bowling alley bar unleashed a minor crisis in the city by converting itself into a split disco/folk bar (disco upstairs, indie/folk downstairs), supposedly under the impression that the punk rock era was over. generations of rock fans in the city have been going through the stages of loss ever since, stuck somewhere between anger and depression. the topic still comes up regularly in smoking sections, with the lone explorer that's set foot in the new world reporting their findings to shocked listeners who can't believe it's really that bad.
"the whole upstairs is a disco club?"
"yup. all of it."
"there's no other section? it's ALL disco? it's really that bad?"
"yup. the whole thing."
"no. like, i mean - not even a room..."
"all of it. it really is that bad."
whether due to popular outcry or increasing financial losses or some other reason, the downstairs folk section seems to be in the process of converting itself back into a punk bar. want my honest guess? punk rock fans are losers, sure. but we're not the massive dorks that an indie/folk bar will bring in. you don't sell a lot of beer to these people. they drink herbal tea, and complain that the smoker on the other side of the room walked by them on the way in, which will possibly affect their grandchildren by offsetting their genetic energy.
bars will always serve punks because we're the market. there's no deficit of coffee houses for the indie dorks to congregate in.
detroit is currently a mess, as woodward is still being torn up. to be frank, i completely forgot that was happening, and walked directly into the construction without any knowledge of detours; thankfully, very little was required. but, it was a cold and very dark walk through broken concrete. i had the first jjjjjjjjjjjjj record in the phones, which was rather effective over it's second, atmospheric half. and, i can report that it sounded correctly through the mp3 player, as well.
sisters of your sunshine vapor are a local act that i've near-missed repeatedly, but finally caught last night. you can guess by their name that they want to exist in a specific period, but the result is somewhat stale; i was waiting for the stonehenge to fall rather than looking around for the ghost of syd. but, calling something stale does not suggest that it's terrible. the rhythm section is actually pretty solid. what they really need, i would argue, is a second guitarist to fill the sound out a little and take it over the top.
bands like this tend to float for long periods without accomplishing anything, but there's a long shot possibility that they might develop.
it'd been three or four years since i'd heard any grooms, and they've definitely expanded their sound quite a bit. they've also become a three piece, it seems. this is the only video i could find of them as a three piece...
they still sound a lot like sonic youth, but they seem to be trying to break away from it. you can tell because they're moving in multiple directions. i've seen this a thousand times and it works out one of two ways: if they settle on a specific sound, it will no doubt be because they get some kind of financial pull on it. then, the focus becomes on compressing the sound as much as possible, and it quickly becomes boring. but, if they keep flailing around and the experiments increase rather than decrease then they have the potential to take it to the next level.
it's hard to say what direction they're going in. for the moment, the set was hit and miss: when they wanted to rock, they could and did but a lot of it was passive and mediocre jangle-pop.
so, i'm learning that a part of the experience of living in detroit is developing a healthy level of cautious fear regarding the architecture, and then conquering it.
i didn't see a lot of shows upstairs before it transitioned, but the ones i saw were loud: cloud nothings, boris. the place shook. like, uncomfortably. as the opening sets were playing, it actually crossed my mind a few times that this was better because we're closer to the ground, so it shouldn't be so scary.
but, it only took a few seconds before the wobble asserted itself. i've been to enough shows to know that this was more than the bass from the speakers; the floor was shaking left-to-right. that is, perpendicular to the motion of the sound waves. very bad.
i took a look outside and saw the concrete torn up, right to the front door. what's under the building? three hundred years of caverns, sewers? hidden treasures? masonic lodges? hoffa? who knows; but i know i'm not on solid ground. and, what are the chances that detroit found it in it's budget to do a proper engineering assessment to put in the rail system? you think that's on illitch' mind? you think he cares at all? no; i'm thinking that chances are high that there was no assessment done at all...
i had to move back a little, which blunted the physical effect of the sound. i'm aware that this is a large part of the experience; i've been to plenty of shows where the sound is pummelling. but, i think my intuition of my surroundings was justified.
i did slowly move up, but the show was done by the time i was getting the courage to get to the front.
there was a benefit, though: i got to see a relatively interesting light show from a bit of distance. you can't see it in this video, presumably because the camera is too close. but it's a wall of white light surrounding the stage, making the band members appear as apparitions. simple but effective.
as for the band? they're a known entity in what they do; joy division goes grunge. swans performing nirvana covers. brutal and dark, but always melodic and never stupid. creative use of guitar effects. but, you're not getting half of it by watching this video. this is a band that you'll get the most out of by seeing live, and letting the sound physically affect you.
and, as for myself, i need to get over this fear of detroit's architecture, as healthy as it may be.
i hadn't bothered to check the time; it was moving a little slower than normal, due to a chance encounter in the smoking section before aptbs. but, i get out and check my clock and it's three minutes until the last bus. no chance. shit.
i make the decision to walk to the tunnel and wait for a cab, aware that i'm still feeling a little funny from the chance encounter and thinking i'm probably better off getting a coffee, anyways. after waiting at the bus station for a while, i finally approach the border guards to ask them to call me a cab.
"call you a cab?"
"yeah."
"where are you from?"
"i live in windsor."
"they call cabs in downtown windsor?"
"well, i'm from ottawa. i don't know. i never use taxis, i walk everywhere, it's just that you've got all these barricades here preventing me from getting home unless i'm inside an automobile of some sort."
"it's a security concern."
"can you call me a cab, please?"
"no. what you do is go to that road over there and wait for one to drive by."
i've really never done that before. like i say: i walk everywhere. but, sure enough, there's a sign on the road that i don't think i've ever seen before: taxi stand.
it's about ten minutes, which is not bad.
"how much to get just across the border?"
"across what border?"
"to canada."
"to canada? you have documents?"
"yup."
"$60."
i got him down to $50, but that was it.
see, here's the thing: even if i could afford that, and was willing to pay it, i'd still be stuck. my bank card only works in canada. i had $17 in cash on me, which i thought would be enough - it's literally two minutes to the other side. but, the cabbie is concerned about getting searched by customs ("i'm a muslim. they always search me.") and it's just a no go.
a few minutes later, cabbie #2 pulls up...
$60. still. he tells me it's a flat rate set by the company due to losses stemming from hold ups in customs.
so, basically, i have to pay $60 for a two minute drive across the border that i'm not allowed to walk because border security does routine racial profiling on cabbies doing their job. great system. very efficient.
in the end, i was at the bus stop for more than 6.5 hours: from 1:45 to 8:30. i took a few walks. i spent well over an hour on the couch in the fancy hotel lobby across the street when i was getting a little cold; strangely, nobody asked me to leave. i was dressed to be able to walk for a few hours, but not to sit outside for six hours so it was really necessary to get in and warm up. another novelty was getting back pennies on a coffee purchase, which no longer exist in canada.
i asked two different cops if they could just shuttle me over, and they both refused. as mentioned, it's a two-minute drive under the bridge, if that. i had documents. 10 degrees isn't enough to kill you after even a few hours, but after 6 hours? as mentioned: i went in repeatedly, because the shivering felt as though it was onsetting hypothermia, and i do believe that this is the right range of temperatures.
i'm considering looking into the responses the cops provided me and pushing the point. i do believe that they should have been required to shuttle me across.
but, i know now that catching a cab in the middle of the night isn't an option and that if i'm stuck downtown then i need to find an all-night coffee shop close to the venue.
