The South Bayview Bulldog

There are many ways to spend your Victoria Day, but these good ladies found an especially worthwhile occupation today. They were busy on the grounds of St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church, 1399 Bayview, cleaning up and planting.

The notorious corner of Welland Ave. and Moore Ave in Moore Park is where the police harvest a bumper crop of fines. It’s a $60 hit for those caught turning right between 4 pm and 6 pm Monday to Friday. Of course, the bylaw preventing these turns isn’t really about preventing turns. The turns have no effect on traffic at the corner. No, the bylaw is about keeping home-bound rush hour traffic out of Moore Park. And it does that. But what about Victoria Day, a statutory holiday when there is no rush hour? And no rush hour traffic. Well, today the police were at Welland and Moore stopping and ticketing hapless Sunday drivers because they made the illegal turn. Does robo-ticketing like this bring the police into disrepute? Quite probably.

For a supposedly rainy day, Saturday was dashed sunny. And so Mr Duck, possibly a decoy, was out at Elegant Garage. (No ducks were injured in the making of this post). Down the street, the Hoodie Buddies, sweatshirts with built-in headphones (!) were on display at DEW. Right, we’re still having trouble processing the new Shoppers Drug Mart sign. That marquee hasn’t looked better since it was hefted up there in 1936 as part of the Bayview Playhouse movie theatre. Check out historic pictures from an earlier Bulldog post.

Yes, it’s time for the 2011 issue of the Second Cup Rogues Gallery in which we feature the ever fine-looking crew of this South Bayview coffee bar. That’s owner Hong Ngo at the upper left followed by his happy associates from left to right Ally, Gabe and Sadie. Second row, from left, Andy, Steve, Sophie and Matt.

In one of the many junk yards east of Laird Drive lies the 1954 Plymouth Savoy pictured above, centre and right. No one recalls today that Johnny Cash did a commercial for Chrysler (owner of the Plymouth brand) in 1954 when he was getting started. In that ad he called the Plymouth “the best car I ever owned.” This was remembered by the ad executives at Chrysler. In 1972 Cash was hired to take part in a Chrysler promotion in which the world was asked to “Help us find the best car we ever owned.” The winner of this contest was Mrs. Ray Hild of Tacoma, Washington (shown at the left with Cash) whose 54 Plymouth had but 14,500 miles on it. This means that Mrs. Hild was putting barely 800 miles a year on her Plymouth. Wonder where it is today? Certainly not rusting on Esandar Drive in Leaside.