March Of The Mucky Mucks

A few years ago I spent a month in Vancouver. Our rental condo overlooked the asphalt that most West Vancouverites had to take to access the glistening towers of downtown Vancouver. As I peered below, I was struck by two things:
1) almost every car I saw was a luxury car.
2) not a single Ford Focus wagon.

It's common knowledge that West Vancouver is an expensive place to live. It is one of Canada's preeminent mucky muck enclaves. If you can afford to live there, then you can afford to drive something more worthy than a 3-series BMW. I did see a number of 3-Series BMWs, mind you. I suppose the maids and mechanics need cars too!

I've had a similar experience here in Toronto. Every morning Wendy and I cross two mucky muck feeder streets. Jarvis Street allows those who call Rosedale and the Bridle Path home to get to their downtown offices. It's the first street we cross every morning, and it's a parade of wealth without fail. This morning's image depicts a typical Jarvis Street as taken from the view of a pigeon (me). If only I was a pigeon (shit hawk).....target practice from above!

The other muck-worthy feeder-fodder road is Avenue Road. Wendy and I cross it just before we get to her UofT office. Avenue Road takes the muckers from tony Forest Hills and Lawrence Park to their towers of capitalism. Like Jarvis Street, it provides an endless parade of BMWs, Jaguars, Audis, Range Rovers, Mercedes Benz, and obscenely large SUVs.

Crossing these streets makes me nervous. I sense that the drivers on these streets feel entitlement. I'm richer than you, boot boy, so get out of my way! Maybe they can smell that I keep a Ford Focus wagon back in the New Brunswick backwoods? I don't know how they'd know as I tend to mind my own business as I cross their intersection wearing tatty Levi's, a five year old non-black/non-Canada Goose jacket and a low budget toque. Perhaps it's the blade of timothy protruding from my scowling, suspicious mug that sells me out?

Between the two parades of conspicuous consumption I pass by Yonge Street's beggars, bozos, buffoons, belligerents and the bewildered (likely Scientologists)....all on foot. I am, I suppose, one of them, but not all of them. I feel privileged to know the city at its gritty ground level. I am a keen observer of my own version of reality, without the luxury of Rosedale-coloured glasses. I wouldn't ever trade my dash across Jarvis Street for the walnut dash of their Jaguars. Walnut dash....hmmm....is it just a veneer?

That's a good question...is it a veneer? If you stripped away the fancy cars, obscenely large houses, ties and heels of the mucky mucks, what would be left? Would it be you and me?