What I've been up to lately - February 2023

Every Canadian knows that January and February are some of the worst months of the year, so we packed up and headed to sunny California for some adventure, good eats and relaxation.

Food I Ate and Places I Visited - Cali Edition

First things first – plane snacks are the most important of all snacks. There must be something salty, sweet and chocolatey. My go-to's are pringles (hello, hard container, so my chips never get crushed), nibs, and Pocky. Plus magazines, not iPad magazines but real magazines that you buy at the airport. My choices were Dwell Magazine and Elle Decor.

And to watch – I decided to dive into Inventing Anna on Netflix - based on the intreguing article I read a couple of years ago. And I'm glad that I did, this 9 part mini-series was a lot of fun to watch and to see if you think that Anna was guilty of all charges. Julia Garner is a master actor! I would definitely recommend it.

So what did we do? We tried to do everything single thing outside. We ate outside, biked along the Vencie beach, rode horses through the Hollywood Hills, did a 3hr hike, went to the Santa Monica Farmers Market and laid in the sun in Palm Springs.

We also did some fun things inside too. I took a class at The Class, did a float at Pause Studio, hit up The Comedy Store for some late-night LOLs and had a trivia night at the hotel in Palm Springs.

A couple of food highlights for us:

• The deep-dish pizza (and salad that I cannot stop thinking about) at Quarter Sheets Pizza

• Eating babka on the gorgeous patio at Gjusta

• The Cardamom Rose latte at The Butchers Daughter

• Anything at Petit Trios

Not a bad way to spend a week in the sun!

What I Read

TVO's: Plan A for housing is failing in Ontario. What’s Plan B?

It's very easy right now to look at the state of the market and panic, but real estate is a long purchase and will go through its own cycle. While at this ~very~ moment in time, it does seem that there is no longer any demand for Toronto housing, all signs for the future are clearly pointing to a much bigger problem. And a housing shortage seems to be brewing just under the surface.

Canada will need to build a new home — whether that’s a detached house, a purpose-built rental home, or a condo — every single minute, for a decade, to meet the federal affordability target. Every month we fall behind that target puts us deeper in the hole and further from restoring any sense of affordability to Ontario’s cities.

The Narwhal's: Research shows more highways don’t fix traffic congestion. So why is Ontario still building them?

You've probably heard about the proposed Highway 413 and how advocates say this won't solve the traffic congestion. This also fascinated me because you would assume that more and wider highways will fix traffic, but this article does an excellent job explaining why that's not the case. The Ontario government's own projections show that congestion won't stop being a problem on its new highways, either. This begs the question, does paving over part of the Greenbelt and prime farmland to build a highway help Ontarians and create the urban sprawl we need? Studies have shown that investment in public transportation would help reduce carbon emissions and clear up our current highway traffic.

People tend to think of cars on an urban highway like liquid flowing through a pipe — if the pipe gets wider, the liquid drains faster. But in reality, city traffic actually behaves more like a gas, expanding to fill whatever space is available.

New York Times: Glossier Gets a Makeover

I've loved Glossier since I learned about them many years ago. While at the beginning of their journey, they were all about the millennial pink, the redesign of their Soho location shows that they are fully embracing all things Gen Z. It's complete with a wet bar (think Genius bar but for makeup and skin-care services), a carnival claw machine that gives shoppers a chance to win branded hair clips and merch. I'm just daydreaming about when their first Canadian store lands in Toronto.

That's it for now! See you next month 👋