The nightmare that has been Toronto’s political news scene for the past three years seems to have finally reached its awful zenith. With allegations that Mayor Rob Ford may have smoked crack and made homophobic, racist remarks on video, there is no end to the ill effects of this latest head-shaking fiasco: the continued reduction of our municipal political sphere to a never-ending circus; the serious harm done to Toronto’s international image by a man who claims to be raising its business profile; and the simple fact that a city that was finally starting to hit its stride has been seriously set back by its woefully inadequate mayor.

But one more unexpected, negative, and completely unnecessary effect of this mess has been the circulation of a profoundly xenophobic tone about the people who have the video in question. Though the original Gawker piece made precisely no mention of the ethnicity of the video owners, the Toronto Star article mentions the word “Somali” six times, and uses ethnicity as shorthand for easily identifying who ‘these people’ are. This is a problem.

The most obvious issue with the use of the term Somali is one of simple accuracy. If the people in question live here, they are Somali-Canadians, Canadians of Somali descent, or, ya’ know, Torontonians. It’s simply bad form and more than a bit odd that Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan, the writers of the article, would choose to mark these men out as “foreigners” rather than residents of the city.

Of course, it raises the question of why an ethnic descriptor was necessary at all. Some, like Now Magazine’s John Semley and the Star’s Andew Livingstone, have advanced the argument that including ethnicity helps to not only contextualize the story, but lends it credibility. The Somali-Canadian community at Kipling and Dixon in Etobicoke is in some ways like many other ghettoized, low-income communities across the country: drugs and drug trafficking are an undeniable problem. But the idea that ethnicity is a good predictor of behaviour—which after all is essentially the argument Semley and Livingstone are making—is exactly the problem with racial profiling. As a methodology, it’s simply a bad way to talk about individuals, because even if a practice is common amongst a group, there’s no guarantee specific members of that group will repeat the practice—or even identify as part of that group. Saying these men are Somali to link them to drugs is about as useful as pointing out the colour of their clothes.

But perhaps most galling of all is just how frequently it was repeated in the original Star piece, which had the effect of scattering a basic factual and ethical error across local media and the globe, often in unexpected ways. The notion that Ford’s acquaintances are “Somali men” has now ricocheted around the world—showing up on sites like Buzzfeed—and has now circled its way back to Canadian media, like in this troubling column from Christie Blatchford. It’s like a study in stereotypes in miniature: you invoke an inaccurate description, link something seedy to a certain ethnic group, and then watch the associations you made with that group get repeated over and over.

To put it more plainly, when of all people a Gawker writer calls you out on the pernicious effects of your rhetoric, you fucked up. Doolittle and Donovan basically repeated an old-age practice of marking certain people out as weird, threatening ‘others’, using subtle foreignness as a kind of shorthand for that not-so-subtle  Canadian xenophobia. It’s irresponsible, it’s stupid, and they should do what they can to fix their mistake.

What makes this whole mess even more depressing is the circular nature of the prejudice at work. Ford’s voter base from the 2010 election included a great number of minorities who had real, legitimate complaints about being left out of discussions at City Hall, and saw in Ford someone who would stand up for their suburban concerns. But as Desmond Cole brilliantly pointed out, Mayor Ford’s record on race is abysmal, a fact perfectly captured by the constantly contradictory rhetoric of saying he supports minority youth while he refuses to address any of the system issues that plague them. Minority voters were had by the effectiveness of Ford’s campaign team. Now, when the press quite legitimately goes after Ford, they do so in a way that completely gratuitously brings race into the equation. It’s a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t, isn’t it? And while it is Ford’s transgressions that are obviously the story here, we shouldn’t simply ignore the gross negligence that has allowed a vital community of Torontonians to get caught in the crossfire.

Yassine Zaime and Salah Barhoun are both innocent, but worried that this New York Post cover could affect the rest of their lives

By Ali Zafar

#Muslims.

Last Monday’s trending hashtag intensified my suffocating sense of dread, the one that’s ebbed and flowed since Sept. 11, 2001.

Muslims.

That dirty word stripped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his white privilege: he had been identified in news reports as a Chechen, terrorist and radical, but never American.

Because he’s Muslim. Like me.

I’d logged off from the 24-hour cycle of the world’s misfortunes that afternoon, deciding to take a breather before my workday started. I always expect something big to be breaking when I show up for my evening newsroom shift, but the news of the Boston Marathon bombings was still a shock. My stomach churned as I looked at graphic images on the newswire: the blood-splattered streets, the volunteers racing to help a man in a wheelchair with a missing leg.

And my heart dropped when I logged onto Twitter and saw #Muslims trending alongside #PrayforBoston. Was it possible that a person who calls himself a Muslim was behind those horrific images? What if his first name was Mohammad? Like mine? What if he had dark hair? Dark skin? Like me?

Anxiety, embarrassment and a shade of fear began bubbling inside me like a violent thunderstorm. Watching the news made it worse.

I watched as CNN’s John King described a “dark-skinned” male suspect under arrest.

There was no arrest.

I watched as a Saudi-born marathon onlooker, his body torn by the impact of the explosions, was plucked out of the crowd, chased and tackled by bystanders. His apartment was searched by police while he was in hospital recovering, as the New York Post crowed “FBI grills Saudi man in Boston bombings.”

He turned out to be innocent.

Sunil Tripathi, a missing Brown University student with a non-Anglo name and biracial brown skin, was incorrectly labeled as a suspect by the crowd-sourcing website Reddit.

That turned out to be utterly false.

Also making the cover of the New York Post last week were friends Yassine Zaime and Salah Barhoun—“Bag Men,” read the headline, falsely declaring that the FBI were looking for the two men.

They, too, were innocent. But Google is forever, and 17-year-old Barhoun, who moved to America from Morocco, says he now worries about his chances of getting into college.

If the past week has illustrated anything, it’s that our collective psyche sees both Muslims and brown males as an existential threat to Western society. U.S. TV commentator and frequent Fox News guest Erik Rush decided the only recourse was genocide of all Muslims. “… They’re evil,” he tweeted. “Let’s kill them all.”

Toronto is a big, diverse city, one where people seem enlightened enough to question the prejudices floating around in their subconscious. But as I watched the barrage of bias, I asked myself how many people here also suspected a dark-skinned or Muslim male of planning the Boston bombings, and whether those suspicions would somehow reflect on me.

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were light-skinned, yes, but their unwieldy names and suspicious faith entrenched their un-Americanness, something made evident in a question posed to the estranged uncle of the brothers. “How do you feel about America, what do you think about the United States?” a reporter asked Ruslan Tsarni, who lives in Maryland.

After an emotional Tsarni proclaimed his love and respect for his adopted country repeatedly, again and again, he also felt the need to distance his entire community from his 19-year-old nephew. “He put shame on our family,” Tsarni cried out. “He put shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity.”

I don’t remember members of the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity drowning in guilt when Newtown killer Adam Lanza, suspected theatre-killer James Holmes or Tucson shooter Jared Loughner were implicated.

I don’t remember chants of “USA! USA!” when Holmes or Loughner were arrested (Lanza took his own life), a chant I clearly heard when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night.

Lanza, Holmes and Loughner terrorized many through their heinous actions, but they’re not grouped with the entire “race” of anglo-white males. When the media refers to them, it’s by their names, not their ethnicity or beliefs, no matter how violent those beliefs were. They’re seen as lone wolves, individuals, perhaps mentally ill individuals, but individuals whose American identity was never questioned.

Yet the uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers sees the alleged actions of his estranged nephew as a smear “on the entire Chechen ethnicity.” I’m disturbed and appalled that “minority” groups are expected to feel a collective guilt after “one of ours” commits a crime, that Chechens, or Muslims, are forced to feel shame after the Boston bombings. It’s an irritating double standard.

The blame for that doesn’t fall only on “the media,” which in the end is just made up of members of society who often regurgitate the same biases held by the public. Instead, I blame our own inability to question subliminal biases that whisper that Muslims and dark-skinned males are dangers to our way of life. This bigotry often comes out when we’re at our worst, in situations of fear and uncertainty. It’s always convenient to distance ourselves from heinous acts, like the Boston bombings, by illustrating the suspect as nothing like us, relying on our biases for this reinforcement.

I hope people have the ability to grasp the alleged actions of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an American, one whose twisted beliefs led to the maiming and killing of innocent people, without linking him to the religion that more than a billion others use on a daily basis to live a life of peace—myself included.

Ali Zafar is a Toronto-based journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @MohammadAliZ.

Jason Priestley, Cara Ricketts and Nigel Shawn Williams in Race.

By Denise Balkissoon

This is a Toronto blog, and here’s my Toronto take on Race: America is weird. After seeing last night’s premiere of David Mamet’s play (starring, yes, Jason Priestley), my main thought was that we really need to do a Canada vs. USA issue of the Ethnic Aisle, and examine how very differently the two countries experience race and ethnicity. The literal black/white dichotomy of American race politics is always curious to me. It’s not surprising that the Atlantic slave trade has such an enduring legacy on just about every single way Americans look at everything. But at the same time it seems strange that a play debuted in 2009 makes just an offhand mention of one immigrant, and barely flicks at the ever-changing, multifaceted view of race and ethnicity that is my Toronto-born view of the topic, and the world.

I’m fascinated with the ways that race and class and gender inform how we construct our ideas of how things work. The subject of this play is how these issues unfold in the criminal justice sphere–a rich white man has been accused of raping a black woman, and a partnership of white and black lawyers must decide whether to represent him. It’s touchy territory, ripe for discussion of assumptions and stereotypes and morality. I don’t think the play makes it all the way there.

All of the characters just seemed mad all the time–the two lawyers who supposedly respect each other enough to start a practice together didn’t seem to have a particular history or friendship. Dissecting the shame instilled by racism was interesting: how that shame creates distrust, and dread, and calcifies the kneejerk actions and behaviours that we’d all like to be better than. But those moments were sparse, dotted between a series of predictable stand-up comedy jabs (black people are like this, and white people are like this). Race and racism makes people vulnerable, and that would have been more revelatory to witness. Instead, there was a lot of shouting and a whole a torrent of n-words with a b-word or two thrown in for good measure. I’m not a priss, it’s just that it was predictable, not shocking.

Mainly, for a play that was trying to be fresh and provocative about race, it still had the straight white male experience as its core. But maybe that’s just a Toronto opinion.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: isn’t it a bit crazy for a blog dedicated to challenging stereotypes about Toronto’s many communities to time a booze issue right near St. Patrick’s Day? It’s a fair question, and one to which the answer is “uh, probably?”.

But what better time to poke at the rituals, assumptions, and differing views that circle around drinking? Like few other things, alcohol shows us what we share and what we don’t. Those of us who indulge often do it and think of it in different ways. Some of us never touch the stuff. How different communities look at alcohol forms a kaleidoscope of opinion.

This week on the Ethnic Aisle, we’re all about booze. From how culture and religion affect our views on drinking, to what a multicultural bar might look like, to the dreaded “Asian Glow”, we’re diving in to the world of liquor.

Sitting down for drinks amongst a mixed group of friends can be an ideal symbol of Toronto’s diversity. Whatever disagreements we have tend to dissolve in the pleasant haze of a good buzz. So in that spirit, we invite you to kick back, pour yourself a drink and savour the many notes of our Booze Issue.

Starting off, let’s confront St. Patrick’s Day head-on with a Dubliner’s Rant by Séamus Conaty. “Patty! Really? Patty? That is either an old WASPy woman’s name or a delightful Jamaican pastry, not Ireland’s main man.”

There’s so much more to Greek alcohol than ouzo. Kat Armstrong gives us a handy primer and a breakdown on drinking etiquette (metaxa is so fancy, like).

“It felt weird to me to be the only sober person in a room full of people who were inebriated.” Bharavi Thanki talks to a young, ambitious Muslim woman about whether her choice not to drink affects her career path.

Kids and Wine Is Just Fine: Kelli Korducki was a child drinker (sort of) and people let her get away with it cause her parents were foreign (maybe).

Navneet Alang and Anshuman Idamsetty would like to know – just What Is a Multicultural Bar? Is it about the crowd, the food, the decor, the music? Must it serve Kingfisher?

Hennessy and Enemies: the Toronto Star had some pretty stupid things to say about the link between hip hop, cognac and last summer’s shooting on Danzig Ave. So Denise Balkissoon has some stupid questions of her own.

Are Asian club nights different than “regular” club nights? Karen K. Ho talks to David Ins, a promoter with Asian-focused party company Epic Nights.

In Irish Pride, Lucas Costello shares an intense, dark memoir of life with an alcoholic Irish dad and a teetotalling Filipino mom.

and Chantal Braganza teaches us all about pulque, the Mexican liquor with the consistency of saliva and the taste of runny sourdough starter. Cheers!

by Anshuman Idamsetty and Navneet Alang

When we sat down to think about a multicultural bar for the Ethnic Aisle’s Booze Issue, we had one question in mind: how might you create a bar that includes and represents Toronto’s many cultures?

After getting some reaction to the post, however, it seems like we missed another really important question: would it even be a good idea? Because now we’re not so sure, and here’s why

• For example, Pete Evans suggested on Twitter that you can’t really plan these things. What’d actually be preferable would simply be to let the market sort it out; if people want a “Chinese bar” or what-have-you, they’d either start or patronize one. It’s a good point, but it’s a also wise to keep in mind that market-based approaches to diversity – like in housing - have downsides, too.

• Others, like Ethnic Aisle contributor Mike Warren, said that things like music are often a “great divider“. A “fusion” playlist might end up pleasing a tiny fraction of people, and alienating everyone else – and that’d probably extend to decor, seating etc. too.

• In an awesome comment on the original post, “A Panlillo” exploded the whole idea of a multicultural drinking hole. We highly recommend you read the whole thing, but she questioned she questioned the very premise, arguing “How can the execution of this bar not resemble tokenism on drugs?”. It makes sense: If someone wanted a bar where they felt at home, but what they instead got was fusion, wouldn’t they simply be happier with a bar that catered to their idea of ‘home’ in the first place? The commenter had  another very interesting, provocative idea, too: “The ideal clientele, then, the clientele this establishment will unconsciously be aiming at, and whose risk of being offended is least among the lot, comprises of those who are not racially marked: white people, in other words.”  Touche!

In light of these very smart and much-appreciated insights, some more thoughts and questions of our own:

• Would there be a difference between what first-, second- and third-gen, immigrants want in a bar? Many first generation immigrants have a habit of either adhering to the culture they’re familiar with, or diving head-first into their new surroundings. So a bar that ‘mixed things up’ might be off-putting to first-gen immigrants for very good reasons: it might be either ‘too Canadian’ or not nearly Canadian enough.

• What about second- and third-generation immigrants, the people born and raised in Canada and multiple cultures? For tonnes of us, fusion is just an ordinary, everyday part of life, so an establishment that reflected that – like say the very hip Banh Mi Boys, which was started by the sons and daughters of first-gen Vietnamese immigrants – still feels worthwhile. The problem is the “diversity balancing act”: how do you keep it honest to things people know, while making it welcoming for all?

• Maybe the solution is an idea that didn’t fit in our original post: that instead of ‘A Multicultural Bar’, what we need is a multicultural bar/coffee shop scene. Rather than trying to mix everything into one, perhaps the point is to mimic the way restaurants work where an establishment unapologetically just does its own “ethnic” thing and hopes people show up.

• Here’s the basic point: we think that bars are a central part of the social fabric of any city. Toronto, especially in the past few years, has a bunch of great ones. Would our bar scene perhaps be even better if they didn’t all aim at being ‘Canadian’ in a really obvious way, and instead branched out to actually represent the lived experience of Toronto’s inhabitants?

I’m not up on my Aztec mythology, but one thing I’ve always remembered are the Centzon Totochtin, 400 rabbits that liked to drink and party and each represented a particular type of intoxication. They were the gods of good times, and their mom, Mayahuel, provided the booze: a thick, milky sap called pulque that was once one of the more popular alcohols in Mexico.

If you tasted it now, this would be hard to believe. It has the consistency of saliva and looks a bit like translucent milk. It bubbles a bit sometimes. It’s made from agave, largely the same kind of plant you get mezcal from, only the sap is uncooked (tequila comes from a specific species only—blue agave). In Mesoamerican times, it was enjoyed only by priests, the pregnant, the elderly and sacrifice victims in need of a pick-me-up. When the Spanish came around and messed things up a bit, everyone started drinking the stuff.

Whenever my parents go back to Puerto Vallarta, I tell them to bring me back a bottle of high-roller tequila, or rompope, a kind of boozy egg nog that tastes like caramel. But never pulque: it’s not looked too kindly upon by most Mexicans these days and seen as cheap rural booze—a kind of moonshine. I used to think this was because it tastes like runny sourdough starter, but the Internet tells me a more interesting story that has more  to do with immigration and marketing.

In post-colonial times, pulque was big business. Families built multi-generational fortunes from producing and selling the stuff, and drinking establishments called pulquerias populated nearly every city centre (it’s estimated Mexico City held about 1,000 of these places in the early 1900s). You might have called it the nation’s equivalent of beer, its liquid pride, until actual beer brewers started moving in and setting up shop. Beer had its advantages: a longer shelf life, expert marketers, and its production wasn’t reliant on a plant that eventually started disappearing in certain regions of the country. It looked and tasted cleaner. Pulque, on the other hand, was rumoured to have a less-than-savoury production process that may or may not have involved socks filled with manure to kick-start fermentation. You sell beer on almost any type of dumb joke (see: Corona or Dos Equis commercials), but I doubt toilet humour qualifies.

Relatively few pulquerias exist today, though you can buy it in cans at specialty shops. Based on what I’ve learned, I might give it another chance the next time I go. Maybe.

The first time my dad died, I was five. He was standing at the top of the staircase, proclaiming “the Chinaman kept giving me tequilas.” Then he fell flat on his face. The rest is haze: me in a room reading a Walt Disney activity book with “Kiki”, my Filipina nanny, while my Filipina mother, bawling, called the ambulance, and tall men in uniforms with stripes down their pant legs showed up to save the day.

My father didn’t actually die that night. In the end it was cancer, not directly alcohol-related, that brought him into the black. The years in-between are spotted with memories: him fighting with my mother on a night that she dumped out all of his expensive scotch; me, still a child, waking up to find out that he had driven our TransAm into a ditch. Our big alcoholic-and-son bonding moment was a night in Mexico. My mom took off after Dad refused to not drink x amounts of tequila. He ended up unable to walk, so I helped him back to the hotel room. It was Angela’s Ashes meets Wall Street, with Lionel Richie as the soundtrack. Luckily for all of us, Dad was a gentle drunk; our family didn’t have to deal with the trauma of physical abuse that so often haunts families with alcoholic parents.

 My mother is Filipino, and her family doesn’t have much of a culture of drinking.  On my mom’s side, alcohol and the foolish things it made you say and do was always a point of embarrassment or shame. (I’m sure there’s an Ilongo word for that, but I don’t know it.) This distinct difference was very apparent at my Dad’s wake. I had just turned fourteen, and the miserable summer was punctuated by a grievous day, exacerbated by the well stocked bar. My Canadian/Irish/white/whatever relatives shed tears jet-fueled by beer, and were comforted by my mostly sober Filipino relatives. This was the day I learned that getting shitfaced was a magic place, one where you could be numb while puking your emotions all over anyone in your proximity. The Irish way.

The drunken Irishman. The Fighting Irish.  What came first: the colonization or the booze? A friend once said that the British learned their colonization techniques on the Irish and perfected them on First Nations.  Despite the notable professional and artistic achievements of many, many, many members of these communities , the drunkenness and fighting can often drown the rest out.

Take James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, two canonical Irish writers whose well-known struggles with alcohol seem inseparable from their literary contributions. The fable of alcohol or substance dependency leading to great art isn’t propagated solely by Irish artists, but few cultural identities are as attached to alcohol.  If there are any other Catholic saints (St. Patrick, not actually Irish) whose feast day is advertised by multinational booze supplier Diageo (owner of Bushmills and Guinness), I have yet to hear of them.

What if, instead of allowing the great works to stand as apology for the artist’s alcoholism, we mourned the great works that were never created, due to premature deaths and lives ended in squalor?

Absurd.

Total buzz kill.

I know.

A few nights ago, I called my mom to ask her about my dad, the time his heart stopped, and whether it was just because of drinking. She told me she had blocked most of that time out.  We don’t talk much about Dad anymore. Time doesn’t necessarily heal, sometimes you just forget that you’re still hurting. Play through the pain.

I pushed a bit. “Was it cocaine?” I asked (it was the 80s after all, maybe my dad was like Jim Belushi).

“No, god no, I don’t remember, I only remember the time after chemo…his electrolytes were…”

“Electrolytes?”

“Yeah he…this was when…”

“Oh yeah…” It’s all fuzzy, I didn’t really remember.  Kiki, the bedroom, Surrey.

“I think he was just so drunk and I couldn’t move him, I probably didn’t know what to do.”We don’t talk about this time. A new country, a young child, her husband on the floor immobile. Dead drunk.

For twenty plus years I’ve been carrying this idea around of my dad as my own Patron Saint of Reanimation, a fighter. But it turns out his resurrection was just another dead drunk Irish story.

Lucas Costello in an arts worker and activist living in Parkdale. He is the progeny of a Filipina beauty queen and a Vancouver disco king. He likes Toronto better, yes, really. Yes, really, he is half Filipino. He will eat all the lumpia. 

“It’s hard to explain without seeming racist,” laughs David In when asked about the East-Asian party scene in Toronto. The 29-year-old Korean-Canadian is a co-founder of Epic Nights. The entertainment production company produces concerts and other events, but Epic specializes in promoting club nights targeted at young East-Asian students and professionals.

I haven’t been to a nightclub in years, but I still know that clubbing is a massive part of Toronto’s entertainment industry. I also know that East-Asian nights are incredibly popular. What I wanted to figured out was exactly how popular, and how parties focused on East-Asian clubbers might be different than a “regular” club night. So I asked David, and here’s what I learned.

Club gear transcends race. “You’ll have your hipsters and the guys who are all GQ’d, and obviously the douche-bags who are wearing Ed Hardy,” David said. “You know, the True Religion jeans and really flashy standout style.”

East-Asians drink what everyone else drinks. Bottle service orders are dominated by vodka, while bar orders are mostly Jagerbombs and tequila shots.

“Asian Glow” exists. (It’s increased acetaldehyde accumulation, ok?) “Some people will have one sip of beer and they’ll turn red,” David laughs.

Friday night is Asian Night—it’s when club owners are most likely to ask Epic to help them bring in an Asian clientele. “However on Saturday it’s completely different,” he said, noting that the demand for “white” nights goes up. “But those tend to become mixed anyway.”

David said that among ethnicity- or nationality-specific events, East-Asian parties are generally busier than those aimed at South-Asian or Black patrons. “Not to be racist,” he quickly added. “It’s just how it goes.” For Epic Nights’ current residency at Pure, David brings in hundreds of people per week.  On special events like Halloween, that number can go up to as high as 3,000. “And its like at least 99 per cent Asian,” he said.

“Asian” doesn’t mean “905.” “Uptown, downtown, Mississauga, we have people coming in even further than that,” he said. “It’s not like people from one area.”

Focusing on Asian patrons is a business decision. “Most clubs don’t do well if they don’t do Asian,” he explained. “When a club isn’t doing so well that’s when they outsource to a company like us.”

Maybe seeking out white crowds is, too. “White people tend to spend the most,” David said. “That’s just generally how it goes.”

At the same time, “Asian clubs” are stigmatized. “There’s a saying in Toronto, ‘Once you go Asian, your club’s going to shut down,’” David said. Nightclubs Embassy, XS and Live all introduced East-Asian residencies last year. Shortly after, they all closed.

Most Asian clubgoers are Chinese. “There is a ton of Chinese people in Toronto,” is David’s simple analysis. “Those make up the majority of people who come out.” A decade ago, East-Asian clubgoers were generally from Hong Kong, but these days, most 20-something patrons are now from Mainland China.

International students like to show off their cash at clubs. “You’re going to have Mr. Chan, who’s opening up 10 bottles of champagne for his friends because Mommy and Daddy are rich in Shanghai,” he said, remembering some of his personal clients buying up multiple bottles of Ace of Spades champagne each worth $900. “You just can’t compare.”

They’re also kind of shy. When Epic Nights organized K-pop events, they were really busy, but not very social. “The first time we did it, a lot of Korean people came out and they said the music made them feel like home,” David said, adding that many of those who attended were small groups of exchange students. “But they only like to party amongst themselves.”

Filipinos are much more likely to prefer hip-hop. “A lot of parties in Toronto now, they play house music,” David said. “But when you go to hip-hop club, you’re going to get a different clientele of people.” At these events, both the dress code and drink preference are very different: more sneakers, and more Hennessey.

Racism exists in the club. David says that Korean attendees stopped coming out to events once they realized a lot of Chinese people were showing up, too. Taiwanese clubgoers also preferred not to mingle with mainland Chinese.  East-Asians who were born or predominantly raised in Canada are more likely to interact with other nationalities than are new immigrants.  “It’s really hard for them to mingle because of language barriers,” said David.

Club owners can be prejudiced, too. “They’ll be like, I don’t want Asians, I don’t want any black guys, I don’t want any brown guys,” David said. “Turn them all away at the door.” Even though club owners aren’t technically allowed to do this, bouncers can refuse entry using comments about clothing, intoxication, or ID. “They will start turning away certain people in the beginning just so they don’t start becoming a niche crowd,” David said. He believes that expensive quotas at clubs like Maison are a way to make sure a club doesn’t get too Asian, and says lucrative party bookings are sometimes even turned down for the same reason. “It’s kind of crazy,” David said.

Less people are partying, Asian and otherwise: the recent recession, an industry-wide decline in attendance and a rise in the number of promotion companies means club owners willing to host Asian nights are making a lot less money. “Three years ago, at the same spot I am today, I’d see 1,000 people a week,” David said. “Now if I see 400, I’m happy.”

 (Note: In quotes, mentions of the word “Asian” specifically refer to people of East-Asian descent.)

Karen K. Ho is a business reporter who was born and raised in Toronto. She recently discovered the joy of Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night and Liberte’s coconut yogurt.

Can you read that wine label? Cause this brand causes dictatorships.

There were many things to be upset about after last summer’s shooting on Danzig Avenue: the deaths, of course, plus the youth of the accused shooters, and how easy it seems for firearms to slip through our porous border.

Farther down on the list, but still troubling, was “Henny & Hip Hop,” a story that ran in the Toronto Star about 10 days after the incident. Dotted with lyrics by Mobb Deep and Eminem, the piece informed the reading public that “Hennessy has been part of hip-hop culture for almost 20 years.” It quoted a Brazil-based spokesperson from Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, who emphasized that the company “was not part of the party.” In other words, it was embarrassing and nausea-inducing, and almost a year later, it still bugs me.

Does alcohol make people violent? Unquestionably, yes. But I can’t think of a culture other than hip hop for which a string of brand citations follows every incident. When Vancouver Canucks fans tore their city up after losing the Stanley Cup two years ago, I don’t remember hearing what kind of flat beer they were overcharged for in the Rogers Arena.  An upper-class Scottish chef killed his girlfriend last fall, but the news coverage has yet to inform me about what sorts of fine wines he might have been drinking. At a time when there were many important, heart-wrenching things to consider, “Henny & Hip Hop” was just another piece of Othering tripe letting us know that “in urban culture, [Hennessy] is seen as liquid bling.”

I have some questions of my own about liquor brands and identity, questions that I might have considered stupid if the country’s biggest daily hadn’t opened these floodgates. Let’s start with the most important one, and move on from there.

1. Obviously we all want a world without prejudice or hate. Anheuser-Busch InBev is on track to own every major beer brand in the world. When Corona tastes just like Rolling Rock tastes just like Hoegaarden tastes just like Quilmes, will racism be over?

2. Speaking of Anheuser-Busch InBev, why does the Beer Store get a consumer-thwarting monopoly when none of the brands that run it are Canadian?  To quote the Star again: “The Beer Store is ultimately owned by three foreign multinationals: Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors and Sapporo. In what other country does an elected government act as an enabler for a foreign-owned cartel that wields monopoly power on beer sales in such a lucrative, captive market?” I would also like an answer to this question. If you want to politicize booze, Toronto Star, stick with stuff like this.

3. Does PBR make one’s neck beard more luscious? Does it help dull the pain of your 18^th tattoo?

4. Does drinking vodka make you more, or less, likely to support Pussy Riot?

5. After the U.S. mortgage crisis, a slew of thinkers mused on whether financial types are actual psychopaths—not quite Christian Bale-esque killers, but empathy-deficient robots with no understanding of other humans’ lives. I’m wondering, does this have to do with the tannins in French Burgundy? Or is it a reaction to fine Italian wool? Perhaps the magnetic pull of Patek Phillipe watches affects their levels of oxytocin, otherwise known as “the cuddle molecule.”

6. Is the Girls’ Night Out “Strawberry Samba” flavour specifically marketed at Latin Americans, or can anyone enjoy it? Any girl, that is? Not guys, obviously. Or men. Or boys. It’s for girls. Girls’ Night Out. But all girls, or just Brazilian girls?

7. Does Cristal regret getting all racist about rap lyrics, and in turn pissing off Jay-Z? Would they consider launching a rosé called “Ni**as in Paris” to make it up to him? Gwyneth Paltrow could be in the ad.

8.  When is someone going to say something racist about rap and Patrón tequila? When it happens, will you remember that I predicted it?

9. Why are Trinidadians soooooo obsessed with Johnnie Walker? Wait, I have the answer to this one, thanks to Rishi Sankar, who blogs as Trini Traveller.

“For many years, the only alcohol you could find was rum from Caroni and the islands,” he tells me via email. “Drinking whisky was considered quite upmarket in the 60′s and 70′s. ‘Johnnie’ was pushed to be the best via some great marketing campaigns in the 80′s and 90′s. Once you add the cachet of ‘scotch’ on top of it …well, you know Trinis.”

Johnnie dominates the small, million-person market, and many Trinidadians’ palates reject fancier single malts and such. “I took a bottle of 25 yr old Balvenie to drink with my dad,” says Rishi. “He quite liked it, but one of my brothers, who likes Johnnie, said it tasted like ‘shit.’ Feeding caviar to pigs is a waste.”

10. “Liquid bling,” Toronto Star? Really? Did you really print that in a newspaper for a million people to read?

by Navneet Alang and Anshuman Idamsetty

Nav: This past summer, I lost a silly bet with my Dad, the details of which are far less important than what was wagered: the loser had to buy the other beer. Strangely though, my Dad has yet to collect on his debt.

Maybe my father is just lazy. Okay, fine, my father is just lazy. But I do wonder if I could entice my old man out more easily were there a bar where we, two South Asian dudes, might feel a bit more ‘at home’.

It got me to thinking: do we need “multicultural” or “ethnic” bars? What would one even look like? Intrigued, I consulted Ethnic Aisle collaborator and friend Anshuman Iddamsetty, and we were soon sitting down in a Bloorcourt pub trying to figure it out. What we came up with were five aspects of a bar we’d need to address: drinks, food, music, seating and decor. As it turned out, though, the more we thought about it, the more complicated things became. Here’s what we visualized:

DRINK: When it comes to booze, familiarity is important. That means any multicultural bar would have to be unusually well-stocked, keeping not only the usual local and popular brews, but among others, Tsingtao, Kingfisher, and Red Stripe. For liquor, you’d need to get more adventurous: next to scotch and gin, you’d need palm wine, Borovička, and arrack in addition to ouzo and grappa—though there is that pesky problem of sourcing these things from both the LCBO and beyond. Whether you wanted to get fancy and experiment with cocktails containing five-spice or coriander, would probably depend on how up- or downmarket you (or your clientèle) wanted to go.

Could it be done? Clearly, an exhaustive list would be impossible, but a decent array of booze from Toronto’s major ethnic groups might be plausible.

FOOD: Bar food at its best is comfort food. The trick for any mutliculti bar would be to cater to the many different forms in this city: pork buns and dumplings, samosas and pakoras, doubles and channa, izakaya/pojangmacha small  plates, and more. Of course, any truly multi-culti bar would also have to dip into fusion too, whether it’s the kimchi grilled cheese or the jerk chicken quesadilla.

Could it be done? Food is the form of diversity Torontonians are most familiar with. With a short list of staples and a rotating menu, this one is totally doable.

MUSIC: Outside of spots devoted to trap or gee-tar, bar music is sort of predictable – you often know the words before you even know the song. There’s your chipped tea cup folk, your CBC-approved Canrock, and if the staff wants to wild out, a Polaris nominee sneaks by. What would a multi-culti bar sound like? Imagine a playlist of constant discovery; K-Pop rubbing shoulders with South African kwaito; Brazillian psych-rock dogging Heems’ “Soup Boys.” Where lyrics and melodies are remembered because they’re unlike anything you’ve ever heard before and omg Shazam why aren’t you working?!

Could it be done? There is this wondrous thing called internet. So yes. 

SEATING: This is maybe the thing we’re most familiar when it comes to drinking and diversity. The European beer-hall table can be found at places like Wvrst or Hrvati Bar, and can encourage interaction. But small tables are more popular for a reason: we Torontonians can be a private bunch. The ideal multi-culti bar would likely have a mix of both: either a central area with large communal tables, with smaller ones as satellites all around; or separate areas of the bar: private tables inside, and communal ones under a covered patio, a la Lahore Tikka House.

Could it be done: Seating = personal space, social conventions etc. Yikes! Getting this right might be possible, but would take a very un-Toronto vibe of collaboration and chilling out.

DECOR: Toronto bars tend to oscillate between two aesthetic poles: the [INSERT ANIMAL] & Firkins – traditional, lacquered, My Guinness! – and the bespoke ale houses of the instagram set, all Brannan and filament bulbs. Curiously, both styles attempt the same trick: the sensation of some mythical Proper Space To Get Plastered. But this is why multi-culti decor has to tread carefully, because at what point do the trappings of, say, a Persian bar, become caricature? And how would first generation immigrants respond to such a space compared to the second or third? Is the ideal multi-culti bar the absence of all ethnic signifiers, or something more gonzo? We were reminded of one Ethiopian social club in Bloorcourt. Its window display is populated by exactly two things: a bike… and a plaque-mounted poster of The Fellowship of the Rings. Outside, men trade insults in their own language. This stumped us.

Could it be done? Perhaps the hardest of all, if not totally impossible?

It’s funny, but thinking about bars brought us around to the basic questions of Canadian multiculturalism: of whether the goal is a single national culture, or a collection of many; and whether inclusion means changing something mainstream, or creating something new. It turned out to be a question much too big for the two of us to answer. So we turn it over to you: would multicultural bars be a good thing? And if so, what would they be like?