I have lived 30 minutes away from Toronto for 22 years. If anyone has visited before, the first thing you'd probably notice is the huge needle thing in the skyline. For whatever reason I never had any interest in it before. It was just always there. Last week I got stuck in Toronto with nothing to do. I sat in a parking lot contemplating on getting food or hit up a bar for a pint. I sat around for 30 minutes, then I looked up. Somehow it looks so much bigger when you are near the base of it. From a distance, it looks kind of small, almost like a taller skyscraper. When I was in Seattle, I went up the Space Needle. While that thing is definitely a tall structure at 184 meters, the CN tower is - wait for it - 553 meters tall. In your face Seattle.
The walk to the base of the tower was pretty interesting. You really get an idea of how god damn big this thing is. Its massive. To get to it you have to cross a bridge over some train tracks. It isn't far from Union Station, so you will see the iconic green GO trains pretty frequently.
The security made me feel like I was in an airport. X-rays are performed on your stuff, and you walk through this weird machine that puffs air and sniffs for explosives. I think I only have had to do these during international flights - and I guess now, for the CN tower.
Up we go. Fastest elevator I have been on. You can feel the pressure in your ears, like flying in a plane. The glass floor didn't help.
Once I got off, I looked around for the famous glass floor. I'm not exactly scared of heights but this made me shake a bit. I still jumped up and tried breaking through it. No luck. It is 2.5 inches thick which doesn't sound like much, but apparently can hold me. The chart showed how many animals it could hold - Of course the species are all very, very Canadian.
Scarily Relevant. Prague - Rome - Tokyo
The view from the window was amazing. You can see people all over the city like ants. I must have spent an hour just people watching out the side. The height makes you feel like you are in a helicopter or something - it just feels that tall. Watching the sun set was pretty spectacular.
It really makes you appreciate the beauty of modern architecture. Ive heard Toronto be called the Glass City and the view really shows the accuracy of that. Definitely gave my inner Engineer a hardon. If you are ever to visit, Id recommend it. It was definitely way cooler than I expected. Anyway, I will leave you with some pretty awesome Day/Night images I took.
It has been nearly 4 months since Ive been in Japan, and 5 months since I left Toronto. Writing that out makes it feel short but in reality it feels like forever ago. The last launch of the Plastic Peak was an overwhelming experience. I felt so grateful to work with CLYW, a company I grew up with. When the World Yoyo Contest hit I didn't know what to expect, but I had started noticing a feeling of burn out after grinding out so many yoyo related projects and in a weird introverted way I was a bit reluctant to go.
CLYW is a Canadian brand that started in 2006. I was 14 at the time when I watched this new brand unfold on the Yoyonation forums. They released their first yoyo named the "Peak" with 50 pieces retailing for $85. Today, that yoyo has used asking prices north of $2500 making it one of the most insanely rare and expensive yoyos to date. This "OG Painted Peak" featured a custom painted surface by a Canadian airbrush artist named Levi. Overtime as the Peak was impacted or dinged, the paint would chip off meaning there are only a handful of units in the world that survived in mint unused condition. Later versions would be released in more durable anodized finishes, but these first 50 "OG Painted Peaks"cemented CLYW into yoyoing history.
This one will interesting - since mine and Augie's relationship go a far distance back. Its also kind of a weird story of how like minded free sprits will seemingly eventually cross roads no matter how unlikely that is.
Growing up in what I like to call the golden area of competitive yoyoing I was blessed to be inspired by yoyoers with so much unique style. These players helped me stay hooked in yoyoing and I often wonder if I would have even stuck with it without them. Players like Yuuki Spenser, John Ando, Eric Koloski, Paul Han, Shinji Saito and of course Augie Fash were some of my favourites. Before there was a yoyo "meta" all these yoyoers had their own 1A style which is why I think fondly of this era.
Jeffrey Pang
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