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.
Crazy to think it has been 2 years since the original release of the Plastic Fulvia and Plastic 000. Both models as of now are pretty much sold out everywhere, and I knew it was about time to update both with a small batch of new colors as well as fix a few small issues with the first designs. I appreciate everyone who has reached out anticipating a restock of these - as the manufacturing process is very timely for sure so restocks can't happen as quick as I'd like.
In January, I released the AKURA MG, a yoyo made from Magnesium. This material has a very low density and I talked about how it performs more like a plastic than anything else. But what made that yoyo really special is the aesthetic. I loved the lines on that yoyo. The proportions with the chunky rims were just perfect. One of the biggest aesthetic challenges though were that after the ceramic coating the lines were quite subtle which hid the design.
Its wild to think that the Fulvia design is now 8 years old - originally released in 2016. This design was developed in titanium with the pursuit of rim weight and stability. So much has changed since then. 2024 was an interesting year with the challenges of moving to a new country while maintaining releases. Not many people realize but I often prototype yoyos for myself and they just never get released. Often they join the rotation of throws I have on the shelf, which never make it to production. The monometal 000 and Fulvia was exactly that - prototypes that I submited earlier this year that just never ended up making it to production.
Jeffrey Pang
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