Today felt like an out of body experience. Toronto was turned into Berlin or some other city that has riots. And I was right in the middle of it.

You see, once a month I play in an 18 pice swing band at the Rex. This was a special day, because the Toronto Jazz Festival was on. Or so I thought. Here's my story.

I knew about the G20 problems and started my voyage downtown from yonge/lawrence two full hours early.  I checked the TTC website and it showed all clear. So I drove to yonge and lawrence subway, and parked the car on Bedford Park. As soon as I got on the subway, the doors closed and the announcement came that call cars were cancelled south of Bloor. Which mean that I  couldn't go over to St George and go south from there, I would have to hoof it and I had a gig bag, trombone and stand, so i figured that would be a fair walk. Which meant I'd likely end up getting a taxi, so I hopped back on the northbound at Eglinton and went back to get the car. Now, one of the guys in the band happens to be a policeman, and he had sent an email that essentially said where the protests were happening. So I went over to Bathurst and was downtown in no time - around 2:30. I went east on Dundas thinking that I would just pop down St Patricks and park north of Queen, but of course as soon as I got close to Spadina it was clear that the traffic was shut down. So I headed south, parked on Queen and started on foot to the Rex. As soon as I got to Spadina, they had blocked off the whole road and weren't letting anyone across.

That was my first view of the hundreds of police in riot gear. I spoke to a nice, yet intimidating guy who was about 6' 4", 240lbs, all muscle and flak jacket, and he just grunted "I'm not from here, can't tell you whether you can make it or not". So I called the band leader at this point, thinking that everyone was having trouble and that it would be cancelled. Of course, he reported that "everyone's here, ready to go", ie. "not sure what your problem is Mike, but you're the only one".  I was staring at literally 400 police in riot gear between me and the Rex, and apparently I was the only one with a problem. While I was on the phone, the policedwarfwoman beside hulk hogan interrupted to say that if I went south to King, I MAY be able to make it over far enough east to head north again. So I trucked my 40lbs of gear south across back alleys to Richmond, where it appeared clear.

As I headed east, past Spadina, more and more police were arriving, so when I got about halfway down Richmond, I realized that they weren't going to let me go any further East. So I turned back and realized that they had now blocked Spadina off entirely. Which meant that I, along with about 8 other poor wandering souls, were trapped in a half block and couldn't go anywhere "until the crowd dispersed". So I went back over to the cops at spadina and pleaded my case. Of course at this point every policeman was in full riot gear and were eyeing my great big black gig bag rather suspiciously. But he let decided to take pity on me and made a hole in the police lineup to let me go south. Here is the shot north as I turned the corner. Hard to imagine that I work on this very corner:

I headed away from the growing chanting at Spadina and south to Adelaide, where there were no visible police lines going eastward. I walked all the way to Simcoe St. and plucked up the courage to head north again towards the line of police across Richmond. As I got closer they all started to put on their gas masks. Clearly not a positive sign. Undeterred, I went right up to one of the guys, and told him my dilemma, and asked if there was any way I could get to the Rex, only one block away. He said "no, you can't get there from here, and you'll likely just run into some yahoo's, so it's best you just go home". I must have been deaf or stupid at this point, because I headed over to University to CONTINUE to see if I could find a way around to the east. It was about 3:15 by this point. Here is what I found looking north from Adelaide at University. FYI, every single van that you see was full of police in riot gear, waiting to jump out.

There were hundreds of them on every street.

So at this point I realize that there really is no way around. Even if I could summon the strength to lug my gear further east and am able to go north to Dundas, I know for a fact that the police aren't letting anyone south to Queen St. So I have no fricking idea how the rest of the band made it to the Rex. As soon as I made it back to the car and turned on the radio, this was happening:

Suffice to say that I'm happy I got out of there. The strange thing of course, is that the guys say they had a near capacity crowd at the Rex and it was a great gig. Was I in a parallel universe?