speaker-0: Toronto loves a story about train wrecks, chaos, and traffic. So for this, I'm going to take you back to 1959. But to help me with this story, you have two story clues in the group chat. Vince, what is your story clue?
speaker-1: Public apology.
speaker-0: Meg, what's your story clue?
speaker-2: bowler hat and Bermuda shorts.
speaker-0: Yes, obviously. Why wouldn't it be? Anyone want to guess the story?
speaker-1: No.
speaker-2: Pierre Poliev appears on Joe Rogan.
speaker-0: The future public apology with bowler hat and Bermuda shorts. Okay, so we're gonna get in a time machine and I'm gonna tell you one of the dumbest radio contests in Toronto's history. It's from Chum FM. It's from Chum, I should say. And it's the walking man contest. The walking man contest happens in 1959 when they ape an idea from the States. The walking man concept is essentially this. We're going to... put somebody on the street randomly in Toronto who is the walking man and you are supposed to engage people on the street with, you the walking man? And if you find the man, you win $1,000. Now keep in mind, a thousand bucks in 1959, nothing to stand on. So guess what happens? Nothing actually because you can't just walk up to random people and be like, you the walking man? So it's an absolute nightmare and they're starting to sweat it at chum because they're like we this was our big contest for the quarter like what are we supposed to do? So they're like, okay, maybe you know, the concept was Every week that you don't find the walking man the money decreases so they try by a time they're down to 500 bucks for like all this is getting sad so like The walking man will be in an elevator. So everyone you meet in elevators today say, are you the walking man? Nobody finds the walking man. They're like, okay, ⁓ what if you were on the subway? The walking man today is on the subway. Ask everyone on the subway, are you the walking man? Nobody knows. So they go down to only ask at store entrances. The walking man will be hanging out downtown in front of a store. Nobody finds the walking man. So now they're like, ⁓ this isn't great. So they give up on their concept. They're like, whatever. Let's just tell them where he is. So get on the radio and they're like, the walking man is young and queen. All right. Young and but Alan Farrow, who's their big PR guy, says to Alan Slate, because there's only people named Alan allowed at Trump in the 50s. And they're like, what? How do we make this at least a bit interesting? So they tell everybody The walking man, because once again, they have no faith that people will find walking man at this point. They're like, he's going to wear a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts. They're like, you know what we're going to do though? We're going to put our radio DJs from different parts at Young Queen. So from the East, there'll be a man in a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts, but he won't be the real walking man. And then from the South, we'll put a person in a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts, but that won't be the real walking man. And the real walking man will come out of the stock exchange. So this would be... dumb on a good day. But here's the thing that everyone always forgets. People need money. And in 1959, 10,000 people showed up to the corner of Yonge and Queen and caused complete chaos to the point where
speaker-1: ⁓
speaker-0: Like cop cars had to line the streets. They had to close down the intersection and Trump had to issue a public apology. Behind the scenes in the Trump storybook, they talk about it as like they were thrilled. They're like, holy hell, this wasn't, this was just like a dumb contest. Clearly we have people, people are paying attention to us and we have power, but to the cops they had to be like, I'm really sorry about that officers. didn't really, we had no idea. We thought 20 people would show up. We had no concept. So this was the public apology that had to air on Trump, which was from time to time. CHUM in editorial form has criticized various civic events or individuals. This time Trump's editorial attack is directed at our own operation. The station sincerely regrets any inconvenience or hardship caused by pedestrians or motorists during the finale of our walking man promotion at the intersections of Queen and Young. Chum at no time visualized the effects of this promotion. In particular, our apologies to the TPA, the Toronto Police Department and a sincere thank you for the superb performance of the traffic officers and quickly clearing what has been reported as one of the largest traffic jams in the history of Toronto. Needless to say, if Chum had foreseen the consequences of our walking man finale, we would not have staged it at Young and Queen. And I guess, you you're throughout a traffic. So if you have a radio promo that you're thinking of for Toronto Appreciation Night, perhaps we shouldn't do The Walking Man. Toronto appreciation at the weekly hangout where we celebrate today's memes, teams, and the city's past scenes. I'm Dan Spear and I've spent my life in Toronto's media, entertainment, and online culture. And this week on the program, I'm joined by my two co-hosts, it's Megan Dingman and Vince Kazimurthy. And like, we like to start off all shows. I think it's that chum thing, guys. in like radio mode. What's going on with me? hey everybody, welcome to the same side. Young and queen, how we doing? Did you guys grow up with
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: a radio station that you liked? you have a fave? I was an AM640 kid for like that three years that it existed. was like Tarzan Dan was my guy. Did you have one? Like Vince, you're not a real music nerd. So you didn't probably have like a-
speaker-1: Well, my music taste doesn't suit Toronto at that time anyway.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's true. ⁓
speaker-1: So
speaker-2: 102.1 The Edge, 977, 107, 1079.
speaker-0: interesting. 107 is Q. And Q and the Edge are owned by the same company, owned by the same sister station, so they always had like crossover. I always found 102.1, there's like CFNY dock right now, but I always found 102.1 to be like toxic bro. didn't like, they gave me the like, I was just like, ⁓ that was the kid that was like.
speaker-2: Yes. Rock music is toxic bro.
speaker-0: Yeah, but like alt scene by the time, because like in the early days, was kind of it was kind of nerdy. It was like nerdy alt, like Chris Sheppard was like the early days of like CFNY. But by the time it gets to like my nineties, it's very much like the death rattle of grunge. So it's like, like by the time I'm like really paying attention to stuff, it's like kind of Progen and Nirvana are kind of on the way out. And there's this like very Alan Cross centric like station. So my question, I always ask you guys for fun facts. Tell me your radio story.
speaker-2: I have so many stories about The Edge, ⁓ but we'll save those for another time. The one, the autograph one though, I will give you. So one day I was leaving France and I was walking towards the subway and I turned left. I like, I'll go to the Eaton Center. So I turned left outside of The Edge and Slash was walking outside. I guess he was in town for when he did his solo stuff.
speaker-0: Right. Okay, really important question. Mm-hmm. Top hat slash?
speaker-2: No, he wasn't wearing a top hat. He had his hair in a ponytail, but you recognize that hair from a mile away. And he's quite a tall guy and he was still dressed slash, like the leather pants and like a little leather jacket. And so you'd spot him from a mile away. So I, of course, went up to him like, ⁓ my God, I'm such a huge fan. It's such an honor to meet you. He shook my hand. ⁓ But I didn't have anything for him to sign. And this is before smartphones. Selfies. there's no picture or anything like that. So I go home and I told my mom about it and I was so excited.
speaker-0: Like,
speaker-2: Fast forward to a couple of months later, she phones me while I'm at work at the CN Tower and said, you have mail from Slash. Like the return address just says Slash and then some address in California. So my mom had contacted his management company and said my daughter met Slash in Toronto. She's a huge fan, but she didn't have anything to get signed. So his management company sent us an autograph. picture, which I still have. And I still have the envelope that says it's from Slav.
speaker-0: Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's great. I like.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: Thanks, Mom.
speaker-1: Yeah, good job, mom.
speaker-0: All right, y'all. So before we get our ball rolling too deeply here, I'm just gonna run down the week that was. And here it is in sports. We got a verbal agreement from the WNBA. Players got the bumps. We'll talk about that in a second. Things feel pretty decent there, but like I'll get you all to give me your hot takes on how decent you think it was. On the Leafs front, the Leafs can't lose correctly. yeah. We're in a situation where the Leafs are not gonna get that pick. but they're also not gonna get anything out of their losing. This is the most Leafs thing to ever Leafs. I don't really have much else on that besides just like another season that won't really do a whole lot for anything. The Blue Jays are doing A-OK in spring training. We'll talk about that in a second of like, what about these injuries? Everybody's apparently just like tripping on garden hoses and dundee. Like, I don't know. What are you gonna do? And then I'm gonna bring us before we get into our staple underappreciated, overappreciated segment. This is my headline of the week for Toronto. Doug Ford praises homeowner who shot man during home invasion. These guys, they need to be shot. Just sure why not congratulations for shooting this guy should have shot him a couple more times as far as I'm concerned the premiere set on wednesday I mean just chef's kiss. are gonna do? Uh Yeah, what do you even say about what do you even say so let's get into Overappreciated underappreciated. I want to begin here the world baseball classic happened And my first question before we get into the final and that whole thing, how do we feel about military pep talks? So the guy who shot Bin Laden was it? The SEAL Team 6 guy is the person who gets to rev up the states before they play Canada? Like what was it even the final? Like what would they bring in for the final? Like Osama Bin Laden's corpse? Like what would they bring
speaker-1: Yeah No Ronald Reagan's every animated corpses who they wanted to bring in
speaker-0: ⁓ okay. Vince, start us off with SEAL Team 6. Underappreciated, overappreciated?
speaker-1: I mean it's par for the course right? I America and military and what they do like I mean America is out there in terms of all of those stuff it's just
speaker-0: Did they release the pep talk out of curiosity?
speaker-1: Yeah, Megan showed it to me, yeah.
speaker-0: Meg, what's it look like?
speaker-2: I mean it looks exactly like you think. It's a win-one for the Gipper, except the, you know, Gipper is Obama.
speaker-1: Well, he's just going on about the story and he was like, yeah, this happened and then was a gay idiot and blah, blah.
speaker-0: Like Ernie comments in the corner, the power of French.
speaker-1: I don't think Ernie was even showing his face.
speaker-0: All right, so Meg over appreciate under appreciates your team six pep talk
speaker-2: I okay, I mean obviously it was overappreciated because it didn't work. But I mean, I understand that. ⁓
speaker-1: Yes! ⁓
speaker-0: worked in that game, wasn't that the game in Canada? So it did work for that one.
speaker-2: One game. But couldn't be- Yeah, yeah. The real problem- no, I'm just kidding.
speaker-1: Venezuela. you
speaker-2: Like was he booked that night? Like he couldn't come back? That's another story, like a high school football team in Texas?
speaker-0: I don't think
speaker-2: No, no, no, like he goes and does these talks now. He goes into like, he a NASCAR one and yeah, he's
speaker-0: But I feel like the s on that's the problem. I feel like he probably has one talk Like his follow-up talk is like there was one time. I picked this woman up at a bar
speaker-2: Yeah, 100%. Don't speech men because that's I mean that's so lame that you would need something like that that you would need this actual accomplished man to come in and be like I did this insane thing that know Children play and I hope
speaker-1: my life.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: And no, you're going to to play.
speaker-0: I want the email because I want to know if it was like pitched or like I just I could really see the correlation between my assassination and your anyways, okay
speaker-1: My gross at typing. I'm in deep trouble.
speaker-0: World baseball classic finale. Yeah, underappreciate overappreciated or just flat on the nose appreciated Meg
speaker-2: Underappreciated. I thought it was so sweet. The pitcher's crying. And like it was, it was great. And another American Aaron screws up everything for his team. Love to see it. Underappreciated. And Venezuela, they had so much fun and like the fans were so excited. Underappreciated.
speaker-0: It was great.
speaker-1: Agreed, underappreciated and it's good to see like they were the team, know, nobody would have picked to win that, right? So of the eight teams in there. I I think that's one situation where Canada would have even been picked ahead of them. So and then ⁓ Andres Jimenez plays for them. hey, good for him.
speaker-0: Also, I mean, if we thought we had a gripe with the United States, right? So I can only imagine that that country got a little bit of enjoyment out of that win in that moment. I'm gonna move on. ⁓ Vince, I'm gonna start you off with this one. Overappreciated, underappreciated, the concept and rumor, underline, underline, underline rumor, Kawhi is coming back to Toronto. Set that up for us and then give me if it's overappreciated or underappreciated.
speaker-2: Right.
speaker-1: Okay, so the rumor that's floating around, mean, this is completely a big, big rumor anyways, but ⁓ is basically because Kawhi's contract is again expiring after next year. So for the next season, you bring in Kawhi, you trade away Brandon Ingram, ⁓ Jacobi Walter, I think that was the and ⁓ CMB, Colin Murray Boyles, who was your first around pick. this past year and a first round pick and you get Kawaii back. Underappreciated!
speaker-0: Underappreciated or overappreciated? Come on! No seriously, underappreciated or overappreciated, idea of Kawhi coming back to Toronto.
speaker-1: I think it is underappreciated because again, like, yeah, I'd do that again. Do we win a championship? Get out of here, Look, all right, the way this team is playing right now, right, Brandon Ingram is who you are using as your primary scorer. Scotty Barnes is being used as the Swiss Army knife, right? Like that's essentially what you're doing. If that is the case, Brandon Ingram isn't enough for you to win. So replace him with a guy who
speaker-0: Wait, you'd do that?
speaker-1: is a bonafide number one and who can play defense too. I think you can
speaker-0: Meg thoughts overappreciated underappreciated
speaker-2: I don't care. No, I'm just kidding. mean, like Vince, walk me through how close he is to being finished.
speaker-1: I don't think he's close to being finished. He is playing really well right now.
speaker-0: Wait, isn't he about to go on the... isn't he injured though?
speaker-1: No, but he's always going to be injured. I mean, that's that's been that's been the case for the last.
speaker-2: Are we... It's never gonna work fully. Are they cutting off their nose to spite their face? they giving... Like, they're giving up a lot of... I mean, there might be room to grow for these guys, and if we're giving that up and then we're getting... Did you say a first round pick would go for him?
speaker-0: Tonight on Vince Sells You A
speaker-1: Yeah, but I mean you're winning right
speaker-0: now so it's the seventh.
speaker-2: But I mean, when we talked about that, doesn't it mean more if it's the team that you like and you watched them grow together and that they win? Do we really want another rent-a-championship, like Dan said last week?
speaker-1: Yes? Rent another championship, yay!
speaker-0: Yay. Here's the thing about this rumor though. Why does it want to back here? Why does it want to come back here?
speaker-1: ⁓ he'll definitely leave after that season. Why is that coming back?
speaker-0: There's clippers rumors that make way more sense to me. I don't think Kawaii would come back to Toronto.
speaker-1: I think it's because he had that, you know, nostalgia quote where he's like, if I only known the town was going to grow to what it is now, sort of quote. everybody's like, possibly. Yes, the only time we want. But the truth is what you said, it's exactly exactly the point. I don't think Bobby Webster is ever going to get out of this group. and trade people away.
speaker-0: Yeah, things will happen. Okay, moving on to something else.
speaker-1: I like Brandon Ingram as a person, so there you go.
speaker-0: a little bit more on the Toronto front than the sports front for just one second. We had this idea floated in the spirit of the mayor of New York talking about public grocery stores. So on Thursday, we had this idea that by next week on March 26th at a council meeting, we're going to have a pitch to establish a pilot for four city run grocery stores. So basically like the LCBO, but make it food. going to prioritize neighborhoods with limited access to grocery stores and lower income households. A study found it'll cost about $350 million if the country wanted to do this countrywide. So open 50 stores across Canada, 40 in urban cities, 10 in remote regions was the suggestion. Six distribution hubs. You can think of like the Amazon of the same idea, right? You need warehouses full of stuff to like be able to actually have a supply chain and other logistics that you would need. Operating costs for things like labor and rent would be an additional 290 million. Saying all of that, it's actually less than the lifetime cost of one F-35 fighter jet. And we cut a deal with the US to buy 88 of those, which once again, shaps case in our current situation. Thoughts around the idea of LCBO but make it food. Overappreciated, underappreciated, mega.
speaker-2: don't know enough about it, other than what I sort of skimmed today, but I would say underappreciated as long as it goes to the folks that need it the most because grocery prices are absolutely astronomical. I and ⁓ all across the board, like whether you're in, you know, downtown Toronto, it's incredibly expensive or out in the boonies, it's incredibly expensive. So anything that might take costs down for folks, I'm in favour of as long as that's the end result.
speaker-0: friends.
speaker-1: underappreciated as well because I would have thought the cost would have been a lot more than what you're talking about 350 ⁓
speaker-0: And that's for the across the country. not for the four pilots.
speaker-1: So yeah, so I think that would be a great idea. Now, not to be confused with, know, I grew up in a third world country and there there's cooperative stores and like, you know, lot of conversations about Cuba is happening right now, where they ration out because, you know, you're in a wartime or in a in an economic crisis situation where they ration out stuff. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about an actual cooperative that could ⁓ keep the prices low and allocate resources properly. mean, that really
speaker-0: Yeah, I actually think it's a flat out public option. I think it's necessarily giving a co-op like in because co-op in Canada, like where I'm from means like a whole other farming thing that like, yeah, like just like a whole back and forth. And I don't think we're even doing that. I think it's literally just like if you can have a public option for a grocery store because of the way you're going to manage the supply chain, can. It's the Amazon effect. But for good, I actually will even double down on this. This would be to happen. Yeah.
speaker-1: would people let it happen?
speaker-0: It has to happen. There's a handful of things, if you listen to Pierre Pollyive on the Rogan show today, there is a handful of things that think left and right can meet in the middle on, and this is kind of one of them. It's sort of how universal basic income, even right wingers, because that's a longer story for another segment, but I do think there are things that both left and right, counselors and there's common grower right like there well all their voters are dealing with the same problem at the grocery store like it's it's unaffordable across the board you don't go to the grocery store with like I'm a conservative I'm a liberal I'm a right p or you go to the grocery store being like how much are hot dogs like it's
speaker-1: you can see the benefits. Can I make lunch for my kid? Yeah, this week, yes.
speaker-0: Yeah. We've got to a breaking point. And the reason why I think this will happen is because then they don't have to tax or go after any of the rich folks that the conservatives have relationships with, like who have lobbyists in your camp. you've got your free, know, and that goes to both sides of the, everybody's got friends inside of the grocery industry. And so this way everybody kind of like, well, we take a little heat off of.
speaker-1: friends.
speaker-0: of a lot of laws, we take a little heat off of measure. You remember like even Jagmeet in NDP, brother connected to grocery monopolies. So it's like, this is a thing that everybody has a thing in and I think everyone can look the other way. So that was my most interesting Toronto story of this week. We get Toronto co-op store, Toronto, sorry, grocery, public grocery stores, chef's kiss. Moving on to another fun little situation, wraps and leaves back to the sports. Let's bounce back to that. got a couple of parallel stories. I'll let Megan handle Leafs and I'll let Vince handle wraps. We'll start with the Leafs. Here's what the overall problem is. We didn't have the best week in standing up for our players as in the city of Toronto. Meg, set me up with what you thought about the Austin Matthews situation and like where it all landed. Overappreciated, underappreciated both of you first though. Standing up for our players in Toronto. Underappreciated? All right,
speaker-2: I think it's overappreciated. ⁓ Radko Gudis, he did the same thing to Sidney Crosby in the Olympics. That is what he does. ⁓ He's got a long standing history. Remember him screaming at, I think it ⁓ was Wall, he was like screaming at him when they eliminated them when he was playing with Florida, if I'm not mistaken.
speaker-0: But one day he will do amazing pep talks for World Series fans. That's what I did for a living.
speaker-1: Yeah, that time I slashed somebody.
speaker-2: Yeah, no, he's a monster and typically ⁓ we would see, know, like way back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you would see, you know, Sidney Crosby would get hit and Evgeny Malkin would come and, you know, lay a couple of fists. But the Leafs have never really been that team. ⁓ Like Ty Domi and Darcy Tucker and Shane Corson were kind of the last
speaker-1: or yeah
speaker-2: and pillars of sticking up for the captain. Like Matt Sundin used to you know, raked over the coals a lot. Faneuf used to get slashed and hacked and whatever. Matthews has been getting, you know, chopped and whatever. And there's not really been anybody to stick up for him. mean, Wayne Simmons did it for five minutes before he got hurt. But the Leafs aren't really a defensive team like that. I... I wasn't surprised that nobody stuck up for him. And I don't know how well-liked Matthews is in the dressing room. And I know that that has a lot to do with getting stuck up for. So, yeah, I don't know.
speaker-0: So are we talking karma? From our least favorite leaf on the panel? All right. Meanwhile, over in the world of basketball, set us up there, Vince.
speaker-1: Well, two different things. is, well, it all happened in the New Orleans game, I suppose. ⁓ The Pelicans game, it took place in New Orleans. Brandon Ingram got traded from New Orleans to Toronto and the team came out and played like garbage. like, how do you, like, he is one of your top two guys and you go back to the place that traded him and how do you... not get up for that game. don't know. And then the last minute it's a blowout. And but you're back a point guard Jamal Sheds ⁓ guarding ⁓ their guy Murray up close. And then all of a sudden he gets, you know, he shoots a three and then he's all up in Sheds face and then nobody except for IQ, Emmanuel quickly, Emmanuel quickly stepped up. and actually defended him. So was like, what is everybody doing? What I liked about it though is Darko, coach Darko actually then a day later actually called out the team for that.
speaker-0: I hated that. That's so funny.
speaker-1: No, because he's finally showing, you know, this is what you should be doing. Right. This is the quote. What was your problem then?
speaker-0: This is the quote, after watching the film, I thought that we did not handle that situation the way we want, that we were supposed to. Our players, they had conversations with each other. They know that that was not the true picture and image of our team. That's the most wishy washy quote. It's the most like, ⁓ that's going to make me look bad as a coach. 24 hours later, after I watched the film, what were you doing when it happened? After I watched the film?
speaker-1: Well, well... But that's the thing though.
speaker-0: first time I was like, what the hell? ⁓
speaker-1: But the point is you can't I like this No, the next three games, you know, they're back to being their best, in my opinion. I mean, they beat Phoenix. That's a team with a better record than them. They beat Detroit. They're rolling right now. So I mean, three. Yeah, but two games, that's, you know, one more than they had in like, what, 14 tries?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to a bit more than that. listen, yeah. I want to ask you guys in general. I want to go back to the Leafs for a second with Meg. Because we just disagree on that. I'm not a fan of the coach. I'm not a fan of how they played this year. I think they're a better team than they're playing. I think they make a lot of internal mistake. Like they make a lot of like shoot yourself in the foot mistakes. You're talking about the Raptors. but the Leafs. mean, flip a coin.
speaker-2: Don't make any mistakes, what are you talking about?
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I actually have had a historical critique over the Leafs. I guess you could say, growing up as a Red Wings fan, I have a Shanna Plan bias. But obviously, Shanna Plan did not go to Plan. They could not get out of the first round. They ran into a lot of problems when they did. I actually think the poison pill that made me believe so is the gut reaction to go back to an era where a big guy punches some guy in the face and is like, that's how we play hockey. I always thought Don Cherry had like an overwhelming influence on that kind of like style of hockey that Canadians wanted to see. And that Ty Doamish Tucker era also didn't really produce results, but they were all, I always thought they were all kind of dumb-dumbs and I was always proud. as a kid being a Red Wings fan, because I was just like, I like that our people can skate and shoot and pass. ⁓ Not that those guys couldn't, just that like, I'm not a fan of like, thug hockey. I know a lot of people are. Do you think the Leafs should actually go back in that direction? Like, do you think there's a happy medium between what I'm talking about? Or do you think that like, it's a Matthews issue? Or it's a current player?
speaker-2: I think it's a current player safety issue more than it's a Leaf issue or a Matthews issue. I think we're seeing a really ugly trend in the NHL and Conor McDavid called it out a little bit afterwards as well, like when the fine came down for Gouda, so what was it, like $5,000 bucks or five games or something like that? Yeah.
speaker-0: And like the pack of gum in your pocket.
speaker-2: Yeah, exactly. ⁓ I think it's a player safety issue and I feel like the league has put a lot of emphasis on like the Florida Tampa Bay quote unquote rivalry. It's always really violent. There's always a lot of fights. ⁓ The Edmonton Calgary quote unquote rivalry always really violent, always a lot of fights. Yeah, the league loves that. So. I feel like it's more a trend in the league versus a trend in Toronto. And I'm kind of happy that we don't really have anybody who's going to go and be a thug or a goon. I agree with you, Dan. I'm not a fan of that era because yeah, Tucker, Domi, Carlson, or Carson, Korson, Shane Korson. We all remember them, but they weren't a very successful team.
speaker-0: I grew up in Berry, as I've said on this program before, and one of the things that was always funny to me is like they would always talk about Shinkors and being like kind of a tough guy or whatever, but his parents ran a restaurant in Berry called Mom's Restaurant, and was just like this cozy wood furniture thing. It was like it was the biggest cottage core thing you'd ever seen. And it always made me laugh because there was like Shane Corse in memorabilia up there, but it was also just like mom's restaurant. It's like, you know, the toughest son of a bitch is Shane Corse. And I'm like, I don't know. His mom has mom's restaurant. OK, moving on. Here's my next question for you. WNBA, no strike. We avoided the strike. Shoot up the confetti in the air. Yay. Verbal agreement. Nothing in writing. We're going to assume it doesn't all go bananas and we're going to end up with like a written everything's going to be fine. So assuming that underappreciated overappreciated the deal these players got Vince.
speaker-1: It's both underappreciated and overappreciated at the same time. Underappreciating the fact that, you know, hey, we're going to have a season and everybody's happy. That's great. Overappreciated if the WNBA and the NBA by extension are thinking that's it, we've squashed any possibility of another rival league showing up. Well, you really have lowballed these players even after all of this. mean, yeah, they have to come out and say this is a great deal and in comparison to the crappy deal they had, this is a better deal. But in the long run, I don't know. mean, look at the numbers, right? And I always bring up ABL and a lot of people go, what the hell is an ABL? ABL was the competitive league or the rival league that actually popped up to WNBA. It actually started playing before WNBA in the 90s at the same time. And they had all the best players and their average player quality was better than the WNBA at that point in time because they were paying better. ⁓ Their minimum salary was 50,000 in the 1990s and average salary was 80K. Just for comparison's sake, this CBA that just ended in 2025. WNBA was paying a minimum salary of $66,000, $16,000 more than what ABL was paying in 1999, and the average salary for WNBA was $102,000 in change, and ABL's was $80,000. So if you actually compare, you know, taking into consideration inflation, man, those guys without any increase, except for inflation increase, would have made ton more money than these guys. So, mean, so what are we even talking about? Right. Like, so I think if somebody put together another league, just like the unrivaled league, but that has association to the NBA. But if somebody was to try something like the PD, a PWHL, you know, put teams in markets that are underserved. I think it's still a possibility. I don't think they ducked that. So. And players need the money, right? So we'll see.
speaker-0: Meg, underappreciated, overappreciated.
speaker-2: I'm gonna say overappreciated. They could have got more, but I think that having the season is going to be an important bargaining chip if they try to go back to the table and say, is what we produced in the 2026, 2027 season. This is what we think we're worth. Here are the numbers to back that up. I mean, hopefully, hopefully, you know, I have faith in Toronto that they'll show up for the tempo and that that'll put the women in a much better position to renegotiate.
speaker-0: I am so interested in this moving forward. We had this conversation earlier on, maybe like week one of the show, and it was like, they're in a bad stitch because the pressure is to not strike and not kill your momentum as women's sports. like, league is always going to know that. The league is always going to be able to hold that for you. And the first 15 years, like, you know, it's just, it is what it is. Practice with PWHL. It's under all one leadership situation. They don't even have like different owners. So you're in this like, you're not in a worker friendly.
speaker-1: Yeah, it could be worse is what you're saying.
speaker-0: Well, it's just like, you don't have a lot of bargaining power because of the situation that you're in. So I do think it's really important to have something called the WNBA. I think it's really important to have that connection and to have like the structure, the TV deal. So the idea of starting from scratch or somebody trying to compete against them, even in the streaming era, I think would be a tall order.
speaker-1: I mean, that's what happened to the ABL. They couldn't really get that deal done. That was it.
speaker-0: So I think, I I kind of agree with Megan where it's just like, think you just got to keep building, keep building, keep building and work your way up. I mean, you think about the Ted Lindsay story in hockey for us Canadians, right? Of getting the players union even up and going and how much like of a nightmare that was, that was quite far along in the league. You know what I mean? Like this wasn't like, so.
speaker-1: Yeah, but my frustration is this, right? There's all these dude bros out there who are like, well, they got more than what they deserved. And I'm like, no, they didn't even get what they deserved. Yeah, they didn't get what they deserved in 1999. That's right. That's what I'm saying.
speaker-0: Yeah. Fair enough. Agreed. I want to go to one more thing here before we dip out another Canada thing. It's tax season. So H &R Block went hunting for free PR and they did a survey. That survey was about tipping and Canadians views on it. Here's some of the stats. Stats in quotations. H &R Block survey. 67 % of Canadians want to abolish tipping. 93 % of us feel annoyed when a machine asks for a tip in a business that previously did not ask for tips. 65 % of us feel less awkward selecting the no tip option. That's an interesting stat. And 89 % believe that tiered gratuity levels are too high. So I'll do some editorializing with that. I'm assuming what it means on the 93 % feel annoyed when a tip. ⁓ is you're asked for a tip, but a business didn't previously do so. So I'm gonna say like fast food joints at the counter that never used to come up. I'm assuming that's where most people's ire is at. And the second part of that, which was like the 89 % of the tiered gratuity levels are too high. A lot of times now, I don't know if this works across the, this is called Toronto Appreciation Day, so I don't know if I care what's going on in Saskatoon, but in Toronto. Well, just cause of our. In general, Saskatoon's fine, but they're not gonna listen to a program called Toronto Appreciation Day.
speaker-2: We love you Saskatoon. They're not now.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Thanks, Dan. Sorry, guys. Please send your letters, So the thing I'm saying is, is I think that what that refers to is probably the 25 % being the high end of it and then the low end of it being 18 to 20 on some machines in Toronto. You get that. I don't know if that happens anywhere else, but it does downtown city. So the question is tipping at a Subway restaurant, very specifically, something like that. Overappreciated, underappreciated.
speaker-1: Well, I'll be honest with you, right? But I'm that guy, like, you know, I'm glad, you know, four people are listening to this podcast. So I could say this out loud, if I, hey, you don't listen.
speaker-0: I'm like trying to be really nice. Yeah
speaker-2: listening right now. is someone else's podcast.
speaker-1: Same.
speaker-0: Amy Poehler. Finally, we have our trailer.
speaker-1: But if you see me coming a mile away, you know, know, because a lot of the the people who are serving you, usually what they do is they wipe that screen clean, like as in like they move past that screen for you because they know people always complain about, I want to click that button right now.
speaker-0: Okay, so what's your day?
speaker-1: People complain all the time. Like, you've never seen that? Like, people are like, okay.
speaker-0: They never seen it. I've been handed a thing with I've always got the tips.
speaker-2: Yeah, I've
speaker-1: No, but people complain so some of them- I don't-
speaker-0: People complain, but I'm saying you're saying the employees are getting you past the tipping screen? Yeah. Never had that happen. OK.
speaker-1: Sometimes.
speaker-2: I've had that.
speaker-1: And what I'm saying to you is if you see me coming a mile away, you don't do that because the fact is I'm so awkward I'm going to tip you. I'm going to tip you a lot. So do not do that. yeah, but so that that's my feeling towards it. But do I feel like, wait, I didn't used to do that. But I mean, we're having a longer conversation about that tips being needed. to the employee to top up their pay, right? Like that's where we're really at as a society. I don't know, know, before we have this conversation, I think we should have that conversation, you know, paying people better wages.
speaker-0: You're not the host. can't make that decision. I asked you overappreciated, underappreciated. State of format. No, I agree. That's why for me, I'll take this chance. I won't jump in for Meg, just because you set it up. That for me is why it's overappreciated, because I'm not subsidizing Subway. Right. Like Scram Subway. Get out of here. You have more restaurants in North America than any other chain. And you're like, you know what we really need? The person at the tail at Subway, we need you to subsidize their salary for us. What happened to them being sandwich artists? Even sandwich, if you have artists in the title of anything you do, you're getting screwed. Sandwich artist, actual artists.
speaker-1: Yes. % the truth. Yes.
speaker-0: ⁓ The only generative AI artist job that is safe is a subway sandwich artist, but they can't get paid properly.
speaker-2: They can make robots that can put tomatoes on bread. Come on now.
speaker-0: I have zero faith in that. Just that weird Boston Robotics dog. I'm to make your thing.
speaker-1: Thanks.
speaker-2: Even the robot knows you want urban cheddar.
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ Meg. Underappreciated, overappreciated, tipped big odd. Like at a fast food joint at the...
speaker-1: Mm-hmm.
speaker-2: So my rule typically is if I'm standing up when I get the food, I don't tip. ⁓ unless
speaker-0: That's why when you go to restaurant with Meg, it's really awkward when they food to the table.
speaker-2: I'll take that. Burning my hand carrying fajitas. No, like a Subway? No, I won't tip. Smaller restaurants where they're like family owned and operated and I know that that kid is getting the tip. I do appreciate the opportunity to tip these days, but ⁓ I don't know if the person at the till is getting the tip at Subway or, you know, or Burrito Boys or Tim Hortons or what, or Starbucks or what have you.
speaker-0: Sorry
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: I have no idea whether they're actually getting the tip, so I don't do it. But if it is something like a family owned restaurant or a small business that I know is going to that person, even if it's a takeout order or whatever, then I like the opportunity to tip, but I still only tip like two bucks.
speaker-0: One of the things that's also raising the ire for me is if you go to Uber Eats or something, the delivery fees are starting to go up, and that's going to Uber. It's not going to go to the restaurant. So it's like some of those go to the restaurant, and that's different. But it's mostly going to a technology company who's also not paying their workers and not giving them a percentage. And now you make the argument, well, it's it's cheaper for you, and you wouldn't order it if we didn't do those things. But OK, maybe we have a broken system.
speaker-1: Yes.
speaker-0: that we need to talk about. So going back to what Vince said at the beginning, yeah, like the system is broken. And I do think that the, you know, I don't think everyone's just a villain not tipping. Cause like, listen, to be clear, Toronto appreciation night says you should tip everyone because ⁓ dear God, in this culture, we're all drowning. But like at the same time, I really hate this concept of like, it's being put back on us. Like same with, I hate grocery kiosk paying. Like I hate. not having cashiers any
speaker-2: ⁓ you're not a self checkout person.
speaker-0: I hate self checkouts on like in once again in principle because most of the time just in my experience it's like Uber or anything else. The very first days of it you're like, ⁓ this great. I like folksiness and I understand most people don't. get most people just wanna like walk through their life and not have a conversation but I like a five second conversation or a human interaction so I know I'm different. But even if I wasn't, you go to more and more stores. Like I went to Shoppers today and three of the four. Chaos are down And so it's like there it is like that's exactly what's gonna happen like yes
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Shopper's as famous for that, yeah.
speaker-2: I do love a shopper self checkout though. I love that because you buy like the most random personal things at shoppers and I just want to check out with my you know my tampons and my giant thing of ⁓ &M's in private.
speaker-0: But how will sitcoms of the future have a teenager buy condoms? Where will that plot point be, where the parents are behind them in line and it's like, I need a price check on condoms.
speaker-1: I had to do that once where the person at the counter is the person that I was seeing's parent.
speaker-2: No.
speaker-0: Okay, and I'm in high school. Where are you? Why is high Odie like you didn't see like yeah?
speaker-1: I was like, no, I didn't. I was very nervous about it. was in high school. So was like,
speaker-2: Did they know you were going out with their kid? Yes. ⁓ no. So they were like, hey, Vince, how's it going?
speaker-0: And you were like, don't worry, I'm cheating on her.
speaker-1: Yes, that's actually what it was. We're not seeing each other anymore.
speaker-0: I broke up with her on Tuesday. it out. It's fine, don't worry. All right, coming up after the break, I want to have a conversation about something kind of odd. AI.
speaker-1: Yeah. you
speaker-0: in the future of announcing. Congrats listener to making it to the part of the show on two times the speed where you automatically skip because you assume it's going to be an ad about a meal service to your door or a mattress. But it's actually not an ad, it's just an ask. We just launched our Instagram page as HeyTorontoAN or HeyTorontoan on Instagram. We're gonna post video from the show, we're gonna post some clips that we didn't do in this program, and we're just gonna have some fun all around sharing pictures from the Toronto's meme scenes and teams. So, Thank you for being the first waivers, family and friends that are paying attention to Toronto Appreciation Night. We hope you're having fun. Welcome back everyone. appreciate you. Andrew two times is speeding us. Okay, here we go. Buck Martinez retired as everyone knows. They did the exhaustive search to find a replacement by looking directly to the left. They're like, ⁓ that joke just settles there. right. Let's, Buck's no longer going to be on the program. Of course he is still living and still with us, but this brings me to a thing that came up this week because Val Kilmer and his estate agreed that his participation in this film that was supposed to go through except, you know, all the things that happened to Val. So he couldn't be a part of it, but he wished to be. So they're like, you know what, we have the tools, we have the thing now, we're going to AI Val Kilmer into this new movie. And the estate's like, sure, why not? Because I think you see this a lot with actors who weren't, who did fine, but necessarily maybe aren't like into Tom Cruise category of like, we were just sitting on piles and piles of money. So this got a lot of hype in the entertainment world, but It reminded me of something that I felt that kind of came and went, which is, remember when NBC relaunched like the round ball rock era of we've got basketball back, here's John Tash, he's doing stuff. In that same thing, they used generative AI to bring back Jim Fagan, who died in 2017. And they used him for like the nostalgia for some of the adverts and for some of the segments. And to remember when we used to have basketball, here's the voice of that.
speaker-1: We've got bad
speaker-0: So, you know, I think about this week in baseball, Mel Allen, when I grew up, like those types of roles, you could easily now bring them back because it's just a narration. It's just like a, but taking that one step further.
speaker-1: Hmm.
speaker-0: There could be an avatar human doing the game and you could convert that into Harry Carrey, you could convert that into Tom Cheek, you could convert that into Jerry Howard, da da da da da da. Where are you at? You know what I'm saying? Like you could do any voice you wanted. Like anyone who's not broadcasting, like Jerry Howard, but sure.
speaker-1: Jerry Harith is still alive, Dan. But I think Jerry could actually say whether he wants to be that.
speaker-0: But all these people are going to sell it. I don't know you've seen the viral clips of Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine. were both like, ⁓ it's probably going to be a thing. And then meanwhile, behind the scenes, they have deeply invested themselves into it being a thing. So Matthew McConaughey flat out believes you should just copyright yourself and then print money off of your voice. And this is I'm asking you all. What level of uncomfort as fans do you want like a real human in the booth or if you could get the nostalgia back of a Tom Cheek radio broadcast would you want it?
speaker-2: No.
speaker-0: Megan, No, I just watched you both lean in, was like, all right.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, not at all. No. Yeah.
speaker-2: ⁓ boo. ⁓ I don't even need to elaborate. Just no, absolutely not would I ever want to hear that. It would be icky. It would be gross. I don't want to hear Bob Cole's voice talk about a team that doesn't exist. Like if you want to play his voice at the beginning of a broadcast, that's one thing. But an AI generated voice is disgusting. It would just, that's uncanny valley, the likes of which I don't even want to think about.
speaker-1: Even if you perfect the technology and all that stuff and it's not gonna look like Tupac the hologram standing between, you Dr. Dre and Snoop, it's still ⁓ not cool, man.
speaker-2: Just dead, man. Just let it go. It's just weird. I hate it.
speaker-1: And what you're doing with it, they didn't give you permission.
speaker-2: No, the Val Kilmer thing is slightly
speaker-0: Well, wait, there's no world where this happens where it's not given permission. That's the family of the the broadcast. And mean, Val Kilmer's family's given permission. Right. And once again, and the future is going to be these people trademarking their voices like James Earl Jones has already done it. So it's like you could get this is CNN.
speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, but what I'm saying Michael Caine ⁓ also saying the same thing as they get closer and closer to the end. You know, want your voice to carry on forever.
speaker-2: Just that tangerine speech.
speaker-1: Yeah
speaker-0: I'm interested in the following question then. Is there any scenario that you give a pass for this to? So can I create a contextual world where you're like, okay, maybe. So we honor a player ⁓ from an era and it's Joe Bowen introducing them. Bothers you at all? Okay.
speaker-1: No. Yeah. Everything. Yes.
speaker-2: I don't want to hear them say something that they weren't alive for it to happen.
speaker-1: And now I'm gonna flip it because I know you have opinions, Dan, so what do you think about all of this?
speaker-0: Well, I've talked about AI a lot in my day to day life because the entertainment media world is affected by it greatly. I tend to mean to the Pandora's box is opening. So if we don't regulate it and we don't get loud about what bothers us or doesn't bother us as people, that's bad. But on the flip side, to be honest with you, I was leading you a little bit in the beginning of the segment because that's my issue when we don't let young people in the door ever. ⁓ it's sort of lends itself to like, well, this could happen. We're not introducing or growing young talent. So then I guess we'll just let the boomers and the elders have, and the Xs have their broadcasters till they pass away. Like, it's just a very easy thing for me to imagine that you would just get Bob Cole. If that was this era, you would just get Bob Cole forever. ⁓ or you get Jim Houston forever or whatever, like, you know, Until that passes away and then like maybe. But like there's so many weird things you could do. Like if you think about what happens in reality is always what I tell people to think about. So for example, like how much do people love Snoop Dogg at the Olympics? All of a sudden you could have Snoop Dogg doing voice, like you could have that voice doing curling with the expertise of the person who actually knows what they're talking about. You could do all of these kinds of stunty things.
speaker-1: That's not Snoop though.
speaker-2: That's right. We're not there for his voice. We're there for him saying the horse is crip walking.
speaker-0: Right. have, listen, I want to believe in the world that you live in. I just think that there's also a world where Hallmark movies do really well.
speaker-2: We're not saying it's not possible. We're saying that it's one's are you I it's not possible. We're just saying that it's
speaker-1: Or is not going to.
speaker-0: I agree with you. Yeah, I don't love it.
speaker-1: And in fact, the acting unions having a fun time with it because there's also like this a lot of gray area that's popped up where people are signing up actors to actually do stuff without really getting, know, what they tell you is the permission that they're getting versus what they are actually getting. There's a lot of gray area in there. So, yeah, it's it's becoming difficult for sure.
speaker-0: And I mean, also there's just like, there's so many signs. We talked about this last week with the Toronto tempo and the art where I said in my final piece out of the show, was like, artists need to start thinking about more and more about like what their deals are because you feed something through after you do enough talking, you know? And what I will say is interesting. And I think this speaks to, we're gonna go to an age, right? I don't wanna get too deep into this cause we don't have the time, but. all of these media networks are falling apart. There's gonna be a handful of them left that survive with live sports and it'll be a streaming service. like whether Amazon has hockey or whether it's the Rogers, one of these big dogs will have it. And then the rest of us are gonna be fighting on these kinds of shows. It's independent shows. It's gonna be your gate 14s. It's your, know, those types of programs that are fan-driven shows. And when we get to that, That's where things get super interesting because these teams don't have legal reps. These types of shows don't have a legal team. We don't have a department. We don't call Gary down the hall who's our legal guy and was like, hey, can you go after this? Or hey, can you look into this? And what you're seeing in music is it's not necessarily Taylor Swift we're stealing beats from. It's all the indie artists that are like desperately trying to feed the algorithm to keep up their head above water. And that's what's being swiped. So in the same way of like voices, different things, your voice might not end up on like Hockey Day in Canada if it's us, but your voice could definitely get up and like they could steal our voices once we put enough audio up. Some random medical podcast or for some random history podcasts that they're like, we need to just try to churn money out. And that's where things I think get really complicated is for like the, we're creating a middle class of entertainment and media.
speaker-1: Well, I
speaker-0: without protections, without legal, without anything that has professionalism around it. It's just people hustling and that's who's vulnerable. So anyways, long story long, when you hear Toronto Appreciation Night brought to you by Pfizer, everyone's just appreciating the latest drugs. ⁓ Please know that wasn't us. I'm going to end this program with our appreciation parade. So I'm going to start with Vince tonight. Vince, what do we appreciate?
speaker-1: Well, I'm appreciating my nephew, Ashok, who's gonna turn seven this weekend, so... Indeed, happy birthday, buddy. Yeah, it's quite hard to talk about the impact that he's had on my life. it's just, you know, he's made me grow and evolve in a way I probably didn't think was possible, you know, or thought I needed to. You know, it's like doing simple things like going in, doing a woodworking workshop last weekend. Like it would have been a thing that I would have never done in my life. I don't want to be near, you know, nails and hammers. No. But here I am doing that stuff. All of that, all the simple things and the joy that he brings to my life. I really appreciate. I love you, buddy. And yeah, I appreciate you.
speaker-0: Meg fall out.
speaker-2: Can't follow that! ⁓ my god, that is so sweet! Okay, but does he come with a sailor's hat commemorating the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald?
speaker-1: He would love a sailor's hat.
speaker-2: Because my appreciation is the Madison Mallards doing an ⁓ appreciation night for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald where everybody gets a ticket and a sailor's hat for 20 bucks. So the thing I appreciate this week is a little minor league baseball teams that do fun stuff like that and with the women's baseball team coming, or baseball league coming out, I really hope that that sort of extends and I hope to see a lot more like fun giveaways and fun themed nights and stuff like that. ⁓ god, that sounded so like trite compared to yours though. Jeez.
speaker-1: No i will.
speaker-0: I think we should do this over again and let Vince go last.
speaker-1: Hehehehehe
speaker-0: No, no. All right. My appreciation this week goes to the J's opening on the 100th level, an actual like excellence exhibit. So it's like a level of excellence. And so the 50th season, we're going to have a concourse level, Buck Martinez, brand spanking new.
speaker-2: Okay, so.
speaker-0: inductee, it's gonna have memorabilia, monumental achievement from players, coaches, builders, broadcasters. It basically sounds like they're gonna try to do like a little mini Jays Hall of Fame. Now what this looks like yet, I haven't seen a full mock-up of how good it will be, but I wanna see more of this in sports in general. I think that it's really important, speaking to Vincent, his nephew, it's fun for, you know, the elders to get their moment of back in my day, here's what a glove looked like. And you can have those conversations. I went to Cooperstown with my dad when I was a kid. And those things were interesting and they do bond you because your dad's got some random story about some random thing that happened in 1960, whatever. And that was fun for me growing up as a kid. And it's the same with things like in Toronto when there's actual Museum of Toronto and they're doing the Degrassi. to like, young people, television in the history of Toronto. And here's like Mr. Jessup's tickle trunk. And here is a prop from Degrassi and here is a prop from today's special. And here is a random photo of the, you know, of the friendly giant. All of these things, I really think, bring the city. And I think we've lacked it in Toronto for such a long time. And there's going to be a statue for the 92, 93 team. ⁓ That's not that we didn't love that Roger statue, but it's nice to have a team statue. And so my appreciation goes to, I think this new trend that we're seeing, which is to sort of celebrate the city, but also not just immediately throw our history away the second that it's over. That we're gonna have some memories of things and we'll be able to touch the literal stuff a little bit, or at least behind glass. that actual, for the longest time in Toronto, it felt like, We just threw stuff away. It's the condo culture. It's the like, we don't have a restaurant. Meg and I used to work at the CN Tower together back in the day. And it was that thing that you just didn't feel like, know, New York has like 45 things. You'd be like, yeah, that Seinfeld restaurant, Tom's restaurant, go to that. Toronto, like there's so few of those touch points, because they're all gone in 10 minutes. there is no purple onion that, you know, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen hung out with in Yorkville. It's, you know, it's an espresso.
speaker-1: shop like this.
speaker-0: This this kind of at least if we're going to get rid of stuff, we're going to replace it with like take a look at it and not just like prop up Sam the Record Man signs and Dundas Square because we don't know what else to do with it. I like that we're to celebrate and appreciate Toronto shockingly enough from one of the hosts of Toronto Appreciation Night for Megan Dingman and Vince Casio-Murphy. I'm Dan Spear and reminding you to check us out on all the podcast platforms that exist in your life or just follow us at Hey Toronto and Hey Toronto and at Instagram all one word or Toronto appreciation on YouTube. You're gonna see some clips and some videos coming up from the show and we'll be here for you every weekend. Have a good weekend, Toronto. We'll see you next week.
speaker-1: Public apology.
speaker-0: Meg, what's your story clue?
speaker-2: bowler hat and Bermuda shorts.
speaker-0: Yes, obviously. Why wouldn't it be? Anyone want to guess the story?
speaker-1: No.
speaker-2: Pierre Poliev appears on Joe Rogan.
speaker-0: The future public apology with bowler hat and Bermuda shorts. Okay, so we're gonna get in a time machine and I'm gonna tell you one of the dumbest radio contests in Toronto's history. It's from Chum FM. It's from Chum, I should say. And it's the walking man contest. The walking man contest happens in 1959 when they ape an idea from the States. The walking man concept is essentially this. We're going to... put somebody on the street randomly in Toronto who is the walking man and you are supposed to engage people on the street with, you the walking man? And if you find the man, you win $1,000. Now keep in mind, a thousand bucks in 1959, nothing to stand on. So guess what happens? Nothing actually because you can't just walk up to random people and be like, you the walking man? So it's an absolute nightmare and they're starting to sweat it at chum because they're like we this was our big contest for the quarter like what are we supposed to do? So they're like, okay, maybe you know, the concept was Every week that you don't find the walking man the money decreases so they try by a time they're down to 500 bucks for like all this is getting sad so like The walking man will be in an elevator. So everyone you meet in elevators today say, are you the walking man? Nobody finds the walking man. They're like, okay, ⁓ what if you were on the subway? The walking man today is on the subway. Ask everyone on the subway, are you the walking man? Nobody knows. So they go down to only ask at store entrances. The walking man will be hanging out downtown in front of a store. Nobody finds the walking man. So now they're like, ⁓ this isn't great. So they give up on their concept. They're like, whatever. Let's just tell them where he is. So get on the radio and they're like, the walking man is young and queen. All right. Young and but Alan Farrow, who's their big PR guy, says to Alan Slate, because there's only people named Alan allowed at Trump in the 50s. And they're like, what? How do we make this at least a bit interesting? So they tell everybody The walking man, because once again, they have no faith that people will find walking man at this point. They're like, he's going to wear a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts. They're like, you know what we're going to do though? We're going to put our radio DJs from different parts at Young Queen. So from the East, there'll be a man in a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts, but he won't be the real walking man. And then from the South, we'll put a person in a bowler hat and Bermuda shorts, but that won't be the real walking man. And the real walking man will come out of the stock exchange. So this would be... dumb on a good day. But here's the thing that everyone always forgets. People need money. And in 1959, 10,000 people showed up to the corner of Yonge and Queen and caused complete chaos to the point where
speaker-1: ⁓
speaker-0: Like cop cars had to line the streets. They had to close down the intersection and Trump had to issue a public apology. Behind the scenes in the Trump storybook, they talk about it as like they were thrilled. They're like, holy hell, this wasn't, this was just like a dumb contest. Clearly we have people, people are paying attention to us and we have power, but to the cops they had to be like, I'm really sorry about that officers. didn't really, we had no idea. We thought 20 people would show up. We had no concept. So this was the public apology that had to air on Trump, which was from time to time. CHUM in editorial form has criticized various civic events or individuals. This time Trump's editorial attack is directed at our own operation. The station sincerely regrets any inconvenience or hardship caused by pedestrians or motorists during the finale of our walking man promotion at the intersections of Queen and Young. Chum at no time visualized the effects of this promotion. In particular, our apologies to the TPA, the Toronto Police Department and a sincere thank you for the superb performance of the traffic officers and quickly clearing what has been reported as one of the largest traffic jams in the history of Toronto. Needless to say, if Chum had foreseen the consequences of our walking man finale, we would not have staged it at Young and Queen. And I guess, you you're throughout a traffic. So if you have a radio promo that you're thinking of for Toronto Appreciation Night, perhaps we shouldn't do The Walking Man. Toronto appreciation at the weekly hangout where we celebrate today's memes, teams, and the city's past scenes. I'm Dan Spear and I've spent my life in Toronto's media, entertainment, and online culture. And this week on the program, I'm joined by my two co-hosts, it's Megan Dingman and Vince Kazimurthy. And like, we like to start off all shows. I think it's that chum thing, guys. in like radio mode. What's going on with me? hey everybody, welcome to the same side. Young and queen, how we doing? Did you guys grow up with
speaker-1: you
speaker-0: a radio station that you liked? you have a fave? I was an AM640 kid for like that three years that it existed. was like Tarzan Dan was my guy. Did you have one? Like Vince, you're not a real music nerd. So you didn't probably have like a-
speaker-1: Well, my music taste doesn't suit Toronto at that time anyway.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's true. ⁓
speaker-1: So
speaker-2: 102.1 The Edge, 977, 107, 1079.
speaker-0: interesting. 107 is Q. And Q and the Edge are owned by the same company, owned by the same sister station, so they always had like crossover. I always found 102.1, there's like CFNY dock right now, but I always found 102.1 to be like toxic bro. didn't like, they gave me the like, I was just like, ⁓ that was the kid that was like.
speaker-2: Yes. Rock music is toxic bro.
speaker-0: Yeah, but like alt scene by the time, because like in the early days, was kind of it was kind of nerdy. It was like nerdy alt, like Chris Sheppard was like the early days of like CFNY. But by the time it gets to like my nineties, it's very much like the death rattle of grunge. So it's like, like by the time I'm like really paying attention to stuff, it's like kind of Progen and Nirvana are kind of on the way out. And there's this like very Alan Cross centric like station. So my question, I always ask you guys for fun facts. Tell me your radio story.
speaker-2: I have so many stories about The Edge, ⁓ but we'll save those for another time. The one, the autograph one though, I will give you. So one day I was leaving France and I was walking towards the subway and I turned left. I like, I'll go to the Eaton Center. So I turned left outside of The Edge and Slash was walking outside. I guess he was in town for when he did his solo stuff.
speaker-0: Right. Okay, really important question. Mm-hmm. Top hat slash?
speaker-2: No, he wasn't wearing a top hat. He had his hair in a ponytail, but you recognize that hair from a mile away. And he's quite a tall guy and he was still dressed slash, like the leather pants and like a little leather jacket. And so you'd spot him from a mile away. So I, of course, went up to him like, ⁓ my God, I'm such a huge fan. It's such an honor to meet you. He shook my hand. ⁓ But I didn't have anything for him to sign. And this is before smartphones. Selfies. there's no picture or anything like that. So I go home and I told my mom about it and I was so excited.
speaker-0: Like,
speaker-2: Fast forward to a couple of months later, she phones me while I'm at work at the CN Tower and said, you have mail from Slash. Like the return address just says Slash and then some address in California. So my mom had contacted his management company and said my daughter met Slash in Toronto. She's a huge fan, but she didn't have anything to get signed. So his management company sent us an autograph. picture, which I still have. And I still have the envelope that says it's from Slav.
speaker-0: Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's cool. Oh, that's great. I like.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: Thanks, Mom.
speaker-1: Yeah, good job, mom.
speaker-0: All right, y'all. So before we get our ball rolling too deeply here, I'm just gonna run down the week that was. And here it is in sports. We got a verbal agreement from the WNBA. Players got the bumps. We'll talk about that in a second. Things feel pretty decent there, but like I'll get you all to give me your hot takes on how decent you think it was. On the Leafs front, the Leafs can't lose correctly. yeah. We're in a situation where the Leafs are not gonna get that pick. but they're also not gonna get anything out of their losing. This is the most Leafs thing to ever Leafs. I don't really have much else on that besides just like another season that won't really do a whole lot for anything. The Blue Jays are doing A-OK in spring training. We'll talk about that in a second of like, what about these injuries? Everybody's apparently just like tripping on garden hoses and dundee. Like, I don't know. What are you gonna do? And then I'm gonna bring us before we get into our staple underappreciated, overappreciated segment. This is my headline of the week for Toronto. Doug Ford praises homeowner who shot man during home invasion. These guys, they need to be shot. Just sure why not congratulations for shooting this guy should have shot him a couple more times as far as I'm concerned the premiere set on wednesday I mean just chef's kiss. are gonna do? Uh Yeah, what do you even say about what do you even say so let's get into Overappreciated underappreciated. I want to begin here the world baseball classic happened And my first question before we get into the final and that whole thing, how do we feel about military pep talks? So the guy who shot Bin Laden was it? The SEAL Team 6 guy is the person who gets to rev up the states before they play Canada? Like what was it even the final? Like what would they bring in for the final? Like Osama Bin Laden's corpse? Like what would they bring
speaker-1: Yeah No Ronald Reagan's every animated corpses who they wanted to bring in
speaker-0: ⁓ okay. Vince, start us off with SEAL Team 6. Underappreciated, overappreciated?
speaker-1: I mean it's par for the course right? I America and military and what they do like I mean America is out there in terms of all of those stuff it's just
speaker-0: Did they release the pep talk out of curiosity?
speaker-1: Yeah, Megan showed it to me, yeah.
speaker-0: Meg, what's it look like?
speaker-2: I mean it looks exactly like you think. It's a win-one for the Gipper, except the, you know, Gipper is Obama.
speaker-1: Well, he's just going on about the story and he was like, yeah, this happened and then was a gay idiot and blah, blah.
speaker-0: Like Ernie comments in the corner, the power of French.
speaker-1: I don't think Ernie was even showing his face.
speaker-0: All right, so Meg over appreciate under appreciates your team six pep talk
speaker-2: I okay, I mean obviously it was overappreciated because it didn't work. But I mean, I understand that. ⁓
speaker-1: Yes! ⁓
speaker-0: worked in that game, wasn't that the game in Canada? So it did work for that one.
speaker-2: One game. But couldn't be- Yeah, yeah. The real problem- no, I'm just kidding.
speaker-1: Venezuela. you
speaker-2: Like was he booked that night? Like he couldn't come back? That's another story, like a high school football team in Texas?
speaker-0: I don't think
speaker-2: No, no, no, like he goes and does these talks now. He goes into like, he a NASCAR one and yeah, he's
speaker-0: But I feel like the s on that's the problem. I feel like he probably has one talk Like his follow-up talk is like there was one time. I picked this woman up at a bar
speaker-2: Yeah, 100%. Don't speech men because that's I mean that's so lame that you would need something like that that you would need this actual accomplished man to come in and be like I did this insane thing that know Children play and I hope
speaker-1: my life.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: And no, you're going to to play.
speaker-0: I want the email because I want to know if it was like pitched or like I just I could really see the correlation between my assassination and your anyways, okay
speaker-1: My gross at typing. I'm in deep trouble.
speaker-0: World baseball classic finale. Yeah, underappreciate overappreciated or just flat on the nose appreciated Meg
speaker-2: Underappreciated. I thought it was so sweet. The pitcher's crying. And like it was, it was great. And another American Aaron screws up everything for his team. Love to see it. Underappreciated. And Venezuela, they had so much fun and like the fans were so excited. Underappreciated.
speaker-0: It was great.
speaker-1: Agreed, underappreciated and it's good to see like they were the team, know, nobody would have picked to win that, right? So of the eight teams in there. I I think that's one situation where Canada would have even been picked ahead of them. So and then ⁓ Andres Jimenez plays for them. hey, good for him.
speaker-0: Also, I mean, if we thought we had a gripe with the United States, right? So I can only imagine that that country got a little bit of enjoyment out of that win in that moment. I'm gonna move on. ⁓ Vince, I'm gonna start you off with this one. Overappreciated, underappreciated, the concept and rumor, underline, underline, underline rumor, Kawhi is coming back to Toronto. Set that up for us and then give me if it's overappreciated or underappreciated.
speaker-2: Right.
speaker-1: Okay, so the rumor that's floating around, mean, this is completely a big, big rumor anyways, but ⁓ is basically because Kawhi's contract is again expiring after next year. So for the next season, you bring in Kawhi, you trade away Brandon Ingram, ⁓ Jacobi Walter, I think that was the and ⁓ CMB, Colin Murray Boyles, who was your first around pick. this past year and a first round pick and you get Kawaii back. Underappreciated!
speaker-0: Underappreciated or overappreciated? Come on! No seriously, underappreciated or overappreciated, idea of Kawhi coming back to Toronto.
speaker-1: I think it is underappreciated because again, like, yeah, I'd do that again. Do we win a championship? Get out of here, Look, all right, the way this team is playing right now, right, Brandon Ingram is who you are using as your primary scorer. Scotty Barnes is being used as the Swiss Army knife, right? Like that's essentially what you're doing. If that is the case, Brandon Ingram isn't enough for you to win. So replace him with a guy who
speaker-0: Wait, you'd do that?
speaker-1: is a bonafide number one and who can play defense too. I think you can
speaker-0: Meg thoughts overappreciated underappreciated
speaker-2: I don't care. No, I'm just kidding. mean, like Vince, walk me through how close he is to being finished.
speaker-1: I don't think he's close to being finished. He is playing really well right now.
speaker-0: Wait, isn't he about to go on the... isn't he injured though?
speaker-1: No, but he's always going to be injured. I mean, that's that's been that's been the case for the last.
speaker-2: Are we... It's never gonna work fully. Are they cutting off their nose to spite their face? they giving... Like, they're giving up a lot of... I mean, there might be room to grow for these guys, and if we're giving that up and then we're getting... Did you say a first round pick would go for him?
speaker-0: Tonight on Vince Sells You A
speaker-1: Yeah, but I mean you're winning right
speaker-0: now so it's the seventh.
speaker-2: But I mean, when we talked about that, doesn't it mean more if it's the team that you like and you watched them grow together and that they win? Do we really want another rent-a-championship, like Dan said last week?
speaker-1: Yes? Rent another championship, yay!
speaker-0: Yay. Here's the thing about this rumor though. Why does it want to back here? Why does it want to come back here?
speaker-1: ⁓ he'll definitely leave after that season. Why is that coming back?
speaker-0: There's clippers rumors that make way more sense to me. I don't think Kawaii would come back to Toronto.
speaker-1: I think it's because he had that, you know, nostalgia quote where he's like, if I only known the town was going to grow to what it is now, sort of quote. everybody's like, possibly. Yes, the only time we want. But the truth is what you said, it's exactly exactly the point. I don't think Bobby Webster is ever going to get out of this group. and trade people away.
speaker-0: Yeah, things will happen. Okay, moving on to something else.
speaker-1: I like Brandon Ingram as a person, so there you go.
speaker-0: a little bit more on the Toronto front than the sports front for just one second. We had this idea floated in the spirit of the mayor of New York talking about public grocery stores. So on Thursday, we had this idea that by next week on March 26th at a council meeting, we're going to have a pitch to establish a pilot for four city run grocery stores. So basically like the LCBO, but make it food. going to prioritize neighborhoods with limited access to grocery stores and lower income households. A study found it'll cost about $350 million if the country wanted to do this countrywide. So open 50 stores across Canada, 40 in urban cities, 10 in remote regions was the suggestion. Six distribution hubs. You can think of like the Amazon of the same idea, right? You need warehouses full of stuff to like be able to actually have a supply chain and other logistics that you would need. Operating costs for things like labor and rent would be an additional 290 million. Saying all of that, it's actually less than the lifetime cost of one F-35 fighter jet. And we cut a deal with the US to buy 88 of those, which once again, shaps case in our current situation. Thoughts around the idea of LCBO but make it food. Overappreciated, underappreciated, mega.
speaker-2: don't know enough about it, other than what I sort of skimmed today, but I would say underappreciated as long as it goes to the folks that need it the most because grocery prices are absolutely astronomical. I and ⁓ all across the board, like whether you're in, you know, downtown Toronto, it's incredibly expensive or out in the boonies, it's incredibly expensive. So anything that might take costs down for folks, I'm in favour of as long as that's the end result.
speaker-0: friends.
speaker-1: underappreciated as well because I would have thought the cost would have been a lot more than what you're talking about 350 ⁓
speaker-0: And that's for the across the country. not for the four pilots.
speaker-1: So yeah, so I think that would be a great idea. Now, not to be confused with, know, I grew up in a third world country and there there's cooperative stores and like, you know, lot of conversations about Cuba is happening right now, where they ration out because, you know, you're in a wartime or in a in an economic crisis situation where they ration out stuff. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about an actual cooperative that could ⁓ keep the prices low and allocate resources properly. mean, that really
speaker-0: Yeah, I actually think it's a flat out public option. I think it's necessarily giving a co-op like in because co-op in Canada, like where I'm from means like a whole other farming thing that like, yeah, like just like a whole back and forth. And I don't think we're even doing that. I think it's literally just like if you can have a public option for a grocery store because of the way you're going to manage the supply chain, can. It's the Amazon effect. But for good, I actually will even double down on this. This would be to happen. Yeah.
speaker-1: would people let it happen?
speaker-0: It has to happen. There's a handful of things, if you listen to Pierre Pollyive on the Rogan show today, there is a handful of things that think left and right can meet in the middle on, and this is kind of one of them. It's sort of how universal basic income, even right wingers, because that's a longer story for another segment, but I do think there are things that both left and right, counselors and there's common grower right like there well all their voters are dealing with the same problem at the grocery store like it's it's unaffordable across the board you don't go to the grocery store with like I'm a conservative I'm a liberal I'm a right p or you go to the grocery store being like how much are hot dogs like it's
speaker-1: you can see the benefits. Can I make lunch for my kid? Yeah, this week, yes.
speaker-0: Yeah. We've got to a breaking point. And the reason why I think this will happen is because then they don't have to tax or go after any of the rich folks that the conservatives have relationships with, like who have lobbyists in your camp. you've got your free, know, and that goes to both sides of the, everybody's got friends inside of the grocery industry. And so this way everybody kind of like, well, we take a little heat off of.
speaker-1: friends.
speaker-0: of a lot of laws, we take a little heat off of measure. You remember like even Jagmeet in NDP, brother connected to grocery monopolies. So it's like, this is a thing that everybody has a thing in and I think everyone can look the other way. So that was my most interesting Toronto story of this week. We get Toronto co-op store, Toronto, sorry, grocery, public grocery stores, chef's kiss. Moving on to another fun little situation, wraps and leaves back to the sports. Let's bounce back to that. got a couple of parallel stories. I'll let Megan handle Leafs and I'll let Vince handle wraps. We'll start with the Leafs. Here's what the overall problem is. We didn't have the best week in standing up for our players as in the city of Toronto. Meg, set me up with what you thought about the Austin Matthews situation and like where it all landed. Overappreciated, underappreciated both of you first though. Standing up for our players in Toronto. Underappreciated? All right,
speaker-2: I think it's overappreciated. ⁓ Radko Gudis, he did the same thing to Sidney Crosby in the Olympics. That is what he does. ⁓ He's got a long standing history. Remember him screaming at, I think it ⁓ was Wall, he was like screaming at him when they eliminated them when he was playing with Florida, if I'm not mistaken.
speaker-0: But one day he will do amazing pep talks for World Series fans. That's what I did for a living.
speaker-1: Yeah, that time I slashed somebody.
speaker-2: Yeah, no, he's a monster and typically ⁓ we would see, know, like way back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you would see, you know, Sidney Crosby would get hit and Evgeny Malkin would come and, you know, lay a couple of fists. But the Leafs have never really been that team. ⁓ Like Ty Domi and Darcy Tucker and Shane Corson were kind of the last
speaker-1: or yeah
speaker-2: and pillars of sticking up for the captain. Like Matt Sundin used to you know, raked over the coals a lot. Faneuf used to get slashed and hacked and whatever. Matthews has been getting, you know, chopped and whatever. And there's not really been anybody to stick up for him. mean, Wayne Simmons did it for five minutes before he got hurt. But the Leafs aren't really a defensive team like that. I... I wasn't surprised that nobody stuck up for him. And I don't know how well-liked Matthews is in the dressing room. And I know that that has a lot to do with getting stuck up for. So, yeah, I don't know.
speaker-0: So are we talking karma? From our least favorite leaf on the panel? All right. Meanwhile, over in the world of basketball, set us up there, Vince.
speaker-1: Well, two different things. is, well, it all happened in the New Orleans game, I suppose. ⁓ The Pelicans game, it took place in New Orleans. Brandon Ingram got traded from New Orleans to Toronto and the team came out and played like garbage. like, how do you, like, he is one of your top two guys and you go back to the place that traded him and how do you... not get up for that game. don't know. And then the last minute it's a blowout. And but you're back a point guard Jamal Sheds ⁓ guarding ⁓ their guy Murray up close. And then all of a sudden he gets, you know, he shoots a three and then he's all up in Sheds face and then nobody except for IQ, Emmanuel quickly, Emmanuel quickly stepped up. and actually defended him. So was like, what is everybody doing? What I liked about it though is Darko, coach Darko actually then a day later actually called out the team for that.
speaker-0: I hated that. That's so funny.
speaker-1: No, because he's finally showing, you know, this is what you should be doing. Right. This is the quote. What was your problem then?
speaker-0: This is the quote, after watching the film, I thought that we did not handle that situation the way we want, that we were supposed to. Our players, they had conversations with each other. They know that that was not the true picture and image of our team. That's the most wishy washy quote. It's the most like, ⁓ that's going to make me look bad as a coach. 24 hours later, after I watched the film, what were you doing when it happened? After I watched the film?
speaker-1: Well, well... But that's the thing though.
speaker-0: first time I was like, what the hell? ⁓
speaker-1: But the point is you can't I like this No, the next three games, you know, they're back to being their best, in my opinion. I mean, they beat Phoenix. That's a team with a better record than them. They beat Detroit. They're rolling right now. So I mean, three. Yeah, but two games, that's, you know, one more than they had in like, what, 14 tries?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to a bit more than that. listen, yeah. I want to ask you guys in general. I want to go back to the Leafs for a second with Meg. Because we just disagree on that. I'm not a fan of the coach. I'm not a fan of how they played this year. I think they're a better team than they're playing. I think they make a lot of internal mistake. Like they make a lot of like shoot yourself in the foot mistakes. You're talking about the Raptors. but the Leafs. mean, flip a coin.
speaker-2: Don't make any mistakes, what are you talking about?
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I actually have had a historical critique over the Leafs. I guess you could say, growing up as a Red Wings fan, I have a Shanna Plan bias. But obviously, Shanna Plan did not go to Plan. They could not get out of the first round. They ran into a lot of problems when they did. I actually think the poison pill that made me believe so is the gut reaction to go back to an era where a big guy punches some guy in the face and is like, that's how we play hockey. I always thought Don Cherry had like an overwhelming influence on that kind of like style of hockey that Canadians wanted to see. And that Ty Doamish Tucker era also didn't really produce results, but they were all, I always thought they were all kind of dumb-dumbs and I was always proud. as a kid being a Red Wings fan, because I was just like, I like that our people can skate and shoot and pass. ⁓ Not that those guys couldn't, just that like, I'm not a fan of like, thug hockey. I know a lot of people are. Do you think the Leafs should actually go back in that direction? Like, do you think there's a happy medium between what I'm talking about? Or do you think that like, it's a Matthews issue? Or it's a current player?
speaker-2: I think it's a current player safety issue more than it's a Leaf issue or a Matthews issue. I think we're seeing a really ugly trend in the NHL and Conor McDavid called it out a little bit afterwards as well, like when the fine came down for Gouda, so what was it, like $5,000 bucks or five games or something like that? Yeah.
speaker-0: And like the pack of gum in your pocket.
speaker-2: Yeah, exactly. ⁓ I think it's a player safety issue and I feel like the league has put a lot of emphasis on like the Florida Tampa Bay quote unquote rivalry. It's always really violent. There's always a lot of fights. ⁓ The Edmonton Calgary quote unquote rivalry always really violent, always a lot of fights. Yeah, the league loves that. So. I feel like it's more a trend in the league versus a trend in Toronto. And I'm kind of happy that we don't really have anybody who's going to go and be a thug or a goon. I agree with you, Dan. I'm not a fan of that era because yeah, Tucker, Domi, Carlson, or Carson, Korson, Shane Korson. We all remember them, but they weren't a very successful team.
speaker-0: I grew up in Berry, as I've said on this program before, and one of the things that was always funny to me is like they would always talk about Shinkors and being like kind of a tough guy or whatever, but his parents ran a restaurant in Berry called Mom's Restaurant, and was just like this cozy wood furniture thing. It was like it was the biggest cottage core thing you'd ever seen. And it always made me laugh because there was like Shane Corse in memorabilia up there, but it was also just like mom's restaurant. It's like, you know, the toughest son of a bitch is Shane Corse. And I'm like, I don't know. His mom has mom's restaurant. OK, moving on. Here's my next question for you. WNBA, no strike. We avoided the strike. Shoot up the confetti in the air. Yay. Verbal agreement. Nothing in writing. We're going to assume it doesn't all go bananas and we're going to end up with like a written everything's going to be fine. So assuming that underappreciated overappreciated the deal these players got Vince.
speaker-1: It's both underappreciated and overappreciated at the same time. Underappreciating the fact that, you know, hey, we're going to have a season and everybody's happy. That's great. Overappreciated if the WNBA and the NBA by extension are thinking that's it, we've squashed any possibility of another rival league showing up. Well, you really have lowballed these players even after all of this. mean, yeah, they have to come out and say this is a great deal and in comparison to the crappy deal they had, this is a better deal. But in the long run, I don't know. mean, look at the numbers, right? And I always bring up ABL and a lot of people go, what the hell is an ABL? ABL was the competitive league or the rival league that actually popped up to WNBA. It actually started playing before WNBA in the 90s at the same time. And they had all the best players and their average player quality was better than the WNBA at that point in time because they were paying better. ⁓ Their minimum salary was 50,000 in the 1990s and average salary was 80K. Just for comparison's sake, this CBA that just ended in 2025. WNBA was paying a minimum salary of $66,000, $16,000 more than what ABL was paying in 1999, and the average salary for WNBA was $102,000 in change, and ABL's was $80,000. So if you actually compare, you know, taking into consideration inflation, man, those guys without any increase, except for inflation increase, would have made ton more money than these guys. So, mean, so what are we even talking about? Right. Like, so I think if somebody put together another league, just like the unrivaled league, but that has association to the NBA. But if somebody was to try something like the PD, a PWHL, you know, put teams in markets that are underserved. I think it's still a possibility. I don't think they ducked that. So. And players need the money, right? So we'll see.
speaker-0: Meg, underappreciated, overappreciated.
speaker-2: I'm gonna say overappreciated. They could have got more, but I think that having the season is going to be an important bargaining chip if they try to go back to the table and say, is what we produced in the 2026, 2027 season. This is what we think we're worth. Here are the numbers to back that up. I mean, hopefully, hopefully, you know, I have faith in Toronto that they'll show up for the tempo and that that'll put the women in a much better position to renegotiate.
speaker-0: I am so interested in this moving forward. We had this conversation earlier on, maybe like week one of the show, and it was like, they're in a bad stitch because the pressure is to not strike and not kill your momentum as women's sports. like, league is always going to know that. The league is always going to be able to hold that for you. And the first 15 years, like, you know, it's just, it is what it is. Practice with PWHL. It's under all one leadership situation. They don't even have like different owners. So you're in this like, you're not in a worker friendly.
speaker-1: Yeah, it could be worse is what you're saying.
speaker-0: Well, it's just like, you don't have a lot of bargaining power because of the situation that you're in. So I do think it's really important to have something called the WNBA. I think it's really important to have that connection and to have like the structure, the TV deal. So the idea of starting from scratch or somebody trying to compete against them, even in the streaming era, I think would be a tall order.
speaker-1: I mean, that's what happened to the ABL. They couldn't really get that deal done. That was it.
speaker-0: So I think, I I kind of agree with Megan where it's just like, think you just got to keep building, keep building, keep building and work your way up. I mean, you think about the Ted Lindsay story in hockey for us Canadians, right? Of getting the players union even up and going and how much like of a nightmare that was, that was quite far along in the league. You know what I mean? Like this wasn't like, so.
speaker-1: Yeah, but my frustration is this, right? There's all these dude bros out there who are like, well, they got more than what they deserved. And I'm like, no, they didn't even get what they deserved. Yeah, they didn't get what they deserved in 1999. That's right. That's what I'm saying.
speaker-0: Yeah. Fair enough. Agreed. I want to go to one more thing here before we dip out another Canada thing. It's tax season. So H &R Block went hunting for free PR and they did a survey. That survey was about tipping and Canadians views on it. Here's some of the stats. Stats in quotations. H &R Block survey. 67 % of Canadians want to abolish tipping. 93 % of us feel annoyed when a machine asks for a tip in a business that previously did not ask for tips. 65 % of us feel less awkward selecting the no tip option. That's an interesting stat. And 89 % believe that tiered gratuity levels are too high. So I'll do some editorializing with that. I'm assuming what it means on the 93 % feel annoyed when a tip. ⁓ is you're asked for a tip, but a business didn't previously do so. So I'm gonna say like fast food joints at the counter that never used to come up. I'm assuming that's where most people's ire is at. And the second part of that, which was like the 89 % of the tiered gratuity levels are too high. A lot of times now, I don't know if this works across the, this is called Toronto Appreciation Day, so I don't know if I care what's going on in Saskatoon, but in Toronto. Well, just cause of our. In general, Saskatoon's fine, but they're not gonna listen to a program called Toronto Appreciation Day.
speaker-2: We love you Saskatoon. They're not now.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Thanks, Dan. Sorry, guys. Please send your letters, So the thing I'm saying is, is I think that what that refers to is probably the 25 % being the high end of it and then the low end of it being 18 to 20 on some machines in Toronto. You get that. I don't know if that happens anywhere else, but it does downtown city. So the question is tipping at a Subway restaurant, very specifically, something like that. Overappreciated, underappreciated.
speaker-1: Well, I'll be honest with you, right? But I'm that guy, like, you know, I'm glad, you know, four people are listening to this podcast. So I could say this out loud, if I, hey, you don't listen.
speaker-0: I'm like trying to be really nice. Yeah
speaker-2: listening right now. is someone else's podcast.
speaker-1: Same.
speaker-0: Amy Poehler. Finally, we have our trailer.
speaker-1: But if you see me coming a mile away, you know, know, because a lot of the the people who are serving you, usually what they do is they wipe that screen clean, like as in like they move past that screen for you because they know people always complain about, I want to click that button right now.
speaker-0: Okay, so what's your day?
speaker-1: People complain all the time. Like, you've never seen that? Like, people are like, okay.
speaker-0: They never seen it. I've been handed a thing with I've always got the tips.
speaker-2: Yeah, I've
speaker-1: No, but people complain so some of them- I don't-
speaker-0: People complain, but I'm saying you're saying the employees are getting you past the tipping screen? Yeah. Never had that happen. OK.
speaker-1: Sometimes.
speaker-2: I've had that.
speaker-1: And what I'm saying to you is if you see me coming a mile away, you don't do that because the fact is I'm so awkward I'm going to tip you. I'm going to tip you a lot. So do not do that. yeah, but so that that's my feeling towards it. But do I feel like, wait, I didn't used to do that. But I mean, we're having a longer conversation about that tips being needed. to the employee to top up their pay, right? Like that's where we're really at as a society. I don't know, know, before we have this conversation, I think we should have that conversation, you know, paying people better wages.
speaker-0: You're not the host. can't make that decision. I asked you overappreciated, underappreciated. State of format. No, I agree. That's why for me, I'll take this chance. I won't jump in for Meg, just because you set it up. That for me is why it's overappreciated, because I'm not subsidizing Subway. Right. Like Scram Subway. Get out of here. You have more restaurants in North America than any other chain. And you're like, you know what we really need? The person at the tail at Subway, we need you to subsidize their salary for us. What happened to them being sandwich artists? Even sandwich, if you have artists in the title of anything you do, you're getting screwed. Sandwich artist, actual artists.
speaker-1: Yes. % the truth. Yes.
speaker-0: ⁓ The only generative AI artist job that is safe is a subway sandwich artist, but they can't get paid properly.
speaker-2: They can make robots that can put tomatoes on bread. Come on now.
speaker-0: I have zero faith in that. Just that weird Boston Robotics dog. I'm to make your thing.
speaker-1: Thanks.
speaker-2: Even the robot knows you want urban cheddar.
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ Meg. Underappreciated, overappreciated, tipped big odd. Like at a fast food joint at the...
speaker-1: Mm-hmm.
speaker-2: So my rule typically is if I'm standing up when I get the food, I don't tip. ⁓ unless
speaker-0: That's why when you go to restaurant with Meg, it's really awkward when they food to the table.
speaker-2: I'll take that. Burning my hand carrying fajitas. No, like a Subway? No, I won't tip. Smaller restaurants where they're like family owned and operated and I know that that kid is getting the tip. I do appreciate the opportunity to tip these days, but ⁓ I don't know if the person at the till is getting the tip at Subway or, you know, or Burrito Boys or Tim Hortons or what, or Starbucks or what have you.
speaker-0: Sorry
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: I have no idea whether they're actually getting the tip, so I don't do it. But if it is something like a family owned restaurant or a small business that I know is going to that person, even if it's a takeout order or whatever, then I like the opportunity to tip, but I still only tip like two bucks.
speaker-0: One of the things that's also raising the ire for me is if you go to Uber Eats or something, the delivery fees are starting to go up, and that's going to Uber. It's not going to go to the restaurant. So it's like some of those go to the restaurant, and that's different. But it's mostly going to a technology company who's also not paying their workers and not giving them a percentage. And now you make the argument, well, it's it's cheaper for you, and you wouldn't order it if we didn't do those things. But OK, maybe we have a broken system.
speaker-1: Yes.
speaker-0: that we need to talk about. So going back to what Vince said at the beginning, yeah, like the system is broken. And I do think that the, you know, I don't think everyone's just a villain not tipping. Cause like, listen, to be clear, Toronto appreciation night says you should tip everyone because ⁓ dear God, in this culture, we're all drowning. But like at the same time, I really hate this concept of like, it's being put back on us. Like same with, I hate grocery kiosk paying. Like I hate. not having cashiers any
speaker-2: ⁓ you're not a self checkout person.
speaker-0: I hate self checkouts on like in once again in principle because most of the time just in my experience it's like Uber or anything else. The very first days of it you're like, ⁓ this great. I like folksiness and I understand most people don't. get most people just wanna like walk through their life and not have a conversation but I like a five second conversation or a human interaction so I know I'm different. But even if I wasn't, you go to more and more stores. Like I went to Shoppers today and three of the four. Chaos are down And so it's like there it is like that's exactly what's gonna happen like yes
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Shopper's as famous for that, yeah.
speaker-2: I do love a shopper self checkout though. I love that because you buy like the most random personal things at shoppers and I just want to check out with my you know my tampons and my giant thing of ⁓ &M's in private.
speaker-0: But how will sitcoms of the future have a teenager buy condoms? Where will that plot point be, where the parents are behind them in line and it's like, I need a price check on condoms.
speaker-1: I had to do that once where the person at the counter is the person that I was seeing's parent.
speaker-2: No.
speaker-0: Okay, and I'm in high school. Where are you? Why is high Odie like you didn't see like yeah?
speaker-1: I was like, no, I didn't. I was very nervous about it. was in high school. So was like,
speaker-2: Did they know you were going out with their kid? Yes. ⁓ no. So they were like, hey, Vince, how's it going?
speaker-0: And you were like, don't worry, I'm cheating on her.
speaker-1: Yes, that's actually what it was. We're not seeing each other anymore.
speaker-0: I broke up with her on Tuesday. it out. It's fine, don't worry. All right, coming up after the break, I want to have a conversation about something kind of odd. AI.
speaker-1: Yeah. you
speaker-0: in the future of announcing. Congrats listener to making it to the part of the show on two times the speed where you automatically skip because you assume it's going to be an ad about a meal service to your door or a mattress. But it's actually not an ad, it's just an ask. We just launched our Instagram page as HeyTorontoAN or HeyTorontoan on Instagram. We're gonna post video from the show, we're gonna post some clips that we didn't do in this program, and we're just gonna have some fun all around sharing pictures from the Toronto's meme scenes and teams. So, Thank you for being the first waivers, family and friends that are paying attention to Toronto Appreciation Night. We hope you're having fun. Welcome back everyone. appreciate you. Andrew two times is speeding us. Okay, here we go. Buck Martinez retired as everyone knows. They did the exhaustive search to find a replacement by looking directly to the left. They're like, ⁓ that joke just settles there. right. Let's, Buck's no longer going to be on the program. Of course he is still living and still with us, but this brings me to a thing that came up this week because Val Kilmer and his estate agreed that his participation in this film that was supposed to go through except, you know, all the things that happened to Val. So he couldn't be a part of it, but he wished to be. So they're like, you know what, we have the tools, we have the thing now, we're going to AI Val Kilmer into this new movie. And the estate's like, sure, why not? Because I think you see this a lot with actors who weren't, who did fine, but necessarily maybe aren't like into Tom Cruise category of like, we were just sitting on piles and piles of money. So this got a lot of hype in the entertainment world, but It reminded me of something that I felt that kind of came and went, which is, remember when NBC relaunched like the round ball rock era of we've got basketball back, here's John Tash, he's doing stuff. In that same thing, they used generative AI to bring back Jim Fagan, who died in 2017. And they used him for like the nostalgia for some of the adverts and for some of the segments. And to remember when we used to have basketball, here's the voice of that.
speaker-1: We've got bad
speaker-0: So, you know, I think about this week in baseball, Mel Allen, when I grew up, like those types of roles, you could easily now bring them back because it's just a narration. It's just like a, but taking that one step further.
speaker-1: Hmm.
speaker-0: There could be an avatar human doing the game and you could convert that into Harry Carrey, you could convert that into Tom Cheek, you could convert that into Jerry Howard, da da da da da da. Where are you at? You know what I'm saying? Like you could do any voice you wanted. Like anyone who's not broadcasting, like Jerry Howard, but sure.
speaker-1: Jerry Harith is still alive, Dan. But I think Jerry could actually say whether he wants to be that.
speaker-0: But all these people are going to sell it. I don't know you've seen the viral clips of Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine. were both like, ⁓ it's probably going to be a thing. And then meanwhile, behind the scenes, they have deeply invested themselves into it being a thing. So Matthew McConaughey flat out believes you should just copyright yourself and then print money off of your voice. And this is I'm asking you all. What level of uncomfort as fans do you want like a real human in the booth or if you could get the nostalgia back of a Tom Cheek radio broadcast would you want it?
speaker-2: No.
speaker-0: Megan, No, I just watched you both lean in, was like, all right.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, not at all. No. Yeah.
speaker-2: ⁓ boo. ⁓ I don't even need to elaborate. Just no, absolutely not would I ever want to hear that. It would be icky. It would be gross. I don't want to hear Bob Cole's voice talk about a team that doesn't exist. Like if you want to play his voice at the beginning of a broadcast, that's one thing. But an AI generated voice is disgusting. It would just, that's uncanny valley, the likes of which I don't even want to think about.
speaker-1: Even if you perfect the technology and all that stuff and it's not gonna look like Tupac the hologram standing between, you Dr. Dre and Snoop, it's still ⁓ not cool, man.
speaker-2: Just dead, man. Just let it go. It's just weird. I hate it.
speaker-1: And what you're doing with it, they didn't give you permission.
speaker-2: No, the Val Kilmer thing is slightly
speaker-0: Well, wait, there's no world where this happens where it's not given permission. That's the family of the the broadcast. And mean, Val Kilmer's family's given permission. Right. And once again, and the future is going to be these people trademarking their voices like James Earl Jones has already done it. So it's like you could get this is CNN.
speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, but what I'm saying Michael Caine ⁓ also saying the same thing as they get closer and closer to the end. You know, want your voice to carry on forever.
speaker-2: Just that tangerine speech.
speaker-1: Yeah
speaker-0: I'm interested in the following question then. Is there any scenario that you give a pass for this to? So can I create a contextual world where you're like, okay, maybe. So we honor a player ⁓ from an era and it's Joe Bowen introducing them. Bothers you at all? Okay.
speaker-1: No. Yeah. Everything. Yes.
speaker-2: I don't want to hear them say something that they weren't alive for it to happen.
speaker-1: And now I'm gonna flip it because I know you have opinions, Dan, so what do you think about all of this?
speaker-0: Well, I've talked about AI a lot in my day to day life because the entertainment media world is affected by it greatly. I tend to mean to the Pandora's box is opening. So if we don't regulate it and we don't get loud about what bothers us or doesn't bother us as people, that's bad. But on the flip side, to be honest with you, I was leading you a little bit in the beginning of the segment because that's my issue when we don't let young people in the door ever. ⁓ it's sort of lends itself to like, well, this could happen. We're not introducing or growing young talent. So then I guess we'll just let the boomers and the elders have, and the Xs have their broadcasters till they pass away. Like, it's just a very easy thing for me to imagine that you would just get Bob Cole. If that was this era, you would just get Bob Cole forever. ⁓ or you get Jim Houston forever or whatever, like, you know, Until that passes away and then like maybe. But like there's so many weird things you could do. Like if you think about what happens in reality is always what I tell people to think about. So for example, like how much do people love Snoop Dogg at the Olympics? All of a sudden you could have Snoop Dogg doing voice, like you could have that voice doing curling with the expertise of the person who actually knows what they're talking about. You could do all of these kinds of stunty things.
speaker-1: That's not Snoop though.
speaker-2: That's right. We're not there for his voice. We're there for him saying the horse is crip walking.
speaker-0: Right. have, listen, I want to believe in the world that you live in. I just think that there's also a world where Hallmark movies do really well.
speaker-2: We're not saying it's not possible. We're saying that it's one's are you I it's not possible. We're just saying that it's
speaker-1: Or is not going to.
speaker-0: I agree with you. Yeah, I don't love it.
speaker-1: And in fact, the acting unions having a fun time with it because there's also like this a lot of gray area that's popped up where people are signing up actors to actually do stuff without really getting, know, what they tell you is the permission that they're getting versus what they are actually getting. There's a lot of gray area in there. So, yeah, it's it's becoming difficult for sure.
speaker-0: And I mean, also there's just like, there's so many signs. We talked about this last week with the Toronto tempo and the art where I said in my final piece out of the show, was like, artists need to start thinking about more and more about like what their deals are because you feed something through after you do enough talking, you know? And what I will say is interesting. And I think this speaks to, we're gonna go to an age, right? I don't wanna get too deep into this cause we don't have the time, but. all of these media networks are falling apart. There's gonna be a handful of them left that survive with live sports and it'll be a streaming service. like whether Amazon has hockey or whether it's the Rogers, one of these big dogs will have it. And then the rest of us are gonna be fighting on these kinds of shows. It's independent shows. It's gonna be your gate 14s. It's your, know, those types of programs that are fan-driven shows. And when we get to that, That's where things get super interesting because these teams don't have legal reps. These types of shows don't have a legal team. We don't have a department. We don't call Gary down the hall who's our legal guy and was like, hey, can you go after this? Or hey, can you look into this? And what you're seeing in music is it's not necessarily Taylor Swift we're stealing beats from. It's all the indie artists that are like desperately trying to feed the algorithm to keep up their head above water. And that's what's being swiped. So in the same way of like voices, different things, your voice might not end up on like Hockey Day in Canada if it's us, but your voice could definitely get up and like they could steal our voices once we put enough audio up. Some random medical podcast or for some random history podcasts that they're like, we need to just try to churn money out. And that's where things I think get really complicated is for like the, we're creating a middle class of entertainment and media.
speaker-1: Well, I
speaker-0: without protections, without legal, without anything that has professionalism around it. It's just people hustling and that's who's vulnerable. So anyways, long story long, when you hear Toronto Appreciation Night brought to you by Pfizer, everyone's just appreciating the latest drugs. ⁓ Please know that wasn't us. I'm going to end this program with our appreciation parade. So I'm going to start with Vince tonight. Vince, what do we appreciate?
speaker-1: Well, I'm appreciating my nephew, Ashok, who's gonna turn seven this weekend, so... Indeed, happy birthday, buddy. Yeah, it's quite hard to talk about the impact that he's had on my life. it's just, you know, he's made me grow and evolve in a way I probably didn't think was possible, you know, or thought I needed to. You know, it's like doing simple things like going in, doing a woodworking workshop last weekend. Like it would have been a thing that I would have never done in my life. I don't want to be near, you know, nails and hammers. No. But here I am doing that stuff. All of that, all the simple things and the joy that he brings to my life. I really appreciate. I love you, buddy. And yeah, I appreciate you.
speaker-0: Meg fall out.
speaker-2: Can't follow that! ⁓ my god, that is so sweet! Okay, but does he come with a sailor's hat commemorating the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald?
speaker-1: He would love a sailor's hat.
speaker-2: Because my appreciation is the Madison Mallards doing an ⁓ appreciation night for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald where everybody gets a ticket and a sailor's hat for 20 bucks. So the thing I appreciate this week is a little minor league baseball teams that do fun stuff like that and with the women's baseball team coming, or baseball league coming out, I really hope that that sort of extends and I hope to see a lot more like fun giveaways and fun themed nights and stuff like that. ⁓ god, that sounded so like trite compared to yours though. Jeez.
speaker-1: No i will.
speaker-0: I think we should do this over again and let Vince go last.
speaker-1: Hehehehehe
speaker-0: No, no. All right. My appreciation this week goes to the J's opening on the 100th level, an actual like excellence exhibit. So it's like a level of excellence. And so the 50th season, we're going to have a concourse level, Buck Martinez, brand spanking new.
speaker-2: Okay, so.
speaker-0: inductee, it's gonna have memorabilia, monumental achievement from players, coaches, builders, broadcasters. It basically sounds like they're gonna try to do like a little mini Jays Hall of Fame. Now what this looks like yet, I haven't seen a full mock-up of how good it will be, but I wanna see more of this in sports in general. I think that it's really important, speaking to Vincent, his nephew, it's fun for, you know, the elders to get their moment of back in my day, here's what a glove looked like. And you can have those conversations. I went to Cooperstown with my dad when I was a kid. And those things were interesting and they do bond you because your dad's got some random story about some random thing that happened in 1960, whatever. And that was fun for me growing up as a kid. And it's the same with things like in Toronto when there's actual Museum of Toronto and they're doing the Degrassi. to like, young people, television in the history of Toronto. And here's like Mr. Jessup's tickle trunk. And here is a prop from Degrassi and here is a prop from today's special. And here is a random photo of the, you know, of the friendly giant. All of these things, I really think, bring the city. And I think we've lacked it in Toronto for such a long time. And there's going to be a statue for the 92, 93 team. ⁓ That's not that we didn't love that Roger statue, but it's nice to have a team statue. And so my appreciation goes to, I think this new trend that we're seeing, which is to sort of celebrate the city, but also not just immediately throw our history away the second that it's over. That we're gonna have some memories of things and we'll be able to touch the literal stuff a little bit, or at least behind glass. that actual, for the longest time in Toronto, it felt like, We just threw stuff away. It's the condo culture. It's the like, we don't have a restaurant. Meg and I used to work at the CN Tower together back in the day. And it was that thing that you just didn't feel like, know, New York has like 45 things. You'd be like, yeah, that Seinfeld restaurant, Tom's restaurant, go to that. Toronto, like there's so few of those touch points, because they're all gone in 10 minutes. there is no purple onion that, you know, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen hung out with in Yorkville. It's, you know, it's an espresso.
speaker-1: shop like this.
speaker-0: This this kind of at least if we're going to get rid of stuff, we're going to replace it with like take a look at it and not just like prop up Sam the Record Man signs and Dundas Square because we don't know what else to do with it. I like that we're to celebrate and appreciate Toronto shockingly enough from one of the hosts of Toronto Appreciation Night for Megan Dingman and Vince Casio-Murphy. I'm Dan Spear and reminding you to check us out on all the podcast platforms that exist in your life or just follow us at Hey Toronto and Hey Toronto and at Instagram all one word or Toronto appreciation on YouTube. You're gonna see some clips and some videos coming up from the show and we'll be here for you every weekend. Have a good weekend, Toronto. We'll see you next week.
