Bay Lower’s Doors Open

I have here the letter from Gary Webster of the TTC to Doors Open concerning its “participation” in the 2007 event. The only thing we are promised is that “the TTC will prepare Bay Lower for public tours on Saturday, May 26 from noon to 3:00 PM.” In the next paragraph, we are reminded of the TTC’s $8.50 day pass, implying that one will need to pay to get into the subway just to tour this disused station.

Obviously none of this is sufficient.

• There will be an avalanche of interest in Bay Lower. Three hours aren’t gonna cut it. Remember, everyone travelling east or west last weekend or during the next five weekends will have glimpsed the station through closed doors. We started out with a large number of transit fans interested in the station; now everybody who takes the train during six weekends knows it exists. And we want in.

• A three-hour tour window insults even the previous transit-fan base, whom the TTC has spent decades ignoring. After Transit Camp, I thought the TTC knew better than to ignore its most ardent fans. Don’t make us line up for hours (on what could be a hot day) only to tell us at some arbitrary cutoff point like 2:30 that nobody else is getting in. Forty years of disuse cannot be rectified by three hours of public access.

• Of course the station needs to be upgraded slightly for safety. But once you do that, you can run tours all afternoon on both days of Doors Open.

• Don’t charge admission of any kind. It is trivial to set up a line for Bay Lower tours that is separate from the entrance to Bay station.

• Webster’s letter lists 18 TV commercials that were filmed at Bay Lower (of little interest) and 32 movies:

  1. Bait
  2. Bless the Child
  3. Broken
  4. Bulletproof Monk
  5. Caveman’s Valentine
  6. Claire’s Hat
  7. Cletis Tout
  8. Colony, The
  9. Darkman
  10. Don’t Say a Word
  11. Extreme Measures
  12. Hades Factor, The
  13. Hate
  14. Honey
  15. Johnny Mnemonic
  16. Judgement
  17. Last Night
  18. Loser
  19. Mimic
  20. New York Minute
  21. Paper, Scissors, Stone
  22. Quints
  23. Recruit, The
  24. Republic of Love
  25. Runaway
  26. 16 Blocks
  27. Take the Lead
  28. Thoughtcrimes
  29. ’Til Death
  30. Undercover Brother
  31. Walter & Henry
  32. You Stupid Man

  How many of those have you seen or even heard of? How many have Toronto standing in for New York or for an unnamed city? How many are actual Canadian movies? (By my count, three.)

Let’s not blow this, please.