Oh and before I wrap up these proceedings…

You want me to reveal the secret to good taste?

I’ll tell you as long as you promise not to share this.

Because unfortunately we require people with bad taste so we know what good taste is. If everybody ate with a fork and knife we wouldn’t know it’s poor form to eat with your hands. Or why eating your hands is acceptable as a toddler but the expectations change as you grow older.

Okay…write this down.

The secret to good taste is…search vaguely.

How do you use Google…you search specifically right? You Google the hours of a store; directions to a friend’s new house…an actor’s IMDB.

On Spotify you go right to the new album from Radiohead or Mark Ronson or fire up a workout playlist.

You do the same on Netflix: gimme the new season of Stranger Things. When we’re online we treat these vast high tech resources like a cab driver: I wanna go here…(hear)…now hurry up and get me there. We search specifically.

Try searching vaguely.

Open YouTube and plop in a song name you like + covers. Here’s a sweet Girls Just Wanna Have Fun cover. Fresh, yes?

Covers exist but you gotta find em. So do remixes and mashups and more. Searching vaguely trains the algorithm according to your (good) taste.

Open Google and search for rock music from the 2010s. See what it spits up. Then work through the results and identify what moves your spirit. Is this work? Absolutely.

You can’t shortcut good taste. An NBA player can hit a game winner shot it doesn’t mean he’s a great player. He’s gotta do that consistently and efficiently. It takes time. It all takes time. It all takes work.

This is why many people have Top 40 taste. And that’s fine…if you’re happy and that’s what you want from pop culture: that’s fantastic. Turn up the new Rihanna song and call it a day.

But if you want more because there is more…so much more…remixes, covers and beyond music…foreign TV shows and overlooked movies and sci-fi novels that are not bestsellers. All bounty worthy of a successful pop culture treasure hunt. For more search vaguely.

In most detective TV shows there is a classic line: “What are we looking for? I dunno but we’ll know it when we see it.” That’s the value of searching vaguely. That’s the value of good taste. “What are we looking for? I dunno but we’ll know it when we see it.”

We did this for everything in real life back in the day…we vaguely searched bookstores; video rental stores and of course vinyl shops.

We were pop culture detectives, searching for clues…putting it all together…grasping at connections.

Pop culture was a mystery filled with wonder and surprise. Going into stores like a record shop were surprise parties. We didn’t always know what to expect. Search vaguely sparks surprise.

When the Melody Record Shop in Washington, DC closed in 2012 cultural critic Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New Republic…about comparing online/Google searches with like physically browsing in the stacks…he concluded:

“Browsing is the opposite of “search.” Search is precise, browsing is imprecise. When you search, you find what you were looking for; when you browse, you find what you were not looking for. Search corrects your knowledge, browsing corrects your ignorance. Search narrows, browsing enlarges.”

THAT’S IT. That articulates so much: Search corrects your knowledge, browsing corrects your ignorance.

And that’s what we used to gain from digging into the stacks. But that’s a skill that has been lost. Or has it?

You don’t always hafta search specifically. Yes, to find the locations of a store you want to visit…search specifically. Bam! Done. That’s what Google is good at.

But you always (thankfully!) have the option to search vaguely.

And…it gets easier.

Because the most important part isn’t discovery, it’s sharing. Share eagerly, share often.

On December 31, 2016 a Toronto institution Honest Ed’s permanently closed. For many Torontonians it was a difficult death. One of the reasons for Ed’s demise was fans treated the institution like a museum not as a store.

You can’t adore Honest Ed’s but shop at Wal-Mart or online via Amazon Prime. You hafta buy something; literally invest in it…in your community for it to survive.

Just months before Honest Ed’s closed up shop another Toronto institution relocated from its noble home: Play De Record left Yonge St. for a new location on Spadina (411 Spadina Ave).

In the 1990s, the Yonge Street strip between Gould and Elm was Record Store Central: Play De Record, Sam the Record Man with those iconic neon records, A&A, Sunrise Records and so much more.

Downtown Toronto had a vibrancy, a third world energy that now is mostly past tense. You can see elements of what I’m describing in Dave Chappelle’s 1998 movie Half Baked…shot in Toronto.

The Sam The Record man records are lit up in this scene: you can feel the electric current of the city. (And that clearly Pizza Pizza where Kenny is scoring his munchies is also gone now. Sigh.)

Later The Incredible Hulk an Edward Norton Marvel movie, also shot in downtown Toronto in 2007, features a final appearances of Big Slice. A delicious pizza joint. (We’re rapidly losing pizza outlets as much as we are vinyl shops in the city.)

(A lot of the Yonge Street depicted in this Hulk battle scene is now…gone. Which is a rageful irony since the Hulk scene is supposed to be set in Harlem and how many New Yorkers recognize Harlem anymore? Gentrification blurs identification.)

And now you can add another film that literally documents that long ago downtown Toronto vibrancy: Drop The Needle a Play De Record documentary.

A record shop Play De Record was located at 357A Yonge St. right at Yonge-Dundas our Canadian Times Square. Bright Lights, eh?