Well, fast forward 13 months, and my replacement boots started showing the same problem. The sole was coming apart in a way that they call “talking boots.”

So, a few weeks ago, Jenna and I popped into the ABC to show them the problem. A very, very helpful woman named Casey let me know that yes indeed, this was a warranty issue. She showed me how each pair of Blundstones has a year/month date stamp on the sole, and suggested that my defective pairs may have been from the same bad batch. She was incredibly apologetic about the sole problems I’ve run into, and in addition to a brand new replacement pair of 500s, she gave us coffee vouchers from nearby Dufflet’s.

There are a lot of places you can buy boots in Toronto. But for customer service, you’d be hard pressed to top ABC.

The Bloor is a pretty special place for me. It’s where I met Jenna back in 2005, and it’s where I proposed a few years later. You can watch the whole doc in two parts on YouTube:

I sent a quick email to the Queen Street location, with a link to the photo, asking for suggestions. About ten minutes later, I received a response from an actual human being named Andria. She told me to bring the boots in to have them assessed for warranty.

I brought my boots to the shop after work this evening, and they replaced them with a brand new pair, under warranty, with no receipt (Andria found a record of my purchase in their database).

Colour me impressed.

The TTC has scheduled streetcar service to resume along the Queen Street East bridge across the Don River at 5 a.m. today. Construction at Church and Queen Streets continues to disrupt streetcar service.

Via Transit Toronto

According to this week’s Now, Ed’s is one of Toronto’s top ten ice cream shops. Personally, I prefer the gelato.

The horrible streetcar screetching at Queen and Parliament that I wrote about? For the past week, we’ve been spared. It seems that the previous diversion has been diverted by more construction on the Queen East bridge. So until August 27, the 501 will take this convoluted route:

501 Queen Streetcars will divert eastbound, from Yonge St.; east on Queen St., south on Victoria St., east on Adelaide St., south on Church St., east on King St., north on Parliament St., east on Dundas St., south on Broadview Ave., east on Queen St. to route. Streetcars will divert westbound, from Coxwell Ave.; west on Queen St., north on Broadview Ave., west on Dundas St., south on Parliament St., west on King St., north on Church St., west on Richmond St., north on Victoria St., west on Queen St. to route.

Laura and I tried to get to the subway today via the 501, and boy, was it confusing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in a brand new rock and roll back band called The Sweat.

We play Spinal Tap-inspired tough-guy rock, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

We’re playing our first ever full-length show this Thursday, July 9 at the El Mocambo with two other bands: Huron and Sandman Viper Command. We’d love to see you there.

There’s a Facebook event for the show, if you’re into that kind of thing.

In late December, Jenna and I finally received our Northbound Southbound vinyl wall decal from walloper.com. It’s awesome. We love it.

But though the decal itself is terrific, and looks great in our apartment, the shipping and customer service from Walloper was abysmal. We ordered the decal on November 20, and it didn’t arrive until more than a month later, on December 23rd. In the meantime, Jenna sent several emails, the first of which was ignored or lost (Derek at Walloper cited a “spot of trouble with our email provider”), and they misquoted delivery timelines twice. I understand that walloper is a small company with an overnight success on their hands, and I realize that it’s run by a small handful of people. But still, I can’t help but feel like they could have handled us a little better.

Still… the product is pretty cool: