Comments on: Monkey in a smart coat visits suburban Ikea

By: Jerril

Jerril — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:38:00 +0000

At least in my part of Ontario, “suburburban” is an adjective describing a neighborhood of a city that is “not urban” ie “not apartment buildings, not downtown lifestyle”, whatever.

Single family or semi-detached homes, lawns (tree optional but recommended), your own driveway and even your own garage? You’re in the suburbs.

If you either don’t have a car because it’s annoying, or you park on the street or in a shared lot with the other 4-400 families in your building, and everyone up and down your street is the same? You’re downtown.

There’s a subset of “downtown” involving very narrow single-family brownstone buildings packed in shoulder to shoulder and usually 3 floors, that predate the automobile. These probably used to qualify as “suburban” but got overrun :)

By: Dan Hibiki

Dan Hibiki — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:03:00 +0000

Sure is. We got monkeys in IKEA and a baboon’s ass for a mayor.

By: toyg

toyg — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Yeah, but isn’t it sort of comforting, knowing that they’re “just” regular bullies, albeit vicious? They’re after your loot, not your life.

Koalas are much scarier. They sit there, eating, thinking… and then they look at you with an empty stare, like a serial killer trying to determine whether he wants to keep eating his bamboo or would rather cut you into bloody little pieces, y’know, for the fun of it.

By: soylent_plaid

soylent_plaid — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:02:00 +0000

Damnit, that’s the Ikea near my place. WHY DIDN’T I GO TO IKEA YESTERDAY???

By: Ernest Valdemar

Ernest Valdemar — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:16:00 +0000

Monkey’s next stop: Yonge Street!

http://youtu.be/q3c2vLFJZCs

“There’s a rainbow in Toronto,
Where the monkeyshiners are bold . . .”

By: feetleet

feetleet — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:38:00 +0000

How is THAT a smartcoat, Q? The coat falls conspicuously short in the hidden compartment and ejector seat departments. And it’s clearly bespoke for that monkey – probably doesn’t even take USB.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:27:00 +0000

I hate pandas. They look like clowns.

And I’m not too thrilled with monkeys either. After spending time in India and Nepal where monkeys knock people down on city streets to steal their groceries, they don’t seem in the least bit cute.

By: GregS

GregS — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:41:00 +0000

Apparently monkeys do.

By: GregS

GregS — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:40:00 +0000

I live in Toronto and I call North York a suburb, even though it is part of the city. Most people here use the word suburb to describe an area of a city that’s (1) outside of the downtown core, and (2) relatively new (i.e. postwar). Maybe another way to think of it is that the suburbs are the urban areas designed around the automobile, as opposed to the older parts of the city that were designed primarily for people on foot.

By: anonotwit

anonotwit — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:35:00 +0000

I hear or see people use the word “suburb” or one of its variants fairly often to refer to North York, Etobicoke, etc.

By: jimh

jimh — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:50:00 +0000

My, but that is a very smart coat.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:45:00 +0000

Watch the monkey get shelves! MONKEY!! :(

By: Itsumishi

Itsumishi — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:37:00 +0000

The word suburb has varied definitions. In Australia suburb is simply is simply used where a North American might say district or neighbourhood, i.e. even inner areas of cities are referred to as suburbs. Although they’re not usually referred to in the slang term “the burbs” nor are they referred to as suburbia. The terms inner-suburb or outer-suburb are used to distinguish the two when necessary as well.

It is a little surprising that Cory has used the term like that, as he’s a Canadian expat living in the UK and my experience in Toronto (where I’ve been the last 4 months) and the UK (where I’ve spent far less time) I’ve not heard the word used in the same manner as it is in Australia or New Zealand.

By: TheKaz1969

TheKaz1969 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Toronto is so friggin’ cool…

By: TheKaz1969

TheKaz1969 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:31:00 +0000

You have to be 40″ tall to enter SMALAND…

By: BarBarSeven

BarBarSeven — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:34:00 +0000

Fake. Who dresses up to go to Ikea?

By: gromit32767

gromit32767 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:06:00 +0000

North York was subsumed into Toronto in the 1998 amalgamation so it can’t accurately be called a suburb of Toronto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto#1998_amalgamation

By: SedanChair

SedanChair — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:03:00 +0000

He had to wind his way through the entire store before he could get out the other side.

By: VBartilucci

VBartilucci — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:59:00 +0000

How it didn’t up in the ball-pit is beyond me.

Heck, if I were in Ikea marketing, I’d have tried to get it to assemble a bookcase or two, just to prove a point.

By: Jellodyne

Jellodyne — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:56:00 +0000

The IKEA MONKË are really cute this year!

By: Ǥɍǡḩḁᶆ Ӻᴙᴇᴇᴍᴀᴎ

Ǥɍǡḩḁᶆ Ӻᴙᴇᴇᴍᴀᴎ — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:42:00 +0000

I’m trying to think of a joke about monkeys, Ikea and Skinner boxes but my heart isn’t in it. Poor monkey. :(

By: petz79

petz79 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:41:00 +0000

That’s what I call a monkey business!

By: Mitch_M

Mitch_M — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:26:00 +0000

It really becomes not funny once you process it a little. A scared, confused animal was captured and then held in a strange place separate from the people he has bonded with.

By: toyg

toyg — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:17:00 +0000

I don’t know why, but I simply cannot find any monkey “funny”, in any circumstance whatsoever. I’m either sad for their captive conditions, or scared shitless by the thought that between us and them there’s so little difference, they might be laughing at us for all we know.

I don’t care for pandas though. Pandas are dumb, deheheh.

By: Missy Pants

Missy Pants — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:16:00 +0000

It was COLD yesterday in Toronto! It snowed, freezing rain, and winds, the whole shebang. I’m really glad this little guy made a break for it and will now get to spend his life in a sanctuary. Stupid people. (Also, that Ikea, on a Sunday afternoon during the xmas season = several hours in line, morons!)

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:10:00 +0000

C’mon internets! There had better be an adorable monkey-antics video (set to the good Mr. Coulton’s “Ikea”, naturally) on youtube by noon.