Sports bars are so cliché – neon signs, projections screens, beer, more beer. So David Frankovich is holding his own Grey Cup party within the beer-scented environs of the Gladstone Hotel with a little historical refinement. Sipping Earl Grey tea – whose cup did you think it was, anyway? – and nibbling at biscuits at the hotel’s Art Bar, Frankovich, an artist, and a friend provide offer a hiccup of an unexpected sort as one kind of male-bonding ritual meets another in a very public way.
It’s the final act of a week-long performance art series put on by Toronto’s FADO performance art centre. Called “Escapist Action: Performance in Recession,” the series embraces the upsurge in cheap-pleasure indulgence that down economic times seem to spark, booze and TV among them. The tea party may have none of the former, but they’re in for the latter. If you brave the biscuits and finery, they’d probably tell you: ‘Riders by 2.