Does Toronto look like New York? According to Hollywood, it sure does. Movies like The Cinderella Man and Kojak and TV shows like 111 Gramercy Park have all been shot in Toronto, because of the cheaper dollar and generally lower operating costs. Indeed, so many filmmakers go north for their New York scenes that Toronto’s local government has actually set up a web site with pictures of various locations for filmmakers to consider. It’s certainly true that many of the locations have a sort of generically big-city-urban look, such as the National Trade Center, Osgoode Hall, or the main train nexus, Union Station — “a poor man’s version of Grand Central Terminal”, as Dominic Basulto put it over at Corante.

But what really cracked me up was Toronto’s officials promoting the campus of Scarborough College — a distant suburban satellite about 45 minutes’ drive away from the main, downtown University of Toronto. When I went to U of T, special pity and horror was reserved for the poor schlubs who had to attend Scarborough College. U of T downtown is replete with gorgeous architecture, a vibrant night life, and dozens of superb international cuisines in local restaurants; Scarborough is a joyless moonscape of food trucks.

And those poured-concrete buildings! My god. You can see an example of ‘em in that picture above. They look like postapocalyptic bunkers designed to keep rampaging mutants at bay after some ghastly, accidental thermonuclear holocaust. Seriously, I’ve been to that location … it looks like something out of a vintage Dr. Who episode. You keep on waiting for Daleks to appear in the corridors and slaughter everyone. Exterminate! Ex-TER-minate!

(Thanks to Corante New York for this one!)