Sticky Step Ten: Alexandria Falafel & Motel Bar 1233-5 Queen St. West

As Lucas leaves his apartment dressed in a Blue Jays jersey, possibly to take in a baseball game while grabbing a bite at the hot dog cart just outside Rogers Centre, the last of Majestic's scout rats flee en masse, down the street.

Lucas leaving his apartment at 1381 Queen St. West.

Lucas proceeds in the same direction (with his Human-Lizard gear stowed in his knapsack, as always), but whether he's tailing the rats or just heading downtown to catch that ball game is never firmly established because as he approaches the corner, Lucas closes the distance between himself and fresh trouble brewing on Queen St. West.

Lucas walking down Queen St. West, directly in front of Alexandria Falafel and Motel Bar.

As he passes by one particular storefront, a huge crack in the sidewalk appears, throwing Lucas off-balance and heralding the arrival of serious trouble just up ahead. Could this be a job for the city's newest protector?

Lucas loses his footing right in front of Motel Bar at 1235 Queen St. West.

Located at the corner of Gwynne Avenue, Alexandria Falafel at 1233 Queen St. West has been keeping the visitors and residents of Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood fed for years now. Open late, it primarily caters to the after-last call crowd as patrons empty out of the surrounding bars in the area.

Alexandria Falafel at 1233 Queen St. West and the corner of Gwynne Avenue.

One such establishment, Motel Bar, just happens to be right next door to Alexandria Falafel. So titled as a play on the names of other hotel-turned-watering holes in the Parkdale area, like the Drake and the Gladstone Hotel, Motel Bar is slightly different from your typical hole-in-the-wall dive bar.

Motel Bar at 1235 Queen St. West.

In addition to offering up live music for patrons Sunday to Thursday, it also doubles as a vintage record store, as well. The vintage doesn't end with the vinyl, though. Inside, the walls are adorned with old record sleeves, cathode ray tube TV sets and even an original motel sign recovered from Toronto's long-lost strip of cheap, seedy motels along Lakeshore Road.

Motel Bar's namesake, an old rusty sign recovered from Toronto's seedy past.

Next up: The Human-Lizard helps out Mother Wonder (well, sort of) while battling a mutant monster by the Dufferin Street Tunnel and Parkdale Amphitheatre!

-DE

Sticky Step Nine: George's Gourmet Hot Dog Cart at Bobbie Rosenfeld Park, 280 Bremner Blvd.

While Lucas Barrett, a.k.a. The Human-Lizard, contends with overly curious rats and lab technicians at the Secret Lizard Lair in Parkdale, word is also getting around about his adventures throughout the city.

Just outside Rogers Centre, next to Bobbie Rosenfeld Park at 280 Bremner Blvd.

Outside of Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, and next to the tiny green space known as Bobbie Rosenfeld Park, several Jays fans standing in line at one sausage stand recount the story of the Human-Lizard's daring rescue of another street meat vendor in the Club District the night before.

Jays fans getting their street meat on.

The conversation quickly devolves into speculation and gossip about who Toronto's newest super-hero is, one of them even suggesting that he'd dated the Human-Lizard's sister once, though it sounds like he has no idea what he's really talking about.

Ordering the spicy Italian sausage.

Still in the exact same spot on Bremner Blvd., George's Gourmet hot dog cart (#3368) has been serving up street meat to hungry baseball fans for a while now. Although he'd started a long way off from where the Blue Jays play, George has been in the hot dog business for over forty years and has been a fixture outside Rogers Centre for quite some time.

George's Gourmet Hot Dog Cart.

George himself was taking the day off when I'd visited, but his grandson was manning the grill in his absence and was happy to chat with me, giving me a brief history of George's Gourmet cart. He was also especially proud to learn that his grandfather had been featured in a Toronto super-hero comic, even taking a few pictures of the panel featuring George so he could show the rest of his family, proving once again that the Human-Lizard really is the beloved protector of the city's street meat vendors.

George's grandson giving the hot dog gourmet a well-deserved day off.

Next up: Lucas heads into the city on foot, but runs into some sidewalk trouble right in front of Alexandria Falafel and Motel Bar!

-DE

Sticky Step Two: Freshslice Pizza (now closed), 619 College St. a.k.a. "Big $ Pizza"

Sadly, the location of this next sticky step has closed down since The Pitiful Human-Lizard #1 was first published in 2014 and is still vacant as of this posting. On page one, the very first panel shows the storefront to "Big $ Pizza," which is actually 619 College Street, former home of Freshslice Pizza in Toronto's Little Italy district.

Storefront of the now defunct Freshslice Pizza at 619 College St. in Toronto's Little Italy.

The windows are papered over, so I couldn't get photos of the interior featured in the first two pages of the issue. Hopefully, whoever eventually moves into the space won't change up the interior too drastically and I'll be able to get some comparative photos in the future. For now though, the glass doors and windows facing the street will just have to satisfy.

"Big $ Pizza" from The Pitiful Human-Lizard #1 and the Freshslice Pizza storefront.

Inside "Big $ Pizza," a "CT24" news broadcast on television shows the Human-Lizard saving a child from a shop fire in Parkdale while a traffic cam shot of the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way) at Erin Mills Parkway is shown above a headline describing a Scarborough man's arrest for indecent behavior in a mall food court and a quote from former Toronto Blue Jay Paul Molitor. CP24, Toronto's real 24-hour news broadcast outlet, actually shows a traffic cam at Southdown Road (the same street as Erin Mills Parkway south of the QEW).

"CT24" traffic cam of the QEW at Erin Mills Parkway and CP24's traffic cam of QEW at Southdown Rd.

 
If you're in Toronto and still want Freshslice pizza you're not completely out of luck, but you'll need to travel to North York to get it, since the only other Freshslice Pizza location still operating in Ontario is at 5223 Yonge Street.

Next up: The Pitiful Human-Lizard's day job!

-DE