Valentine's Day spots for T.O. singles

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and your social life has picked an inconvenient time to leave you single. Even worse, it falls on a long weekend this year. Though many Toronto singles will do the natural thing—stay home, get bitter, and cry—we at Post City have a list of places singles can head to take their minds off of the big day.

1) The Spring Fishing and Boat Show: “Walleye” isn’t something you hear much when talking about love. Same with “bass,” “angler,” and “fishing lure.” Luckily, one or all of those will pop up in almost every sentence spoken at this year’s fishing show. We’re not saying fishing isn’t a good time—we’re just saying that the phrase “fly-fishing” can drive all romantic thoughts from a person’s head instantly.

Friday February 12-Monday February 15. International Centre, 6900 Airport Road, Mississauga.

2) The Bloor Cinema: Toronto’s favourite indie theatre has scheduled fare fit for anyone who feels like denying the existence of romantic love (and maybe happiness, too). Though you may want to miss their Valentine’s Day showing of Casablanca, the film showing after it is The Road. It’s about a father and son wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland and is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, widely hailed as America’s bleakest writer. They also have Under Rich Earth on Saturday, a documentary about Ecuadorian farmers facing down an armed militia. We’ll take a wild guess and say there’s no scene where a soldier falls in love with a beautiful farm girl.

Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor St. W. See their website for show times and more details.

3) The Factory Theatre: Live theatre lovers who don’t want to see happy couples in abundance are advised to skip certain shows this weekend (their names rhyme with "Hershey Toys" and "Fiddle Mouse on the Fairy"). Instead, The Factory Theatre has you covered. They have the recently opened And So It Goes, a new play about mental illness and homelessness, topics that remind us of romance about as much as fly-fishing and Cormac McCarthy do. Playwright and director George F. Walker weaved late author Kurt Vonnegut into the play as a character and we’re pretty sure he didn’t write romance novels.

Performances Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St.

4) The Cadillac Lounge: Events with "massacre" in the name aren’t usually love-filled. Same goes for events named for historic gangland murders. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Friday night is a rockabilly concert that promises to leave you needing all long weekend to recoup from. Going to a rock show and then spending three days in bed is probably going to wipe more than just the holiday from your memory. You didn’t need that memory of your first kiss, did you?

Friday, February 12, 9 pm. Cadillac Lounge, 1300 Queen St. W. Tickets available in advance at the lounge or at the door.

5) Home: A day at home this weekend doesn’t necessarily mean sitting around, looking deranged and making voodoo dolls of everyone who’s ever romantically wronged you. You can always invite equally single friends over for a good time. No, not that kind of good time–it’s probably best not to think of the day as a big excuse to get lucky.

Kateryna Spiwak, a dating and relationship coach, says if you feel like you need to do something for Valentine’s but don’t have a Valentine, there’s no use in fighting it. She suggests trying to think of it as a day to celebrate the love between friends and family and to make sure you have some kind of event planned — a potluck dinner, a martini madness party, or a DVD marathon with friends. If your house doesn’t appeal, restaurants have prix fixe meals, spas are open, or you’re bound to know someone itching to get out of the city for a day trip. It’s important to do anything, she says, except spending not-so-quality time alone with a tub of ice cream.

Or voodoo dolls, for that matter.

 

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