Shawn Micallef - The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure

What do your Eggs Benedict say about your notions of class?

Every weekend, in cities around the world, bleary-eyed diners wait in line to be served overpriced, increasingly outr food by hungover waitstaff. For some, the ritual we call brunch is a beloved pastime; for others, a bedeviling waste of time. But what does its popularity say about shifting attitudes towards social status and leisure? In some ways, brunch and other forms of conspicuous consumption have blinded us to ever-more-precarious employment conditions. For award-winning writer and urbanist Shawn Micallef, brunch is a way to look more closely at the nature of work itself and a catalyst for solidarity among the so-called creative class.

Drawing on theories from Thorstein Veblen to Richard Florida, Micallef traces his own journey from the rust belt to a cosmopolitan city where the evolving middle class he joined was oblivious to its own instability and insularity.

The Trouble with Brunch is a provocative analysis of foodie obsession and status anxiety, but its also a call to reset our class consciousness. The real trouble with brunch isnt so much bad service and outsized portions of bacon, its that brunch could be so much more.

Acknowledgements

Writing about class, personal and otherwise, was more of a challenge than I had imagined. Im thankful for the long chats I had with friends while trying to get a handle on the sensibilities around the working and middle classes Ive bumped into and been a part of. Thanks especially to Anna Bowness, Michelle Kasprzak and Simon Reader for these open and meandering explorations. Others, like Elizabeth Bowie, Jessica Duffin-Wolfe, Todd Irvine, Dale Duncan, Tabatha Southey, Alfred Holden, Stephen Otto and Ivor Tossell were essential cheerleaders along the way. My family deserves credit for their encouragement, and providing a solid place to come from and a clear view of the world. And deepest gratitude to wonderful Robert Ruggiero for unwearyingly coming along on this ride and enduring the ornery harangues of a lost writer. Much love to all these people.

Coach House is a dear place that allowed me considerable room to figure out how to write a book with as vague a premise as something about class. Thanks to Evan Munday for a light bulb moment early on, without which this book would not be. Heidi Waechtler provided tremendous editorial help throughout the production of this manuscript. Stuart Rosss insights and assistance were invaluable in the final stages of production. Alana Wilcoxs sharp edits and suggestions were essential to this book, as was an early conversation with her about class and the sometimes fraught journey from small town to big city. Writing this book was a process of discovery, and Jason McBrides skilful shaping of an unwieldy collection of disparate ideas into a coherent narrative let me say things Id not have been able to say on my own. Much thanks and gratitude to these last two people in particular for their patience and most gentle encouragement.

About the Author

Shawn Micallef (@shawnmicallef) is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and Full Frontal T.O. , a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star , and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prizewinning magazine Spacing . Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 20112012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at University of Torontos Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centres Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project that has spread to over twenty-five cities globally. Shawn was the Toronto Public Librarys Writer in Residence in fall 2013.

About the

Exploded Views Series

Exploded Views is a series of probing, provocative essays that offer surprising perspectives on the most intriguing cultural issues and figures of our day. Longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a full-length book, these are punchy salvos written by some of North Americas most lyrical journalists and critics. Spanning a variety of forms and genres history, biography, polemic, commentary and published simultaneously in all digital formats and handsome, collectible print editions, this is literary reportage that at once investigates, illuminates and intervenes.

Bibliography

Books/Journals

Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem . London: Flamingo, 2001.

Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class and how its transforming work, leisure, community, & everyday life . New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Frank, Thomas. Whats the Matter with Kansas?: How the Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2005.

McWilliams, James. Are Farmers Markets That Good for Us? Freakonomics . 2009.

Schlichtman, John Joe and Patch, Jason. Gentrifier? Who, Me? Interrogating the Gentrifier in the Mirror, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research . 2013.

Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class . New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Woolley, Frances. Why politicians court the middle class, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. 2012.

Reports

Caught in the Time Crunch: Time Use, Leisure and Culture in Canada, Canadian Index of Wellbeing , University of Waterloo. 2010.

The Transnational Buenos Aires Brunch

I t was nearly two oclock on a Sunday afternoon and we were walking the near-deserted streets of Buenos Aires looking for a very particular brunch spot. In town for two weeks to attend an art symposium, I had made a new conference friend, Kate, also from Toronto and keen to find a place she had read about in her Wallpaper City Guide: Buenos Aires , an object she was a little sheepish about but one that was compact and listed just enough galleries and eating spots to suggest a few distractions for the spare hours during the busy week. Do you want to go to brunch tomorrow? she had asked on Saturday night.

Its a question I dread, one that comes around often, usually offered with the best of intentions and met with what must seem like, at worst, rude indifference. I have a no brunch ever rule that is as ironclad as it can be without turning me into a complete social pariah. At home, in Toronto, I just wont go, as there are plenty of other ways to socialize with friends and, to be frank, expressing a public disdain for this meal means rarely being invited anyway. There are exceptions to the rule. If the brunch is being held at a friends home, thats different. Thats more like a special visit or a dinner party, and dinner parties are okay because its dinner, a normal meal with proper rules. As well, when travelling I will usually acquiesce to an invitation, especially if its extended by the people Im visiting who are excited to show me their city. For many, brunch is part of that tourist experience. If its relatively quick, it can be useful and fuel for doing other things, but I find it difficult to hide my impatience if it stretches on. When Im in another city, I want to see that city, not a brunch place that is likely a facsimile of the brunch places I dont frequent at home. Globalization has meant we can tour the world, go to the farthest corners, yet still get a Subway sandwich or a Starbucks Grande Soy Chai Latte, or find a leisure experience like brunch that recreates itself independently, without the corporate head offices guiding hand. All of that, and stopping for a meal as languid as brunch, can feel like a conspicuous waste of an expensive plane ticket; theres a city to explore.