(this was typed on early Sunday Morning…8/22/2010)
So I’m sitting here in New York at JFK airport waiting to get a bus from here to Washington DC. I got some time to kill so I figured I would type up some stuff about my trip to Toronto. It was quite a crazy trip for multiple reasons.
So I leave LAX airport on Thursday morning en route to Toronto (with a layover in Chicago). The plan is as follows: Land in Toronto at 9:15 pm, get picked up by my Canadian homey Yen at the airport, have a couple drinks or whatever that night, get some sleep, then wake up the next day and get ready for the show. The plan was going off without a hitch until after I landed in Toronto and got to the desk at customs…. the desk where they usually ask you some questions about why you’re in Canada then wave you through with a friendly “Welcome to Canada, eh.”
Now before I go on you must understand something…. if you are a musician you can not just go to Canada and play a show there. In order to do it “by the books”, you are supposed to get a work visa beforehand. Of course there are tons of people who just say they are there for something else but go and play shows anyway.
So I’m walking up to the desk all happy and excited to be in Canada then it hits me…. I never thought of my other story. Why am I in Canada? What fake reason for coming to this country am I going to give to the customs official? I am forced to improvise on the spot. I based it on truth in some cases and that is what got me into trouble. The conversation between myself and the “kinda bitchy but maybe acts that way because it’s part of her job” female customs agent went pretty much like this from what I remember:
Her: “So what are you doing in Canada?”
Me: “Up here to hang out with a friend”
Her: “Is it a male friend or a female friend”
Me: (probably an awkward pause) “a female friend”
(i’m not gonna use the pics for every quote from now on)
Her: “How do you know her?”
Me: “I met her on Facebook”
(I really did have a girl I met on Facebook I was trying to hollar at while in Toronto)
Her: (gives me a “you’re creepy” look) “Have you met her before?”
Me: “No”
Her: “How old is she?”
Me: “22″
Her: (pauses for awhile and looks at me in an evil way…..then changes the subject)
“So what do you do for a living in the States?”
Me: “I’m a musician.”
—-Let’s pause the conversation there for analysis. The facebook thing was terrible but this is where I really fucked up. Honesty is NOT the best policy when lying. A musician??? Why in God’s name would I tell her that? I knew I was fucked as soon as I said that. You can’t improvise in these types of situations man you gotta have that shit planned and I didn’t even think about it. Also, I had a guitar on my shoulder as I walked through. DUMB. Let’s resume the conversation:
Her: “a musician, what are you here to play a show? Is that why you’re only staying for two days?”
Me: “No, I just wanna hang out and stuff”
Her: “What’s the guitar for then?”
Me: “Uh, I don’t know I take it everywhere I go”
Her: “Do you have any cds or merchandise that you plan on selling in any of your bags?”
Me: “No”
Her: (looks at me suspiciously for awhile then makes a big X on my declarations form with a pink marker) “Go ahead”
So the next step in the chain as far as going through the border is one of two things, you either go through the right hand hallway where everyone was going, or you go into this little “suspicious people room” on the left where there was only a couple people in line. The pink X puts you in the suspicious line.
So at this point I’m thinking I’m screwed because the bag I checked is full of my own cds. I’m thinking they’re gonna check the bag and it’s not gonna be rocket science to figure out I have a show. I’ve heard from other musicians that have had trouble at the Canadian border that sometimes they will straight up google you’re band name and find your concert schedule.
I wait for a little bit in this line and when I get to the window the lady asks why I’m in town and I stick with the girl from facebook story (an awful story obviously, but I am now forced to stick with it). She tells me to sit down and she will call me over in a few minutes. After about 15 minutes I get called back over and they have looked up my record. Last year, like an idiot, I got a DUI in Burbank, CA. This was on the record. I didn’t know this until now, but you cannot enter Canada with a DUI on your record until 10 years go by….. well, unless you get a “temporary residence pass” before your trip.
As a side note, there was a bunch of other shit on my record that I didn’t do. I don’t know what exactly but she called them “little things.” She asked me if I have ever gone by the name “Travis Plumber”. I am not bullshitting right now. There is some dude with that name, or that alias, or whatever that has some minor crimes or some shit on my record. WTF?? I told her I didn’t know anything about that and she believed me.
Anywho, once the DUI shit came up the whole musician thing wasn’t even discussed again. She said “this DUI alone means you can’t come in”. She said that I would have to wait in there until 6 am when the next flight to the US left. It was about 11 pm at the time. She said I would be sent back to Chicago because that was where I had came from (my layover was there, so my most recent flight that actually took me to Toronto was from there). I explained to her that I had someone waiting outside to pick me up and she asked for his phone number. I gave it to her. (oh, forgot to mention that while I was waiting for that 15 minutes, I was texting to Yen to get the facebook girl story straight with him in case she called lol).
She calls Yen and talks to him, gets his address, then tells me that I can go with Yen for now. She printed out these forms I had to sign that said I would be back to the airport at 4 am to report to immigration to get kicked out. Basically, she gave me 5 hours to be in Canada. I have no idea why they would do it like that but they did.
I met up with Yen outside the airport and explained the deal to him. We started to try to think of alternate ways of doing the show, since we had both put a pretty good amount of time and money into booking and promoting the show, not to mention the plane tickets to get there. The first thing we discussed was the possibility of me taking the morning flight to Chicago and trying to make it back for the next night’s show via land. After finding out it was a 9 hour drive we thought it wouldn’t be worth it, especially considering we didn’t even have a ride. We also thought of going back in the morning at 4 am and trying to state a case… basically saying “it’s only one more night!” or some shit. We didn’t think that would work though.
We were having these discussions in the car and we decided to go get a few drinks at a bar in Yen’s hometown of Scarborough. At the bar we met up with a few of Yen’s friends and we ended up coming up with a pretty obvious conclusion…. just don’t go to the 4 am appointment. Stay, do the show, then go back to the airport and basically say “my bad”. It makes sense if you think about it, the worst they could really do is kick me out of the country, and I planned on leaving voluntarily anyway.
So that was the plan. The next day I did an in store performance at a dope clothing shop called Glossy Collective, followed by the main show at El Mocambo, both in downtown Toronto (also during that day the immigrations people left several messages looking for me on Yen’s phone….friendly messages for the most part though). The shows were off the hook! Tons of fans came out and showed me love. During the set at El Mocambo there was so much energy pouring back at me from the crowd I was overwhelmed. I got to meet tons of cool people and there was a great party after the show………
these dudes say that the shocker is their crew’s gang sign
that’s Yen in the above photo
me saying some type of rhyming words or some bullshit like that
Which lead to my next problem: because of the lateness of the after party, we overslept and missed the plane ride that I had originally booked to come back to the States. So now, not only was I going back to the airport having to explain to the Immigration department why I didn’t show up when I was supposed to, but I also didn’t have a ride out of Canada. Yen couldn’t even move that morning so a couple of his boys gave me a ride to the airport. I was hoping that since immigrations had to kick me out anyway, they would somehow hook me up with a ticket back that wouldn’t be at my expense.
So I get dropped off at the airport and I report to the Immigrations Department. I had to go to this sketchy little door and ring the bell. The person on the intercom asked for my name, I said “Michael Jones” and the person seemed to know who I was. When I came into this strange little room, the officer was really mad.
He said, in a very “stereotypical cop” type of manner “YOU BETTER HAVE A REALLY FUCKING GOOD EXCUSE FOR THIS. YOU BETTER TELL ME YOU GOT IN A CAR ACCIDENT. WHY ARE YOU COMING HERE RIGHT NOW??”
To which I replied something like “Uh, I know I’m late but…”
Him: “LATE? YOU’RE REALLY LATE BUDDY. WHERE WERE YOU, EH?
Me: “Just hangin out with friends man”
Him (pauses) “THAT’S IT? I BET YOU WOULDN’T BE THIS LATE IN THE STATES WOULD YOU, EH? WOULD YOU DO THIS TO A JUDGE IN THE STATES? YOU KNOW WE DON’T HAVE TO LET YOU IN HERE, TRAVELING TO CANADA IS A PRIVELEGE, BUDDY.”
(he really did say buddy and eh a shitload of times, as did everyone else i met in Toronto)
Me: “I don’t know what to tell you man, It was just pure irresponsibility.”
Him: “Well, I can tell you one thing, you will never be coming back into this country again.”
After that, I had to go upstairs to the American Airlines booth and buy my own new airline ticket back to the US. He said if I didn’t have a ticket I would have to go to “the west side” which he said was what they called the jail. I didn’t want to experience that so I dropped way too much money on a plane ticket. They didn’t even have a ticket available to Bmore or DC so I had to get a plane to New York.
When I was going to the gate, 2 officers had to escort me the whole time. It was awkward, but kinda cool that we went to the front of all the security lines. At the gate, one of the officers had to wait with me until I boarded the plane. He was actually a pretty nice guy. I talked to him about his job and shit. He explained to me that even though I was technically not allowed to enter Canada, I would most likely still be able to get through any land crossing just by showing my passport. They can’t run everybody’s passport number through their system. However, it is highly unlikely that I will ever successfully fly into Canada ever again.
Don’t worry though, Canadians, I GUARANTEE I will play another show in Toronto. I will drive in there somehow.
On another note, there was a professional film crew on hand for the show so in a few weeks I should have some good footage to throw up on my youtube page.
Sorry about the long ass blog, and God Bless both America and Canada.
Recent Comments