A few carnies barking into cellphones give off an L.A. scent, but the entourages have yet to arrive in full force. The newspapers are still covering other events soon to be shunted to the back pages (TENT CITY GROWING. Homeless gather, light toxic barrels for warmth). On Bloor Street, next to designer clothing boutiques and stores selling thousand-dollar pens, a handful of teenaged girls fan out and cover the celebrity-spotting corners, pagers and BlackBerries at the ready: The Starbucks in the Chapters bookstore. Club Monaco at Avenue Road. The restaurant Prego. Within days, there will be more of them, underdressed for winter, jackets open to show their pudgy midsections, armies of Lana Turners looking for Schwab’s. Around the corner from Bloor at the Four Seasons, the crowds have yet to descend. There is only one man on a lawn chair staking out a square of sidewalk near the curb, drinking coffee with his mittens on, a camera around his neck. He looks proud, as if he did some investigating and discovered that this little patch legally qualifies for public space and he is going nowhere.
