50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 25, Bike-riding pinkos have a sense of humour

Last December, when Don Cherry stepped up to the mike at Rob Ford’s mayoral investiture dressed in a signature mobster-meets-Florida-snowbird floral print blazer, he delivered his now notorious rant about “pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything.” Faster than Cherry could spit out “Put that in your pipe you left-wing kooks,” Twitter and Facebook exploded with condemnation. But not everyone reacted with rage. The staff of Spacing, the urban landscape magazine run by a collective of journalists and social activists—precisely the kind of arts-loving, bike-riding lefties who annoy Cherry to no end—saw an opportunity to spoof him by producing pink buttons with the now ubiquitous slogans “Bike Riding Pinko” and “Left Wing Pinko.” They’ve sold 16,000, at $3 each. And downtowners weren’t the only people pinning them on: 2,500 sold in the suburbs. The magazine cheekily donated $1,000 from the button revenues to the Darling Home for Kids, a child hospice originally named Rose Cherry’s Home for Kids in honour of Cherry’s late wife.