{"id":19271,"date":"2013-03-05T00:02:55","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T05:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19271"},"modified":"2017-06-21T12:09:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:09:59","slug":"toronto-the-oh-so-sophisticated-riding-crop-sales-up-in-toronto-but-not-in-the-rest-of-the-gta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/05\/toronto-the-oh-so-sophisticated-riding-crop-sales-up-in-toronto-but-not-in-the-rest-of-the-gta\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto the oh-so-sophisticated: riding crop sales up in Toronto, but not in the rest of the GTA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Star<\/em><\/a> takes the opportunity to remind their readers that Toronto tastes are so much more refined than those louts in the 905 who haven’t even heard of the Fifty Shades<\/em> books:<\/p>\n

Feeling strangely sadomasochistic these days?<\/p>\n

It turns out you\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n

Just ask Concetta Tucciarone, manager of the Greenhawk Harness & Equestrian Supplies store in North York, where sales of riding crops have mysteriously doubled during the past year or so.<\/p>\n

The question is: why?<\/p>\n

And the answer, apparently, has nothing to do with horses but owes everything to a sexually adventurous university student named Anastasia Steele and her dark, brooding passion for the mysterious young entrepreneur Christian Grey, \u201ca man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus: pretty handy with a riding crop.<\/p>\n

Or, as the Marquis de Sade once wrote: \u201cIt is always by way of pain that one arrives at pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a story about pain, pleasure \u2014 and equestrian goods.<\/p>\n

Steele and Grey, as many readers doubtless know already, are the central characters in the decadent Fifty Shades<\/em> trilogy of novels, a chart-topping publishing phenomenon penned by American writer E. L. James, a woman who has brought bondage and sadomasochism \u2014 and riding crops \u2014 into the North American cultural mainstream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The in-crowd in Toronto are apparently thrashing away at one another in the approved style, but the peasants in the rest of the GTA still haven’t clued in:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not noticed an increase at all,\u201d says a sales clerk at the Picov\u2019s Horsemen Centre in Ajax, who identifies herself only as Diane. \u201cI guess in Durham Region, they\u2019re not aware of those books.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same seems to be true at The Equine Emporium in Mississauga.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, we just sell to riders,\u201d says sales clerk Jennifer Babos.<\/p>\n

Ditto Carmen Griscti, owner of Baker\u2019s Harness and Saddlery in Markham, who hasn\u2019t detected a recent spike in riding-crop sales, either \u2014 but wishes he had.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I was downtown,\u201d he says. \u201cCan you imagine? I\u2019d make a killing.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Star takes the opportunity to remind their readers that Toronto tastes are so much more refined than those louts in the 905 who haven’t even heard of the Fifty Shades books: Feeling strangely sadomasochistic these days? It turns out you\u2019re not alone. Just ask Concetta Tucciarone, manager of the Greenhawk Harness & Equestrian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,831,6,28],"tags":[909,255,207],"class_list":["post-19271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-business","category-cancon","category-media","tag-bdsm","tag-sexuality","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-50P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39042,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19271\/revisions\/39042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}