Adam Giambrone gives chase, to avoid being punched in the face

“Two-timing TTC chair gets back to work” is the headline on Michele Mandel’s column in today’s Toronto Sun, although the truth wills out in the National Post: “Adam Giambrone goes back to being boring.” Before things settled down, there was an actual chase! “Giambrone just ran … the long way … around the rotunda of City Hall to get into TTC meeting,” tweeted Global News reporter Jackson Proskow. But dealing with mundane transit matters is the city councillor’s idea of a therapy session — leading Royson James of the Toronto Star to ask, in the aftermath of Mayor David Miller’s defense of his political protégé, “Where is Giambrone’s ‘leadership’?” And the first meeting since he slipped away to France with putative live-in partner Sarah McQuarrie after an outbreak of text messages provided Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 president Bob Kinnear with the best takeaway, after luxury hotelier Steve O’Brien was named head of a blue-ribbon panel on customer service: “I’m sure he’s done a wonderful job in the hotel industry,” Kinnear spouted to The Globe and Mail, “but I’d like to ask him when was the last time one of his clerks got punched in the face? That’s something that we have to deal with.”

If only Giambrone didn’t register to run for mayor on the first day of this month — this morning, his name remains on the candidates list — there might have been a more compelling thorough examination of how the transit system can proceed with its PR E/R: O’Brien, pilloried by Kinnear for being a GO Transit rider who lives in Milton, is the general manager of One King West — a project that itself was the subject of major drama between partners Harry Stinson and David Mirvish. Meanwhile, because he’s there — “there” being his new headquarters in Chicago — Bruce Mau was solicited by Eye Weekly for his perspective on how the TTC might apply “design thinking” to save itself, providing a breathless taste of what he gets paid the big bucks for: “You’re not going to build the buses and streetcars that you build, you’re not going to build the bus shelters that you build, you’re not going to run them in the same way that you do, you’re not going to design the interface in the way that you do, you’re not going to constrain people in the way that you do …  you’re going to actually design it to win, and that’s a radically different model that, so far, no one has achieved. So it’s a big, big opportunity. If you did it, you would export it to the rest of the world and be famous.” And, in the end, Giambrone is still “In a Relationship” according to his page on Facebook.