I don’t know if it’s official, but Toronto seems to have been renamed. Now, thanks to Drake, I live in The 6ix. According to the Urban Dictionary, the new name refers to Toronto’s original area code—416.
Before I read that explanation, I had come up with other explanations that struck me as perfectly reasonable. One is that six is the number of former municipalities that amalgamated to form the current city—North York, East York, Etobicoke, Scarborough, York, & City of Toronto. We live together as The 6ix.
Another is that it has something to do with sex i.e. 6ix is a way to write about sex without actually writing the word sex. Another entry in the Urban Dictionary hints at this. Under the second definition of 6ix (“A post modern approach to spelling the number 6, versus the traditional six.”) we find the following usage: On the Facebook wall, “Dude I had 6ix last night and I was GONE!”
Apart from the fact that the numeral 6 is one half of a simultaneous mutual oral sex act, the written 6ix often incorporates one of the city’s great phallic landmarks. The “i” in 6ix is represented by the CN Tower. Skyscrapers and ravines. Male and female. The modern ankh.
Toronto long had an inferiority complex. How can we possibly have a decent city when a) we aren’t in the US, & b) we’re so fucking polite? So we (or our local politicians) overcompensated for their feelings of municipal inadequacy by authorizing a massive erection. And so the CN Tower was born.
Whenever tourists come here, they feel compelled to take photos of our massive erection. But typically they haven’t time to take more than a basic shot in midday light. One of the privileges of living in a place is that you have the time to get atypical non-touristy shots. You can scout different locations and can keep going back, day after day, in different light conditions, until you get what you want.
