Students risk it all for reheated food, overpriced beer at Yonge Street Warehouse

By Zachary Roman

As news broke on Sept. 26 that seven new cases of COVID-19 in Toronto have been linked to the Yonge Street Warehouse, many Ryerson students have been left wondering: whomst the fuck?

Front-line workers continue to put themselves in danger every day and anyone with the slightest shred of care for anyone other than themselves is following COVID-19 safety protocols as best they can. But there really do be folks out there ruining it for everyone in the name of $5.95 mac ‘n’ cheese that tastes like it was purposely microwaved with the plastic wrap still on to add some flavour.

“I just have such a hard time making Kraft Dinner, I never pour the right amount of milk in,” said Tom Masboy, a third-year sport media student. “At Warehouse I can get the same quality of dinner—but made correctly—for only five times the price.”

Masboy said the risk of catching COVID-19 was never a consideration when making his choice to go to the popular downtown restaurant. Growing up, Masboy never once cooked a meal for himself since he was always at hockey practice with the boys. He has never used the kitchen in his apartment because he converted it into a studio for his hockey podcast, “Bar Down Beauties.” Due to these factors, Masboy viewed going to Warehouse as “essential.”

“I wish my mom never made me move out,” said Masboy. “If she’d just meal prep for me on my Sunday visits like I ask her every week, I would never have gotten into this mess in the first place.”

Anton Ego, an internationally-renowned restaurant critic, genuinely cannot understand why anybody would ever visit a Warehouse under any circumstances. “At a restaurant like Gusteau’s in France, one bite is enough to evoke visceral memories of the happiest part of my childhood,” said Ego. “At a restaurant like Yonge Street Warehouse, one bite is enough to invoke a debilitating case of food poisoning that will take weeks, possibly months, to pass through your body.”

“I have an incredibly high fever but it is literally just the flu, you absolute cretin, you bumbling sheep, you hippie, communist, shithead”

Surprisingly, some Ryerson students who know how to cook still decided to go to Warehouse during the middle of a global pandemic. One such student went to the restaurant in search of love.

“I told shordy to come thru for a date night. When I brought us to Warehouse, she was bare disgusted and dipped, ” said Ron Tomanns, a caucasian film student from Parry Sound who thinks appropriating language is a personality trait ever since he read Narcity’s Ultimate Guide to Toronto Slang For Everyday Situations. “The only bad ting going on that night was my date idea styll. On god, mans is a Raptors fan but I struck out like Grichuk that night, JHEEEEEZ.”

Tomanns said he spent the rest of the night drinking $9.75 Warehouse Coronas (an actual drink on their menu whose name has aged terribly) to drown his sorrows. He said living with the shame of his failed date attempt combined with his fear of catching COVID-19 from the new outbreak has left him distraught. “I can’t look in the mirror anymore without thinking, ‘who’s dat?’” said Tomanns.

While Warehouse may not be the best place to find a good meal, love or music that is played at a reasonable volume at 3 p.m. on a Monday, some students who went there felt it was the best place to protest “the oppressive communist Canadian government forcing us to wear masks.”

“Trudeau says wear your mask over your nose but it may as well be over your eyes because you can’t see the truth,” said Dee Nye-Err, a first-year politics student who is a registered People’s Party of Canada member. “I have an incredibly high fever but it is literally just the flu, you absolute cretin, you bumbling sheep, you hippie, communist, shithead.”

Nye-Err denies being responsible for spreading COVID-19 to the Warehouse staff members who were just trying to pay their overpriced rent in this godforsaken city. She was later seen leading the recent anti-mask protest in Yonge-Dundas Square.