Torontonians have followed the story, in the Star, on Twitter, television, blogs and so on. Most of us who live here and are more or less conscious are aware of the key events. Robyn Doolittle’s book Crazy Town pulls it all together, and gives the story chronology and context. For those of us who enjoy following municipal politics in Toronto, getting the whole story packaged up in a book is irresistible. The story is at once sad, tragic, outrageous and perplexing.

And it’s quite a story. Mr. Ford’s behaviour has put Toronto in the headlines across the world, for all the wrong reasons. Once the incredible story is chewed down and digested though, we’re left with two other mysteries. The first is the Mayor’s stubborn refusal to step aside and the second is the willingness of the hard-core Ford supporters to forgive anything.

Lurking behind the straight-forward account of the story laid out in a most readable fashion by Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle  is a story of disenchantment with and distrust of mainstream politicians and the media and a simplified division within the amalgamated Toronto as sold by the Ford camp – between between the suburbs and downtown, the car and the streetcar, the right and the left, and so on.

Crazy Town is a good title. You can’t make this stuff up. Yet this is our city and it’s real and it happened and the story continues to unfold. I suspect we may see a record voter turnout for the October election. Everybody has an opinion and these opinions run deep. The next chapters will have to be part of somebody else’s book, as Robyn Doolittle leaves off at the beginning of this year. We should have a good idea of the full slate of candidates over the next month or so and the campaigns will start to really rock and roll.

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On a side note, did you hear that Shuffle Demons’ sax player Richard Underhill is running for Mayor? I don’t know what kind of Mayor Mr. Underhill would make, but in general I like sax players.

Here are the Demons performing their most famous tune, Spadina Bus, live in Japan in 2011