Intro to Night in the City Songtext
von Joni Mitchell

I close this set now with my current favorite song
Which is about a place in Toronto called Yorkville Avenue
It′s kind of a small-scale Greenwich Village or Chicago Oldtown
Or a large-scale Detroit Plum Street
There's a village there, but it′s only a block long

The people in Toronto are very funny about their village though
Because although it is one of their main tourist attractions
And quite a lovely place to go
Except on weekends when you can't walk down the street


Uhm, people tend to criticize it a lot and еvery time I've gonе up there
The newspapers have been running some dreadful article
Like "True Confessions Of A Yorkville Hippie" or something like that
It′s always very blasphemous, and it says
"I wouldn′t let my children go down there", and all that kind of thing

But Torontonians, when they get away from Toronto
Are very, very proud of their village
And being an ex-Toronotonian, I decided to go back
And look at it as much through tourist's eyes as I possibly could

And so I spent a night walking up and down the street and sampling the music
As it came spilling out of the doorways of the clubs
And uhm, then I went back to the place where I was staying
And climbed the stairs and took out my yellow pad of paper with the blue lines
And my black felt pen
And I wrote this song called "Night In The City"