Deja Vu with a Cobalt hue

There was some decent feedback about a post I did last week entitled “And the loneliest guy on Bay Street today is?” (December 11-08). And then, just this morning, an eagle-eyed reader spotted a Bloomberg piece that struck a chord.

First, an excerpt from last week’s blog post:

The loneliest guy on Bay Street today must certainly be the salesman from Walkers’ Point Marina. He has rented some space in Brookfield Place, and has a booth in the atrium just near a new 24 foot burgundy Cobalt. It’s up on stilts; much like the rest of Bay Street.

In prior years, our boat dealer has had three boats on display. He’s either cut back on the inventory up North, or didn’t want to spend the extra gas to trailer three boats down the 400.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, stop by and chum with him for a bit. There are 32 “non current Cobalts available at his dock – ouch. If you’re feeling really carefree, but haven’t yet got your “number” from your i-bank, use this fake pay stub service…

And then this from Bloomberg earlier today:

Michael Collins, an investment banker at TD Securities, stops to admire a 21-foot burgundy boat on display in the courtyard of the Brookfield Place office tower in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.

After a “double-digit” cut to his annual bonus, Collins isn’t buying the Cobalt 212 cruiser with a 320-horsepower engine, on sale for C$62,973 ($50,380). Nor will he be adding to his collection of wine, rare books or Gibson guitars.

“No one’s buying boats this year,” said Collins, 48, chief operations officer at the investment-banking unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank in London, who’s been trying to sell his own boat. “I’ve held off spending on big items. Anything more than the price of dinner, I’m putting off.”

Readers can be forgiven if they’re experiencing a bit of deja vu.

MRM