Bricks and other Art

Not all art is intentional, sometimes it just happens. This large wall has been painted pink, its covering of mortar falls away from some of the bricks. The wall slowly strips away its' facade. Maybe a mural or large advertisement will fill the empty space one day.

The Paint Your Faith mural at the side of the Metropolitan United Church.

Chinese Restaurant mural and sign (Fantino hearts me).

STOP Graffiti Vandalism Now

The Mayor of Toronto wants to stamp out graffiti vandalism, which is an excellent idea, especially since it explicitly excludes art murals, "One or more letters, symbols, blah, blah, blah, that disfigure or deface a structure or thing, blah, blah, blah, does not include an art mural". The blahs are mine, if you want to read the information check the city website.

Devil baby breathes fire!

Saying you want to get rid of graffiti is like saying you want to cure the homeless problem. It is very expensive, will cause much debate over who/what can stay in the streets and in the end won't cure the problem.

Fresh Homelessness

But I agree bad graffiti is either vandalism or gang markings and should be removed from city streets and alleyways and art murals should only go up on buildings with the owners permission.

See more graffiti after the jump.

Sandals and cherries - Bell Sucks!

I am without home internet as my Bell wireless modem (2wire) has again crapped out because of their failure prone power supply. When a new power supply finally gets to me, hopefully within a month, I will celebrate my fifth unit and hope its lifespan is far greater than the previous units. Something must be in the air because when I was still on my third power supply Bell sent out a new one in a general mailing saying that they have had a problem with the ac to dc conversion units and here you go.  It didn’t take me long to need that new unit and now that replacement has gone to a better place.

I hate dealing with Bell and I hate getting hosed by Bell and I really hate when they tell me, once again, that I am not listed on my account. PS my name is James Hamilton and I am addicted to the internet and Bell Sucks!

Condo Newspaper Boxes

The City of Toronto has introduced a new, sexy type of newspaper box - a community type of box with multiple newspapers living together in harmony, a sort of hippie newspaper commune or a condo-box for a condominium city. The grey structure I found at Queen Street West and Bay Street is branded with the City of Toronto Logo, holds eight different papers with up to four paid editions possible (yeah, like that will be necessary in the near future). Maybe they can remove the coin slot area and stick in more free editions as necessary. This design was actually released to the media in 2008 and shown in this Torontoist article but this is the first time that I have seen it in the wild.

The other newspaper boxes are scared of the beautiful lines of the new box and fearful of a future where they may have to go to for recycling. You can see the City's logo on the side of the box.

This sleek new baby replaces the long line of multi-coloured newspaper boxes that fill many street-corners and which many people consider an eyesore. I didn't mind the old individual boxes because they were sometimes the most colourfull objects on a downtown street. You can see that they must have just taken the wrapping off the installation as the dull grey finish is yet untouched by stickers, graffiti or posters. I will check back later this week to see if the finish remains virgin.

The old boxes in front of the Starbucks wait for the transfer of the paying editions to the new box. They are remarkably clean with very little marks added by artistic citizens. Both the Star and the Sun boxes have small stickers which mention agendas and lies.

A walk in the Beach

Toronto has a love/hate relationship with the name of the area just on the east side of the downtown core (starts at Coxwell Avenue) of the city - even their website shows "The Beach/Beaches". Whatever you call it, the area starts at the sandy foot of Lake Ontario and continues north. The favourite part for many is the long and wide stretches of beach full of sun worshipers, swimmers and volleyball teams in the heat of summer. This place is so much fun that even the bell telephones are happy (although it could be one of those new fangled emoticons  and not really a sentient telephone who appears to be happy).

Oh yeah, the best part of heaven is the bikinis and thongs.

Banksy in the alley

Banksy's Toronto graffiti still survives, barely, in a few places. Luckily he picked the right alley on Church Street because the building next door looks like it is coming down, while the second one away is down - done like dinner, nothing left but the splinters.

I was surprised to see that the Church Street Keg Restaurant has moved out of it's old building and into a new home on The Esplanade. I worked in that Keg for one night covering their staff party night - that's right I used to work for the Keg (Mississauga (the old Dixie-Dundas Keg) and the Brampton (the old downtown Brampton Keg)). Sadly, I just noticed that all my old Keg Restaurants are gone! I met and married my wife when we worked at the Keg and I have a ton of great memories from those days. Rock on Keg Staff.

Untamed Queen Street West

The lush texture of Queen Street West begins with the high end clothing and shoe stores and a crazy mix of some wild and wonderful stores like Condom Shack and the Cannabis Culture Shop and is followed, and always overshadowed, by the old CityTV/Much Music building with that SUV blasting out of the side of the wall, high above the parking lot. Stars and celebrities still wander through out the studios and people wait to catch glimpses of the famous. Wonder Woman engages in a wild fight with evil, phallic shaped MAC cosmetics in the store window above.

There is always colour and a vibrancy about the street coming from the area's desire to be something other than a staid business strip of typical merchants. That and the constant posters and graffiti everywhere.

Roommate wanted posters

"This wall looked better with graffiti" - I'm pretty sure it still has graffiti.

Big Red Tongue

I found this big, red tongue hanging out just off Queen Street East and I have to admit that it is very familiar. It seems like I have seen it before, but it is so big and red that I think I would remember where I saw it. Obviously the artist is so creative that he has painted something so meaningful that it might be a shared memory buried deep within our genes. And here is a graffiti door, less powerful, less meaningful, it could just be a door and not art, sometimes I never know.

Bright Colours

I did find some vivid colours in Toronto today and it was in the morning when the sun was shining bright and the colours really stood out. There was a pink bus and a mustard fence and the ever present graffiti.

TRON Legacy 3D - graffiti

On the side of a comic book store on Queen Street West I find the wall now covered with an advertisement for TRON Legacy 3D by Artchild from TorontoGraffiti.com.

I found a YouTube Video from the Key of Awesome guys, which was awesome.

Then I also found some more graffiti and posters in a few Queen Street West alleyways.

Name him Milkman

"We can't exactly name the kid "Milkman"". I found another sign up on the streets of Toronto, similar to the Dick's Parents sign, and I finally read the small print. FabFindbaby was set up to name a baby from Facebook submissions. The winning name is Melania followed by Aria and finally in third place; Willow. Sounds like Disney  was sending in a few names.

The people behind FabFindbaby run FabFind - it some kind of deal a day thing, but on the website you have to sign up to find more information, so I bailed.

And I found a few other signs.

Posters and Graffiti

The Toronto Dominion Centre construction site is protected by large sheets of plywood advertising the Cadillac Fairview 77 King Street revitalization project. Someone has added a stencilled image of a man drinking, his shirt says "section 8", as the advertising caricatures stare in his direction. That's just crazy.

Down the road I come upon some posters plastered to newspaper boxes. Rather ironically someone has covered over the poster which states "we got balls". 

This was of course related to the cross, slash and turkey posters which were plastered over the downtown core earlier this year. There was no writing on the old posters to say what they were about, besides the bowling references. Now the trashy advertising has been covered up and you can't tell what it is promoting. Because the advertisements are annoying I won't mention the name either.

Another poster was for a local superhero: Captain Euchre, from Tights and Fights dotcom. You can also check out Fantabulous Gal on the entertainment website.

Graffiti on the walls

Artists and gangs tag the walls wherever they have even the slightest access. Cans of spray paint litter the alley, leftover from a day of painting. The artists get mad when taggers wreck their work.

Someone adds a graphic symbol to the graffiti mural.

Most of the graffiti is stylized words and letters, a vomit of colours and easily forgettable. Along railway tracks and in long alleyways the words tell a story that is hard to decipher.

Sometimes graffiti is simple and shares a message.

And sometimes it is cute.