Car Modern 2011

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

The Queen Street West stroll takes in an area with lots of character and it is always fun walking along and seeing the different stores and their sometimes funny advertising (who can forget the camel toe window), ever present graffiti and the occasional chair to relax your weary bones.

The alleys off of Queen Street West are full of vibrant graffiti, some artful and some just mean tags. It seems like a pretty tough place with so many gates and fences and the ever present spray painted surfaces. I think most of the spray paint used in Toronto is along the alleys adjacent to Queen Street West. They say that "Graffiti Alley" runs south of Queen Street from Spadina to Portland. You can also visit the torontograffiti.com site to view some more graffiti and even hire a graffiti artist.
The city also has a lot of windows so you can find some interesting reflections of the streetscape, especially the popular CN Tower, staring right at you. Although sometimes you need to catch the tower at night when it is lit up in a changing kaleidoscope of colours.

A graffiti stencil proclaims "It's always ok to lie to police" on a temporary barrier beside Ryerson University. The big RU near Yonge Street almost hides the red graffiti.

I wonder if this was the result of the police lying about the five metre stop, search and require identification zones outside of the G20 security zone?