Exotic Car XxX

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.

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.
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.

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.