POWcityblog

(134) Rouge

2009-10-08T10:39:00.007-04:00

This nonsense started with a redhead and we are tempted simply to leave it all roughly where we found it. Increasingly the Security Detachment feels a blog is a counterproductive undertaking for a secret organization. We hardly devoted all of Level IV at the bunker just to ignore their daily briefings, however shrill and annoying they have become.

(133) Cravings

2009-10-06T17:59:00.004-04:00

It's hard to relate buying a shoebox on the 5th floor for 300K with life's naughty pleasures but there's probably a scary shitload of money behind how and why ads like this work. We'll stick with the bunker for now.

editor's note: Luigi's Barbershop is no more. He's been cutting hair in Poorkdale since 1964 and if any part of the bunker's support infrastructure had become irreplaceable it was that patinated part. Truly, the apocalypse looms, time for a lemon cupcake.

(132) Greetings from Port Credit

2009-09-19T17:33:00.003-04:00

RIP Jim Carroll

(131) Random POWage

2009-07-30T20:42:00.007-04:00

Great religions falter and are abandoned, or are embraced with fanatical desperation, because they all fail to provide much of an answer for the randomness of life. Modernity is a font of randomness, hence it has a tendency to conflict with religion and the attempt by religions to offer themselves as the antidote. Today, we enjoyed the goddamn randomness, every last second of it.

(130) 27

2009-05-10T17:05:00.002-04:00

(129) Tap

2009-04-17T09:50:00.002-04:00

editor's note: walk like an Egyptian!

(128) Triple Play

2009-04-12T15:14:00.006-04:00

Well, somebody we know started getting around town in the 1980s and hasn't let up since! This is the third iteration of this black-haired, seductive visage we've come across without even trying. We're sure we'll meet again someplace.

editor's note: see posting (67) & posting (43) for a triple decker of beautifulness ...if you can handle it, that is.

(127) 1948

2009-04-05T14:10:00.004-04:00

A moment of mid-century cheese reproduced on the hoardings in front of Union Station. It seems that some of the much-awaited reworking of the station is underway. If they mess with Union - we will mess with them.

(126) Zooks! Awesome, Stunning, Mega-Graff Giant Spring Posting II

2009-04-02T20:52:00.009-04:00

Today we went looking for action. Boy, did it ever find us! Two postings worth - from a stretch of graff on the back side of a row of stores just west of Bloor/Dundas (visible from the subway).

Rummaging through a handbag naked should be an Olympic sport.

This bomber's Dad has a lot of copies of Heavy Metal stashed in his garage?

Shades of Sargent's Madame X yeah?

Redheads are always welcome at POWcityblog (see postings 1 & 121)

What a day! Walking from Dundas West to Union Station was worth the sunburn for these images.

(125) Zooks! Awesome, Stunning, Mega-Graff Giant Spring Posting I

2009-04-02T20:45:00.010-04:00

Marylin, pop perennial (see also posting 56).

Breakin! Electric Boogaloo.

Shades of the long-haired Orion slave girl Vina (Susan Oliver) from the original Star Trek series.

Shades deux: the short-haired Orion slave girl (Yvonne Craig - Batgirl) from the original Star Trek series.

editor's note: this blog contains only one other Star Trek reference.

(124) Golden Gowned Glam Graff Goddess

2009-04-02T20:42:00.003-04:00

Graffiti was not like this when we were young.

(123) Circus Maximus

2009-04-02T20:05:00.007-04:00

For the Romans, the circus was part of the equation of urban and imperial power. So it is in our society as we discovered this afternoon in Etobicoke!!! An example of the perennial trailer-borne midway had just arrived and was preparing itself to distract the masses. As soon as the weather improves these caravans slum their way north to roost in the parking lots of obsolete, underperforming strip malls. They never quite edge their way into the city proper, preferring to lurk near the perimeters. This one was setting up shop as we happened by right on the Etobicoke!!!/Mississauga border near the West Mall in between the hulk of an abandoned Wal-Mart and a muffler shop. To be honest, we fervently hope the masses know they are gonna need a little more than this pretty soon.

(122) Rosie the Robot Maid

2009-03-26T00:14:00.004-04:00

(121) Industrial Espionage

2009-03-25T09:44:00.012-04:00

We have mentioned our current undercover assignment to a motion picture printing plant a couple of times now. Lo, yesterday we deftly snatched an image therefrom. It was our most dangerous acquisiton to date. All the irksome distractions of an insecure, high-exertion/low wage job were present plus an enhanced regime of security guards and dozens of electronic eyes. The Man may be patient ...but POWcityblog is even patienter!

Inspired by the classics, Columbia shares the romantic early name mooted for the United States. How often in cinemas has the Statue-of-Liberty-like Goddess Columbia flickered into life? During the last Great Depression how often? During this Great Depression how many times more? The lettering and the clouds have evolved over the years but the torch and awesome floor-length gown have been pretty consistent. There was a variation for television and at least two tag-lined versions reflecting changes of ownership. In your own life how ubiquitous is Columbia? Lamp aloft, the broiling clouds of atomic destruction behind her signalling your entry to a silvery and special world beyond our own, brought to you from a magic place, a dream factory.

editor's note: more on the shit-ass bastards at the factory of dreams in future postings. That's the soundtrack on the left!

(120) Popeye's Pigtails

2009-03-20T13:46:00.004-04:00

Those who have been with POWcityblog since the early gritty days will recall where it all began. Posting numero uno: a redhead in an alley behind a chicken franchise. Everything old is new again at a nearby Popeye's outlet. What also has "outlets?" Sewage pipes and serious aggression come to mind. Speaking of which, we did not purchase a meal at either restaurant.

editor's note: our research indicates urban legends of genetically modified, six-legged chickens without beaks that are fed their own shit through a tube clipped to their faces to be nothing more than malicious food propaganda!

(119) Ave Maria

2009-03-17T23:03:00.003-04:00

(118) Graff

2009-03-17T20:48:00.002-04:00

(117) Under the Fire Escape

2009-03-17T20:45:00.004-04:00

(116) Westdale Boutique Mall

2009-03-04T11:12:00.006-05:00

We thought the automatic instant photo booth had disappeared sometime during the era of fifty cent subway fares. At one of the 905's more nausea-inducing malls-in-decline, Westdale Boutique Mall, we came across a functioning example of a photo booth with updated graphics applied thereon to entice users. How delightful we thought, delaying our minor errand long enough to take a snap.

With certainty, we acknowledge the value of photobooth photos. A quick scan of Cray III supercomputer results from ebay and other e-places reveals the depth, volume and profundity of such images. We are glad that the too impatient and media saturated youth of today might still have the chance to serendipitously pass through the mall and have their curiosity and patience rewarded with a modest strip of weak images of their fleetingly young selves with a friend or sweetheart giggling at the cheap little lens behind the curtain to clutch and treasure as the world disintegrates.

To learn a little more about photobooths: click here.

(115) Unreal Estate

2009-02-27T20:55:00.002-05:00

We heard a joke the other day while out randomly tapping phone lines:

Why doesn't a real estate agent look out her window in the morning?

Because then she'd have nothing to do in the afternoon.

(114) Drive-by Shooting in Poorkdale

2009-02-25T22:30:00.001-05:00

(113) Royal York

2009-02-25T22:23:00.005-05:00

When we first thought to bring the POWcityblog beyond the bunker to the people we had no idea the gifts Etobicoke!!! would give us. No idea, ...we swear.

(112) Etobicus Rex

2009-02-23T18:32:00.008-05:00

Etobicoke!!! continues to jam pack our optic nerves. Today, we were at large in the Subaru attempting to etablish a new undercover identity as a clerk in the Brewer's Retail chain. Such postings require a great deal of inital groundwork and so, envelopes containing a prole indentity document referrred to as a "resume" provided to me by the Cray III supercomputer in hand, off we went to the surface, to Etobicoke!!! About midway through a ten stop jaunt we found ourselves on a dusty stretch of Lakeshore ironically called New Toronto whence we spotted the content below; part of a huge mural on the east side of an aging eatery/retail establishment with apartments on the upper floor. Giant sea turtles and colourful tropical fish float elegantly on a blue background the length of the building. On each boarded up window, looking in at the riot of piscine beauty, were these figures. How mysterious they seemed to us. Lonely, beautiful portraits by a local Diego Rivera.

editor's note: sea creatures visible upper right and lower left corner final image!

editor's note: according to a 1962 document in the POWcityblog archive the value of merchandise manufactured in New Toronto on a square footage basis was the highest in the world.

(111) 905: We Sell Mirrors & FINE ART

2009-02-18T18:13:00.005-05:00

Normally, we stump for that which celebrates the Goddess, even if it evokes 1980s sci-fi paperback covers, sometimes even because it evokes 1980s sci-fi paperback covers. Also, if operating in the 905, well, even we have to make do! Nonetheless, there are limits. FINE ART in all caps? Run boy, run.

(110) Scrapping with Grandfather

2009-02-18T17:51:00.008-05:00

In prior posts we may have given a skewed impression of Grandfather's declining years after the burning of the Lansdowne Library. While the family's bent toward melancholy did take hold he remained productive and engaged with life in various private fashions. Among his worthwhile endeavours was the patient and meticulous assembly of a 2400 page scrapbook of girlie photos. Said scrapbook brought a quiet joy to Grandfather's world and certainly could have been said to have done little to depress our own adolescence.

Some bleary days after a particularly raucus New Year's Eve party in honour of 1961 we discovered, to our immense sadness, that the scrapbook had been stolen. POWcityblog bunker security initially suspected none other than revolutionary politico Fidel Castro, a last minute arrival at the party. Refusing to entertain the notion that the unexpected life-of-the-party, a punchbowl chugging man-of-the-people such as Fidel, would resort to stealing a family heirloom from its cabinet next to our Gutenburg Bible we resigned ourselves to the loss and pressed on with other business. Five decades later, Sweet Mother of God, but the scrapbook has reappeared! The Internet, wonder of End Times signs and wonders, just this month has come to include an electric facsimile of Grandfather's treasure.

It would seem a college boy found the scrapbook in a dumpster in the United States of America some eight years after it had been stolen. The horror, the joy that swept through us. Such memories that came rushing back to us! We would litigate with extreme prejudice, and regardless of cost, until the sacred scrapbook was back in our hands.

At least, such was our initial thinking. But alas, the more we try to hold on to something friends, the sooner it will be lost, yellowed Scotch tape and all. World, the scrapbook is yours, mine, ours, and above all ...Grandfather's.

editor's note: one click and ...damn, they fine! Fine like a parking cop on his first day.

(109) Super City of the Future

2009-02-10T01:46:00.009-05:00

Reyner Banham, working class intellectual, pop professor and historian of the immediate future, has been a much missed member of the POWcityblog's guru cadre for decades now. He also had a horrible beard. The beard lives forever online in an ancient and badly worn print of the 1972 BBC documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles.

Yes, we know that in many respects this doc is hopelessly obsolete. Banham was channeling a charming, anarchic, thankful kind of thing that was far too accepting of his subject's temporary historical up side. RBLLA could not be made today. Comparing LA to London in a loose-limbed manner Banham takes us on a psychogeographic mission of a type that should never, ever happen, at least according to the stricter interpretations of the approach: one conducted from a car! But how better to understand and experience the expanded edge cities? RBLLA watches well next to Will Self's lecture in posting 54. Enjoy the hour with Banham and a cool female automated narrator in his white Ford while getting an overview of a city we all know in bits and pieces through movies and television. Obsolete but valuable psychogeography. Just ignore the beard as best you can.

(108) Algorithmia

2009-02-09T10:15:00.008-05:00

A distinctive "ping" from the Cray III supercomputer roused us from our nap just moments ago to alert us to an output from its media-scanning applications. It would appear a young writer in, of all places, Minneapolis, has recently introduced herself to psychogeography. We are glad such persons are out there in the human crowd sharing experiences. This troubled world will be needing all the psychogeography it can get, and sooner than it thinks. Curiously, we had of late been contemplating the possibility of attaching higher mathematical functions, or at least the appearance of same, to the randomness of psychogeography on behalf of those less privileged in their appreciation of freedom and creativity as a way to introduce both to them. Whether we follow an algorithim or not we all should be out there walking and experiencing. Like the late, great Lux Interior sang: "The way I walk is just the way I walk."

Perhaps the POWcityblog bunker has been in one place for too long, has become institutionalized? We'll send Miranda to the library for an atlas of America after lunch. We understand Minnesotans are the longest lived people in the world, living longer than even the Japanese.

Minnesota Observer Quarterly link

RIP John Updike & Lux Interior

editor's note: speaking of The Cramps, we were at this show at Napa State Mental Hospital & have cherished the memory ever since. Initially, the other audience members were shy but soon were rocking it out. The hospital barber? Well, let's just say we initiated litigation against him after I saw what he'd done to several of the people who can be seen in the now-charmingly-antiquated video recording. We employed the firm of Smith & Wesson, renowned for decades for their dispute resolution skills. Ninety seven minus fifty two is the kind of algorithim we like best!

(107) Ghost Town

2009-01-27T11:54:00.004-05:00

This song/video is psychogeographic in a spooky, economics-appropriate kind of way.

editor's note: submitted by POWcityblog reader _ICE_ via Telex

(106) Cold Snap

2009-01-24T18:20:00.004-05:00

Psychogeography can be employed to understand not just the city, the spectacle. It can be employed to understand the other. Standing with our back to the Knob Hill on a greasy, grey winter afternoon with the light fading fast we placed ourselves into the imaginary shoes of a person living a life less privileged than our own and concluded that nothing in life could ever be as amazing as an advertising image and were left reeling at the implications.

editor's note: be thankful you are not a Bulgarian paraplegic crack baby with scorpions defecating in your eyes you smart ass!

(105) Dundas W & Sorauren

2009-01-24T18:07:00.003-05:00

(104) Bas-relief

2009-01-23T00:39:00.007-05:00

Since humanity began putting up structures we have decorated them. This bas-relief is a vision of Peel Region long forgotten but all the more touching for that. A strong man protectively astride a woman and lovingly held baby. This is progress and prosperity a la post 1945 Canada. Steam trains, wheat fields and a pair of matching DC-3 airliners. Sounds good now that post-modernity and neo-con economics have worn so thin. This representation may be gone soon. It is at the front entrance of a non descript but solid mid-century building once used by a community college and as a school board headquarters. Now boarded up, we wonder as to the fate of this bas relief.

Bas relief lent itself well to the delivery of messages and realistic bas relief was very popular under fascist regimes. In the west it often became abstract in order to avoid accusations of it being propaganda. We can handle this particular item as propaganda and hope it can be saved. Maybe even something of its vision can be saved, too.

editor's note: Betty Page bangs = 5000 bonus points

(103) Mimicolicious

2009-01-20T00:28:00.011-05:00

Falling back warily eastwards after our bloody nose in Mississauga we found ourselves breathing a sigh of relief to be in Etobicoke!!! Mimico specifically, where we came upon this relaxed beauty having her temples massaged by somebody who recently got a French Manicure done.

Needless to say, we began to relax a little. It would seem that Mimico might actually be worth investigating as a location in which one might more successfully cope with the Coming Apocalypse than the newer McBurbs. Why do we say this? Well, Mimico is within the TTC and is served by commuter rail. It has bicycle lanes and access to the lakefront. Some manufacturing seems to be hanging on nearby (including our present undercover-with-the-proles location inside the world's largest motion picture printing plant).

Mimico offers solid, modest-sized housing at reasonable pre-1980s densities without true urban crowding. A tinge of blue-collar prosperity survives here unlike in yuppified pseudo-villages like Oakville. Life seems, walkable, liveable, reasonable, almost downright, ...Canadian here.

We will be increasing the frequency and detail of our psychogeographic investigations here when the weather improves.

Curiously, we saw the movie Revolutionary Road just before finding ourselves in Mimico, an aging suburb. This film revives the now totally obsolete conundrum of those choosing suburbia over some more life-affirming manner of living. You've seen and know the kind of liberal, arty offering Revolutionary Road is if you've seen American Beauty, The Ice Storm or Valley of the Dolls. Apparently the most materially privileged people on the face of the Earth are not happy with what they have wrought and never have been. We cannot confirm or deny this never having actually lived the suburban dream. Nonetheless, we predict this will be last ever in this genre, that of the disintegrating suburban couple movie. The Happy Motoring era is over and our sprawl-dependent economy is now permanently busted. Really, we only wish we had Leonardo DiCaprio's character's problems in Revolutionary Road: stick with our cushy career or run off and live in Paris and schtumpfing Kate Winslet while we don't make our mind up.

Note to self: Never leave bunker without a case of malt liquor in the trunk of the Subaru ever again, oh, and lobby Senate to amend Constitution regarding French Manicure.

editor's note: POWcityblog style manual spelling for Etobicoke!!! includes three exclamation marks in all uses.

(102) Mississauga Migraine

2009-01-06T01:20:00.008-05:00

For reasons best left to a textless achronological void we were scouring that Edge City called Mississauga for POWcityblog fodder just the other day. While our expectations were low to begin with we had genuinely forgotten what a dismal waste of food-growing land this expanse, four times the size of Manhattan, represents. Why haven't the occupants gone someplace and blown their fucking brains out yet? Beats me. Where once apples, pears and cherries were grown, ...well, what is done is done so bring on the apocalypse.

Just as morale was reaching nadir we came across this vision of loveliness at 5 & 10! Seek and ye shall find.

editor's note: LISH?

(101) Yo Soy Cuba! Ay Cuba

2008-12-14T19:05:00.006-05:00

Seeming to be completely politically incorrect we came across this doll in a dusty store window near Bloor & Landsdowne. Via the Cray III Supercomputer we discovered there is a world of interest in such collectibles that a few scant years ago were considered patronising symbols of racism when attached to advertising. How extraordinary.

You see, the city changes and remains ever a'swirl with images. Nothing ever really goes away it is just that how we feel changes. Just earlier, we had gone into a Barstuck's to throw away our hard earned wages on an overpriced product. We were wearing a t-shirt with a map of the St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) transit system printed thereon. It immediately called forth an enthusiastic conversation about the nature of city life from what in that less politically correct era mentioned earlier could be described as two "pretty young things."

Truly, it was a day and a walk of many things.

(100) Soft autumn nights

2008-10-13T11:16:00.005-04:00

We agree that allowing an intern to just walk up to an art gallery and photograph another artist's work is cheesey and they have been appropriately disciplined. Nonetheless, ...well, you can see for yourself, ...when something is beautiful we wish it to be part of our surroundings, to capture something of its essence, however temporarily. We admit that we are hardly innocent when it comes to paying hommage to fromage. Still, no wheel of brie ever did to anyone what that 300 grams of Maple Leaf Turkey Salami did to the local crackhead we gave it to last week. Teach him to root through our blue box ever again!

(99) Magic Bus

2008-09-27T00:35:00.008-04:00

A severed, grimacing head in a bus window! Not again, we cringed thinking a copycat decapitator was on the loose in Poorkdale, where stranger things have happened. We were packing only a Glock and a single clip for a minor errand to the store but on stopping in our tracks with every intention of using it, we found, fortunately, our Austrian-designed sidearm would not be needed. This gal was just a gag, no doubt thought up by some hapless drummer thousands of kilometers from home a long, thankless musical tour.

What a beaut! The bus that is. If only all buses were like this one, the TTC would have to employ burly guards to keep people off them! Who would be caught dead in an SUV when a publically-funded Funk Bus with Vista Cruiser window was available? Sweet, it's a bus-age wonder.

editor's note: intern Reuben on his bicycle thoughtfully providing human-scale reference

(98) Bukowski

2008-09-21T23:39:00.003-04:00

Since the books we read are an important part of the psychogeography of place we try to keep POWcityblog in mind when perusing the shelves. Of late, we found ourselves with a copy of Women by Charles Bukowski. Pornographic, romantic, engaging and repelling we found it unique, poetic. Indeed, booze-hound Henry Chinaski puts many a main character to shame (especially that wanker Holden Caulfield). While we question the relevance of many intrusions into the canon dating from the 1960s we have to say we laud Women. Sure, Bukowski was channelling a 1940s kind of dissipation (i.e. Barfly) and the problem residents of Poorkdale are more complicated, and yet more boring, in their moral dilapidation than Bukowski’s 1968 LA. Nonetheless, we found the reading of one aids and abets the understanding of the other. Women objectifies women, yes, but the compelling, wonderful portraits Bukowski comes up with makes it a redeeming, sacred kind of objectification, one that lends grace to an obscure, lonely alcoholic who worked too long for the postal service and finds himself, at the broken down age of sixty, suddenly famous. We should have such problems.

RIP: David Foster Wallace

(97) Cowboy hat on the head of state

2008-09-21T20:44:00.007-04:00

We feel awful to have overlooked our head of state among the POW images around us. She is on our stamps, coins and paper money. Formal portraits of Elizabeth II are rarer nowadays than in the pre-Trudeau era but can still be found in government offices, schools and other places (like Fort York armoury) if one troubles to look.

This image was pulled from promo material for the Queen West Art Crawl. We ignored the art because the thirst generated by living under cover as a working class idiot is often mighty fierce so we made for the entertainment stage right near the north entrance to the POWcityblog bunker where the Sleeman tent was located. Jesus, those little plastic cups hold more local lager than you think they do at first. Anyway, what a treat all the neighbourhood rockers. Especially Senior Casio, who brought it home despite the pouring rain. Ah, Poorkdale rock out with your raincoat out.

editor's note: watch Derek Jarman's 1977 punk movie Jubilee for its rendition of Rule Britannia

(96) Celebrity

2008-09-06T20:03:00.004-04:00

Today the Toryonto Sun had a headline slamming the Toronto International Film Festival as "elitist." While waiting around the laundromat on our only day off from our CTFAJ (Current Totally Fucking Awesome Job) wearing old clothes and unshaven in order to blend in with the Poorkdale locals we gave some thought to the matter of celebrity. A continued meltdown of the North American economy, elections in the US and Canada and war in southwest Asia does little to trim the mindlessness or quantity of the celebrity infotainment that takes up so much of the image environment. It’s easy enough to ignore and yet the complementary industry of analysing and decrying celebrity infotainment is almost as large an undertaking. Simply own no television and you will be largely free of both. Nobody can be entirely free of the effects of obsession with celebrity of course, that would perhaps be extreme anyway. People like Amy and Lindsay seem to register in the collective psyche the way minor royalty once did so there isn’t much point in fighting it head on. We didn’t mind coming across these images near Queen & Jameson on the weathered hoardings nailed over a bakery destroyed by fire two years ago. Amy's music is catchy enough, the other one indicates that we aren't really a serious society any more.

(95) Queen Subway 1897

2008-08-25T14:41:00.006-04:00

Some sort of corsetry sequence appeared almost exactly at the spot where we came across, and lost, Punk Rock Girl from posting number 5. There's still a gluey silhouette of PRG on the wall as well as in our hearts. It make take a while for this to grow on us as much. By the time we get around to liking this paper graff it may be long gone, such is the urban image swirl.

The Queen Subway is a nice piece of heavy infrastructure dating from the 1890s. In fact, it broke Poorkdale's back paving the way for annexation by Toryonto. This particular marriage was inevitable given the rule of Orange Lodge sleaze back in the day which saw Toryonto swallow every community around it ruthlessly. Having been rich and set with its own police department and pumping station Poorkdale fought Toronto's advances for many a year. In the end the cost of sinking Queen Nand King Streets below the level of five busy rail lines proved to be too much and the annexation went ahead. The jogging intersection here is set for major improvements and changes. We'll be watching.

(94) Circulars, catalogues, offset repros, cards, tickets, invitations

2008-08-25T14:14:00.005-04:00

If the city must have graffiti it should be like this, sanctioned, possessed of some artistic merit and yet still adding something unexpected, edgy to one's walks. This is on plywood nailed over the front of that old-fashioned, pre-digital printing shop on Queen W across from CAMH. Like the cells in our brains every part of the city is changing all the time.

(93) Persistent feature II

2008-08-14T00:52:00.008-04:00

A tattoo is a picture drawn right onto human flesh in a special kind of parlour! A tool something like a homemade dental drill is used to permanently etch ink into one or more images drawn from a mind-boggling array of possibilities. The associated pain and bleeding is an important part of how a tattoo lets its bearer display their awesome personhood. POWcityblog posits that the proliferation of tattoos makes them a part of the urban image environment, the spectacle. Ditto for tattoo parlours.

Water stained, faded by age and the sun and a little saggy these gals nonetheless caught our eye along Queen West and filled us with desire. ...and we weren’t even that drunk.

editor’s note: this posting features Hawaii and boobies.

(92) Persistent feature I

2008-08-14T00:46:00.003-04:00

Laundromats are one of the truly persistent features of urban centres. They remain about the same even as the types of housing and commercial or industrial activities in a neighbourhood morph around them.

On long road trips we find the good Laundromat comforting and practical. At home, in contrast, we tend to find them depressing, lonely places. In order to avoid them we allocate a portion of the POWcityblog bunker’s operating budget to an extensive, in-house wash installation. (The equipment for the latter we sourced from a 1950s vintage ocean liner being scrapped at Alang, India.) Despite our contradictory feelings we salute the Laundromat for its ubiquity.

This joyful 1970s image is from the Laundromat right at Queen and Spadina; the soap dispenser therein to be specific.

editor’s note: even cool people must do laundry. Beautiful butterfly.

(91) Hack to the future

2008-08-10T20:39:00.003-04:00

More 80s graphics! More palm readership & occult nonsense! Seriously, if an industry is big enough to support its own sign manufacturing infrastructure we ought to take note of it. Still, we find the future much overrated. Often, promises of the future are just a mask for the swindles of the present.

(90) Andrew Pyper on Poorkdale

2008-08-10T20:05:00.004-04:00

As we type these lines with the POWcityblog bunker kitchen door open we can hear a "mentally vexed" woman on the other side of the tree line expressing disappointment with her domestic partner. She is a poor replacement for the drumming and chanting that used to come from a now-closed First Nations college student residence. We've heard her so often, the globally warmed summer of 2005 was a particularly shriekful one in Poorkdale, we don't really notice her much anymore.

In any case, we stole "mentally vexed" from an essay in today's Toryonto Stir, the city's daily paper of record. Particularly, we stole it from a sweet article by Poorkdale's very own Andrew Pyper, a writer who recently wrote about a writer living in Parkdale, a normally pointless task we can claim some familiarity with.

The Toryonto Stir has been commissioning writers to share their feelings and impressions about well-known places in a series of essays. Excellent! Pyper is a psychogeographer even if he does not label himself one. This is the best kind of psychogeographer! Now, like all men who want to get something done Pyper makes a laundry list first. Then he works his way through it: ARTIST, ADDICT, SEDUCTRESS, GHOST. The result is a nice little profile of Queen West centred on Queen & Bathurst. We could hardly have done a better job than the black-clothes-and-rectangular-glasses-wearing Pyper ourselves.

We recommend.

editor's note: the sky has been totally awesome today & for much of the summer almost maritime in its cloud varieties, colourations and storminess.

(89) Simcoe Day photograffs

2008-08-03T23:42:00.004-04:00

(88) For your eyes only

2008-07-29T21:27:00.005-04:00

If a car can be named after a sci-fi movie (Toyota Matrix) can a strip joint be named after a Bond flick? Yes, absolutely. Like Baby Dolls it is surprising that this place hangs on at all. Strip joints were once part of the "classical" Toronto but most of this kind of nonsense moved to the suburbs years ago.

editor's note: the 80s were maybe a little too good to Toronto but love that skyline. Years ago architecture critic Christopher Hume wrote that with the opening of the Skydome, as it was then called, Toronto was complete in that with the CN Tower it now had both a strong male and female element to define it. Huh?

(87) Ossington Ave

2008-07-29T21:23:00.004-04:00

POWcityblog does not create reality, it merely blogs about it. Here we find that Ossington Avenue, just above Queen W, still has plenty of that taxi garage atmosphere.

editor's note: please get this woman a bath robe or at least a tanning coupon

(86) Queen & Gwynne

2008-07-26T21:03:00.006-04:00

We've already expressed some of our feelings at the difficulty of accommodating mannequins on the POWcityblog and now here they are, at it again. Don't they know they are just tools of the hyperconsumption machine? A machine that stops at nothing to manipulate and maneuver and plant empty images in our minds in order to separate us from our hard-earned money and whatever real coolness we can muster in our short time here on Earth.

editor's note: instead of sending telegrams to the bunker accusing us of being a pornified, Catholic, Moma's boy with way too much time on our hands please read Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole By Benjamin R. Barber. 406 pages. $26.95. W. W. Norton Company.

(85) Public service announcement

2008-07-26T20:46:00.003-04:00

In all of our POWcityblog image patrols we never really thought to look for images of pregnant women. There are just not that many to find. Does anyone know why? This one is in the window of a social agency in the east end.

Public service announcements and other forms of free advice from the government about how to live and conduct yourself have become pretty rare. They kind of had their heyday during the Cold War. Back then it actually mattered that life be better in the West than east of the Iron Curtain. If we were going to be poised for a nuclear war all the time then it had to be in aid of defending something worth defending, like having a better standard of living, good manners, more consumer choice, drinking milk, the right to vote, being smoke-free, wearing a seatbelt, clean streets and nice cities, not driving drunk or whatever. Political correctness and neo-conservatism, curiously, worked together to help kill messages from the nanny state. We're pretty much on our own now.

(84) 1929

2008-07-26T20:31:00.005-04:00

Wow! This is a little of the detail surrounding the north entrance of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce at King & Bay. Built in 1929 this handsome building is a treasure equal to Union Station or Old City Hall. Toryonto was built on banking & investment, insurance, mining finance and government and that explains its conservative soul. With buildings like this it may almost be worth suffering what else goes with that. This relief work uses images associated with saving, prosperity, fertility, conservation: bee hives, ears of corn, beavers, squirrels, acorns. Sensible, mature, hard-to-argue with stuff. The stuff of healthy, grown-up maturity and prudent nation-building and maybe even a tribute to the goddess. That stone carving is fantastic, almost Hindu-templesque in its density. Next Doors Open Toronto check this skyscraper out.

Oh how banking has changed since the days of pinstriped suits, Art Deco and the Great Depression. Now, you don't give the banks your money, they give you the money. Wailing, monstrous, oversized amounts of it that you will never be able to repay in a thousand years. Student loans, car loans, mortgages, lines of credit and credit cards. No problem, sign right here suckers.

(83) Roncesvalles

2008-07-17T15:25:00.002-04:00

(82) Public transit & the decline of Western civilization

2008-07-16T22:24:00.008-04:00

If only taking transit could be as sunny and relaxing an experience as this yumster mural image from Roncesvalles makes it look. In the 1980s we participated in a cultural exchange with a working-class family living in a place called Shittassawgwah. In our thesis paper entitled Marooned in the 905: Stress Family Robinson and the Kapitalist Koncentration Kamp we detailed at length the hideous effects of mediocre schools, boredom, class structure, skewed ethnic demographics, poor town planning and, above all, a dearth of public transit on an otherwise endearing group of individuals. More recently we studied the mind-slaughtering, dream-butchering impact of prolonged travel to the suburbs on the Toronto Transit Commission’s Route 29 bus during winter as it grumbled its overcrowded way from the shores of Lake Ontario to the romantic, low wage vistas of Downsview. Rocket Rider or lost cosmonaut? Perhaps our academic/observational objectivity was weaker in these experiences than we thought and so they help explain our simultaneous affection for, and fascination with, motor cars and public transit. We like them to be glamorous: cappuccino machine-equipped light rail and totally chopped Subarus for the masses! Why can’t we have THE TRUTH about how cities should be a la Jane Jacobs; all those pedestrian-friendly shopping districts, sidewalk cafes, fancy streetcars, bicycle lanes, intriguing sustainable architecture, GO trains with onboard pedicure services along with an immaculately restored E-Type, and maybe a hemi ‘Cuda, at the same time?

And what's with all these bullshit merchants who crap themselves when they find out the street they are on is set for transit improvements? We must be in Toryonto?

editor’s note: Car & Driver’s September 1966 issue found the Dodge Dart GT with a 360 almost as fast in the quarter mile as a Corvette!

editor's note: always assist women with strollers board and exit transit vehicles and negotiate stairs/escalators safely

(81) Banksy is dead!

2008-07-15T12:22:00.004-04:00

According to UK media reports "guerilla artist" Banksy, he of the urban poster and stencil, has been unmasked as a "middle-class Bristol suburbanite." In the past Banksy is said to have said (he has an agent) that if people found out who he really was it would be a "crushing disappointment." We know the feeling.

editor's note: hopefully Angelina Jolie will continue to buy his work, misunderstood goddess that she is. Image from King Street East, formerly the nasty old Canada Tavern, soon to be a condo

(80) The Type XXI’s Sunnyside Sewage Sunday

2008-07-12T00:40:00.008-04:00

Further to contextualizing place we occasionally use a large, retractable lattice antenna and a cable TV splicebot to acquire conventional mass media signals from above the POWcityblog bunker. We can stomache relatively little of this “programming.” Vile in particular is the comedic type of show which usually consists of ensemble stupidity in which a given character by turns will relentlessly and snarkily correct the others in the midst of some unlikely, foolish, “romantic” misadventure. We hypothesize that the audience has its emptiness filled temporarily less by the unlikely adventure of a dorkish group of work mates, room mates, family cohorts, or lovers as much as by the type of healthy cross connections and stimulating circumstances supported in the lives of the characters.

What the audience yearns for is not vicarious friends and neighbours but psychogeographic reality, exploration. One of the most important questions framed by our operations is why the audience willingly accepts filler, a swindle, a substitute for the spectacle of the city?

To gather extra signals for our investigations we were towing a second antenna array into Humber Bay behind our submarine to better gather electronic emissions from Toroyonto’s 24/7 capitalist/apologist media structure when we encountered a serious environmental problem.

Engineering data from POWcity’s exact replica of a Type XXI U-boat confirmed media reports from early this week: a sewage backup caused by heavy rains defiled Toronto’s most celebrated bathing area. While traversing Humber Bay something caused our No. 2 engine cooling water intake to become befouled and we had to surface after dark in the centre of Humber Bay lest that engine overheat. Not a common sight in the bay, a man o’ war like ours, but nobody seemed to notice our sleek and deadly silhouette gently surfacing in the dark. Luckily for Toronto’s continued participation in the western world’s economy we are not homicidal Islamists and we have screened our interns for such tendencies with extreme care!

We can report to you the befoulment was temporary, both of our historic submersible and our beloved bay. The stench was awful for a time. It reminded us of the unfortunate occasion in 2001 when we ate a large quantity of poutine and then went to a pool party where there was free lager. Two or three interns were overcome but all remained at their combat stations.
Humber Bay is large enough for a not-exactly-diminutive Type XXI to do a 360 degree turn at war emergency speed which allowed us to cleanse our intakes. From the road and transit maps commonly used by Toryontonians you would scarcely know Humber Bay existed. It is shown thereon usually as a little lame blue bump below High Park.

Landfill for transportation links and commercial development made Humber Bay smaller but it is still a significant body of water. From direct observation we see it is large enough to contain sunken vessels and be a place of history. In the 1920s obsolete sailing ships were burned as an amusement for crowds and the Americans landed here at the start of the War of 1812. The much shrunken wetlands, cherished by the First Nations and where sweet grass can still be found, support a variety of bird life and hang on with an understated, prehistoric grace.

We thought the city had its sewage issues beat. Perhaps not. Either way “ship’s log” will have the interns chuckling for some time to come.

While waiting for the cover of darkness we spotted this image via periscope.

(79) Blog biz

2008-07-12T00:35:00.002-04:00

As POWcityblog closes onto its 100th posting we decided to convene a reader’s panel. (“User” connoting drug abuse rather than psychogeographic enquiry we prefer our chosen term) It seems that the readership is enjoying the blog. This is good. We thank our readers for being our readers. We were a little taken aback by a clamour for more on Grandfather. We had no idea our modest anecdotes about our honoured ancestor’s day had been so welcome. Perhaps Grandfather’s mixture of ferocity and Zen-like understanding of the pointlessness of human endeavour strikes a note in our own era of unhealthy mixed signals.

While we did not create the POWcityblog to be self-indulgent we understand the value of family history within history in general. Knowing Poorkdale’s once-upon-a-times reinforces the contextualization of its present. “You can get much further with a smile, a kind word and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word,” Grandfather always said. Particularly fond of his Webley .32 was Grandfather and his proposition has never been truer than it is today.

Other readers have enquired as to our downstairs maid Miranda. We remain at something of a quandary regarding Miranda. Her near-manic admixture of moods continued through the spring, worsening in fact. Certainly we have lost an intern or two here and there over the years but we have never fired a domestic before. This may change with Miranda regardless of the beautiful outlines of her eyes which we used to be able only to describe as Persian but which now fill with hysterical tears without apparent reason virtually all the time.

Additionally, Miranda abandoned her pre-noon duties some time ago and appears rarely before 11:00, usually looking the worse for wear. We reluctantly must conclude she is a drinker as we have heard wretching from her quarters near the POWcityblog bunker kitchen on several occasions whilst having to attempt to make our own breakfast. Her normal sunny disposition has been usurped too often now by a puffy-faced irritability.

The other day, for example, we offered a constructive criticism of the consistency of a pasta sauce. We have never seen an expensive cast-iron frying pan move at such speed. If we were not so busy bleeding all over the medical intern’s normally spotless white uniform, designed by ourself in Helsinki in 1970, we would have had to consider police access to the POWcityblog bunker.

We think, we fear, Miranda is an alcoholic. This may explain her moods, weight gain, shirking of duties and high consumption of stomache discomfort relief tablets.

(78) Happy Canada Day

2008-07-01T14:19:00.002-04:00

(77) Extension Zone

2008-06-20T14:36:00.006-04:00

Interns brought back this fascinating image from a patrol this morning. When we created the POWcityblog we had no idea so many of our image finds would be made right within walking distance of the steel doors at the bunker entrance. We had truly been taking our environment for granted, not looking at it in great enough detail. You may be doing the same.

editor's note: we like the smile but the hair looks like metal shavings from a drill press. Extension Zone is a long-established local beauty shop. Funny, it sounds like something the UN would impose on Iraq before looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction

(76) Take it easy

2008-06-18T14:01:00.007-04:00

Ah, Easy! Almost ten years ago Poorkdale began to grab the city’s attention for its trendy breakfast eateries. Awesome, we thought. The Mockingbird was our own favourite, but alas, the good die young and Easy remains front and centre and has even expanded onto the tail of King Street where we caught this freshly completed mural. Now, their homefries are usually blacker than the side of an airport limousine at night and about as tasty. Service is somewhere between poor and psychotically indifferent. ...a perfect recipe for growth in Toryonto!!! The first problem is preventable and the latter is likely a product of the fact the employees are as underpaid as the rest of their generation. The rise of breakfast as a time for dating, seeing friends, relaxing, enjoying the fruits of urban life is related to the economics of underwagedness through more than the presence of bored, unmotivated (though hip and young) wait staff.

Our decade and a half of undercover work examining the lives of what is left of our working classes and our pseudo middle class office working population indicates that breakfast is one of the few indulgences left. Maxxed out, indentured to the student loan system into middle age, over-worked, insecure, unpensioned, younger working people still in the grip of the illusion that they will someday become middle class have only a small window on weekend mornings to reinforce this belief through leisure activity. Hence, the enormous presence of breakfast eaters in world class cities like Toryonto.

Don’t get us wrong. We love breakfast, we will eat it and eat it right until we die and then we will dig our way out of our grave and order up bacon and eggs. That’s if we hadn’t already sold our soul for a toasted western on brown, that is. When the sun shines on a greasy, buttery breakfast, well, who needs heaven?

editor’s note: Is she enjoying a cuppa Joe or panhandling? We think she’s drinking coffee - if every panhandler looked that good there wouldn’t be any.

(75) Solid Gold

2008-06-17T11:19:00.003-04:00

(74) Beauty chair

2008-06-15T09:47:00.010-04:00

Judge your honor, hear my plea,

before you open up your court,

I don't want no sympathy.

I just cut my good man's throat,

Found him with a travellin' Jane

I warned her before,

I had my knife, and, well, it's plain,

The rest you ought to know

Judge, judge, good kind judge,

You can send me to the 'lectric chair,

Judge, judge, hear my plea,

You can fry me 'cause I don't care.

I cut him with my Barlow,

Stabbed him in the side,

Stood there watchin' over him,

While he wobbled 'round and died,

Judge, judge good kind judge,

Please send me to the 'lectric chair.

Judge, judge, good kind judge,

send me to the 'lectric chair,

Judge, judge, hear my plea,

let me fly away from here,

Don't want no bonded man to go my bail,

Don't wanna spend no 99 years in jail,

Judge, judge, good kind judge,

Send me to the 'lectric chair.

-Bessie Smith

editor's note: this shop window graphic is kind of cool in a creepy Duran-Duran-meets-Star-Trek kind of way

(73) Yoga

2008-06-12T15:01:00.005-04:00

After years of joyless fun involving motor vehicles, caffeine, office jobs, corn syrup-based sugared drinks, ecstasy and cocaine the gals of Toryonto are increasingly turning to yoga to repair their trashed systems.

(72) Keeping an eye out for us

2008-06-12T14:55:00.003-04:00

On yesterday's mission to LZ Junction we may have passed an ex walking toward Roncesvalles. We did not ignore you, [name censored], on purpose, it's just that, well, you know how it is. Love is like a sword fight with two fluorescent light tubes: stupid and reckless and usually over quickly with no real winner other than the opthalmic surgeon.

editor's note: protectez les yeux!

(71) Junction

2008-06-11T23:59:00.007-04:00

Roaming again beyond Poorkdale we steered north by southeast to an LZ in the Junction today. Capitalism is alive and well in the part of old Toryonto seen from the Wallace Avenue bridge. It always has been. Where railways and meat packers were the mightiest lords now reigns a quieter, but no less lethal captain: retail and residential redevelopment. Thai-Mex baby food, comfortable lingerie and Botox injections are available where once the eyes smarted with coal smoke and poverty.

We thought the artists and other displaceable squalors of Poorkdale would by now have co-opted the Junction, a precinct hardly historically hidden from the lowest of the low. This has not happened. Nevertheless, we enjoy the old school Junction, the new school Junction and the in-between Junction. Simply saying "Junction" pleases us. Indeed, why would we grudge any neighbourhood an uptick in the frequency and decency of its eateries. We could all use a little change and a new menu.

editor's note: today Eva's, tomorrow more Junction

(70) Star of the East

2008-05-29T00:01:00.006-04:00

The 1980s will never be removed form the surfaces of Toronto. Why would anyone even want that?

(69) Fluorescent East

2008-05-28T23:51:00.005-04:00

On launching POWcityblog we decided to step lightly around mannequins. Concerned for originality we did not want to rely on creepy shots of wig heads and mannequins like some snot-sucking art student. After all mes amis this is psychogeography not some alternative high school's day trip. Nonetheless, mannequins are earning a place in our heart when it comes to contextualizing space.

The clutch displayed at a naughty shop along Queen Street East for example: pale, zombie-esque bad girls hanging around in their trashiest skivvies, the ones outside bungee-corded to aluminium step ladders. All a bit like a Canadianized Amsterdam on horse tranquilizers. The scandale with these soon-to-be-everywhere shops is not so much what is displayed in the windows or what people do with such items when they get home as much as the sky high ripoff prices charged therein for a few scraps of nylon mesh and PVC.

editor's note: green is the colour most associated with good fortune in Islam

(68) East End

2008-05-28T23:35:00.005-04:00

Recent spatial analysis efforts confirm our hunch that POWcityblog has not been aggressive enough beyond the borders of Poorkdale. With the arrival of better weather and a case of East German naval surplus smoke grenades there is little excuse. Early today we chose a landing zone just beyond Jarvis Street from whence to go about correcting our homebodiness. Within minutes of leaving the LZ we were acquiring images.

Generally speaking we find the East End (within the boundaries of the old City of Toronto pre-amalgamation) to be much like Poorkdale. The area is undergoing a transition that could be encapsulated thusly: from old-fashioned to post-modern ( i.e. from bedbugs 'n' bullshit to condos 'n' bullshit ). At times we forget Toronto has an East End at all. Because the prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere are to the east that is where the smoke and smells of the industrial past tended to blow making many a city's (Dublin, London) east the inferior end. Although many of Toronto's more prestigious areas and important institutions remain to the west this bipolarity is breaking down. Much of the red brick Edwardian/Victorian era remains in place in Toronto's east with a massive, overpriced new superstructure being emplaced on top of it. The satisfactions and detractions of both are evident in what is, to say the least, a jumbled fashion.

We are much pleased with today's mission. Last year we strategically purchased 130,000 litres of aviation fuel for underground storage at the POWcityblog bunker and as a hedge against inflation. Perhaps we will order the transfer of a quantity to the tanks of the Superbaru for a wider-ranging reconaissance mission soon.

(67) Repeat offender

2008-05-27T00:18:00.009-04:00

Spread over three levels, some 40,000 square feet of the POWcityblog bunker is fitted with 1940s-vintage electronic warfare equipment repurposed to support psychogeographical and artistic analysis. Particularly welcome in winter is the warmth, reddish glow and gentle hum given off by this obsolete but still deeply powerful equipment. Despite these charms, Rochester relays, punch card readers, cathode ray tubes, copper switches, water-cooled vacuum tubes and gutta-percha insulated trunk lines and such require onerous amounts of maintenance and have made moving the POWcityblog bunker out of a gentrifying Poorkdale all but impossible. Nonetheless, we are very encouraged in regard to our righteous insistance on this strategic investment by recent trial outputs. Tying our processing suite to the Cray III supercomputer and thence the Internet allowed us to scope the gem above for example. A repeat image! A 1980s Baybette deployed at two different beauty salons in the same city but many blocks apart. A lovely and unique find. We now have the ability to fine filter the urban environment down to the nth degree. Nothing will escape the POWcityblog's panoptic consciousness now. Nothing!

editor's note: Nothing!

(66) Half and half

2008-05-27T00:13:00.004-04:00

As the econonomy continues to deteriorate we are likely to see even greater numbers of workers "employed" at temp agencies at single digit hourly wage rates and without benefit plans or holidays and able to afford only half of a haircut and half of a top at any one time. We spotted direct evidence of this trend in a window on Roncesvalles. Get used to it.

(65) City of women: city of 'toons

2008-05-22T01:15:00.004-04:00

Even if you are a 'toon, that dress must fit.

(64) Royal Leper Sanctuary of Upper Canada

2008-05-22T01:05:00.008-04:00

The particular attar that greets the shopper or tourist when she steps inside the Eaton’s Centre is not due solely to 1970s ventilation equipment or the salted, greasy emissions of the food court. Its full provenance is much more historic. The odour is in fact the sole trace of the Royal Leper Sanctuary of Upper Canada whose peeling occupants were housed and trained at provincial expense on the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets for some 140 years. The present regional shopping maul, described by a visiting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1990s as “very futuristic,” replaced the sanctuary which, despite its wonderful copper dome, twin observatories, music hall, ornamental pools, extensive orchards and gardens and handsome granite facades, had been deemed obsolete.

The taint in the air is a Victorian medication called St Patrick’s Unguent, a mixture of rye whiskey, harp seal spleens, cod oil, and according to the side of a tin here in the POWcityblog archive, “extrait de beaver.” This heavy cream was applied liberally to each leper by sanctuary staff daily with a lacrosse stick. Some thirty-thousand pint tins of St. Patrick’s Unguent were slathered on the inmates every year. The persistent residue of this treatment contaminated the soil beneath, and leeches into the basement of, the maul to this day. When you shop at the Eaton Centre you are not just spending money, you are breathing history.

editor’s note: Installed in Queen Street station by the TTC during Leprosy History Month in 1972 this enamelled metal panel memorializes the location of the Royal Leper Sanctuary of Upper Canada and all who lived there. Portrayed is Iris Fay Cerotte the characterful matriarch of the sanctuary’s women’s wing from 1837 to 1901.

(63) Hair

2008-05-13T13:22:00.004-04:00

When we were young and our heart was an open book we would have said FUNKY without question. Now that we have matured and are in, as they say on TV, our "Carlsberg years" we lean toward BOB or STYLED.

...ultimately, it's all good, hair.

(62) Memory

2008-05-10T12:57:00.009-04:00

Memory is one of the two or three most important tools to the psychogeographer. Because of that it must never be relied upon. Case in point: our mission this morning. We cycled to Union Station seeking an image of a specific sculpture. In our memory it was a female figure and therefore POWcityblog fodder.

Union Station, built in 1927, is a handsome place to anchor any exploration of Toronto. Unfortunately, memory proves weaker, more fluid than masonry and iron. The sculpture we sought is actually a MALE figure! Our memory had failed us without the excuse of crystal meth addiction or even old age!

Still, our recollection of the sculpture as mediocre was confirmed by a closer look and this comforted us as did a couple of overpriced products from a nearby Barstucks. We remained a tinge disappointed for our audience as we had composed a witty, thoughtful posting about the way historical upheavals are often taken out on sculpture. We reflected on the fall of Communism in eastern Europe and the many likenesses of Stalin and Lenin now face down in parks like so many unselfconscious homeless people. We wondered if the Monument to Multiculturalism might one day be found in a parkette, idly inspecting its scabby knee and waiting for the liquor store to open. Either way, on the ride back to the POWcityblog bunker we acquired a few images, mere cartoons of the goddess, yes, but cheerful for that.

(61) Poster: Queen W

2008-05-06T13:57:00.006-04:00

We think this poster is attempting to capture something of a spirit of Victorian, Edwardian, even Weimar decadence. We've seen better and worse in posters. We feel that the nineteenth century, and the past in general, should be viewed with greater depth than a simple insistance on its inferiority or superiority based on modern day notions of what constitutes repression or liberalism in society. For crying out loud, what would Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud say about our own mad world?

editor's note: cameo appearance by president Bush!

(60) 250 University

2008-05-06T13:36:00.003-04:00

On either side of 250 University Ave we find these relief works softening the corners. The entire building is a nice piece of mid-century modern from the linoleum in the empty drug store on ground level to window details and these relief elements. On our walks and explorations we find our eye increasingly keen on this kind of thing. Toronto flowered in its conservative, greyish, banks-and-insurance kind of way at mid century and so we find ourselves looking at things that have been long familiar and obvious with a new appreciation. We pass these decorative features sometimes daily and never thought to look more closely. The feminine element in both is strong. Is that a Mohawk haircut on the lower feature, we hope so. Note to owner: break out the power washer. 250 University is pretty sweet, we'd like to know it will be well cared for in the future as it moves from the merely retro to the genuinely historical.

(59) Old Henry

2008-05-03T18:31:00.010-04:00

Yorkshire sculptor Henry Moore's special relationship to Toryonto has slipped spomewhat from the general consciousness but compares to that professed to in later decades by the Rolling Stones. Good on old Henry! We miss his visits to the POWcityblog bunker's rifle range where a crate of .303 ammunition and a barrel of scrumpy often made for an afternoon's distraction. Henry handled a Mark IV SMLE with the same deftness he did his mallets. We sometimes wish he hadn't caused Miranda's predecessor in the role of downstairs maid, Ulrike, to quit so suddenly but that terrible misunderstanding between her and Henry involving twenty kilograms of bratwurst and a box of fly paper was ultimately not remediable, ...such can be the life of a great artist with an eye for the female form!

Before we met Henry he was a household name in Toronto for many years. Collecting grandfather from the Drake Hotel one evening in 1960 we discovered he and Henry had been confreres for years. About then there was a great deal of now quaint "modern art" fuss over his bronze work The Archer in Natahan Philips Square. The AGO's holdings of HM's work represent a cultural treasure for our city. We remember the general public interest in Moore from our boyhood onward. Once on a provincially funded television network we saw a group of blind people being let loose in a gallery full of curvaceous sculpture. They commenced to touching his work all over with an enthusiasm at least as catchy as the opening verse to Sympathy for the Devil.

We predict a well-deserved resurgence of enthusiasm for Moore's work this year. As the mindless thrum of lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, air conditioners, and motor vehicles layers itself over the warmer months we can't think of a place we'd rather be than in a cool, quiet gallery of Henry Moore's work, blind or not! Our psychogeography includes indoor locations without prejudice.

editor's note: in the lobby of an office building at Bay & Richmond (MUNICH RE) there is a small, virtually unnoticed Moore.

(58) Oh mama, can this really be the end?

2008-04-25T12:26:00.003-04:00

Mama Martino's ...in Etobicoke!!!

editor's note: the word Etobiocke must always be followed by three exclamation points

(57) Italian Ice Cream

2008-04-25T12:17:00.007-04:00

How does that old jingle go again? "You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!" Then we all wake up screaming ...in Etobicoke!!!

(56) Hollywood on the Queensway*

2008-04-25T11:50:00.008-04:00

Our totally awesome career often finds us at large in Etobicoke, one of several edge cities composing the Greater Toronto Area. If the GTA were a brain Etobicoke would correspond to the limbic system! We would not be who we are without it but ultimately it must be suppressed in the name of civilization. Etobicoke contains a mixture of older suburbs and newer developments and is reasonably served by public transit. Southern portions of Etobicoke were once quite heavily industrialized and still suggest possibilities to the casual explorer, particularly along the shore of Lake Ontario. Northern stretches of the area form a post-1970s suburban wasteland barely survivable outside of a motor vehicle. Mid-Etobicoke prospered with lighter industries during the boom years of Canada's branch plant economy and is still busy with warehouses and small plants and Hollywood on the Queensway. Somebody give us a lobotomy, no, let's go to Etobicoke instead.

*Hollywood on the Queensway is the actual name of a drinking establishment. Cheers!

editor's note: we feel Marilyn Monroe has made the full evolution from nostalgic 80s icon to historic object in the nick of time

(55) Flower power is dead

2008-04-24T11:28:00.009-04:00

We have always liked movies filmed in locations we know. It heightens the illusion. We were drawn to Monkey Warfare because it is set right here in Poorkdale. If you ride bikes and like dope and second hand anything as well as lower budget independent films, dislike SUVs and are concerned about the fate of neighbourhoods you'll see into Monkey Warfare further than most. It is psychogeographical & available on DVD.

After the DVD we made an errand to IFT for shaving cream. The clerk had a coughing fit. If only real life were as interesting as a book or movie, then we wouldn't need to live in Poorkdale.

editor's note: watch for awesome babes-on-bikes medley at Dufferin Street underpass!

(54) Will Self: Psychogeographer at Large

2008-04-23T13:59:00.005-04:00

Imagine getting to work at a firm that brings in all sorts of moderne trendy writers to enlighten its workers at lunchtime. If not for our own totally awesome career we might be tempted. Will Self starts out with a reading from a recent collection of non-fiction called Psychogeography. He warms up afterwards sharing his shtick as the UK-resident psychogeographer that he is. At one point he stumbles over the idea of bicycles in psychogeography. This might be an assumption about the driving habits of a California audience? Either way, Interesting stuff and well worth the investment of 54 minutes.

(53) Pronunciation Guide

2008-04-22T13:56:00.002-04:00

We've been disturbed of late by several occurences of mispronunciation regarding the name of this blog. The POW in POWcityblog is pronounced to rhyme with how. We are not the "PAUCITYblog." This is not a place of paucity as we can see from below!

pau·ci·ty noun [paw-si-tee]
1.
smallness of quantity; scarcity; scantiness: a country with a paucity of resources.

2.
smallness or insufficiency of number; fewness.
Etymology: Latin paucus 'little'

(52) Cubism on Queen

2008-04-22T13:15:00.004-04:00

When securing our POWcityblog imagery we find it best to shoot plate glass from an angle, thus avoiding our reflection appearing in our image. Contrary to the views of some we do realize it is not always about us.

(51) Eyes on the Street

2008-04-18T14:25:00.004-04:00

A familiar parabola those eyebrows follow. We've seen it somewhere before. Bohemian Embarassment!

Bohemian Embassy is now Gallery Condos. Whatever. There was something in the paper about there having been a bar in Toronto named the Bohemian Embassy back in the 1960s. The proprietor was or is suing the condo developer over the name. Old hippy sues new economy.

(50) Foyer horibilus: deux

2008-04-17T14:05:00.008-04:00

Devoting our fiftieth post to the unpleasantness at the local ATM is not our idea of fun. Originally we had a Neighbourhood Spring Festival & Children's Machine Gun Jamboree planned but the Cray III supercomputer gave the interns some debugging issues and the appropriate permits could not be secured in time for the weekend. Oh well, there's always the 100th posting to plan for!

TD Canada Trust has offered us little more than further corporate marketing trash talk regarding cleanliness though after hours access has been restored. Without pressure from the POWcityblog we'd still be banking outside with the crackheads! Nonetheless, it may simply be time to switch to ING. A virtual bank isn't likely to take money from us in exchange for the use of a filthy, pissed-in ATM foyer now is it?

Prior to opening the most recent email on this topic we had Miranda ready a couple of interns with plastic drop cloths, mop-and-bucket, horse tranquilizers and a Bible. When we first approached TD Canada Trust regarding this ATM years ago we naively opened mail without such precautions thinking them to be sincere in their efforts at customer service.

As we read their codswallop we began to feel unwell. A painful torquing sensation developed on the left side of our neck. Soon we were viewing our library three-hundred and sixty degrees at a time as our head began rotating on our shoulders a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Vomit began spewing out of our mouths all over the walls and our Cray III interface table. Our copy of the BNA Act and a first edition of The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine were liberally splashed with the partially digested remains of what had been a rather delicious Mongolian barbecue dinner put on by Miranda earlier in the evening. Both documents had to be sent to a sophisticated aerospace library where they were subjected to advanced cleaning techniques. We have not forgotten the painful sores that broke out all over us either. We make a simple enquiry and next thing we know we need a month of rehab in Hawaii! The mind boggles.

My bank, my way!

editor's note: that's our intern Josephine during a brief stint as a bank customer service representative in 2003. Out of view on her ankle is a 600-volt electrical lead connected to a suerpvisor's PC. Thanks Josephine, we love you to pieces!

(49) Mondo Condo

2008-04-15T14:13:00.011-04:00

We notice that prior to the late 1990s sex wasn't really used in advertising to sell real estate the way it has been used to sell, say, motor cars and sunny vacations for many a year. Images of "class" were used to sell real estate, you know, "you have arrived: the estate homes of Avon Glen Dale" kind of thing. A lot of that imagery was formal/suburban/pseudo-Victorian and its collapse is probably not such a loss to the aesthetic environment. Nowadays we see that sexed up design-ey images, particularly with an urban theme, are the new classy but we do not quite know if we approve. Twenty somethings fresh out of community gulag or university are now direct targets of real estate advertising which is also a very new development. Given what a dismal experience renting can be (we could tell you stories!) signing up for a life of debt as soon as possible may make some kind of reductive, unimaginative sense. I suppose in a pornified world it can be hard to know where the edge is. Either way, expect more of this kind of thing unless the economy collapses completely.

(48) Happy St Victoria's Day

2008-04-13T19:54:00.013-04:00

Saint Victoria is Canada's patron saint. Icons of Saint Victoria are known to have been brought to Acadia by French sailors in 1666. Always identified with the working classes, Saint Victoria was popularized at the height of the bloody trench battles of the War of 1867.

Indeed, she was the centre of mass hysteria in several communities when reports, from both Canadian and American troops, of a miraculous appearance over the field of battle began to leak back to the home front. As Canada's memory of that war faded Saint Victoria Day was eventually overshadowed by the secular nationalist holiday Victoria Day which we all celebrate in a month and a half. Nonetheless, Saint Victoria remains close to the spiritual heart of many Canadians who may not know of that miraculous appearance so long ago.

Seeking an end to the mindless slaughter of trench warfare the Dominion Clockwork and Temperature Control Manufacturing Company of Cambridge, Ontario had been commissioned to develop a ferocious weapon designed to win a decisive victory over Canada's richer and more numerous enemy. The result was a weapon manufactured in small numbers under the greatest of secrecy. A weapon that would alter the course of the war in Canada's favour and subsequently be made the topic of an amendment to the Geneva Convention because of its terrible effects.

A detachment of the Royal Imperial Regiment drilled in the techniques of the new weapon in the woods near Kingston and was transported to the front lines at night by the Grand Trunk Railway. At dawn on July 4th 1867 a new chapter in the horrors of war was written at American expense when the Royal Imperials, boots wrapped in burlap to make their approach quiet, fell upon the Yankee trenches with their fifteen-bladed electric rotating bowie knives a'whirling.

By noon there was nothing left on the American side over six inches in height. The shocking and brutal effect of the new weapon caused the survivors of the Yankee army headquarters to flee back across the border with broken minds and a mess in their pants. The sight of the horrendous slaughter they had wrought left the soldiers wielding the new weapon in little better condition. As sun set over the bowie knife detachment St Victoria was seen weeping above the carnage.

In more modern times she blesses all of you who:

have worked for a temp agency for more than six months
drive a Chevrolet Cavalier with no insurance
are binge alcoholics
have tried to find homes for unwanted kittens and wound up keeping them
have eaten Kraft Dinner with a hot dog cut up in it more than once
became crippled while working for a Class 1 freight railway
were caught in the Chretien/Martin Employment Insurance crackdown of the 1990s
oppose bulk water exports but never vote
have a landlord with "kolbassa breath"
still owe more than $35,000 in student loans and are over 40
have neighbours that party all night and sleep all day and are of a different ethnic group than your own

Happy St Victoria Day!

editor's note: a serious case of "helmet head" was acquired while seeking today's image on a bicycle. Luckily, it turned out to be "Helmut Newton head"

(47) Cameron House

2008-04-13T18:45:00.002-04:00

(46) Air Toronto

2008-04-12T00:23:00.011-04:00

Aldous Huxley said that speed is the one truly modern pleasure. He probably didn't make that up sitting in a TTC vehicle going nowhere with sixty or more people experiencing the full deodorant meltdown of Toronto in August. To our frustration we were recently short turned twice during a single trip on the publically funded King streetcar line. While idling away precious, irrecoverable moments of our life we overheard portions of a topical conversation that set us to less selfish thinking about the complexities of civic transportation infrastructure.

The parties in conversation struck as educated, sensible Torontonians of moderate outlook. Why then, we wondered, were they so opposed to the expansion of air travel from Toronto Island Airport? My fellow travellers worked over a tangled host of issues from fossil fuel depletion to noise pollution, global warming and traffic congestion.

Regular readers know that the POWcityblog bunker is near flight paths out of Toronto Island. While we have no love for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority we find the gentle, random buzz of light aviation, and the more purposeful drone of the occasional C-130 or restored Lancaster bomber, comfortingly modern. We also need to get around.

Frustrated as much by the slow pace of our streetcar as by its operator's decision to wear white gym socks with her grey uniform slacks that day we began to wish the romantic and logistical advantages of aeronautical science could be applied to urban mass transit.

We resolved to write to the Premier of Ontario in regard to having Mississauga City Hall, Black Creek Pioneer Village, High Park and all of Riverdale levelled and paved over to provide runways and terminals for a massive fleet of low-altitude, inter-suburban airliners. As we position our city for the challenges of the twenty-first century can we do any less?

Amalgamated, post-Tory Toronto is now such an unholy mess of smog-choked sprawl we will soon be forced to fly between work and home. The sooner we convert the entire city into an airport the better!

As the 504 car finally returned us to Poorkdale we set up the Cray III supercomputer to provide economic data and scientific models in support of our proposal. Almost instantaneously the Cray III generated the single most important element of the marketing effort required for what will be a $19.4 billion dollar infrastructure plan: a photo of the shoes specified by Porter Airlines for its stewardesses on flights to Ottawa, Halifax, New York and Baltimore. A stark choice faces our commuting citizens: the freedom of the skies and high heels or gridlock and gym socks.

(45) Madonna Marathon?

2008-04-11T00:45:00.005-04:00

When it comes to demented rock moms Courtney Love was preferred over Madonna by 73.9% of POWcityblog readers in a recent survey.

editor's note: we should take a holiday

(44) Actual Photo

2008-04-09T00:23:00.006-04:00

We were trolling the Yellow Pages directory for an exhaust repair shop the other day (we want to run 4-inch pipes on the Subaru this summer). Thumbing towards our objective we passed several pages devoted to escort services. Now, the oldest profession, like it or not, offers up particular images of women. Just look at the back of both of the city's arts and entertainment weeklies as well and you will see what we mean.

NOW magazine we would not place copies of on the floor of the antique cage our cocaktiel Louis Armstrong lives in lest even his modest brain be damaged by having to shit down onto this vain tribute to political correctness from his favourite wooden perch. Eye Weekly at least has some sense of humour in regard to itself and even wanders toward psychogeographic themes but when it comes to printing acre upon acre of "ho ads" is scarcely better. It's enough to make us a vegetarian these luridly coloured paper meat markets.

Both publications affect to be liberal, lefty, hip, and youthful yet they rake in revenue, and from those more thoughtful and tradition-minded of Russian pimps the occasional cake, via the advertising of prostitution. Last we heard this industry was skeevy and damaging to women. Most of the owners of these publications must be bearded. It is hard to believe they can look in the mirror long enough to shave.

Having POWcityblog address this type of imagery was probably inevitable and likely is difficult for many readers. Nonetheless, we know where we stand.

editor's note: during the composition of this post the Cramps song Bikini Girls With Machine Guns came on the radio ...'this stuf'll kill ya'

editor's note (supplemental): a healthier choice of periodical might be Queen's Quarterly or Granta

(43) Schpring has Schprung

2008-04-08T00:11:00.014-04:00

The sun brought us out for a flaneur Saturday and Sunday. Thousands of others had the same idea and the sidewalks were full. We have to say the sunny skies and fresh air were a wonderful complement to breakfast. Our downstairs maid Miranda fixed us a stunner of a burrito. One of enormous proportions with organic refried beans and fresh guacamole. Her usual pleasant, solicitous demeanour appears to have fully returned. We like to be eating eggs, not walking on them, in front of the staff.

As we strolled, digesting our burrito, the gentle light and air caused our shoulders to relax and the search for POWcityblog imagery began in earnest. Even the feral cats of Poorkdale had an extra spring in their step! Setting off from the bunker we knew how they felt.

Firstly, we came across a lost robot. Then a lost cat poster took us aback, replaced our mirth with a small sadness.

Luckily a round of shorter skirts and a couple of tank tops took the edge off all this unexpected loss, as did a large cafe latte. Still, we could not help but observe that the abundant light which drew us forth so welcomingly had another side. The harshness of the city was not hidden beneath a bandage of snow or by dull skies and early darkness. It pains us that spring in the city is not prettier. Manumitted from the snow banks are hundreds of thousands of kilos of cigarette butts, dog shit and litter. The continued amateur tagging and random vandalizing of public property doesn't seem to abate under the influence of winter. We were tempered to a more sober level of appreciation for what was around us.

We felt strengthened upon securing a couple of images from beauty salons. Before the POWcityblog we never much noticed the salons. Now, it's like every second commercial establishment is a beauty salon. Below, from Dundas St, is an example. Look at those lashes! This portrait could almost be from a manga comic.

This image below had us thinking that perhaps the 80s were not so bad after all.

Even on the sunniest day in the city there is a danger of mixed feelings, mixed results. The answer is to press on with eyes open. The city shows no mercy. Neither do we.

(42) Condo Crazy

2008-04-07T00:33:00.005-04:00

Go ahead, build another condo. See if we care!

editor's note: the no-shave look is so Don Johnson 1985 we want to die

(41) Foyer Horribilus: TD Canada Trust, the Bank Gestapo!

2008-03-30T22:36:00.010-04:00

Applied to the smeared, grimy walls of a bank at Queen & Lansdowne this kerchiefed lass surprises us with her composure. She may be wondering though, 'what sort of financial industry entity turns multi-million dollar profits operating from coast-to-coast in an environment protected by a special act of parliament yet cannot keep a few square feet in front of an ATM clean?'

TD Canada Trust, cupcake, that's who!

Years ago we complained. The response was a piteous load of corporatespeak from the manager and someone at head office. The ATM foyer at Queen & Lansdowne has been a disgrace for which one need almost seek out the Bible in order to come up with the requisite metaphor and proper sense of hellish scale. The entire branch has the architectural merits of a portable toilet at best. The ATM specifically is a toilet.

Only the other day we wished to attend to our banking and were put off by an unfortunate young woman giving herself a hit from a crack pipe while reclining on the floor. Undesireables sleep in the ATM area and urinate there. Frequently there are no deposit envelopes and food waste and other rubbish is strewn about inside.

What has been TD Canada Trust's latest customer service effort at this troubled location? To lock the doors after hours. Legitimate customers, not in search of a place to act out their addictions, vomit or urinate, who pay interest and service charges to the bank are left to the streets along with those who would tarnish the foyer. This approach to customer service has a logic the Gestapo would take pride in: one of collective punishment. As grandfather used to say, 'up with this we will not put!'

We are not remotely amused at the ongoing disaster the local TD Canada Trust ATM foyer confronts us with. We are paying for this satanic cess-pit and now cannot even even use it! Fee-paying customers who do no harm must use the outdoor ATM on Queen Street. The screen has been vandalized making it difficult to read. Envelopes are absent after hours.

If we were less than the nimble, long-limbed and well-proportioned working man we are we would not find the corner a safe place to openly handle money. What indeed, if we were elderly or disabled or were a female accompanied by her children? Poor winter weather (this has been a record year my friends) makes forced al-fresco banking a painful experience.

Irony of customer service ironies, a cluster of locals stymied in their attempts to GIVE MONEY to TD Canada Trust formed a spontaneous circle of support last friday night on Queen Street. Many a hearty jeer was directed at TD Canada Trust of a kind which would surely haunt the nightmares of any CEO. Bouyed by my new-found comrades spirit of disdain for their very own bank we walked across the street to a Scotiabank which remains open within sight of the Foyer Horribilus. How quaint and curious that another bank's ATM foyer remains open and stocked with deposit envelopes on the very same corner! We fetched us some deposit envelopes and distributed them to the masses who, we have to say, were ready for a good old bread riot. One garrulous fellow with a case of ice axes and the keys to a front end loader was talked out of rash behaviour by his brother-in-law only at the last moment!

The masses are smart enough to wonder why they should trust their wages, salaries, student loans, cheques and other business to a bank which cannot muster enough imagination to solve a simple technical problem.

The full weight of the POWcityblog will be flung at this rampart of corporate idiocy, technical incompetence and contempt for our part of the city. If other ATMs in Toronto can be clean and user-friendly why can't this one be as well?

This will not stand!

editor's note: click above whenever you have a problem with TD Canada Trust

(40) Hairway to Heaven

2008-03-27T00:52:00.005-04:00

The fossil record continues to indicate that, even in central Etobicoke, about two thirds of Toronto's pre-digital economy was directly bouffant-related.

That smile reminds us of, ...uh, never mind.

(39) Psychogeography

2008-03-23T02:31:00.009-04:00

Our Cray III supercomputer recently created a spreadsheet summarizing the content of letters, emails and telephone calls received at the POWcityblog bunker since going online. We will address all of this inbound commentary in due course. Of immediate concern is that the term psychogeography is misunderstood. At least a dozen correspondents have expectations that the term literally means “geography which is psycho,” that is to say, “crazy.” This failure of comprehension is extremely unfortunate. The principles of psychogeography have probably never been more badly needed by a humanity trying to come to grips with its immediate environment.

So, what is psychogeography? It’s a school of philosophy rooted in France in the 1950s. Essentially it has to do with capturing the direct effects of place upon the feelings, experience, and emotions of human beings. As with any school of philosophy the sky is the limit and there is a healthy variety of interpretation and methodology. Despite its French roots there is nothing about psychogeography that is for wusses.

It can be taken up in a formal or informal fashion according to taste. If you ever spent time wondering why a certain part of the city makes you feel this way and another part makes you feel that way and the totality makes you think or feel something else completely then you are a psychogeographer. This mixture of psychology and geography can be expressed in writing and visual art and it hopes to inform the very shape of our society.

Some ability to get around and a few tools for recording impressions are the only things needed by a psychogeographer. It isn’t always pretty, take a look at the last post for example.

In this society enthusiasm is generally considered just another poor social skill but we’d still like to ask you: when it comes to psychogeography, what are you waiting for?

editor's note: search terms can include Guy Debord, Situationist International, Will Self and psychogeography

(38) On Beauty & Being Just

2008-03-22T19:32:00.006-04:00

Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics at Harvard University. How’s that for a job description? Ours is only one word long. Anyway, that’s who Elaine Scarry is and she wrote On Beauty and Being Just in 1999. The thesis of her little work is that a powerful sense of beauty is directly related to social and economic justice and simple fairness in human relations. Seduced by a blurb to this effect we went to the Toronto Public Library site via the Cray III supercomputer and placed a hold. A few days later we had our hands on the book and found it unreadable. Way too many semicolons; we mean A LOT. Also, there was reference upon reference to the classics which was, like, over our head. Don’t enjoy going back too far to when the mayhem wasn’t mechanized. Still, we can’t get this powerful idea out of our head: that the world would be more just, more balanced if we all had a stronger relationship with beauty. This, this is why we started the POWcityblog even though we did not know it at the time. To fight for beauty one post at a time.

Health + Peace + Karma + Beauty to you all

(37) Poster

2008-03-18T20:12:00.006-04:00

Controversial for some, the lowly poster has been a source of random urban aesthetic delight at POWcityblog for decades now. Even out in the 905 poster culture seems to be taking hold, although in the likes of Brampton and Mississauga posters tend to be of the '$300 DIVORCE' kind rather than for a reading by an "outsider artist" such as Sheila Gostick. This is a poster of Ms. Gostick's that appeared around Poorkdale recently. We like it. Now, Ms. Gostick's thinkings and writings and truthings are not for everyone. We imagine she is happy with that and her commentary on Poorkdale is often profound and second-to-none. But for the demands of our high-powered career we may have attended the reading advertised on this poster. We might have asked, "Why the description 'outsider artist'?" Is there some other kind?

(36) Shelley's

2008-03-17T23:43:00.003-04:00

If some dude came up behind us and put something around our necks we'd have to do Kung-fu on them.

(35) The Battle of Lansdowne Library

2008-03-15T00:20:00.018-04:00

This morning, one of the interns suggested our walks reflect an east-to-west bias and went on to describe us as "a total S.O.B." You can imagine we were willing to be open to the first part of this commentary but took umbrage at the latter. It turns out said intern meant no offence as the acronym refers to our geographical location, living, as we do, South of Bloor (Street).

After an appropriate waiting period we will post the intern a supply of orthopaedic turtlenecks. That and their excess of youth should help to aid their recovery. In the shorter term, we found assigning ourselves a corrective north-south flaneur just the thing to encounter new images in old places and be reminded of another episode in family history involving Grandfather.

Now, the casual or foreign viewer may be forgiven for thinking that the above photo was taken in the Communist party-sanctioned pleasure quarter of Piatigorsk in 1951. But no, this instead, dear reader, is a major intersection in contemporary Toronto, Canada's business capital and North America's fifth largest connurbation. One may be forgiven for thinking that the authorities are placing psychotropic or dissociative substances into the drinking water for the general citizenry to put up with an aesthetic environment even remotely like this.

Some of the history of this corner, from the early part of the last century, may help to explain its present day taintedness. That dull ochre building stands on what was once the location of an ornate art nouveau-styled library. A delightful and humane structure noted throughout the Empire for its spacious and sensible layout, for literally acres of inspiring stained glass depicting our clean young Dominion's most beautiful scenic landscapes and for modern electric lighting. No expense was spared, dear reader, on the Lansdowne Library.

Unfortunately that call to arms that so shocked the world in August of 1914 would be heard just weeks before the new library was to receive its many books, periodicals and musical recordings. The War Office began to spread its administrative tentacles and the Landsdowne Library was taken up as a record office. Pointless, prolonged slaughter being then, as now, quite administratively intense.

In any case, by November of 1920 Grandfather had made his last sudden explosive decompression with the Royal Canadian Navy's Diving Bell Squadron and found himself back in Parkdale. Thinking he might enjoy visiting what had been, on his departure six years earlier, billed as "the most beautiferous and important single cultural treasure within direct sight of a Great Lake" by Premier William H. Hearst Grandfather instead found himself looking in the dusty windows of a disused shell, devoid now even of the rows of meticulous War Office clerks. His disappointment was almost as great as that of Parkdale's other out-of-work war veterans.

At Christmas of 1920 Grandfather was the head of an unemployed veterans committee barricaded in the library. Their demand was "Jobs, Dignity and the Allotted Books or It's A Revolution Here As Well." A quotation from a committee leaflet illustrates the nature of the stand off.

"...if we are thrown out of our improvised home and the community soup kitchen closed we will surely march on city hall with these dozen Vickers guns for a petition. The authorities should remember that we are doing them a service in taking over this empty building. We are using it to distribute food which we collect from trades people on Saturdays and have now a scheme on hand to mend the kiddies' boots and send them dry-shod to school ...we in this way keep control over 17,000 unemployable men who might otherwise be driven to far more violent things than seizing an empty building ...ours is a sensible, direct sort of action, we don't want to break anything if that can be avoided."

As the New Year dragged on the authorities showed intermittant interest in negotiation whilst perparing a brutal make-an-example-of-them sort of ploy. Unfortunately, for them, they had not reckoned with Grandfather.

Police Master Sergeant David "The Bastard" McMurrin, a Belfast man, hammered on the library door with a hairy fist. Grandfather opened up and asked McMurrin what he wanted. The sergeant, looking like murder itself, uttered foul curses. McMurrin was a hard case and had been in charge of the security detachment in the shipyard that built none other than the RMS Titanic before coming to Canada and joining the Toronto Borough Police. During his Belfast tenure McMurrin instituted a morale-building sports program at the shipyard which increased its members skills in boxing, wrestling, rugger, football, checkers and hitting Catholics with a cement block.

Now, as I've mentioned Grandfather was a navy man, and not just of any deck-swabbing kind either. He'd learned to master diving bells. The most complex of craft, diving bells require constant trim adjustments to operate smoothly. These adjustments are accomplished with an iron tool the proportions of which can be gauged by its having been nicknamed an "elephant's pecker wrench" by the men who used it. An example of one had been Grandfather's sole souveneir of participation in the First World War.

The sound McMurrin's skull made when Grandfather's wrench crowned him King of the Pigs was said to have been heard on the steps of the Provincial Legislature. In either case the police backed down and at Grandfather's funeral in 1961 the largest of the floral arrangements was from Toronto's finest who also honoured him with a pipe band. It seems that McMurrin had become unpopular and a younger, more progressive generation of local police yearned to be free of him.

Sadly, a wave of arrests by the Provincial Police was directed at the network of women supporting the men barricaded in the library. The water and electricity was shut off. Also, an internal element favoured quitting the protest when a relief act promising three cents a week to all mothers with a minimum of eleven children was passed. Grandfather, democratic to the end, followed the wishes of the majority and led the march out of the library. He continued straight to the lounge in the Drake Hotel where he could be found for most of the next forty years.

At sunset the very day of the relief committee's victory parade a mysterious fire tore through the library. Each stained glass window snapped with a report like a sniper's rifle. Grandfather is said to have winced each time.

When we walked by Lansdowne and Bloor today, well, we knew how the old man felt.

editor's note: if even we can't work with these blue pumps, we just can't work with it at all