Friday 23 February 2007
Spacing Wire points out this lovely “concert sauvage” by NYC a capella group Naturally 7, favouring bemused Parisian commuters with a rendition of “In The Air Tonight”. I’m reminded of my first visit to Manhattan a few years ago, when three guys wandered onto our train and started singing a couple of gospel numbers (“It’s gonna rain! It’s gonna rain. Or maybe snow…”) - I’m guessing there’s much more of a tradition of singing on the subway in New York?
Makes me want to do some busking this summer. It struck me, for example, strolling around during last year’s wonderful Nuit Blanche, that it’d be even cooler with street music…
I almost missed this one: Zunior recently released the Our Power Solar Music Compilation as an exclusive download album. It’s a fundraiser for solar power initiatives in Ontario, and has tracks by Sexsmith & Kerr, Steven Page, Snailhouse, Gord Downie and others.
Tags for this entry:
a capella,
busking,
energy,
environment,
music,
paris,
performance,
public space,
subway,
transit,
video
Monday 19 February 2007
TTC oddities: Bay station will be closed for three upcoming weekends due to nearby construction, and Bloor-Danforth trains will divert via Museum station. The upshot: you’ll get to see the fabled Lower Bay station. It was closed to the public only months after it was built, but it shows up from time to time in films and on TV, often dressed up to look like New York or elsewhere. Transit Toronto has the lowdown; further details from Steve Munro.
Elsewhere, Steve ponders the challenges if the TTC were to run the Toronto Island Ferry (as it did, once upon a time): “If the Sam McBride is half way across to Centre Island, and is short turned, do the passengers have to get off?” Ouch. :D
In other news, the front of the Revue Cinema fell off yesterday morning. Ouch also.
Also, Matt Blackett is retiring his weekly comic m@b. I’ll miss it, but I’m sure he’ll have lots of other projects to keep him busy - and with a new issue of Spacing (the magazine he founded) in my mailbox today, I can’t complain too much.
Tuesday 4 July 2006
Took a couple cool walks through the west end, down the hill north of Davenport that marks the ancient Lake Iroquois shoreline, past the old Wychwood streetcar barns and the Tollkeeper’s Cottage, a couple of souvenirs of Toronto’s transportation history. The former site is slated for conversion to artists’ studios, greenhouses and parkland, the latter for restoration as a national heritage site.
And there were other neat things along the way - parks and neighbourhoods and friendly cats, and other stuff that may provide inspiration for the radio scripts I’ve been working on.
Down on Bloor Street, we passed by the trio of construction sites at Varsity Stadium, the Royal Conservatory and the ROM, and wandered down Philosopher’s Walk past the Conservatory and the U of T music building, there to check out the second lamppost bass installed by Richard Bishop (who ran across my post about his earlier installation, the Kensington Bass, and was kind enough to alert me to the arrival of its new sibling). A bit tough to play, but fun! I’ll have to come by with my contact microphone and an amp or recorder sometime.
Speaking of the urban landscape, city council is now seeking proposals to provide street furniture citywide. One side effect of this is that the Eucan “monster bin” project (see left) is dead. Good thing too - but we’d better keep an eye on the proceedings and let councillors know we want ads kept under control.
There’s also one really maddening bit: those three-sided “ad pillars” that AstralMedia have installed in parks are exempt from all this. They’re just off the sidewalk, and therefore within the jurisdiction of Parks and Rec, not Urban Planning.
More about this via Spacing Wire. Also, a Star article by Christopher Hume.
Also, on Friday, Newmindspace (instigators of Bubble Battles, subway and streetcar parties, and other revelry) are having a big mobile party they’re calling Flight Of Fancy, somewhere close to downtown. Route to be annouced via email. I’m gonna be there, hopefully playing some music!
Tags for this entry:
architecture,
art,
bass,
kensington bass,
newmindspace,
public art,
public space,
spacing,
street furniture,
subway,
toronto,
transit,
urban change
Wednesday 8 May 2002
I dropped by the Toronto Reference Library today. Designed by Raymond Moriyama, it’s one of the loveliest interiors in the city: huge, airy, impressive and yet intimate, with plenty of natural light, water sculptures decorating the ground floor, and generous skylit reading areas. The north end has a stunning view of Rosedale Valley and the uptown towers of Yonge Street. The only real downer (aside from the rather bleak expanses of blank brick on the outside) is the fact that all the upper floors ring a giant atrium, making it necessary to walk all the way around them if you’re headed for the opposite corner.
It’s part of a period in architecture that I particularly love, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on: those buildings that were built by governments in the 1960s and ‘70s. Although they vary widely, there’s a distinctive feel to them, and some common elements, like the use of 45-degree angles and circular forms, lots of brick and warm colours, and vanes to cut down glare and break up blank ceilings.
Those subways that were built in the ‘60s and ‘70s are great examples. I happened on a book about the Montreal Metro recently that was full of this sort of thing: strikingly patterned concrete, angled walls, integrated art and so on. The contemporary stations I’ve seen in Boston and other cities are similar. (Check out Matt McLauchlin’s loving tribute, Montréal By Metro.)
In Toronto, the 1978 Spadina Line is the prime example, with eight unique stations (most of which, unfortunately, are in the median of a minor expressway). Eglinton West is warm and welcoming; Glencairn is quiet and curiously intimate, with lots of small walls to break up its space; Lawrence West has a mezzanine decorated in bright primary colours, while walls of plain concrete lend its platform a quiet dignity; Dupont, probably the most remarked-upon, is mysterious, simultaneously cave-like and futuristic with its round corners and giant circular lights. In their day, all the stations sported original artworks, though some have faded and some have had to be dismantled, notably Yorkdale’s vaulted ceiling of rainbow neon designed by Michael Hayden.
So what is it that I find so appealing about this era? I think it’s a feeling of genuine optimism and civic-mindedness. I’ve only lived in Toronto itself for a couple of years, but it didn’t take long to notice the sense many have of the 1970s as a kind of golden, enlightened age. New expressways were turned back by those living in their path; plans to scrap the city’s streetcar network were abandoned; alienating high-rise housing projects gave way to sensibly planned new neighborhoods. The future seemed bright and human.
I think we could use a little more of that right about now.
