Forgery League

Our current building on King Street had a façade that was painted turquoise. It was garish but distinctive, and made it a good landmark for pointing out for visiting friends, cab drivers and whatnot.

About a week ago we found out we’d landed a new place out in the Beaches, practically at the eastern end of Queen Street. The very same day, our old building turned white - as if the colour and uniqueness had drained out of it.

It’s been good to us, though, and we’ll miss it.

I will not miss the Indy, which we had to put up with this past weekend; it’s probably a half-mile away, but the droning of engines all day made it sound like we were living next to some bizarre nest of motorized bees. And the crowds that packed the Bathurst streetcar back from the Ex were… a little different, shall we say.

The house itself is in a neighbourhood known as the Beach (or the Beaches), on Neville Park, the easternmost stop on the entire streetcar network. If we lean far enough out the window, we’re probably in Scarborough.

J wrote to the rest of the house:

i think we should call the house, by virtue of its distance from the city

land’s end

“Just so you know, this is really testing love.”—Sean, watching me spoon an experimental breakfast offering onto his plate.

It was pretty atrocious, actually.

Last night, on the GO bus home from Grandma’s, we saw a sign in front of a restaurant specializing in wraps, and both did a double take. After a moment, we realized that the light behind the first panel of it - reading “If the SIZE doesn’t” - had burnt out, leaving only the Yodaically cryptic “AMAZE you the TASTE will!”

Reminded me of a little while ago, walking down Queen Street. A restaurant’s neon had gone out in places, leaving the letters “RE RANT”. And I confess, the first thing that popped into my head was: “...RINFORMATION.”

From the Chicago Tribune, March 19th: “Media giant’s rally sponsorship raises questions” (Thank you, Boing Boing.)

“In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people.”

Now, let me tell you about Dundas Square. It’s an odd little triangle downtown that used to be full of cheap and/or sleazy shops, in an area that was seriously damaged by the construction of the giant Eaton Centre shopping mall next door. A year or three ago they knocked down the buildings to make way for a new public square.

Fair enough; downtown could use more of that sort of thing. But the concept for the square - essentially our own miniature version of Times Square - has always struck me as ridiculous. Times Square is awe-inspiring in its way: street advertising and trashy glitz taken to its greatest extreme. To mimic it is to miss the point. It’s tacky, uncreative, me-tooish - exactly the sort of thing that Canadians from one end of the country to the other love to mock Toronto for.

The square, then, is surrounded by billboards and giant screens showing full-colour video. And crowning it all is The Media Tower, on the northwest corner (it’s the drum-shaped thing in the photos). Essentially it’s a big box made of girders, several stories high, made for the express purpose of hanging ads on. Guess who owns it. Yay, Clear Channel!

On the other hand, Dundas Square has provided a nice location for antiwar demos. That’s one of the most important functions for a public square, after all. And it makes me feel a bit better.

And hey! There’s this big fat target waiting if agit-pranksters want to hang a banner or something. With lots of exposed girders to chain themselves to.

There’s nothing like winter to make you appreciate spring.

Starting a list of things I’ll miss if we move out of this neighbourhood. Number one is Kensington Market. All the wacky secondhand clothing stores have their racks of colourful Stuff out on the street again, and the fruit markets have reclaimed good stretches of the sidewalk. The sound of an impromptu Saturday drum circle echoes across Dundas from the African drum shop. The Moonbean is packed, and its patio is back in full force.

Well, maybe we can get a place along Gerrard or Broadview so it’d be an easy ride from home…

We haven’t even found a house to buy and already we’re discussing what we want to do after that. More and more we’re attracted to some form of cohousing. I’ve always been attracted to the sort of community found on the Islands, for example - progressive, close-knit, homegrown, collaborative, the product of many happy accidents and acts of generosity - and wondered if it’s possible to build such a place deliberately.

In essence, I think it’s a little like the community where Sean’s Mom lives near Charlottesville, but I think I’m after something a little more compact and village-like.

As much as anything, I think it’s a kind of insurance. The challenge is this: I’m going to die. Not only that, I’m going to be old at some point. Do I want to be alone when that happens? No. I’d rather be somewhere with cool neighbours whom I trust; in a comfortable, walkable setting; with the opportunity to help one another out in all different ways - cooking, helping design a house, teaching music on the side, supporting someone who’s lost a loved one, whatever. So the idea of cohousing has really struck home (pardon) for me, as well as the writings of Christopher Alexander.

I just had a vision of our various houses as successive chambers in a nautilus… perhaps ranging from crib to room to apartment to house, each one a little bigger than the last. But not necessarily bigger in terms of space… space is for stuff, not for us. Rather, it’s more a kind of psychological sphere, at every step more integrated with whoever and whatever surrounds us.

Maybe it’s just me coming to realize that we can change the world - just not in the most obvious way. :D

From: [M]
Ooohh, ooohh, $189,000, Lg home near King
NEEDS GUTTING!!!!!!

From: [J]
Gutting! GAH! Let’s avoid the ones that say “needs gutting”, or “total write off”, or “buy it and burn it, you’ll make more money that way”, okay?

We spent much of the weekend poring over house listings, guidebooks for the first-time homebuyer, books on architecture, and one very scribbled-upon map. Wackiest thing we’ve seen so far: a house just off Pape, some minutes’ walk north of the Danforth, which had been converted to a daycare before its proprietor realized that daycares weren’t allowed in residential areas in the former East York. All the rooms still had educational posters and fingerpaintings tacked to them, and one of the upstairs bedrooms had a huge wide closet that had been turned into a puppet stage.

Oh, and there was no kitchen or bath to speak of. The owner was willing to put up money to reinstall them.

This is too much fun. But it’ll be even more fun when we actually have the place and can sink our teeth into the new challenge of shaping it. Sean wants one with a garage so he can convert it into a greenhouse. :D

Well, at least it’s only for one weekend a year.

The Molson Indy is on, and from our new place downtown we can hear the endless droning of engines circling the Exhibition grounds. Maybe next year we’ll join in the lighthearted neighbourhood protests against it… This year I am told they had a “Wholesome Undies” march, wherein people walked the race route sans outerwear. A couple years back, green mayoral candidate Tooker Gomberg and friends sat outside Mayor Mel Lastman’s house with a sound system, playing a recording of last year’s race. (Mel has since moved to a condo.)

In other news, Sean got me a POD (an all-in-one guitar effects unit and amp simulator) as an early birthday present. Yay! Then he got me to show him a couple of chords so he could see how it sounded, and spent about five minutes rockin’ out before he broke a string. :D

Ah well. It was about time to change strings anyway. Good thing I’ve got a set of electrics around to cannibalize, as every music store in town closes on Sunday.

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.

1: Walking across Nathan Phillips Square. Tall, bearded black man, snappily dressed, presumably leaving work at City Hall, passes by. Our eyes meet for a moment. “Hi, sexy,” he says as he passes by. I laugh, startled. He doesn’t look back.
2: A sign in the tile on the ground by the Peace Garden in the square reads: WARNING ETERNAL FLAME