Jack Layton: Alive in our hearts
Jack Layton’s death, which gripped our country and sent us into an everlong wave of mourning, has somehow been inextricably linked with street art. When he passed, ordinary citizens grabbed pieces of coloured chalk and wrote their condolences into the pavement in front of city hall, as I did here.
And then, the street art community responded with their own spraypainted tributes and stencil’d remembrances.
To this day, it continues. This above photograph is of Jack Layton’s home. His wife, MP Olivia Chow, still lives there. When he passed, that porch and walkway was covered in flowers, lit candles, little gifts, and notes. Now it’s clear.
Or is it?
Look closer. Do you see it?
I took this photograph, and then had to walk away really quickly down the street and around the corner. I slammed my heels down with each footfall, with an exaggerated force, so that my tendons would ache and my toes would callus. I pulled my hoodie over my head and didn’t look anyone in the eye for the rest of the afternoon.
Jack Layton Lives!
i miss you, sir.
to the anonymous street artist behind this stencil … fist bump & high five.
and fanks.
all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom
that was the name of the first short story i ever had professionally published. I blogged about it when it happened way back in 2005… that paycheque paid rent that month. i took the above photo in october of last year during my war child challenge campaign, and this was an outtake that was never published, so i thought i’d have fun with it. the blending of two creative projects.
even though i miss house-sitting, i won’t miss that building being the only one in sight for miles in every direction.
found in the alleys behind the drake hotel. i thought Spud already was the mayor.
look closer.
the background of Ford’s stupid monkey face says “Spud 4 Mayor” over and over.
I love Spud’s work, he’s one of the greatest Toronto street artists who eludes everyone. Gregory Allan Elliot told me that some of the dudes in Kensington market know who he is and can put me in contact. His work is everywhere and has been around for years. His Ford-sperms and Ford-faces made it into my The Grid article that was published a few weeks ago. And he always seems to score the greatest walls and locations. The rooftops of Queen and Spadina have all been Spud bombed. One says “SpudR” not sure what the R is for, but hey, we know it’s him because of his style and imagery.
here are some old Spud photos that i’ve taken but have never published. this one above was found in the Ossington-Humbert alleyway (I spend most of my days in alleys, seriously). He took over an entire garage front, and even copyrighted it in the bottom right corner.
this is just a spudbomb sticker, but i love it.
when i grow up, i’m going to bovine university.
this is a moo point.
you know, it’s like a cow’s opinion. it doesn’t matter. it’s moo.
i published a photo of this exact same piece a few months ago, but it was someone else’s photo. thought i’d go back and take my own, for copyright/ownership purposes.
i have another photograph of a piece that was put up in graffiti alley, it’s the exact same rob ford face, but instead of “piss here” it just says “ass.”
hhaha! this is in the alley behind dovercourt and queen. the “work in progress” has always been there, but like the new writing to the left indicates, it has been a work in progress for EONS. C’mon son. GET IT TOGETHER.
do you see what i see?
so fucking cool. this was on abell street behind the wreckage of construction.
i love the unused/abandoned storefronts along queen west.
speaking of Gregory Allan Elliot….see what he did here? He took a black marker to the movie poster for Colombiana… so fucking clever, sir. Yes, I know it’s him because the gun is now shooting his “heart/love” symbol.
the night, with garin, outside the drake hotel, where the woman with the typewriter sat on the sidewalk and tapped poems for passers-by. it sounded like morse-code.
headlines the day after Canada went into a state of mourning…
i was walking along Bloor and this guy was just sitting there holding this while fondling his smartphone.
fanks for letting me take your picture, guy.
it’s the fat-lip twins!
my wifey is so nom-nom-nom.
as i spoke about before, Ford Canada is lending me a car for this Labour Day long weekend (Ford Canada recognizes exceptional awesomeness, clearly) , so I’m going on a roadtrip! I’m going back to the place of my birth, Montreal, to hang with my gay boyfriend, my old school mates, to practice mon français (maudit enfant chienne), and wander about to see what’s cool around the plateau since i left at the age of 12.
frankly, after all that i’ve been going through lately, this opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time.
hopefully i’ll find some amazing Montreal graffiti, and see some great Montreal theatre!
if you have any graffiti/theatre leads, please send them my way. or if you’re throwing a hipster douchebag party event clusterfuck that kyboshes other attempts, let a sistah know.
bloggin will resume next week.
à la prochaine, mes ti-choufleurs!
Jack Layton’s State Funeral: the minor fall and the major lift
WWJD
What Would Jack Do?
Thank you, sir.
kings may come and then go, having sex in the snow
the newspaper headlines reporting bin laden’s death.
compare and contrast.
i took this photo on monday morning and posted it online. within 24 hours, it had over 1200 views. i’d classify that as verging on viral.
it’s official. we have replaced ethics for hype.
having a headline like this detracts from the important issues that people actually care about.
this is pure knee-jerk, reactionary editorializing on the front page that is meant to anger people and appeal to their baser instincts instead of allowing them to form their own opinions from the news. this is here just to sell papers, rather than offering facts on the issue. also the word ‘hell’ in there implies religious connotations that not everyone subscribes to. even religious people would have to agree that “rot in hell” is not a very ecumenical statement and is not endorsed by any church. editorials have no place on front page headlines, and this newspaper, by refusing to hold any issue’s feet to the fire, is calling into question the intelligence of its readers. whether or not bin laden deserved what he got isn’t the question.
when we dumb down the issues to something like this, nobody wins.
the appropriate response to hate is NOT more hate.
* * *
so for hockey election night in Canada, i was invited down to CityTV broadcast headquarters to attend #CityVote, an event where, in their own words, “high-profile tweeters” (that’s so going in my bio) gathered to live-tweet the election and the results, without getting arrested by Elections Canada.
that’s me, doing my job credibly in-studio via UberSocial Twitter on Blackberry
and that’s one of my tweets flashing across the broadcast.
it was a great event, attended by some great twitter-buds and tweethearts of mine, and we were all pretty much in agreement that basically:
The Stache is Da Man.
Also Stephen Harper can now resume building his deathstar in peace.
canadians can’t even do this.
fuck this, i want to see Harper’s long-form birth certificate.
i am extremely excited about Jack Layton and the NDPs political coup in decimating the Liberals as the official opposition, and i’m also so happy for Elizabeth May as the first Green Party Member of Parliament, but now that we have a Harper majority, i can say this, without hyperbole, that this will be the last time we see democracy in action again in this country. hope you enjoyed that.
fucking Fat Alberta, good for nothing province, i blame you for this election. we should invade that province, the only thing they have to defend themselves with is plastic knives and forks, and fucking fat cowboys.
interestingly enough, i wrote this article about the politics surrounding the battle for Trinity-Spadina the day before the election for rabble.ca, a political publication that i have loved for years, so to be asked to write this article was really exciting for me.
read and enjoy!
* * *
the contact photography festival is going on right now (alongside hot docs! agh! so much festival-jaculations, so little kleenex to go around), and phil and i found this amazing outdoor exhibit at front and spadina. this is like legal, permitted street art. but that doesn’t negate its potency or the raw, wild, untamed nature of the work. it’s ephemeral, and it’s free.
my two favourite things.
look at his eyes.
they follow you!
* * *
my office is located around queen and spadina, and i had heard that the last remaining banksy graffiti from his unannounced visit here last year was sitting right across the street from my daily-grindin’-desk. so after work last week, i went for a stroll to see what i could find.
this building is soon-to-be a hotel. how did i find that out?
as i stood on the lawn, overlooking banksy’s rat, the owner popped out and called out to me, “do you want to see what it looked like before it was defaced?”
“sure,” i said.
he walked over with a framed photograph of the banksy rat and said that the photo was taken the day it went up, and that the very next day, someone had defaced it with the word “love!” and other nonsense.
it looks like he’s tried to restore it somewhat, but a lot of the strokes have been buried under someone else’s spray.
the owner then told me that he was offered $150,000 by some guy to cut out the bricks sporting the banksy rat, so he could add it to his collection, and the guy would replace the bricks and make it all nice again.
the owner told the guy “no, because this now belongs to the people of toronto, not me.”
a man after my own heart.
the owner then let me in ON A BANKSY SECRET!
he said Banksy’s best mate from adolescence (from bristol? really?) lives just down the street from the hotel, that’s why Banksy was here last year, to visit him.
banksy apparently has plans to return this summer, and will make some art at the launch of the new hotel which will open in june.
i asked “when exactly will that be?”
“i don’t know,” he replied.
“if you did know, would you tell me?”
long pause.
“no.”
here’s the framed photo of what it looked like before it was defaced.
i gave the hotel owner my business card, and said he should contact me, you know, on the fly, if he wanted to give me a head’s up about, oh you know, whatever may happen this summer that i may or may not be interested in.
wink wink.
* * *
remember in my last post, i mentioned that some street art i found was done by fauxreel? i emailed him and said,
just a quick message to say that i’m a big fan of your work. i found one of your pieces recently on adelaide street near simcoe and blogged about it, and then realized that you’re also behind the two wheatpaste pieces of the open-mouthed kids on leslie just north of sheppard. i see those two pieces every day on my commute to work (i unfortunately live up there, lol!) and i love them so much because that area NEVER gets any thoughtful street art like that, and i think they’re brilliant.congrats on all your success sir! uda man.-Christine
Fauxreel replied! his real name is dan bergeron, and he said,
hi christine,
thanks for your note…i’m glad you enjoy my work…the pieces on leslie were part of a project i worked on with Artstarts for the Villawayz housing community…it was great to put work up in a part of the city that rarely ever sees public art installations…and the piece on adelaide was just something fun, part of a series called men at work, in which i install images of blue collar workers interacting with the urban landscape…db
i officially have a new art-star to worship.
* * *
another reason why being a member of the press rules.
my media badge got me into the one and only, sold-out, capacity screening of Beats, Rhymes & Life: A Tribe Called Quest documentary at Hot Docs. watch the trailer, and get excited.
