Super Grover flies again
Some of you might remember the first time (and the second time) I ran into Super Grover by THINGS.
I found this one at Queen and Dufferin early in the summer, but never got around to blogging it, because, you know …. New York.
I love this stencil and hope THINGS puts up more of them 
I know of some other locations this stencil went up, but I was never able to photograph them before DA MAN got to them.
THINGS loves to get (lans)downe!
more of THINGS‘ fontjaculation! found this guy at lansdowne and wallace
check out my THINGS category for more of his work.
21 THINGS I want in a lover
another THINGS font hit. this was on roncies. it’s great to find more of these, because some of the previous ones i found have already been taken down.
check out my THINGS category for more of his work.
do the bad THINGS, take off your wedding ring
remember my mental note from the bottom of this post? FINALLY DID IT!
THINGS and his fonts continues across the city.
THINGS have gotten closer to the sun, and i’ve done THINGS in small doses
remember back in early november when i found THINGS’ first super grover near roncesvalles? well he’s since put more super grovers all over the city. i haven’t been actively looking for the rest of them, even though i know most of their locations. but last night i stumbled upon this one in kensington market.
You see that heart coming off of Super Grover’s arm? that was added by Gregory Alan Elliot.
THINGS also loves fonts and graphics, and puts his tag on the electricity boxes all over the city, which i’ve documented before. here’s some new ones i’ve found lately. this one is near queen and gladstone.
this is queen and augusta
i drove by one the other day by ossington and argyle, i gotta photograph it asap. MENTAL NOTE.
check out my THINGS category for more of his work.
boast my chills
hey THINGS, you have a copycat (of sorts). THINGS‘ body of work includes the above POST NO BILLS piece, which pokes fun at some famous Williams, and that stupid demand at construction sites.
i found this above POST NO BILLS by THINGS this past summer. the next time you’re wandering by a construction site in toronto, makes sure you pay extra close attention.
anyhoo, last night i was near the esplanade and jarvis and was rather disappointed at how blessedly graffiti-free the area is, until i came across this:
it’s like THINGS but not!
bahahahahahahahahah! oh you. A+
an homage to Occupy Toronto, perhaps?
kinda obvious. B+
um. ok.
THINGS aren’t what they seem
THINGS is everywhere, and loves fonts! this was on the railpath, and is the same saying found on the Lansdowne/Dupont underpass.
Dupont and Edwin.
Bloor and Shaw.
keep your eyes open, toronto!
*some conditions apply
i finally got around (i’m lazy, i know) to photographing Joel Richardson‘s revamped and repainted mural at the Lansdowne & Dupont underpass. i’ve blogged about Richardson before (first when his mural was stupidly removed, and then when i found one of his stencils on the rail path), and i’m glad to finally be able to photograph his work in detail. the man is wicked talented and has a unique artistic vision. his street art here is comprised mostly of stencils, but also some free-hand brush work.
deeeeeeenied.
i love how he uses these mathematical equations and formulas in his work. like halo’d men in suits to the power of infinity divided by the base root of economic recession multiplied by perjury under oath equals wartime dividends.
where’s my calculator?
eerie.
check out his website. as i was taking these photos, it was raining and drunk men stumbling along the underpass were yelling at me.
since i am stubborn and refuse to acknowledge the dangerous situations i sometimes put myself in, i yelled back at the drunk punks “get a fucking life!” um, hey chris? hey, it’s the reasoning part of your brain talking. hi! you’re a woman alone at night in a sketchy part of the west end brandishing an expensive camera. MAYBE YOU SHOULD RETHINK THIS, MORON. fanks, and feel free to consult me more often.
well look who it is.
THINGS apparently put one of his smirking Ford’s here after Richardson’s original mural was removed earlier this year. it’s nice to see that when Richardson repainted, he incorporated THINGS piece into it, instead of removing it. THAT’S how you earn street cred.
look at the two of them. LURVE.
do you see that? *some conditions apply. again, that’s another stencil THINGS put up when Richardson’s work was removed. it’s kinda faded and some of it is covered, but it’s still visible.
I think this gas-masked suit is my favourite.
you ever seen the documentary The Corporation? it’s a canadian documentary that features Michael Moore and others, speaking on the amazing shit that corporations get away with in the name of commerce and the dreams of avarice. because these criminals are wearing a suit and make billions of dollars, they are treated like heads of state. but when a guy in a lower tax bracket does the same shit at the local convenience store, he’s rightfully arrested and thrown into jail. Corporations are considered humans under US law.
what’s most interesting about that documentary is it explores the Bolivian water crisis in 2000. the international engineering/building company Bechtel essentially bought the water in Bolivia, and raised the rates exponentially to a price that the residents could not afford. so people were forced to choose between food or water. their children’s school or water. it became so outrageous, that even collecting rain water or digging your own well was made illegal. it resulted in the Cochabamba protests and revolution which left hundreds hurt and one young boy dead.
my father is an accountant with Bechtel.
fanks for the blood-money, dad!
why are the women wearing mini skirts and open-toed shoes? i’ve worked in dozens of corporate offices, and they are all way too conservative to ever let that shit fly. I’m assuming Richardson did this either because he thinks women are sexualized in the workplace…. orrrrrrr because he doesn’t respect women in the workplace.
om shiva.
speaking of the Bolivian water crisis, i reviewed a film last year at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival called Even The Rain, which dramatizes the Cochabamba revolution. it wasn’t the greatest film i’ve ever seen, but it starred Gael Garcia Bernal, so i couldn’t officially complain.
i’d watch that man remove toe jam for 2 hours on film. no problem.
wow, i need a moment to let the classiness wash over me.
suit man has a halo, an 8 ball, and a bad toupee.
suit with briefcase in the negative.
halo suit in the negative (squared) with some LOVE.
squared negative.
“and do thy duty even if it be humble, rather than another’s even if it be great. to die in one’s duty is life: to live in another’s is death.”
#TheMoreYouKnow
“this at least could be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty and every man was perfectly free both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper. The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of different employments….
…of labour and stock must in the same neighbourhood be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality.”
for love or money?
you have my answer.
hahaha, fuck you man without a face.
and then this little piggy ran wee-wee-wee all the way home.
stockbroker + bomb = economy
remember when i blogged about joel richardson, the street artist whose commissioned mural was stupidly removed by rob ford’s graffiti vandals squad?
well joel richardson was allowed to repaint his underpass with the same images. i’ve driven by the underpass a few times lately, but haven’t been able to photograph it yet. i saw one of THINGS pieces embedded in the mural, so i definitely want to check it out soon.
anyway, it looks like richardson also does some stencilling from time to time.
case in point, i found his stylistic suited men equations along the rail path
fits in well with my OCCUPY STREET WALLS campaign, n’est-ce pas?
all those THINGS we never said
THINGS is a really prolific and highly documented street artist in toronto, but i’m only learning his name now! he reached out to me recently to let me know that some of his work was in my The Grid article that was published a few months ago, and as it turns out, he’s the genius behind some great work such as the Rob Ford “ass” and “piss here” pieces, the light switches, and one of my personal favs, the “post no bills” piece!!
yesterday i found some more of his work, and got all snap happy.
his flying Grover only went up on this wall a few days ago, but already it’s been tagged by another graffitist.
it was so beautiful yesterday as i was taking these photos, the wind was crisp and everything was fragrant. the only thing i didn’t like were the huge tractor trailers zooming by, honking at me like i’m supposed to take that as a compliment. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, run after your huge lorry and say ‘fanks for noticing!’ don’t honk at women! and don’t whistle at us either. horns and whistles are for dogs and cats and other animals, but not for humans, and certainly not for me.
woah. i think i just quoted the sound of music there. i’m not deleting it. whatever, it fits.
i used to love sesame street as a little girl. i used to watch the French-Canadian version growing up, they had a whole bunch of muppets and characters just for us frenchies. IN FACT, sesame street helped with my bilingualism SO MUCH, that because of it, i learned how to say the alphabet backwards IN ENGLISH AND IN FRENCH in under ten seconds.
i shit you not.
TIME ME.
i love this piece. the great thing about work like is that, at every street corner you turn, there’s always a new opportunity to be wowed by new designs, new colours, and new ideas. Art is just waiting around the corner for you, and if you’re not paying attention, you could miss it.
grover looks like he’s reaching out to cup my chin. KISS ME! FOR I AM FLYING GROVER.
I then walked along the rail path for some time, humming to myself, even though i didn’t have my music on. it was such a lovely day for a walk, and the rail path is a nice little elevated meadow in the heart of the urban jungle. oh and look, more THINGS to be found! that’s his lightswitch.
it’s pretty clever. imagine if we could flip a painted-on switch and all the lights went out.
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?
oh look, another one!
flip a switch and just like that, bang.
blackout.
(kinda like death, non?)
speaking of my The Grid article, it turns out that The Grid has this deal in place with Pizza Pizza where their articles are promoted on flatscreen TVs in each location. I didn’t know that (I knew not eating pizza would come back to haunt me). I was sent this photo of my article flashing across the screens at one such location. Next time you get the munchies at 3am, think of me.
love is a poverty you couldn’t sell
you will learn to survive me.
you send me messages of support, and i feel, for the first time, like i can hold onto something for as long as i want.
but the noose buried in my rib-cage has started hissing. friction keeps tightening it around my guts. it hangs my bone marrow.
bathurst and dundas
bathurst and bloor
toronto has very few cobblestone streets left. the streetcars and the old brick façades in the west end hint at footprints long since filled in with liquids. then you walk through parkdale with your brother from another mother and spot the capsule, evoking fob watches and quellazaires.
parkdale keeps her secrets in the diamond grit.
the language the city uses to control the streets of the annex can be translated.
near Bay street and Elm, they were shooting an episode of Covert Affairs as i walked past. the supervising police officer, schleppin’ on the corner, paced over this find without even realizing it.
or maybe he did, and was trying to wear it down with the soles of his shoes (for obvious reasons).
either way, i squeezed next to him to capture this… what do you call this?…perhaps, concrete art?
street art by nature has a short shelf life, but if it’s blasted into the concrete of the quiet sidewalks that we never look up from after a traumatizing week, the aim might be to keep it around a while longer.
now you won’t be able to stop seeing them. this was Bay near College.
Bay near College. this was an exciting find, because i had heard of the “post no bills” stencil making the rounds, but i didn’t know it was here in toronto.
you MUST have seen this Kill Facebook colourjob at Queen and Spadina.
social media encourages apathy.
so what?
dude riding his bike backwards. he was heading right for me when i snapped this shot. as he passed, i said, “nicely done!” and he flashed me his pearly whites. i giggled like a tween.
in trinity bellwoods park.
when i discovered this, i said to michael and mel, “if i had could shag any animal, i’d choose an owl, because no matter which position you took it from, you could always get eye contact.”
AWK.
WARD.
things around here will get back to normal at some point, guys.
soon.
a fingers-crossed promise.
bear with me.
i’m inching toward something that, once, was rain, but became fragrant and light.
“It isn’t enough for your heart to break because everybody’s heart is broken now” – Allen Ginsberg
oh hai there! here i am!
but enough about me, tell me more about your single father.
* * *
check out my film review of the bang bang club (that’s what the actress said to the bishop), this is a poor-man’s Blood Diamond, but it’s still a timely and relevant film, seeing as how 2 war photographers were just killed in Libya. so watch for some context, but it should have been told from Kevin Carter’s POV, IMO. WTF. OMG. LOL. Smiley Face.
also, i interviewed mia donovan, who directed the documentary inside lara roxx which premiered at the hot docs festival, check out the article here
we found this in an alleyway just north of queen and dovercourt. i’ve found a few rob ford graffiti stencils before, i’d love to know who is behind them. they are clearly the offspring of stephen hawking, jesus, and gandalf….they are made of perfect jesus wizard sauce.
we found this in an alleyway just south of queen and dovercourt. that ol’ german jew would approve.
wait, what?
we find the best graffiti murals on our bikes.
biked to the distillery district and found cube works, a shop that sells things made out of rubix cubes….just like one of my fav street artists, Space Invader!
reg and i found a few bixi bikes docking stations mere hours after they launched in toronto (i wrote an article about Bixi Bikes, read me!). notice how half of the bikes are already gone? people love them! you know what this means – toronto requires further bicycle infrastructure, more bike lanes, and more civil rights for cyclists. yes, yes ya’ll, i’m a bike-nerd, WHAT OF IT?
she’s so cute.
when reg and i get together, it’s like pegasus has just mated with a unicorn, and we’re riding their super-hero offspring across the neon blue sky.
this piece is by Jerm IX
i had a really trippy thursday and friday. thursday night i went out to yuk yuks with a friend for some comedy after a particularly upsetting day when i had to visit a clinic for a stressful check-up. we were laughing and enjoying ourselves when he gets a message from a friend that’s gone out of town. friend is worried he left stuff burning in his apartment, so we go, keys in hand, to make sure the home fires aren’t burning (see what i did there?).
we help ourselves a bit to stuff that’s in the fridge, and i have half a homemade cookie, and some homemade chocolate.
30 minutes later, we’re walking up broadview to bloor, and i completely lose my shit. i start to get dizzy and really hot, i can’t walk properly or gain my focus. he sits me down a bench and my nervous system fails, and it feels like something is pressing down on my cerebral cortex. my brain is screaming at me to snap out of it, and to pull myself together, and to stop milking it. but my body won’t listen. i begin to BONK with the biggest braingasm and body-clusterfuck i’ve ever had the misfortune of experiencing. there was something wrong with that cookie and chocolate bar. i don’t know what exactly it is that i ate, but it’s definitely on my never-have-ingested-before-and-never-will-ingest-again list.
he has to run and get me some food because i am tripping and wigging out so hard that i’m paranoid at the voices i hear around me. time is slowing down and i can’t focus on what he’s saying. one minute he’s calmly stroking my back to get me to chill the fuck out, but that minute in my head lasts 45 minutes. he’s trying to talk to me as he leads me back to the house, but i can’t hear a thing he’s saying, my brain just won’t focus. bits of my life are not registering in my long-form memory (me so clever) and suddenly i’m passed out in some strangers abandoned bed, then a few hours later, i’m hovered over some strangers abandoned toilet regurgitating out my pretty-pink insides.
toilet water is splashing up into my face as life seeps out of me.
he puts me in a cab and i go home and vomit some more until Sitto (that’s ‘granny’ in arabic) starts talking in that high-pitched sad voice that means she’s upset and worried about me. i pass out and miss a day of work because my dizzy body has officially gastro-interitis’d me into oblivion.
seriously, who the fuck bakes sweets with ingredients that will put you out of commission for a full 24 hours?
mum stop reading my blog!!! happy mother’s day you snooping scavenger!
* * *
with the following photos…..um…….
you guys enjoy high-brow photographic fuckery, right?
we had brunch at aunties and uncles
then went to the beach
when i put my head on someone’s torso and can hear their pulse and their organs groan, i small part of me thinks i can hear their thoughts in there too.
just sayin’.
* * *
it was a particularly cold winter.
