Rob Ford Sucks
Now I agree that Mayor Rob Ford sucks, but ….
…Iiiiiiii just can’t endorse this message.
This is kinda bullshit…
…just like Rob Ford’s policies…
Keep calm and be strong
Spud and Poser team up to colour a school with anti-bullying LURVE.
CLEVER!
This was on that elementary school whose name I never catch on Shaw street between Harbord and College. You know it.
So glad to see this. I was bullied as a kid and the school did nothing. In fact, they blamed it on me and told me I was bringing it on myself for being who I was. They told me to “become invisible.”
Just another brick in the wall.
Yes, I can.
YYZilla’s duck wants his feathers back
This is by YYZilla, whom I have profiled before.
Steal mah feathers to make a jacket? I’m taking that jacket back, foo!
Holden Caufield made a remark about knowing where the ducks go in winter. Pretty sure this duck wouldn’t stick around Canada if it couldn’t keep it’s own feathers. Who needs down pillows or jackets anymore anyway? We have better synthetic options. Leave the duckies alone!
This was on Bathurst, between the Bathurst bridge and King street.
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.
Start!
pretty sure this is the fine work of Denial
Shaw and Argyle
Harper: turning Canada into a deathstar since 2005.
Listen Bird is having a sugar riot
college and manning.
I got a message recently from a woman who says that when she and her kids are riding around in the car, they play a game together of “spot the listen bird.” They LOVE his birds and love trying to find them! It’s a fun game suitable for the whole family.
Isn’t that graff-spraying-awesome?
manning and dundas
in an alley near college and montrose
dundas and rusholme
Check out my Listen Bird category for more of his awesomeness
BleedingHeart sees nothing but blue skies
ah Irving Berlin. C’est l’amour.
Check out my BleedingHeart category
James Bond’s house
i’m not kidding you, i stopped to talk to the guy who owns this house on bertmount avenue and his name is james bond.
seriously kids, you must pay a visit to this house in the east end. it is many things, but dull or unoriginal it is not.
a plaque signed by the former mayor of toronto, barbara hall. THEY GIVE OUT AWARDS FOR THIS?!
Chuck Taylors are my weapon of choice
Some girls love Louboutins or Choos…. others refuse to leave the house without the Chucks they bought in Brooklyn for $10.
Compare and contrast.
Speaking of which, CHUCKS IN STENCIL FORM!
When I found the stencil on the shop window of Community 54, I realized they were the ones probably responsible for the street campaign of stencils. Then the owner of the shop walked out… turns out it’s a Twitter-friend of mine whom I’ve known for a few years.
Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
whoops, i’m in the frame. i’ll move, one sec…
there we go.
These were all in and around Queen and Dufferin, in and out of the alleys
Please Slease have fun!
if you insist.
dundas and shaw.
Video game caricatures descend upon Toronto in relentless onslaught
see that?
(this was at ossington and dundas)
evil super nintendo mushroom is EVIL!
see that?
(this is at queen east and logan)
spooky pacman ghost is SPOOKY!
Wax ALL the wax heads!
Of all the waxes, I think Wax Head is my favourite 
check out my Wax Head category for more of his fun waxy crayola stuff around toronto.
Fauxreel is fo’real!
Again, apologies all around for posting these photos so late in the game, but as I’ve been saying, I had so many New York and Montreal photos to get through, that these have just been sitting in my photo storage banks for months, itching to be posted!
I’ve photographed Fauxreel‘s stuff before (although, admittedly, I haven’t seen his stuff about Toronto in quite some time). Fauxreel is arguably Toronto’s most famous street artist (everyone in the Brooklyn scene knows who he is, how many people can boast that?), so was glad to hear that during the Luminato festival, he was invited to erect some stuff around the Gerard and Parliament area.
These were taken at night, so forgive the lax-clarity.
Looks like he made the piece out of Condominium Open House and Grand Opening signs.
it’s nice and all, but i think i prefer Fauxreel’s wheatpastes of full-size people…. check out my Fauxreel category for examples of those:)
the Ansers are gone
I finally get to post the trove of Anser street art pics that I’ve been taking for months! Problem is, as I mentioned previously, most of these pieces are now gone. But at least I was able to document them before they got the chop.
this was on queen west near shaw.
this was on ossington near queen west, but it’s since been painted over.
man alive, i love Anser’s stuff. I’ve been begging via this blog for him to do my face next, but my dream is still unrealized….. i really should put my vanity away.
shaddup.
another one on ossington (109 ossington) but it’s also gone…..
now that i think about it, i do tend to find his works quite often in the ossington area and thereabouts…. my detective skillz are telling me that Anser probably lives in that area. I MUST FIND YOU! Hey Anser, meet me at The Lakeview or Crafted or Bellwoods Brewery and let’s talk graff, sound good? good. done. sold. deal.
speaking of The Lakeview, this one was found directly across the street from that resto on Dundas and Ossington.
Now this one is particularly funny to me because not soon after i snapped this photo, it was painted over and there was thusly an empty wall.
then a few days later, i noticed the face was back. that made me question my eyes, because i rationalized that i must have missed the piece somehow and in fact it was never painted over.
and a few days later, it was gone again! so then i didn’t know what to believe.
turns out Anser is just tenacious (and a little bit of a shit disturber, natch) because the face reappeared for A THIRD TIME but in different spray colour…
bahahaha! he even added a note to the building owners who kept painting over his stuff, just to piss them off…
i cannot tell you how much i fricken love this! Give ‘em hell, Anser!
Then i was walking through the alleys on the north side of Trinity Bellwoods park and found this Anser embedded in the garage.
You’ll remember that I once found another Anser in the park not too long ago.
and this one is also super fun because i photographed this Anser piece a little while ago, but it was without colour. Looks like Anser came back to fill it in!
now this one, munchkins, is perhaps my favourite Anser piece that he’s ever done.
it just blends so nicely with the old wood. it gives it such a rustic, beautiful, antique look…. like this is beauty in danger of extinction.
well done, my dude.
wuv u Anser! LET’S BE FRIENDS!
BE HERE NOW
Finally! After months and months of blogging my New York Shitty and Montreal photos, I’m back to covering Toronto’s urban art. Here’s the thing. These photos were taken waaaaaaay back in June before I set off on my adventures (and there’s still more adventures to come!), so from now until I leave, all the street art I will post comes with the caveat that it may already be gone. That’s the nature of the beast, unfortch. Short shelf life, and all that. Street art is like a dairy product.
Anyhoo, here’s a find from Trinity Bellwoods park.
while this is very inspiring and ephemeral, it’s not by any street artist. this is a media campaign for North by Northeast (NXNE, a music festival akin to South by Southwest that occurs in June), which i discovered a few hours later when i found this poster on college street near beatrice.
oh well, it’s the (derivative) thought that counts!
Check out my Graffiti photoshoot & interview with TorontoVerve!
Recently, I had a very fun photoshoot and interview in Toronto’s infamous Graffiti Alley with TorontoVerve. If you don’t know, TorontoVerve is one of the more popular street style photoblogs in Toronto, and presents a really great cross-section of the personalities and characters to be found whilst traversing our awesome little city. Also, the photos are absolutely stunning! Anyway, they asked me if I would like to be one of their subjects, and I was humbled and flattered by the invitation.
It turned into a really fun 101 lecture on Graffiti and Street Art from Toronto, which as you all know, I can yap my freakin’ head off about! We wandered together through the alley for a few hours, and I even made him hike up Spadina to show him the last Banksy left in Toronto!
Here are some of the photos of me in the alley, but for the full interview (We talk about Banksy, Spud, Poser, graffiti turf wars, and of course, Mayor Rob ford), click over to TorontoVerve now!
Enjoy!
Fanks for Nigel for the invite and for being made of awesomesauce.
(All photographs copyright Nigel Hamid/TorontoVerve)
no schleppin’
some people see a drain pipe. other people (namely, street artists) see a slug schleppin’ it’s way down.
it kinda looks like those shitting yellow slugs that would kill you in the old computer game Commander Keen. remember that game?!
found near bloor street west and st clarens.
unwanted forever
found another Unwanted on the side of a canada post box near brunswick and harbord! haven’t found one of these stencils in a while.
whoever is behind it sure is tenacious!
this bird only has one leg!
so i’m walking at harbord and bathurst when i see this bird just sitting on the newspaper box outside the convenience store.
normally, birds scatter when humans get close to them. this bird saw me, and kept his eye on me the entire time, but didn’t fly away. that made me curious so as i got closer, i realized why.
it only had one leg. POOR POOKIE!!! awww! sad!
i was wondering why he didn’t fly away, but surely, only having one leg would make it harder for a bird to fly. Don’t both legs add to its centre of balance?
city birds have it rough. if they’re not smacking into highrise buildings during their seasonal migration, or if they’re not choking & dying from eating all the discarded chewing gum we spit out on the sidewalk…. they’re losing legs from our psycho drivers.
have a care for the animals we share this city with, people …. be kind to raccoons, foxes, rabbits, and birds.
they were here first.
anyone speak russian?
i have backpacked through eastern europe where the cyrillic alphabet is used more widespread than the latin alphabet. When i was in the ukraine, and when i was in bulgaria, i had to become proficient in translating cyrillic street signs really fucking quickly…. seeing as how my map had street names written in the latin alphabet, but the street signs were using cyrillic.
so i know that when i look at the cyrillic alphabet, i know that the P is actually an R, and the backwards N is an I, and the H is an N, and the thing that looks like a train coming down the tracks at you is a D ….
that being said, i have no clue what this fucking says.
lil help?
found on lippincott street near bloor street
