Hello my friends – here’s the latest episode of “Hard Truth and a Big Hug”. It’s a small part of a book that I haven’t yet got around to publishing – but I thought the big ideas and the final take-away were
I don’t this point can be made often enough – tacky, eclectic, oddball, low-rent, artsy and/or just plain freaky storefronts are by-far the best for both musing and photography. Nor is this for such an entirely obvious reason as that old mean-comedy
I was a convert to the idea that popular art, particularly sequential art (comics) was true ‘real’ art (without requiring any qualifying subcategory) from roughly the age of ten. 1975 was a cool year for that. Comics wise, we could still read
Caught a wonderful show on the weekend at the AGO – “Living with monsters” which is a sampling from the private collection of the brilliant filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, who began as an amateur illustrator, then worked in special-effects, before finally getting
When I was a kid, we had a knife-sharpener man who would walk up and down every street in the neighbourhood every couple of weeks, ringing his bell in a very particular way (you never mistook the sound for anything else). He
Politics did not just become stressful, or a matter of life and death recently – my title comes from “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” a famous and still chillingly relevant observation from Plato. Like
I’ve been fond of a great many cats over the years, but I think Moe, who was a really nifty puffball orange kitten who used to wake me up by licking my eyelids, and ran away when I was eight, was probably
I am pretty sure that a certain part of me will always feel just a little bit guilty, for the fact that I now use auto-focus by-default, even though digital photography systems have made this feature fast reliable and excellent. Tactically-sublimating masochist
When you see a big collection of them all in one place like this, it’s tempting to think of these light craft, many of which are available for rent right in the middle of the busiest tourist section of the harbourfront (active
The artsy Queen West scene was always a curious mix, even back in the eighties, with the new music Rivoli, Cameron House, and Horseshoe tavern balanced by neighbourhood institutions which served the working artists (not yet driven out by high rents) like
One last series from the fan-expo, this time of stand-out individual costumes – soloists, if you will. I rather wish I had caught this first furry-bird in video, because even the walk had the exact right sort of cartoon surliness. Not just
Being an art-model is a strange gig – and there really is something very gig-like about it, because no two classes are ever anything like the same. Of course the subject makes a difference, and the personalities even more so – but
I’ve got an amalgam of fairs in my head, exotic and local. The ‘Ex’ (Canadian National Exhibition) looms especially large – but Centreville on the Island (an old-time town, full of antique-themed rides) was always cheaper and ran a far longer season
As I’ve noted before, even a personal-sized slice of the universe is much too complicated for us to be able to perceive it’s true and total reality – therefore it is necessary for us to make up vastly simplified stories to tell
Some more images from the truly wonderful annual Polish festival on Roncessvalles in Toronto. Though it is true that many have moved away from the old area over the years, this also means this party is unmissable – because it’s always full
I honestly can’t for the life of me figure out what is going on around here – an experiment in INFINITELY increasing density? Toronto is a big city, and there are many other areas with plenty of development potential, but the craze
I am, you will likely have gathered by now, a very big fan of street festivals. Not only an excuse for extra fun (always a good idea), they are also a terrific way for one neighbourhood to tell those from other parts
As a young avant-garde musician (think Mingus/Dolphy exuberant cacophony, only with infinitely less talent) who had nothing but a grade-two education on-paper, I had a heck of a time getting (or, to be fair, wanting) any sort of half-decent straight-job. Ended up
The weathered letters are now gone, I figured I’d best grab this nostalgic ghost, while the brick beneath it still remembered them. The Brunswick Tavern is no more – and honestly, it had been going downhill for quite some years, so it’s
Went out for a grocery run on the weekend – and I noticed that the signs were up for the big annual five building garage-sale. Wasn’t late in the day, seemed reasonable to think that I could afford to swing-by on my
There’s no question that the horrendously wow-distorted (and frequency attenuated) recording, played through the klaxon-honky speakers of the classic old ice-cream trucks is deeply imprinted on the minds of many North Americans from their youth – but this quieter and more patient