bob tarantino

Passing By 05.25.09

Matriculation ceremony attendees, Merton Street, October 2009.

Oxford Castle Tower

 

Magdalen College.

Gorilla gorilla skeleton.  Yep.

Passing By 05.21.09

More of Oxford, in and around Christ Church College.

 

 

 

Passing By 05.20.09

Lacking the time to blog in any serious manner, I've decided to flay those who occasion this outlet with pictures.  It's astounding the sheer number which one can accumulate given a 2GB memory card and the inveterate need to roam.  So:

 

The Radcliffe Camera.  A surprisingly dull building on the inside.

 

Oxford colleges are surprisingly big on sundials.  All Souls represents with one of the largest.

 

All other institutions of higher learning (except for The Other Place) have it backwards: you're supposed to wear the mortarboard when you start your studies, not when you finish them.

 

New College Chapel.

 

Round here, the Natural History Museum resembles nothing so much as a cathedral.  With dinosaurs.

Passing By 06.25.07

Evidently I was the last person to find out about it, so I was reduced to near-hysterics when I came across this traffic sign on a recent trip to Chicago:

The Vanilla Ice version (Stop. Collaborate and Listen) is just about as funny.  If anyone finds either species in Toronto, let me know.

Passing By 04.29.07

I had no idea Ontario had a "badlands".  It's not a big badlands, mind you, but it still makes for an interesting stop along the way.  The easiest set of directions I can figure out is to take Hwy 410 all the way to the end (i.e., it literally stops) where it hits Olde Baseline Road, take a left (i.e., go west) and drive just past Chinguacousy Road - the badlands will be on your left.  If you go down a really steep hill, you've gone too far.

Look, at the end of the day, it's mostly just dirt, but it's relatively interesting dirt.  There are a couple of hiking trails around the badlands (which, it turns out, are largely manmade - or at least mostly the result of agricultural practices from the 1930s), and a gaggle of children and a few dogs were having a grand old time romping up and down the dunes in today's spectacular weather.  If you're in the Glen Williams/Caledon/Halton Hills area, you may want to stop by.

Passing By 04.03.07 (Cecil Pt 2)

Part 1 of this two-part Passing By can be found here.  In the first installment we moved east from the west end of Cecil Street in downtown Toronto, a shot street which, to my eye, offers numerous examples of some of the more charming aspects of living in the urban core.  For all the sights offered by the western end of Cecil, from the squat castle of the Community Centre to the parking lot murals, as we head towards the eastern end of the street we start encountering some features which give Cecil its unique character.

First up, some of the houses which reflect a late Victorian style (I think - if anyone is better able to identify the architectural style, please let me know).  The trim surrounding the second-floor balcony, when nicely maintained as in the first example, is one of the elements common to older houses populating the surrounding streets.

I also like the gating which you can see in this example:

On either side of Ross Street, which runs north from Cecil, there are twinned buildings like the one below - I still can't figure out whether these are original buildings which have been restored, or relatively new buildings in the style of older ones.

Now we start getting to the good stuff.

One of the big presences on the block is the squat three-story brown building which houses the United Steelworkers of America.  The building is named after Larry Sefton, who was a prominent member of the Canadian Labour Congress.

This part of downtown has a relatively long history of organized labour involvement.  Tucked back from the Steelworkers building is this gathering place - the Toronto Labor Lyceum (note, oddly, the American spelling of "Labour"):

I actually rather like the utilitarian lines of the Lyceum - the front is composed of six equal boxes, providing a nicely elegant contrast to the somewhat rococo elegance of some of the trim on the nearby houses.  The building is also noteworthy for the fact that the access ramp at the lower left was so well-incorporated into the design that it actually enhances it, by adding a visual accent which still maintains the geometric lines of the structure.

Jack Layton and Olivia Chow live around the corner from here (Olivia is the MP for Trinity-Spadina, the riding in which Cecil lies), and this neighbourhood and this building fly their colours:

At the far left (ha!) of the first picture of the Lyceum, above, you may have noted a small white sign affixed to the building.  The sign points members to Steelworkers Dental Office, guided by the smiling visage of Alex the Tooth.  I swear I am not making this up.

Seeing as we're downtown, and outside a labour/left stronghold, it seems apposite to point out what the people (or at least the postering subset thereof) are saying:

Some of these buildings house mysterious gatherings.  This building, for instance:

In the lower right-hand corner, you will see space for signs built into the brickwork beside the stairs.  Here is the sign:

For the longest time I was baffled by the reference - "The Church in Toronto".  I wasn't really sure where the emphasis should go: was it "The Church", but it had an office in Toronto? Or was the nature of the church in question that it was in and of Toronto? Was this some sort of Arcadian sect which knew the secret? Or something more mundane? Figure it out for yourself.

As we saw in Part 1, Cecil continues to witness the reappropriation of buildings for new uses, reflecting the needs of the community inhabiting it.  What is now home to Chinese-Canadian social clubs:

was previously home to buildings servicing Caribbean-Canadian immigrants:

As we continue east, we're getting closer to the end of Cecil, and the building stock changes markedly.  The houses are newer, not possessing the character of homes farther west.

Where Cecil crosses Beverly Street, we find an outpost for yet another immigrant group:

The modern building features one element not often seen downtown: open-air parking (well, there's a ceiling) which is located under the building, barely visible in those shots.

I have no idea what to make of this, present at the corner of the plot of land on which the Polish Combatants Association building:

A silver stone.  Why is it there? Why is it silver? Is there some legend of a silver stone in the Polish mythos? Anyone?  One possible, if decidedly less interesting, guess is that the stone was getting covered by grafitti, so they decided to cover it up, and they just repaint it every once in a while; but I've never seen it tagged, so if they are responding to grafitti, they're doing it awfully quickly.

Anyways.

Crossing Beverly, we encounter one of the true mysteries of Cecil Street: a massive abandoned building (the blonde in the picture is no mystery, she's just equipped with bad timing).

This is a big building - lying completely unused in downtown Toronto.  The value of this land must be laughable - I've seen houses in the immediate area listed for more than $700,000.  Just south of Cecil on Baldwin, a similar plot of land is being developed into townhouses.  An intransigent owner waiting for a higher price in a hot market? Environmental concerns? Haunted?

No idea what this is supposed to represent, or what it is he's holding - a breadstick? Or something more, uh, primal?

This one is interesting as well; I like the little guy with the crown:

As we get to the end of Cecil, there are a handful more houses, along with a large co-op.  Behind the abandoned building, we can see an access alley with garages, which allows houses on the street (in this case, Henry Street) to be built without driveways, permitting a more intimate relationship between the homes and the street.

Finally, we reach the eastern capstone of the street: Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church.

Note the image of Christ and the three-barred cross which sit at the top of the nave, looking rather sternly down over Cecil.  Take from that what you will, I suppose - because with that we've come to the end of this edition of Passing By.

Passing By 04.01.07 (Cecil Pt 1)

I grew up in the suburbs.  And loved it.  But ever since moving away from home permanently (i.e., not including stints at unversity and law school), I've only lived in decidedly urban environments.  And loved it.  One of the things that I think many people overlook about downtown Toronto is just how interesting it is from an architectural and social history perspective - if you're looking for the right things.  Downtown isn't always pretty, but I like to think there's a more complicated beauty which can be uncovered.

So here's a look at a street which I happen to walk along fairly often and which possesses the sort of understated charm which requires a bit of attention to discover: Cecil Street.  I won't be able to do it justice in this photo essay, but I'll do my best to get a start on it, as we saunter from Cecil's western end to its eastern terminus (a total of about a four minute walk).  You can see the street on this map, running as it does between Spadina Avenue on the west and Henry Street on the east:

Map of 2 Cecil Street Toronto, ON M5T, CA

Now, Cecil is surrounded by some interesting stuff.  To the west of Cecil, on the other side of Spadina lies Kensington Market.  To the north, on the other side of College St., is the University of Toronto campus, an entirely underappreciated font of amazing architecture in the middle of Toronto.  To the northeast and east is Queen's Park and University Avenue.  To the south and southwest is Toronto's Chinatown.  Actually Cecil probably belongs to Chinatown as well (since the streetsigns bear both English and Chinese script), but it takes inspiration from most of its surroundings and works its own charm.  In any event, Cecil is so unassuming that it gets overlooked - most people from outside the neighbourhood have little, if any, reason to traipse along it. 

One of the reasons I think it's so interesting is that it is bookended by two buildings, which are perfectly centred on the street and, if buildings had eyes, could be seen to be staring each other down.  They are buildings of strikingly different character, and between the two of them Cecil unfolds, and the nature of Cecil and the uses made of it changes several times.  The western bookend of Cecil can be found in this commercial streetscape:

The actual bookend, centred, as I mentioned, almost perfectly with the middle of Cecil Street, is this commercial/residential building on the west side of Spadina:

Note the opening near the top: I don't have faintest clue what it's there for.  It opens onto the roof, which is essentially not accessible.  It's not a window, just a frivolous design element - but frivolity has its own value, I always say.  Spadina at this point, between College and Dundas, is not the most gripping of streets: a frazzled mix of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, Asian dollar stores, cheap clothing stores, computer outlets, import/export shops, empty units, fly-by-night bargain book sales, and an inordinate number of stores selling flags.  I've never been able to figure out the flag stores.

Anyways.  At the western end of Cecil proper, sitting on the southern corner of Cecil and Spadina, stands a Toronto institution: Grossmans Tavern, which boasts live blues music seven nights a week and this mural:

Across from Grossmans you get a taste of what downtown living can sometimes be like, with a rather handsome building marred by grafitti:

I'm one of those people who is endless fascinated not just by architecture, but by buildings, especially smaller, idiosyncratic ones.  This white one has always freaked me out a little bit:

It's not really connected to any other building, and you never seem to see lights on there.  Lately I've started hearing a band practising in there.

At the far right of the photograph above you can see the corner of a central feature of Cecil Street: the Cecil Community Centre.

What appears to be the history of the Community Centre (as gathered from the outside of the structure) is worth recounting, since it seems to be a concise summation of this entire neighbourhood, as different waves of Canadians have washed across the area.  The Community Centre was originally built in 1890 as a Church of Christ -

At some point, the building was modified to accommodate the Jewish community -

And now it serves Chinese-Canadians -

On the south side of Cecil, across from the Community Centre, is a parking lot; but even there, there's art and humour to be found.

I didn't say it was good humour.

Continuing east, a stretch of attractive row houses begins.

One of the best things about downtown is that, because the building pattern is so organic, the most fascinating things spring up out of nowhere.  F'rinstance, you may think this is just a service alley behind the Community Centre:

In fact, it is Glasgow Street, which is the downtown equivalent of a cul-de-sac, completely inaccessible except from Cecil, and its own mini-neighbourhood tucked away behind what you pass by on the street:

Glasgow even has its own little parkette:

Going back to Cecil (really our only option since, as I mentioned, you can't go from Glasgow to anywhere else (you used to be able to wind your way on foot through an alley to College, but that has been closed off)), the intersection of Cecil and Huron streets offers a glimpse of the different types of buildings and residences to which a downtown neighbourhood is home.  We'll look from the SE to the SW to the NW to the NE corners.

First up, an attractive older house which only recently offered itself up to pedestrians, since it was previously hidden by tall hedges:

Next is a newer multi-unit residential building:

On the northwest corner is a single-family dwelling with a sizeable lawn (relatively rare down here), and built at some point in time between the two prior examples:

Finally, on the northeast corner sits a Hydro substation:

That strip of green you see running between the substation and the street is an attempt to make good on the city motto, visible in the sign below - "Toronto - A City Within a Park".

It doesn't look like much before the flowers have begun to bloom, but little touches like this parkette, with its benches, flowers, greenery and playset for kids, are part of what makes downtown eminently habitable.

That's it for Part 1.  I'll continue with Part 2 shortly, as we move east along Cecil.  In the distance of the shot below, you can see the eastern capstone of Cecil, Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church, about which more next time.

Part 2 will include what I think is the even more interesting part of Cecil Street, with the Steelworkers, the Lyceum, and the mysterious silver stone.  For now, I leave you with pictures of branches.  Just 'cause - I mean who doesn't like bare branches against the sky?

Pictures and Glass

Checked out the Ansel Adams/Alfred Eisenstaedt Two Photographers. Two Visions. exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario yesterday, and it's worth the visit - at least the Adams portion (which is by far the larger) is worth the time.  I only possess a "I know what I like" critical appreciation for photography, but the pairing of these two by the AGO (the Adams portion of the show is on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) seems to endow Eisenstaedt with a bit more significance than he merits - at least judging by the quality of the prints shown here, Eisenstaedt's work is... rather pedestrian.  Yes, I get that that may be the point.  Perhaps Eisenstaedt suffers from the imposed banality of the pioneer: once his technical and compositional innovations have been adopted by everyone else, whatever his contribution was becomes impossible to discern.  Of course, perhaps I'm an entirely uneducated mook and I'm missing the whole point when it comes to his stuff.

Anyways, the confluence of museums and photographs reminded me of something I've been meaning to post about: the Corning Museum of Glass.  On December 21, 2006, I mentioned that I would be undertaking a road trip to New York City in the near future, and asked if anyone had any recommendations for things to see in upstate New York State along the way.  One helpful reader suggested a trip to the Corning Museum of Glass - which, since it's approximately half way between Toronto and NYC, seemed perfect.

And it was - for anyone who is ever in the Corning/Ithaca/Binghamton area, I highly recommend taking part of a day to check out the Museum of Glass.  This is one of my favourite pieces in the collection:

The facility is brand new and beautiful, and among the thousands of well-displayed pieces in the collection, which covers glass-making from its origins in the Middle East, through Roman, Islamic, Renaissance, Baroque, American and modern iterations are some breathtaking examples of glass as both a functional and decorative art form.  The Museum website recommends setting aside at least three hours to properly view the exhibits, and that seems about right - in addition to the exhibits themselves, the glass-making demonstration, scientific displays and even the gift shop reward attention.

The Museum of Glass is also one of the only museums I've ever been to which allows you to freely photograph whatever the hell you want.  I've set up a separate photo album here for anyone interested in checking out the pictures I took.  A couple of notes on the photographs: the batteries ran out before I reached the "modern" portion of the galleries, so to see some of the most innovative stuff, you'll just need to visit the damn place; I was having a hell of a time figuring out the proper settings to get good shots since the lighting was wreaking havoc with the flash, and most of the exhibits have panes of plexiglass in front of them; and a bunch of the shots in the photo album are poorly focused (that plexiglass thing again), but the colour effects of the pieces were more important than detail, so I've included them anyways.

Since our charter here mandates that a portion of our content be devoted to legal education, I should also point out something which may (should?) strike some lay readers as incredibly odd: most of the pictures in the photo album of modern works constitute infringements of copyright - having reproduced a piece of art in its entirety, the picture itself has violated the copyright of the artist in his or her work.  Ponder that.

Items which you may wish to keep an eye for among the pictures: the glass slipper; the Tiffany window; and the good-looking guy I happened to photograph while he, coincidentally, was also taking a picture.  Hah.

Oh, and yes, all of the pieces you see in the photo album are made out of glass.  Including the slugs.  Go figure.

Passing By 11.19.06

One of the best things about living in downtown Toronto is the opportunity to observe the warp and weft of graffiti, especially the attempts at political relevance.  A few years ago, there was the illiterate who markered every National Post box in sight with "facist" - but he or she seems to have gone back to whatever suburb of disaffection from which they were spawned.  Or perhaps they just morphed into the "Lies" guy, who typically brands Post, Sun and the occasional Globe box thusly (Star boxes mysteriously don't get the same treatment (*cough*)):

But then someone, armed with a letter "F" and clearly counterrevolutionary instincts, made an unholy mockery of that bold statement.

Politics, especially the zealous brand practiced by the "Lies" guy, doesn't generally deal well with humour, so it's the best way to disarm them.  The incidence of "(f)Lies" tagging seems to have dropped off markedly.

Anyways, we're all becoming lazier as technology advances, and it's no different for your local speaking-truth-to-power types, so the most recent development appears to be the use of stencils - mostly painted on sidewalks (there appears to be a preponderance around U of T, go figure).  Of course, this all might be some sort of dada comment on graffiti and propaganda, since this new line of commentary seems to be willfully opaque.  The first one I came across was this:

An image from the widely-circulated and widely-debunked Mohammed al-Dura footage, purportedly showing the killing of a Palestinian child by Israeli soldiers (do a Google search on "al Dura" and you figure out the truth), accompanied by the statement "both sides shoot children".  So - what is the stencil saying?  I mean, it takes a certain amount of political engagement to even recognize the image as being from the low-level war between the Israelis and Palestinians - but assuming the viewer is conversant with the image, is this a denunciation of the Israelis?  Most likely, but why use such a contested image, which would inevitably raise charges of fabrication?  It could also be a knock against the Palestinians - sort of a "you try to say the Israelis are killing your children, but you do the same thing - even going so far as to make it up".  Or something.  Is it a charge of moral equivalency? An argument that the justness of one side's cause is enhanced by the depravity of the other side? Or a claim that the justness of one's side cause is not mitigated by the fact that it shoots children? Are we against shooting children or for it?  Maybe it's no deeper than the surface statement, and we're angry at everybody involved.  Or just angry.

Then there's this one:

A tank, with the ominous "coming soon".  A warning of impending fascism? War? A reference to those hilarious Liberal "Soldiers with Guns. In Our Cities." ads from the 2006 federal election?

This one, though, is my favourite by far:

Not the faintest clue how to read this one.  Is it "stop playing around bush,"? Or "bush, stop playing around"? What's with the paper airplane? Is it meant to be threatening?  Who's afraid of paper airplanes? Or is the paper airplane meant to be a comment on the notion that George W. Bush treats war like some kind of game? Whaaa?  Anyways, yes, Bush, stop playing around, dammit.

Readers are encouraged to forward photos of other interesting graffiti as they see fit.  You send 'em in, I get to decide what to do with 'em, though.

Passing By 11.14.06

I like to think of libraries as one of the more important threads that make up a community.  It especially helps when, as in Toronto, many of the buildings either have historical significance, or are throughtful, interesting pieces of architecure unto themselves.  Standing guard at the entrance to the Lillian H. Smith library is the above gryphon (also spelled griffin, though I prefer the former); it spends its days staring down .  Across the street is the University of Toronto campus (the real campus, not the Mississauga and Scarborough interlopers), and just down the street is the superlative ein-stein pub, home to the best wings in Toronto that I've ever discovered.  Lillian H. Smith is home to the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy, one of the best non-internet geek-out experiences available free of charge.  Also the site of a recent reading by James Bow.  Spot the monkey in the picture for extra points.