It had been a grey and slightly damp morning when I was out walking. As I headed to the subway to go home, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. So I kept walking north of Dundas West station. Edna Avenue is the street that runs parallel to Bloor immediately north of the station.
below: Edna Avenue, looking east towards Dundas Street West.
below: Edna seems to have a Guardian watching over her.
below: There is an alley that runs north from Edna and the sunshine beckoned.
below: T-shirt sale at the One Stop Shop!
below: The sun sets and rises eternally, apparently.
below: A little Catchoo daisy sticker caught my eye.
below: There was also a 33wallflower33 paste-up with a few little catchoo stickers on her gorgeous white outfit.
below: Faded bricks like faded jeans. They are a little rough around the edges too.
below: Chairs, backyard chairs.
below: Backyard picnic tables too.
below: Raccoons on the roof! Mural by Mel Coleman.
below: More backyards – or at least, backs of houses
below: Another chair
below: Cassette tape (remember those?!) and supersized pencil. If you had tapes, you always had a pencil handy, just in case! Back in 2020, this mural was fairly new. You can check out “faceless in an alley” if you want to see the whole mural before the one wall was defaced.
below: Another ghost from the past – a ghetto blaster proudly carried on his shoulder
below: The mural is an Ex-Vandals piece, or at least references them. On the left in this image are the words Dino Nod – he was one of the founding members of the Ex-Vandal crew (formed in 1971 in Brooklyn NY).
below: Red and green men too.
below: A couple of blocks north of Edna is Glenlake, and here we are looking east towards Dundas.
below: Glenlake and Dundas. When I was double checking Google maps for the names of these streets, I discovered that this used to be a store that sold flowers and other things. Where there is no grass beside the building, was once a fenced in area with plants for sale.
below: Just north of the Glenlake/Dundas intersection is the large bridge over the railway tracks that connects Dundas to the West Toronto Railpath.
below: The concrete supports for the bridge were painted with nature scenes many years ago. The weeds have grown up and the artwork has faded.
below: Blobs, curls (by Flips), stars, and Spy vs Spy
below: Looking up the stairs (but not walking up – I’ll leave that for another day).
below: Instead I turn around. This is a big part of the view that you see as you walk down the stairs – a large, striking, mural by Kizmet32 .
below: I now know that these metal utility poles can be used to make “music”. All you need is a big stick or two.
below: Walking back to Dundas West station to finish for the day.
below: Slightly off on a tangent – for those of you who follow such things, the Giraffe Building on the northeast corner of Dundas West and Bloor is still there, and still empty.
as I walk Toronto 