alley | as I walk Toronto

Posts Tagged ‘alley’

alley creatures

Posted: September 18, 2014 in graffiti and street art
Tags: alley, bandana, boat, devil, dmc, dog, fork, garage door, graffiti, horns, lane, red, red roses, skull, street art, sunglasses, Toronto

Creatures on walls and garage doors, all seen yesterday between Dundas & Palmerston and College & Bathurst.

women on David French Lane

Posted: September 10, 2014 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, arm, faces, garages, graffiti, heads, lane, mask, paper, red lips, street art, Toronto, women

David French lane runs between Borden St. and Brunswick Ave., south of Bloor. I know that I have posted some of the graffiti on the garages in the lane before. Most of those garages have since been covered with ugly and boring tags. There isn’t as much of interest there these days…. but I did see the following today.

Street art piece of two large women's heads. One is blue and she's wearing a black mask.

Masked and unmasked

A stencil (on paper) almost life sized woman wearing shorts and a Tshirt. She has a metal arm with a vice grip hand that looks sort of robot like.

Waiting in the doorway. Note the trashy tags around her.

smoochies!

Graffiti man's head with red eyes and mouth. Red paint that looks like blood dripping is above him.

Ooops, that’s not a woman!

another Kensington alley

Posted: September 4, 2014 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: all seeing, alley, blue eye, colours, eyes, faces, graffiti, grin, heads, Kensington, lane, people, red eye, smile, street art, Toronto, trees, wise

Back in May I posted some photos from a small dead end alley in Kensington.

This past weekend I took some pictures in a different Kensington alley.

Take a look 🙂

Colourful graffiti in a Kensington lane. Close up of a pair of grey eyes. Bottom part of face is obscured, including her cheeks.

Eyes hold a fascination for me.

.

.

The top part of a woman with long black hair and wearing a white and blue dress is standing amongst many tree trunks.... Colourful graffiti in a Kensington lane. There is a broom, a mop, and two large buckets on the sidewalk in front of her.

It looks like she is in the midst of cleaning. Mop, broom and buckets handy.

Colourful graffiti in a Kensington lane stencils of heads, one dark blue and one purple.

twins, similar but not identical

facing outward from the wall

Posted: July 18, 2014 in graffiti and street art
Tags: alley, city, downtown, dude, face, faces, garage, graffiti, graffiti faces, head, lane, laneway, people, photos, spray paint, street art, tags, Toronto, urban

Graffiti faces seen in alleys and lanes recently.

A street art painting of a bust of a woman, all white, looks like white marble Greek or Roman statue, very classical looking

White bust on a wall near Bathurst subway station. She has been here for quite some time now; it’s good to see that no one has tagged over her

Large black & white & grey face of a famous black musician, probably jazz or blues but I'm not sure

musician – and my apologies because I am not sure who it is.

A small black & white & grey face made on paper, surrounded by green , yellow, blue & oranges squiggly lines

colourful face

A street art painting of a woman's face. Her eyes are closed and her head is tilted upwards

Closed eyes between the garages

Graffiti, or street art, on a blue background, of a little black and white animal with a spray paint can in his hand. Beside him is a tag in yellows and olive greens.

Love Spraying Dude, a colourful little guy

A few small trees are growing in front of an older building that has been painted white. Two brown figures have been stencilled onto the wall.

Hiding behind the trees

*****

alley animals

Posted: July 14, 2014 in graffiti and street art
Tags: alley, animals, beaks, bird, bunny, city, cranes, dinosaur, doors, downtown, elephant, garages, graffiti, hummingbird, lane, mural, pig, rhino, rhinocerous, street art, tags, Toronto, urban

A selection of the graffiti animals that I have encountered in the past few weeks.

large mural on the side of two storey building of a rhino surrounded by large birds

rhino and his feathered friends, parking lot off College St.
This is only part of the mural…. more below.

mural of many large birds in blues and greys, they all have long curved necks and large beaks

large beaks, large birds
This is only part of the mural…. more above.

oink, oink
A mural by ACS murals

A white outline drawing of a dinosaur painted on a green door that is locked

guardasaurus to watch over the door

a red and white painting of a floppy eared stylized rabbit on the side of an old garage. Other garages with tags on them are also in the photograph

posr rabbit tucked in beside a garage – hiding from those who are hunting rabbits

large mural street art piece painted on the side of a one storey building of a beaked creature with wings

Creature with scales and a tail, Willis St., near the northwest corner of Queen and Bathurst streets.

elephants in threes, but you can only see two of them in this pic. The elephant on the right didn't fit in the photo.

Elephants herd of three, but you can only see two of them in this picture. The elephant on the right didn’t fit in the photo…. but it looked just like the one of the left except it’s facing the other way.

painted graffiti of a hummingbird that looks like it is coming into land, hovering near vertical

hummingbird hovering beside a garage door

*****

Bulwer Street

Posted: June 10, 2014 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, bird, Bulwer, car windows, chain link, city, concrete walls, downtown, eyes, face, fish, graffiti, lane, photos, reflections, stickers, street art, tags, teeth, Toronto, urban, wall, weeds, yellow bird

Bulwer Street is a short street that runs parallel to, and one block north of, Queen Street West. It is only one block long, running east from Spadina Ave to Soho St.

graffiti on a brick wall on Bulwer St., the angle of the photograph makes it look like there is a large chain link fence in front of the wall.

children behind the fence

graffiti on a brick wall on Bulwer St., children including a larger than life sized boy wearing an orange T-shirt

children playing in the parking lot

white eyes

detail of graffiti on a brick wall on Bulwer St., a large brown hand is holding miniature size city buildings in blues and purples

he’s got the whole city in his hands

rooftop reflections

reflections of a mural in the windows and side panels of a black car

mirrored in the glass

facing the alley

sticker of half of a man's face (cut vertically)

only half the man he used to be

picture of people in blues and reds beside a nondescript grey door at the back of a small parking lot (or driveway)

the back door

bright blue, pink and orange tag on lime green background

tag – suniti? BA Kings?

parts of three tags on a wall

A concrete wall with tags on the lower part. There are hydro wires in front of the top part of the wall, and they are casting shadows on the wall

wired tags on concrete

large paper stencil of the top part of a woman is still there although parts of it have worn away

worn away but clinging on

Uber 500’s little yellow bird shows up on this street too

little fish, big teethfish

graffiti on a brick wall on Bulwer St., with the CN tower behind in the distance

one of the many, many, views of the CN tower

*****

stuck on behind Bathurst

Posted: June 9, 2014 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, bathurst st., black and white, brick wall, calzone, decolonize, dog, Dundas, eye, graffiti, lane, line drawings, mug shot, paper, phinite, photos, red eye, scribbled, stickers, strawberry, street art, tags, tongue, Toronto, window

There is an alley that runs behind Bathurst, on the west side. Most of these photos were taken in that alley. All of the photos are of sticker, or paper, graffiti that I saw when I walked that alley a week or so ago.

A window space in a brick wall that was covered over a long time ago. Now there are tags and stickers covering the space as well as graffiti on the walls around the space.

It used to be a window, now it is an ever changing canvas.

black and white line drawing that looks like something you'd create with spirograph

spirograph on the metal pole.

four stickers on a wall. One is a mask that looks either African or BC First Nations. One is a hairy dog like creature with a long tongue that is licking a red strawberry with legs. One has the word 'decolonize' on it along with a picture of a group of men. The last sticker is just the word 'phi-nite' with a symbol.

strawberry man gets licked by dog, a mask looks at you, decolonize and phi-nite, all in a small space

two stickers on a tag & scribble covered space. One sticker is a silhouette of a man on a skateboard. He has large wings coming out of his back. Ths other sticker is a greenish colour geometric design within a greyish white circle.

have wings, will skateboard

a purple and white sticker that has been defaced by the tag 'calzone'. Beside it is a sticker that says 'decolonize history' with a mug shot of a man.

calzone tag unfortunately scribbled on top.

five stickers on the back of a metal sign.

Billy and friends

black ink on brown paper graffiti of a woman's head & shoulders

brown girl on the wall

two stickers on a wall. One is the head of a blue cat. The other is a lacey looking circular design.

blue cat with lace

Someone has placed a red & white circular sticker over the iris of an eye that is part of a black and white eye graffiti picture

red eye

*****

a little alley

Posted: May 22, 2014 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, chainlink fence, coffee, couple, doorway, face, Kensington, lane, mailbox, male nude, man, mosaic, people, stickers, tags, tiles, Toronto, woman

A little dead end alley in Kensington and the graffiti I found there.

Looking through a chain link fence towards a short laneway. There is graffiti on the walls of the buildings that back onto the alley

A chain link fence at the end of the alley.

Street art piece of a semi clad woman and a male nude, reaching for each other. They are larger than life, and higher up on a wall.

I love the way that the faces are incomplete compared to rest of the anatomy.

A graffiti piece of a black hooded figure. Someone has tagged over part of it in large white letters. The next person has put an orange line through the white tags and then added the words Fuck You learn some respect

The seemingly endless battle between graffiti artists and those who wantonly tag over their work.

A collection of small tiles that have been painted over by a larger piece of street art

squares pieced together

Multicoloured graffiti that covers a door as well as the wall.

hidden doorway

black outline picture of a tea cup and saucer, with steam rising from it, on top of green and purple graffiti

steaming

Doorway covered with stickers and scribbles

chaos with stickers and scribbles

Graffiti of a pinkish face with bared teeth. CHainlink fence on the left of the photo.

grimacing skull by the fence

windows and other bits

Posted: December 4, 2013 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, bird, brick, construction, fish piss, graffiti, lane, lovebot, metal, photos, red brick, Richmond Street, rust, street art, Toronto, windows, yellow brick

A few things that I saw today as I walked from Richmond and Spadina, southwestward to King and Shaw. A beautiful sunny Tuesday afternoon.

An old metal sign saying No Authorized Parking has rusted badly. It is on a yellow brick building. Beside it is a blue coloured metal screen covering a window.

rusted and authorized

A graffiti painting of a blue and white bird on a grey concrete block wall. It is painted to look like it's perched on the top corner of a window.

Happily perched above it all with a birds eye view of Richmond Street West.

the backs of a few lowrise brick buildings. One of the buildings is painted an olive green coloutr. There is graffiti above one of the buildings, of 2 dog heads, one of which has a cigarette in its mouth.

Smoking on the roof.

Stop Rob Ford at the western end of a one way Richmond street.

A brick wall that is painted a pinkish colour. There is an old window with the lower half barred. A light is mounted on the wall to the right of the window. The wall is dirty.

window and light, Palace Hotel, at King and Strachan.

A red brick wall with an old door that has been bricked over. A large new window has been added. You can see the lights on inside.

Afternoon light.

A paper sticker showing three beer bottle shaped bottles with labels that say fish piss.

fish piss in the alley

Three small windows arranged vertically beside a rusted metal grille covering an air vent. Black and white splotches have been painted around the window.

Black and white and speckled all over. This was one in a series of five or six windows of various sizes along the same wall. The black and white painting gave the wall an interesting look although I am not sure of pictures of the individual windows are all that interesting!

gold coloured poster on a dirty light grey garage door. The poster says 2013 Lovebot Loveinvasion. It has a picture of a light grey robot on it, with a red heart.

The alley I was walking down turned, but as I turned the corner I realized that I had come to a dead end. I spotted this poster on one of the garage doors that was there. According to the man standing inside one of the other garages, lots of people end up doing U-turns in front of his garage – including cars that come zooming around the corner, only to have to hit their brakes.

A sticker of a black hearted, square headed, yellow robot on a blue dumpster.

for more information about the lovebots, http://lovebot.com/about

This photo was taken while standing in a parking lot near the southeast corner of Adelaide and Bathurst streets.

The graffiti across the lower part of the building is by homebase. Their website: http://www.homebasetoronto.com

graffiti on garages

Posted: November 10, 2013 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: Alan Powell, alley, camille, city, colours, Darth Vader, David French, dogs, door, faces, fence, garages, graffiti, Harbord village, lanes, locomotive, paint, photographs, street art, Toronto, train, urban

Graffiti and street art on the garages

of David French Lane and Alan Powell Lane

David French Lane runs south from Barbara Barrett Lane (just south of Bloor St.), one block to Sussex Ave. If you cross Sussex Ave., the lane continues as Alan Powell Lane. Both lanes are lined with garages for the houses on Borden St. and Brunswick Ave., the streets that run parallel on either side of the lanes. Alan Powell Lane also runs behind Central Tech Collegiate.

There is an excellent interactive map of the lanes of Harbord village and the people for whom they were named at http://www.harbordvillage.com/laneways/lanewayinteractivemap.html