Well, not really Camden Street, but an alley that runs perpendicular to the street…. If the lane has a name I don’t know what it is. Google maps doesn’t even include it. It’s a very short alley that runs both north and south from Camden street and it doesn’t go anywhere. Both sections were painted with murals 9 or 10 years ago. Amazingly, they have survived.
Let’s start with the south side of Camden Street.
below: Mural Project, “The walls won’t know what hit them”. The mural was painted in 2006 youth from the Harbourfront and Cecil Community Centres as part of the City of Toronto’s Graffiti Transformation Project.
below: The mural is painted in a quasi cartoon style.
below: She’s upset and she’s expressing her hurt and anger with spray paint seems to be the start of the story.
below: My knowledge of slang is limited, and this is 10 years old but this sheezy is cool. It’s probably as simple as “this sure is cool”, i.e. spray painting graffiti is cool.
below: Oh no! I always laugh when I hear this expression these days… is there anywhere in Toronto where property values are going down? Okay, okay, so it’s part of the story – she’s complaining that someone has sprayed graffiti somewhere nearby, the vandalism part of the story. The angry young woman or the “sheezy heezy” guy above have been busy in her neighbourhood.
below: As you can see, a couple of things were in the way as I was taking pictures. I am not sure exactly how the plot of the mural progresses from here because I couldn’t see the whole thing. There are gaps in the story line. A few missing pages so to speak.
below: Flesh tones as dots in the face of woman who plays an unknown role in this story – the mystery woman?
below: I suspect that this is the “We’ve got to get rid of the graffiti” part of the story. Is it improper to make comments about Rob Ford and his anti-graffiti program here? I don’t want to insult the mural or the project behind it because I think that the Graffiti Transformation Project is an excellent program.
below: If there was a mural on the other side of the alley, it’s long gone.
A short walk across Camden Street to the other half of the alley….
below: You can see the taller buildings on Richmond Street West but you can’t get there from here.
And like most downtown alleys, garbage bins are a dominant feature.
below: At the entrance to the alley. There are words under the window by the sunflowers that say that this painting is also the work of the Harbourfront/Cecil Community Centre’s Graffiti Transformation Project, 2007.
below: A very low window with green arrows
below: And last, I’ll end with a weather comment because we’ve all been talking (complaining?) about it these days – someone’s a bit overdressed for this August weather although it doesn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.
Stay cool!
as I walk Toronto 