Enter if you dare!
To houses guarded by skulls
and ghosts. Where skeletons rise out of the ground
Where spider webs cling to everything – is that spider nearby too?
Happy Halloween everyone!
This is a “Thursday door” post. If you are interested in doors and want to see other people’s blog posts about doors, start with Norm 2.0’s blog post. At the the bottom of that post you will find a link to many more!
Another year of jack o’lanterns and giant spiders
and other creative spooky and creepy decorations. Clowns and pumpkin heads.
And even bunnies can be fearsome. Bunny with baseball bat.
It’s a time for dressing up in costumes and having fun…. for kids
…. and for adults (night time photos taken on Church street)
below: What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Three Trumps! Thrice the thrills.
Not everyone was scary – look at these cute and cuddly animals!
Smurfs!
Even Marilyn stopped for a picture.
Wilson subway station is nestled between the northbound and southbound lanes of the Allen Expressway. It’s functional, but not pretty. All that concrete!
below: Wilson subway station from the parking lot on the SW corner of Wilson and the Allen.
If you look closely at the above picture, you might be able to see that one of the pillars holding up the Allen has been painted purple. That’s part of the latest mural painting project by Shalak Attack, with help from Bruno Smoky. What you can’t see is that the mural covers all of the underpass supports on both sides of Wilson Ave.
below: The mural on the south side of Wilson Ave has been painted on all sides. Here, a face is between two hands gripping the poles.
below: More pillars on the south side.
below: A large spider on a web is in the center of the mural.
below: The back side of the supports have also been painted. Just be careful not to bump your head on the road above if you want to get a closer look!
below: The north side of the underpass is being painted at the moment. Stay tuned for updates!
The best walks are those where you discover things that you weren’t expecting.
Slices of pool cues and wood, toy figures and animals, as well as small bits and pieces have been put together with patience and imagination. The methodical, artistic work of Albino Carreira covers his garage in a lane. It looks like a work in progress.
below: Rising above the garage is a sculpture that resembles a spinal column with its stacked vertebrae. Albino Carreira was a construction worker who came to Toronto from Portugal in 1972 as a young man. In 1993 he fell from scaffolding on a job site, cracked his skull and broke his spine. Albino survived the fall and doctors were able to fix his skull with metal plates and reconstruct his backbone with pieces of bone from his leg.
below: As you can see, one side of the garage is painted bright red, blood red perhaps.
But it is also a vibrant red, full of life.
below: The north side of the garage (the side you can’t see in the first picture) is covered with slabs of polished stone with marbles in the grouting between the stones. All parts of the pool cues were used, including the rubber bumper ends in the pattern seen here.
below: The wasps have found it and they must like it too.
below: Some examples of the eclectic assortment of objects that have been used…. skulls, Santa Claus, beetles, butterflies, gold golfers, figurines, and champagne corks. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the details, but then again that’s the sort of thing that I like to do. I find it rewarding to discover little things that other people might pass over.
As I wrote this blog post, I kept thinking that I should go back to see if there was anything that I missed… and then I learned that his house is also decorated in a similar manner so now going back is definitely in my future!
as I walk Toronto 