for st.clair west

to fall in love
while riding westbound
on st. clair
would be to fall
in line
with my past
to reintroduce self
to oakwood and
to rarely venture beyond keele
to negotiate porch space
2 steps below her
but perfectly in line
the art and entertainment
of corso italia passerbys
time well spent
give her up for lent
and fall from love
into temptation
put a motown step
in my walk
she got me practicing
romance in my talk
buidling with baianos
on the block
she'd be thoro but with flare
leave me dedicated
like the right of way
it'd be a nice way
to fall in...

thoughts on spadina...

This afternoon i navigated my way through the heat from union station to cbc with an ultimate destination of catching a spadina streetcar northbound. From the corner of john and wellington i believe (where the cbc and metro hall meet up), looking west, one can directly see spadina off in the distance, and more importantly see the streetcars going in both directions. In the 5-10 minutes it took me to get from john to spadina, i saw about 4 streetcars going north.
4 streetcars in 10 minutes is great for transit riders, such frequency means you never have to wait (my observation doesn't account for any streetcars short-turning at King, which at least 2 of 3 spadina streetcars do) but from an efficiency standpoint, at 2pm in the day, 4 streetcars in 10 minutes is a glaring inefficiency, the car i rode in was empty from king until dundas. To be fair by the time it arrived at spadina station there was a reasonable capacity, but the two streetcars that were literally right behind me were for the most part empty.
In a city looking to cut some fat, hopefully the powers to be have put spadina on the new workout plan.

Ironically enough, this is what was on the mind of TTC officials lately.
Thinking ahead is one thing, but i'm not how to file this one.

summer of the street

Yesterday i spent most of the day walking up and down yonge street.
Call me crazy but i think yonge doesn't get spoken about too much when discussing the livelihood of streets in toronto. Sure yonge street has a festival, but i personally think the festival takes away from the essence of the street and to be frank is a lousy attempt at a street festival (see 'the danforth', 'montreal jazz festival' for proof).

College, queen, bloor, dundas, spadina, get alot of press and love from us twenty-somethings.
anything north of bloor is irrelevant, because there is usually a cooler equivalent south of bloor.

But yeah, yesterday, walking yonge street north of bloor, there's alot going on, its a busy street aside from the north - south traffic. Solid range of businesses, buildings of mixed usage (sounds like i'm doing a commercial strips assessment), a good mix of old and new architecture. This ranges from bloor almost up to lawrence. Like i've been told in class time and time again, streets and street scaping are important, they lay the foundation for the vitality of an area. Streets should be more than a mean of travel, they should be a destination, a place to hang out, shop, sit, relax, be seen.

With the Death and Life of Great American Cities and Great Streets on my reading list, this could very well be for me a summer of the street. Stay tuned.