Video: The Perils of Biking in the Bike Lane

This New Yorker got a ticket for not riding in the bike lane, so he decided to make a video about what happens when you always ride in the bike lane no matter what.

Video: Learning to Ride a Bike? Listen to This Kid.

This kid may have watched too many movies, but he definitely kicks ass.

Video: Rear Window, Canucks Edition

Here's what part of downtown Vancouver sounded like when the Canucks scored a tying goal with seconds left.

video uploaded by chloejohns

Video: Goodbye Water, Goodbye Life

Check out this video made for the Stop the Quarry campaign by Dyson Forbes, which aims to educate people on the deleterious effects of a 2,400 acre limestone quarry proposed for the Town of Melancthon.

For more information on the proposed Ontario quarry, read this excellent Torontoist article from November 2009 by now Torontoist editor Hamutal Dotan. Torontoist also covered the more recent Stop the Quarry protest march that happened on April 26, 2011.

Pit Stop from Dyson Forbes on Vimeo.

Video: Silent 1940s Film of Vancouver's Parks

Have you ever walked around Stanley Park and wished you could watch a 45 minute silent documentary film from 1940 on Vancouver's parks? Well, look no further than this video from the Vancouver Archives. The video features footage of Memorial West Park, Grandview Park, Trout Lake, Queen Elizabeth Park, and many more. Of particularly interest are shots of Victory Square in the Downtown Eastside, which captures Vancouver's old streetcars going by in the background.

Also, check out the Vancouver Archives' new blog, AuthentiCity.

Beers & Bikes, Street Food Hold the Red Tape, Mayor Ford vs. Graffiti Round One, and a 19th Century Online Newspaper

Beer, bikes, and parks. The three just go together like salt and pepper...and, um, a third kind of, but still complimentary seasoning. But how to transport your drinks to the park? And how, once you arrive and claim your space under a big shady tree, do you open said drinks? Fear no more, for now you can purchase a handy bicycle beer holder as well as a seat clamp with a built in bottle opener. Just don't park your bike on this crazy thing in Seoul, as it might be a bit hard to get down tipsy. And please don't drink and try to do this:

Toronto is looking to provide tastier, streets eats without the red tape, after the disastrous Toronto a la Carte program. Perhaps we should look towards Vancouver for help, as that city has implemented a successful and diverse street food program that has seen itself expanded. Personally, I'm still waiting for the cart that just sells jars of peanut butter and spoons.

See Mayor Rob Ford. See as he gets his hands dirty, power-washing graffiti. See as he scuttles reporters because, like a petulant child, he just wants to talk about what he wants to talk about and nah-nah-nah-boo-boo. Why do these pesky reporters keep bothering him about expense accounts, campaign funding, and the selling of TCHC houses? Can't they see that once we get the city clean, brick by brick, all those other problems will go away too? These people don't think so.

The Toronto online mediascape just got a bit more crowded with the addition of Toronto Standard. Be sure to check out two great articles by Ivor Tossell re: Transit City and Alex Bozikovic re: TCHC housing. Toronto Standard was originally established in 1848, back when the internet was candle-powered and servers were housed in barns.

And in other news, the sky apparently seems to be falling.

Toronto's Missed Transit Opportunity

The transportation talk the last week or so in Toronto has been mainly focussed on Rob Ford's deal with the Dalton McGuinty to reallocate the money set aside for Transit City to pay for an entirely underground Eglinton Crosstown LRT and an upgraded Scarborough line, with Ford's plans for a privately financed Sheppard subway extension still in the works. Thus, instead of multiple lines of LRT threading their way through Toronto's inner suburbs, Toronto will get one new line, an upgraded one, and one made mostly out of dreams.

In fact, Ford himself doesn't seem to fully understand what privately financing something actually means, leading to what would be a jaw-dropping exchange between Ford and reporters if this kind of exchange hadn't proved itself par for the course. When a reporter pressed Ford about the fact that the City would in fact be borrowing money to pay for the Sheppard extension, this exchange happened (read the full National Post article):

Mayor: I’m not quite sure where taxpayers money is coming in, when we’re using private money.

Q: Because you have to repay those private financiers with taxes and development charges that you would collect later. That’s called borrowing.

Yeesh.

But it seems the debate has zoomed in even closer, focussing on the nixing of the Finch West LRT, which has angered a lot of residents along the busy corridor, currently served by over-crowded busses. When asked to comment on this, Ford said he could see a subway on Finch in ten years. And a thousand gold bricks for everyone!

Above is a video of The Star's Christopher Hume as he takes us on a quick tour of the Finch corridor, explaining why this is a missed opportunity for the city. What's difficult about Transit City fading away is that it has the whiff of one of those historic turning points, where Torontonians will look back in ten years with thoughts of "if only." LRT would have completely transformed not only the look of those avenues, but the feel of the entire city.

As Hume says, "Transit's not just about moving people from A to B, but about building the city." And Transit City, with its ability to stitch Toronto together, would have excellent city building.

NFB Documentary: Radiant City

Radiant City is a strange documentary, but I can't tell you why because it would ruin it. It picks up on one family in Calgary's outer suburbs and follows them as they attempt to adjust to their new life in the still under-construction "community" of Evergreen. I put community in quotation marks because the idea of this type of development being a community in anything other than the most basic way is challenged again and again in this film.

We hear from such thinkers as Mark Kingwell and Joseph Heath, both authors as well as professors at the University of Toronto; James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere; as well as many urban planners, designers, and architects on what exactly makes the suburbs tick and why.

The film is interesting, but the critique of the suburbs is one we have heard and is hammered home over and over again by the different interviewees. James Howard Kunstler is particularly poetic in his anti-suburban diatribe, calling the suburban wasteland tragic and cartoonish. We're told the suburbs are dehumanizing, isolating, fat-inducing, energy-hungry, and far too big. We're told we need our cities to have walkability, main streets, mixed-use, mixed-income and dense, neighbourhoods. But we don't really get anywhere deeper than that.

Still, anyone that grew up in the suburbs will likely have some flashbacks as we watch the family attempt to coordinate their lives around their two cars--necessary for their new life in the far-flung 'burbs.

Think You Love Vancouver?

Chances are this woman loves it more.

Dance Like Everyone is Watching

If you're like most people, when you're in a public place you'll do almost anything not to stand out too much. You certainly wouldn't dance around crazily to music only you could hear while someone filmed you and then post that video on the internet. So I guess that makes Phil Villeneuve not like most people.

I was first exposed to the antics of Villeneuve when a friend showed me the video of him whirling and twirling to the Scissor Sisters in a No Frills grocery store. I was slightly horrified as I watched the video, the same kind of stomach-cringe I get when I watch people on American Idol or when a certain beauty pageant contestant stumbled through an answer. I'm embarrassed for them. I literally sweat watching.

But I feel there is something important about dancing and being silly and spontaneous in public. There can be a tedium to the day-in day-out rhythm of urban life that causes us to switch to autopilot. We've all seen that glazed over look as people push their shopping carts down an aisle or stare straight ahead on the subway. You feel as though you could bounce a tennis ball off their forehead and they wouldn't blink.

The reason things like flash mobs and crazy dancing people are so compelling is because of the way they play with the tedium of that urban routine. They force people to snap back into reality, because suddenly reality has become, well, surreality. This is shown best in the New York Grand Central Station freeze, where a group of people all froze at a predetermined time to the amazement of everyone else. It's hilarious to watch everyone's reaction as their boring commute is suddenly hi-jacked and turned into a Twilight Zone episode. It turned a completely forgettable act into something impossible to forget, which I'm sure is the goal of Improv Everywhere, the group that organized it.

Flash mobs, however, have become almost tedious in themselves. They all seem to have official websites and predetermined dates and times. There's the No Pants Subway Ride and the Zombie Walk, and the Pillow Fight and on and on it goes in countless cities around the world. I feel like, by reducing it to virtually one person, Villeneuve sheds all the weight built up by these mass events and gets back at the core of what it's all about--the delight of the unusual.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Villeneuve video is that everyone around him is trying so hard not to care. But it's clearly impossible to deny a grown man swinging around the pole of your subway car like a stripper. There's a few turned heads, some smirks, but mostly people are just attempting to ignore him like you would ignore that crazy man who corners you on the bus and won't stop ranting about U.S. foreign policy. He knows this too, which is why he grabs people's hats or puts his arm around them.

This is a total adaptation of city space for something other than what we've all decided is appropriate for that space. Subway cars are for commuting. Grocery stores are for buying food. Dancing is something you do when you've had that third drink and your favourite song comes on and the dance floor is just crowded enough that no one will see you jerk about. But it's good to challenge what we can do in different areas of the city and push people's comfort zones, if just for the simple fact that it keeps things interesting.

I often think about what I would do if I encountered Villeneuve dancing in my subway car or grocery store or bank. Maybe I would laugh, engage with him, and give him a twirl. But most likely I would avert my eyes and pray he picked on someone else.

Oh well. I can always watch him on YouTube.

Video: Toronto By Numbers

I posted a video a few week's ago that my friend in England made while in Toronto (the video was later picked up and posted on the Torontoist as well). I thought I would share another video by the same friend, in which he sets a collection of numbers found in Toronto to music.

Watching this video (as I have done several times now; how could you watch it just once?) reminds me of all the small details that we might miss in our everyday goings about town. House numbers don't necessarily command our attention as we walk down the street, but as this video shows they are numerous (ha!), unique, and often beautiful.

It's the cumulative effect of such diverse details that make Toronto so visually dazzling at times. When I first moved here from Vancouver it would take me forever just to walk down the street in my Annex neighbourhood because my eye kept becoming caught left and right by the amazing architectural diversity and the detailing on the houses. Coming from the land of the architectural cut-and-paste (glass condos; Vancouver special house) it was refreshing to see such character. Sure some of the paint is peeling off the brick, and the wood may have a warped, bloated look at times, but each house seems to have its own unique stamp. If the devil's in the details, then beauty is as well.