For Doors Open Toronto, I visited Osgoode Hall, home of the Law Society of Upper Canada and several appeals courts. Among the most impressive rooms were the Hogwartsesque Great Library, and the enormous Reading Room beside it. Among towering stacks of reference books of all kinds (and one hell of a stack of paper), there’s one single computer … and you can see where it was pointed.
You figure those books will ever really be used again?
Last week I took a photography workshop that was held at an old auto yard - an amazing place that had been used as a car graveyard for more than 50 years. I’m still sorting through my images, but this seemed like the one for today, the day they announced the end of 82 years of Pontiac history.
I’ve never owned a Pontiac, though I went to the prom in a Trans Am, put myself through college by working in a GM parts warehouse and thoroughly enjoyed the occasional rented Grand Am. The end of any era makes me sad.
Apparently my unhealthy fascination with signage is rubbing off on my kids - but their commentaries are much funnier than mine. Here’s a sampling of their comments on signs in our neighbourhood:
Daughter: “Daddy, look. A frying pan with a smile!”
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Daughter, walking past this untitled tattoo parlour on Queen St. (its sign used to proclaim it “Domain of Pain”) and peering in at all the designs up on the wall:
“Ooooh, a sticker shop! I’m definitely going there when I get older.”
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Five-year-old, frowning at the hussy on the left as we drive past this strip joint:
“Why is that woman pulling up her shirt? She should do something else. Like read a book!”
CBC Toronto has gone sticker crazy. You know those giant, peel-off vinyl graphics you see everywhere these days? Well, CBC has bought in.
It seems every flat surface of the Broadcasting Centre, inside and out, is in the process of being tarted up with giant ads sporting CBC personalities and shows. The atrium looks like the hood of a NASCAR vehicle. Even the newsroom is getting plastered - though for all those interior uses, I’m not quite sure who we’re supposed to be advertising to. Ourselves?
A few theories:Â Perhaps vinyl is suddenly cheap. Maybe it’s good old fashioned end-of-fiscal spending, or new fiscal. Or perhaps we can’t afford billboards anymore. Or we’re trying to stay one step ahead of Rami Tabello.
With as many as 800 people heading out the door, perhaps temporary promotions are considered wise. Conversely, there’s a rumour that if you make it onto a sticker, your job is safe - though that didn’t help Steven and Chris.
With the peel-off craze nearing its peak, I can just tell what’s coming next: Rex Murphy Fatheads!
At least they aren’t scratch ‘n sniff.
Check out a sampling of the plasterings here - bigger versions on Flickr, with comments.
So, all morning I’ve been ranting (quietly - this is me, after all) about CBC’s funding mess: it appears there will be no extra money, no bridge financing, no carriage fees, no guaranteed CTF envelope… no help at all to deal with a potential $145 shortfall. And now the CBC’s own board seems to indicate that the $60 million in “one-time funding” we’ve had for seven years now may also be dropped. That part really scares me - it’s not just a refusal to help, it’s a willingness to cut. [update: That money was later promised by the heritage minister.]
Suffice it to say that “$60 million” on my mind. And then this afternoon, I go onto Facebook to post a link, and a “verification” window pops up:
Anyone know where Facebook gets their verification code words? Other than “directly from my brain”?
At times like this, I like to glance over at this photocopy I found during my archival work.
Almost exactly 60 years ago.
If you live in Toronto and take the TTC, you’ll no doubt recognize this poster for a singer called Ali Slaight - they were plastered throughtout subways and streetcars for months.
I’m always a little suspicious of artists I’ve never heard of that take out massive print advertising campaigns - smacks of marketing instead of merit. Also, it’s an EP.
But then I came across this Sarah Slean image from Canada Reads site:
Look familiar?
It’s not just that the poses are so similar - slouched in the corner, one arm up, head at the top of the panelling, left elbow down (what is Slaight’s elbow doing, anyhow? Did they photoshop out the table?) …. I think it’s the exact same location! Take a look at the panelling and bench on the left wall - the railing, the slats - it’s identical.
Yeah, one’s in a dress, one’s blonde, and one’s in black and white… still. If I were a young Canadian female musician, the least I would want from my label or publicist is a promo pic that varies a little from the next young Canadian female musician.
Not much comparison in their music, though… I don’t mind the little I’ve heard of Slean, while Slaight (hmm, even the names are similar…) sounds like drivel. But I could slug Slean for inflicting Mercy Among the Children on us.
I’ll bet you that corner is in a Toronto bar or diner - anyone recognize it? If so, I’ll go down there with my camera to take a picture for my own album, Copy the Stars.
This week saw the bittersweet bazaar known as the Royal Canadian Air Farce props & wardrobe sale. After 35 years on CBC Radio and Television, the Air Farce took its final flight.
 It’s the end of an era, not just for the show but because it was one of the few A&E TV shows to still tape in the Toronto CBC building, using the last of the once-great horde of props and costumes built by generations of CBC craftspeople. Those days are over, and they aren’t coming back. (See previous posts about the closing of the Design Department, and the subsequent sell-off.)
But it makes for one hell of a yard sale!
For two days, eager staffers were invited to pick over the remains of the Farce’s unique creations. There are now strange objects scattered across cubicles on every floor.
The props area had coffins, statues, a bomb, rubber chickens and more, to say nothing of rather nice chairs, lamps and picture frames. In wardrobe, you could get labcoats, capes, hockey sweaters, muumuus, a Marg Delahunty costume and about a thousand ties (which eventually sold for a buck each.) Plus everyday sweaters, suits and pants - though every pair of pants I tried on were of Roger Abbott proportions - fit me loosely at the waist but barely reached my calves. Looked like knickers.
Still, I’m a sucker for weird junk, especially if it’s a part of history. In addition to the fake switches and books pictured above, here’s what I walked away with:
Impules buy - for $1 - a board game called “Separatist Careers”… you can even find the original skit online on the Air Farce site.
“Just be sure to avoid the Parizeau card, or you go home a loser.” Priceless! And check out the Lucien Bouchard playing piece:
And for my dollar, they threw in a free box of Lloyd Robertson Hair Rinse for News Anchors:
But the crowning purchase - at a whopping $15 - was this Greek bust:
I think it’s Pericles, but I’m not sure. He’s currently backfilling for our encoder, who was sick that day.
Looking through that stuff was a riot, tempered slightly by the observation that the people selling off the wardrobe collection were a soon-to-be-unemployed seamstress and a scriptwriter.
If only I had bought the fake bomb, though! That would have been… never mind.
Last week the folks in the offices beside mine moved out, now occupying new digs on the ninth floor of the Toronto CBC building.
They took with them the paper shredder, but I was able to find an old one - a really old one - amid the rubble of old SCSI cards, 5 1/4″ disks and skeletons of BASIC programmers.
Here’s the shredder:
Handsome! But did you catch the brand name?
Yep, “Watergate - top secret”. Someone in the manufacturing world obviously has a sense of humour!
Seemed like an odd omen for Inauguration Day, though. In fact, my very first memory of television is sitting down with my parents to watch Richard Nixon depart the Whitehouse. “He was a very bad man, and now he has to go away,” my mom told me.
But I was four, so what I heard was, “He lied, so now he gets to ride in a helicopter!”
Amazing, then, to watch the crowds gather in the CBC atrium to watch Barack Obama being sworn in. If you want a better taste of history, please check out the new topic we posted on the CBC Digital Archives: Swearing In: U.S. Presidential Inaugurations - we’ve got clips of speeches from FDR right through to Dubya.
Back in August, I posted some pictures from a trip to Nova Scotia, including this one:
It’s from the parking lot of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs on the Bay of Fundy. I was intrigued by the concept of special spots for “alternative fuel vehicles” - particularly since there’s no obvious definition. So I sent it on to the brilliant people at the New York Times’ Freakonomics Blog, and they published it today. And of course they had some interesting thoughts on the idea:
Many cities, like Albuquerque, offer free parking to drivers of “hybrid, alternative-fuel, or fuel-efficient†cars. Businesses have also followed suit, reports USA Today.
But drivers of gas-only cars get annoyed, reports the USA Today article, when hybrid drivers take up the best parking spots all day, for free.
In some cases, hybrid-vehicle parking and driving incentives become counterproductive, reports The Washington Post: carpool-lane privileges for hybrid drivers, for example, have helped to clog those lanes.
I’m a big fan of the Freakonomics Blog - I enjoyed the book, and the blog is a daily roundup of the fuzzy interaction between society and numbers - just my kind of thing. But the best thing about the blog is the high quality of the discussion in the comments - a collection of smart people thinking about the way the world works, and backing it up.
Here are some quotes from the discussion of special parking for alternative fuel vehicles:
Maybe even more productive would be having a special section for SUVs to park in the most remote location of the parking lot.
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So a hybrid $70,000 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid that gets 20 mpg gets a free parking spot in LA than I do in my 36 mpg Honda Civic, and gets to use the carpool lane (a much larger chunk of it, physically speaking, than I would).
That’s not just ridiculous. It’s stupid. Very stupid.
So are the alternative fuel spots.
Does it count if I have a 1920s steam locomotive driven by burning coal?
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LEED, the most common system for certifying “green†construction in the United States, allows a project to earn one point toward certification if you reserve 5% of the project’s parking capacity for low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles. For the cost of a few signs, you can get a cheap point. Much cheaper than, say, improving your building’s energy efficiency.
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They have hybrid emblems at eBay for $13. Slap one on the back of your car and enjoy the benefits of the special parking spaces. Unless the authorities are going to pop open your hood and confirm your drive train, you should be able to get away with it. Just depends on your personal moral tolerance for trickery
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Hey, I have an idea! Make the polluting cars drive further and longer around the parking lot looking for a place to park, while the up-close parking spaces are largely empty.
Of course, you could simply pull your F-350 Ford Pick-Up into the space (if it would fit), rationalizing that you ARE using alternative fuel–after all, gasoline is an alternative to…nuclear, coal, solar, fuel cells, hydrogen, and so forth.
They even got an interesting response from the operations coordinator of Joggins.
Soon after, the picture prompted a very interesting analysis from my friend Chris Macdonald, he of The Business Ethics Blog (and one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.) He adds:
But there’s another important issue here: even if it were clear what counted as “alternative” (which it’s not) and even if “alternative” SUVs really deserved special parking (which they don’t) there’s still an issue about what sorts of values, in general, we promote through special parking privileges. Note, for example, that every parking space reserved for alt-fuel vehicles is thereby made unavailable for, say, handicapped parking. Or for parking for pregnant women and new mothers. Or for motorcycles and scooters and bicycles. A business can, of course, have special parking spots for all of the above, and still have room for the rest of us — if they’ve got a really big parking lot. But still, someone has to get the spots closest to the door. In making a move to promote a particular value (like environmentalism), organizations need to think not just about what values they’re promoting, but about what other values they’re de-emphasizing at the same time.
Seems they have these spots at IKEA now as well. What do you think - good idea, or just adding a green patina to the asphalt?
[Since I'm mentioning my past blog entries, I'll point out that green parking spots sure beat construction site parking!]
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