Haydain Neale, 1970–2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
Peeve Patrol
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!
Toronto photographer Metrix X (Ryan) has contributed more images to the Torontoist Flickr Group than any other person. The wide range of high-quality images he's added to our pool is reason enough to choose him for The Daily Photoist.
But it was this particular image that caught our eye. For most of us, we'd look at this scene and probably ignore a dumpster and discarded recliner. With careful composition and framing, Metrix X captures an intriguing tableau. The vibrant colour is really quite awesome. We love the small details -- the snow on the seat of the chair, the umbrella atop the dumpster, the way the graffiti unifies the various elements. (For tech spec buffs, this was shot with an envy-inducing 28mm f1.8 lens.)
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"Honey, have you seen my chair?! What chair?! My chair...my favorite chair, it was here this morning when I left for work...I LOVE that chair, I've had it for years"
"Hey man, nice shot"
"Oh, Honey, you're soaked. You poor thing. Couldn't you find your' umbrella? Hmmm, I wonder where it could be...maybe you left it next to..Oh, I dunno...
MY #@*&!* CHAIR!?!"
Disgusting. I can't believe the disrespect some people show the city -- the jug and metal of the umbrella could be recycled, and the chair could have been reupholstered and donated.
Beautiful graffiti though.
Yet another post trying to glorify graffiti? Look at all those budding artists making our city beautiful by scrawling on it?
hey torontoist. you are not new york. stop with the glorification of garbage cans and horrible graffiti.
Glorification of graffiti?
It's a cool pic.
"Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe."
- Lex Luthor
I don't get it -- what does this have to do with New York, Matty? You think it's the only place in the world with this sort of thing? What makes it cooler there?
I don't get why people are so angry...it's not like Ryan arranged the furniture and added the graffiti...he was documenting what he found.
Gary, tomorrow I expect kittens and babies. And maybe a rainbow, too.
I find Rek's and Matty's responses somewhat humorous, hard to see how Matt thinks this glorifies graffiti and I guess Rek has never tried to get a recliner fixed and reupholstered at a price less then a new one costs. We live in a Wallmart made in China world. If you can't see the humor in this shot it's OK with me.
Carrie aren't squirrels the new kitten and baby images?
Why would we think Ryan *didn't* do the graffiti himself? One of the other Torontoist contributors is a woman who proudly graffitis the city, apparently not realizing she should have outgrown that when she was four; maybe this Ryan is also an "artist" who works in spray paint in the middle of the night.
Publius, get your facts straight or don't comment at all. Ryan's not a contributor, he's one of 600 members of the photo group we have on Flickr. The "woman who proudly graffitis the city" (I assume you mean the "hope." artist) was someone who was interviewed by Sharon Harris, a Torontoist contributor.
Also, read our comment policy before you comment again on an article. We don't appreciate antagonistic and rude comments here, and we have no hesitations about deleting them.
Nice to know the morals of Torontoist. Glorifying criminals (taggers) is great journalism. "Antagonistic comments" (ie. ones that don't don't agree with Torontoists views) are unacceptable. For such a liberal blog, you're quite facsist on your jumping to censorship.
Ever thought to look at the hypocracy of your site? You blast advertisers for making the city "ugly" with billboards (which might I add, bring revenue to the city to fund all your beloved social programmes), but think that scribbling over walls is beautiful and constitutes art. You slam condo builders for knocking down decaying buildings in the city to build high density, environmentally friendly housing, but feel that nobody should be allowed to commute from outside the 416 without having to pay some form of congestion charge.
I've had it with Torontoist. I used to check it regularly because it actually kept me informed about what's going on in Toronto. Now it just glorifies the worst aspects of the city. What happened to you guys!?
Little Boy Blue, the Torontoist staff isn't just one person -- we all have different views, and we don't all think the same way about the same things. So, occasionally, those views may come into conflict with one another. I mean, come on! We have a regular column called Torontoist vs. Torontoist that illustrates that tension between opposing ideas of staff members as explicitly as possible!
On the same note, we don't just delete comments that disagree with our points of view. For one, because those points of view aren't shared across the staff. But, more importantly, everyone is allowed to express their opinion so long as it's not totally rude, threatening, hurtful, or, as I've said, antagonistic.
It seems like it's you -- not the staff at Torontoist -- who has trouble handling a diversity of opinions on our website. And that's really too bad.
David,
You're totally right, so apologies. I don't know why I considered Torontoist to be one person/viewpoint this morning. Next time it'll be drink coffee, THEN read Torontoist, not vice versa.
Ryan - Most of my comment was just meant to stir up the debate from the Toivo's Hope article. Most people would put the graffiti in the "digusting disrespect of the city" category.
It seems to me that if you ask anyone who lives in Toronto if they like it they will complain about how it sucks to live there. I LOVE Toronto!! I'd sell my soul for a condo on the water!! Talk about jaded...! I am an artist, and can only afford the burbs. Most of my work is Toronto inspired (see www.amyroger.com if yer interested - I blog there daily and love comments too!)Toronto ROCKS! Whiners suck!
Amy: Your artwork is fantastic. I'm with ya on loving Toronto. There's a lot to complain about, and we should when we want things to improve, but I'm in love with good ol' Hogtown, more so when I travel (especially to cities Toronto is often compared to). We need to worry less about what we look like to the rest of the world and more on improving the standard of living and culture of our city. The former will then follow.