February 13, 2007
The Daily Photoist: Office logo closer
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!
Here lie the abandoned frozen remains of the Microsoft's promotional Vista and Office ice house. Where, you ask? That's right -- dumped under Toronto's very own Gardiner Expressway.
Toronto photographer Cliph discovered the cast-off remains by accident while out with some friends. (You can see the rest of his Remains of the Microsoft Ice House photoset here.)
This raises an obvious question: While, yeah, the ice house was made of ice and in theory should melt away as harmless water, is "under the Gardiner" an appropriate dump site for corporate promotional waste?
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Is this a serious article? Did I accidentally clink on a link to the Onion? We're whining about where big bad corporations are dumping their ice now?
Is the something I'm missing? Some concern about tainting the watershed with the immoral spectre of corporate propaganda?
I would actually be inclined to say yes, precisely because it IS no more than ice, and there's relatively little of it, and the event itself was a one off. I can't really see some wide-sweeping legislation allowing the disposal of corporate waste under the city's highways resulting from this.
There are more sources of ire to be found in terms of coporate promotional waste, than the molten MS house, imo. Take the vast amounts of confetti-like passes/flyers/leaflets that line the streets on any given weekend for example.
Nice shot though. Keep up the good work.
LOL.
This reminds me of the movie "Nothing" where the two guys live in a three-story Victorian house that is built between the Gardiner and an exit ramp.
Obviously the question about dumping the ice was in jest, but it is "corporate waste" and I'm sure everybody was wondering what they were going to do with it when they were finished.
Dumping it under the Gardiner was a hilarious and unexpected solution.
I probably would have selected the harbour myself.
A million dollar 1,800 square foot temporary corporate shelter, dumped where homeless people are forced to take refuge.
A whole bunch of broken up pieces of perfect clear square blocks of ice recently showed up around all of the tree planters on the south side of college street between bay and university (in front of the mars building). I wonder if it's more of the ice house... Probably not, maybe they are from wintercity.
I wouldn't go anywhere so far as to accuse Microsoft of dumping corporate waste considering it's just ice, but for some reason, being the Gardiner, it's hilarious.
I imagine that Microsoft would have obtained the proper disposal permits when they were getting approval to erect the thing in the first place, but if they didn't, tsk, tsk.
Waste is waste, and just because it's ice and it will disappear doesn't mean that they can dump it on public property without permission. Would you be OK with them dumping it on your lawn without permission? It'll just melt by the end of winter, right? What about if a restaurant next door wanted to dump their organic waste in the gutter in front of your house? It'll get eaten by pigeons and eventually disintegrate, no?
The remains of the Vista house are still corporate waste. I assume that Microsoft wouldn't be so stupid to just dump the ice house under the Gardiner.
They should have melted it in situ with flamethrowers. That would have been cool.