Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Urban Planner: November 23, 2009
Ontario unveils greenhouse gas reduction targets. The plan reduces greenhouse emissions to six percent below 1990 levels by 2014. Not to be outdone, Alberta announced that next week they will release their plan, where they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ten percent below 1990 levels by 2257.
The MuchMusic Video Awards happened over the weekend, and as usual it was a big fun music party. Torontoist recommends its own liveblogging of the event. Because we are awesome sauce.
Guerrilla cyclists paint their own pink bike lanes. Experts call it "perhaps the most oddly polite form of civic rebellion ever."
Michael Moore's Sicko turned up on the interweb. Of course, it got removed from YouTube extremely quickly, but the film has spread like lightning thanks to Bittorrent file-sharing, so if you want to see it, it's not actually that hard to download a copy. Torontoist's David Topping calls the film "wicked cool." Also, thoughts on the film by an erudite Torontoist staffer here.
And finally, former original Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Kristy Swanson was arrested in Kingston over the weekend for assaulting the ex-wife of former pairs skater Lloyd Eisler. Torontoist would like to thank Ms. Swanson for what is likely the most surreal news story of the year so far, which could only have been improved if she attacked her perceived enemy with an enormous halibut.
Pink bike lane photo by ayndroid from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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People painting their own bike lanes on the streets?
What an incredibly stupid, selfish, immmature and illegal thing to do.
I can't wait for the first fatality and the assholes responsible for f**king with the streets to explain themselves.
Dave, The Star's article pretty clearly illustrates that one of the reasons the activists had for painting the lanes was for cyclist safety. Not sure how good of an idea I think that is, mind you.
(For safer guerilla activism, you can check out a photoshopped version of the lanes on Bloor.)
I have ridden in these homemade bike lanes several times and they seem perfectly nice and safe to me.
You can tell quite easily that they are not 'official' so no one takes them too seriously from what I have seen and those cyclists I spoke with over the last few weeks. They either ignore them, too busy concentrating on riding safely, or they just have a good chuckle.
I think they are successful in getting cyclists, drivers and residents/merchants talking and thinking about changing one of the most dangerous streets to ride a bike on in Toronto into a more bike-friendly corridor.
In any case, they surely are getting more KMs of bike lanes painted this year than the city thus far.
You may want to listen to the CBCs As It Happens tomorrow (Tuesday), if you want to find out more about the 'guerrilla bike lane painters' intentions and concerns.
Besides, do you know anyone who does not like a pink Penny-farthing?