SOS—Save Our Sam's

Gotta say, I agree with Hamish 100%, and the idea of it on teh wall above the Ryerson Skating rink makes me all tingly. That would be a great place for it!

This totally goes to show that all advertising is not bad advertising. Something like the Sam's sign or the Honest Ed's facade are bona fide landmarks that transcend their function as "marketing."

There aren't too many such signs in this (or any) city and I don't see any contradiction whatsoever. Since they're clearly not ILLEGAL that strikes me as a total red herring.

It's the difference between the organic character of Times Square the the calculated Clear Channel abominations that surround Dundas Square. It's the difference between a city like Las Vegas that will tear down anything and everything and a city like Paris that treasures and preserves its heritage.

As Nigel Tufnel so deftly said, "there's such a fine line between stupid and clever." Same goes for "marketing" and it goes to show that some things (like emotional attachment) are earned, not bought.

That said, the Ryerson idea (or something similar) strikes me as viable and creative but I do think the sign should at least remain in the neighbourhood. (IMHO)

Maybe whoever develops the site's future condo building can come up with some clever way to integrate the sign into its "lifestyle community."

That's assuming it doesn't get demolished or just  collapses before the heritage designation gets approved.

However, I do agree that it's just a sign for a store, and whoever moves into the site should not be forced to maintain it. Does anyone have figures on how much electricity that thing burns in a day?

It is ugly. And Yonge Street is ugly. Get rid of Sam's and improve this street please. It's an embarrassment to Toronto. We need to improve the ugly parts of this city and there are so many of them.

Warmflash? DL? Buzz off to downtown Unionville or something...

Hi Adam Sonbolak. I wasn't thinking Unionville as much as I was thnking 5th Ave or Madison Avenue. If you walk Madison Above 72nd street, or 5th --practically anywhere on it -- you are walking on major retail streets. But boy are they beautiful. A pleasure to behold. Yonge Street is shabbiness personified. It's as though it was designed for Detroit 1971.

If people honestly think Yonge Street is something special that no other city has - they're deluding themselves. Every city has a crappy, run-down, main street.

Auction the Sam's sign. Whoever ends up buying it obviously wants it - they're not going to buy it just to trash it (and it strikes me as a little too large to just install in someone's basement recroom). Maybe the city ought to buy it, it can be their first acquisition for their proposed City Museum.

I really love the Sam's sign...but I don't think we need to punish Yonge Street by insisting that it not be allowed to move.

I think this is a pretty good example of the split between people who are pro street art/anti omniscient advertising, and those who think all ads are fine and people should be seen and not heard. It seems a paradox at first, but the Sam's sign has been there for decades and people feel it is now part of the city -- they feel ownership of it, the same way that someone bombing the back alleys feels ownership of that location, the same way people who play Manhunt or go out for Newmindspace events feel ownership of public space. The Sam's sign is not a generic billboard, it's not Maybe It's Mabeline one week and Buy Toyo Tires the next. In 50 years when that address is an 80 storey tower of some kind, I'd like to see those swirling neon boobs in the same spot and remember what was.

Heritage is more than bricks and statues, it's also the organic gestalt of a neighbourhood. Kudos for people and the HPS for recognizing it.

give me a break....do not confuse heritage value with sentimental value...the sigh is ugly and kitch, PERIOD

rapi - Why designate anything as historical then? A lot of places are useless or their function would be better served with a modern building, so where do you draw the line between sentimentality and heritage?

Ugly and kitsch are a matter of opinion.

They saved the Swinging Lady billboard on Eglinton East... now that's a classic sign! (Such an essential memory from my childhood--and my mom's!)

But it seems "good advertising" is about aesthetics as much as nostalgia. We like things that don't look modern and have 'always been there'.

Times Square is only "classic" because it's had time to age, and been reproduced as-is in so much of the mass media. The same can be said for the Sam's sign (from music videos to CHUM promos...) which is why I think it's essential to keep.

But this also means in 30+ years kiddies (and probs us to, by that point) will be just as fond of the new Yonge&Dundas mega advertising display--provided it maintains the style they build it in today.

Next there will be calls to designate the signs for Harveys, Coffee Time Donut's and Tim Hortons, as historically important.

It's not that all signs are historically important. An old Tim Hortons sign wouldn't likely be noteworthy, but the first Tim Hortons sign would.

"Respectfully Adam, I lived in New York for many years. And 6th Avenue, around the Village is as awful as Yonge Street. And the residents around the Village complain too. They think 6th Ave is horrible."

Ah, but what kinds of residents? Overly-genteel oldsters? Yuppie scum?

Let me ask--aesthetics and types of shopping aside, does 6th feel active? Reasonably well-used? Full of energy? Or does it feel more like a deserted wasteland, a no-go zone?

Methinks the younger and/or less arrogantly middlebrow-affluent the residents are, the more likely they are to tolerate an organic entity like 6th Avenue--or at least they'd roll their eyes at this kind of overzealous de-scummification fantasy.

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Are you saying the shabbiness of Yonge Street is a desireable thing? When you walk down it, do you look around and say " Wow, what a wonderful ugly mess this is. Every city should have somethng like this? "

Obviously you find it appealing on some level. The Dollar Stores, the backlit neon signs, the general shabbiness. I don't get it. Are you suggesting this is " Shabby Chic? "
===========================

Hey, inadvertently or not, Jane Jacobs gave all of us the means to love so-called "ugly messes". In that light, warmflash, you're reminding me of those farts puzzled by youngsters with weird piercings or that non-musical hip-hop gibberish all polluting the urban scene.

Believe it or not, there *are* visitors to NYC (and thoughtful ones, too) who can feel energized, fascinated, inspired by 6th Avenue, or even Canal or Delancey or wherever--while zones like 5th or Madison might, for all their merits, feel too well-trod, touristy or otherwise genteel. Sort of like in Toronto, it's genuinely understandable how a person can prefer Yonge btw/Dundas + Bloor to Yonge btw/Eglinton + Lawrence. Puzzle over "Shabby Chic" all you want, but there's lots who'd prefer it to "Yuppie Chic"...

=======================

"Next there will be calls to designate the signs for Harveys, Coffee Time Donut's and Tim Hortons, as historically important. "

Boston's ahead of you, re the Citgo Sign in Kenmore Square...

Toronto would be a great city if we just got rid of all signs of affordable retail and people who aren't posh enough, you know?

Some of these comments reek of class privilege.

Not that some areas of Toronto aren't brutal, but I've seen far dumpier areas in Manhattan, Paris and London than I've ever seen in Toronto.

Adam, calling those who have a different aesthetic sensibility "yuppie scum", "farts", "grumpy", "conservative-urbanist" paints your arguments with a political hue that ruin any chance of convincing us you are right. But for hipster urbanites (we can do the same), that's no surprise.

Hamish, brokenengine, DavidF, et. al: Ryerson's interested in the building (and, potentially, the sign as well).

correction. sentence II should read, " I DON'T think Yonge Street represents " Broad " standards. I think it represents no standards.

Incidentally, DI, re your

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Toronto has great potential, but we need to put a lot of public pressure on City Hall to vastly improve urban design in the city. It’s the only way things will improve.

Please make note of the following elected officials and contact them regularly to let them know that the current state of our city is unacceptable and that we demand high standards in urban design and architecture.
==========================

Yes, and don't think they don't know it already, so what else is new. Unless you focus your target a little more, the likely fate of such "public pressure" is that it'll be archived and forgotten.

Nor does it take subjectivity and relativity of opinion into account. For instance, some feel the Minto towers at Yonge + Eglinton represent "high urban standards"; others feel they're a violation thereof. Some feel Nathan Phillips Square is a barren concrete wasteland and an embarrassment begging a complete rework; others feel it's a modernist gem begging love and care rather than a "complete rework" barbarism. And, as we see in this thread, some feel that blithely tossing away the Sam's signs is an act of urban myopia rather than a cleansing of blight.

With such an amorphous goal plus said lack of consensus, you're not going to get anywhere. And surely, coming from "world class" urban experience, you ought to know that by now, right?

As for me, I used to feel like you did, that Toronto was a pokey embarrassment next to all that world class stuff out there. Now, I just feel like it's an organic extension of it all; such is the boundary-breaking Internet age, I guess...

Perhaps you might care to read up on the comments about Toronto by today's leading architects and critics. They pretty much all agree that this city needs a lot of work.

A few:

"Toronto is an incredibly ugly city."
-- Will Alsop

"There is a sense of urgency among the design community that we need change. Challenges are greater than ever before."
-- Bruce Kuwabara at the Ourtopias Conference

“Parts of downtown are good, especially the area around the TD Centre and the Santiago Calatrava intervention in BCE Place. But there is a vast amount of what Rem Koolhaas calls ‘junkspace’ in Toronto. Too much context, not enough monument. Low-rise nothingness. We’ve allowed a potentially beautiful city to become plain at the centre and positively ugly at the periphery.”
— Mark Kingwell, University of Toronto

I remember feeling quite down about Toronto after I returned from a long weekend in Chicago. While Chicago does have an enviable downtown, they also paid a high price for it. The handful of non-whites I saw downtown worked retail at stores nobody but white people seemed to frequent. I learned from the friend I was visiting that the downtown is basically set up to exclude the poor with a patchwork system of car insurance and toll booths that discourages them from coming downtown.

Toronto doesn't have the grand boulevards and block after block after block of world class architecture (or a style named after the city), but do we want that if the price is sterilization, only for tourists and the rich?

Is it possible that Toronto can be great without following in the footsteps of Paris and Manhattan?

Can we clean up Yonge without treating the people who live and work there like pests?

I think we can, and I think an essential part of it is recognizing and retaining the organic, the unplanned, and sometimes the ugly and unremarkable things that define and have defined a location.

Sometimes it's good to look elsewhere for ideas, but Toronto isn't Manhattan or Paris or Chicago or London. We don't have the physical confinement and concentrating effect of being on a peninsula or a great river, we don't have the centuries upon centuries of history and homegrown styles, and we haven't had a clean slate moment to undo endemic mistakes inherited from past generations. Can we appreciate Toronto for what it is, or do we have to judge it for what it is not?

"Toronto doesn't have the grand boulevards and block after block after block of world class architecture (or a style named after the city), but do we want that if the price is sterilization, only for tourists and the rich?"

Please, you've got to be kidding! Why are you equating great architecture and good urban design with sterilization?

What a silly assumption!

Even if Toronto needs work (which it does), I think that the Sam's sign is an exception to the rule. I can't think of a much better example of Kingwell's "monument" than the Sam's sign: it's beautiful, it says "Toronto," it has cultural significance, and, more than that, people really genuinely care about it.

I've made a note of the politicians and city officials above and will email them about urban design matters.

These guys only have jobs because we as taxpayers support them. If they're half asleep on the job, then we need to light a fire under them and let them know that it's unacceptable. They need to be held accountable for their actions. If they're not doing their jobs we need to exert public pressure to force them out.

Oh, and incidentally, if some of these as-presented-here conceptions of "high standards" truly did rule the day in Manhattan, the High Line would have been written off long ago as an obsolete, ugly, rotten, hazardous eyesore--no questions asked.

Sometimes, the mark of a great metropolis is the grassroots ability to eke out beauty and inspiration in what "most" deem ugliness...

Jen - I was contrasting Toronto with Chicago. Chicago's Magnificent Mile is sterile. It's beautiful but there's no sign of life; it's full of ideals that have been achieved in brick and steel. It's all monuments, from the Hancock to Field's Museum.

Adam - I can think of a more appropriate group to consult: Torontonians and Canadian architects and the city's heritage board.

Maybe I'm naive or too young to know better, but it seems over the past few years a movement has sprung up within Toronto to celebrate it and get involved where there are problems and proposals. Now if only we can be brave enough to define Toronto in terms of itself, instead of by criteria laid out by other cities, we might just end up with a world class city (arguably the Toronto Dream now) unlike any other.

I don't understand the attraction to Alsop. Stacked corrugated steel boxes with wibbly window blobs do not come to mind when I think of great architecture, or something I want future generations to associate with us (we have enough against us already).

Yonge Street is an utter embarrassment. We are just pathetic to have allowed our city to reach such a low point. Very sad.

I wish Toronto would be able to become a more international city like Tokyo, New York, London, Singapore, Paris, Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, or Milan, which are all "alpha" cities.

These cities have the ability to attract the best and the brightest from all over the place. (Do a search on wikipedia for "global cities" to see the ranking for alpha, beta and gamma world cities. Toronto is ranked as a "beta" city, not an "alpha" city even though we are so desperate to be perceived as a "world-class city").

Toronto's standards in all respects would be a lot higher if we had the ability to attract a mix of people living from alpha world cities. And if this were the case, we would not be discussing saving the "Sam's" advertising sign like it's a national treasure!! This conversation is just so juvenile!

I just know I'm going to be slammmed for this comment, and the "we-hate-tall-poppies-in-Toronto" people will be angry, but please let's stop deluding ourselves and face the reality. This city is mediocre in so many ways. We need to raise our standards and aim higher in all we do.

Exactly. "Aim higher in all we do" might as well pertain more to how we *behold* (or at least perceive us beholding) our city, as opposed to how we simply build it.

And by and large (until recent years, at least), Torontonians have been clumsy and provincial at the fine art of self-beholding--so, our disadvantage might be more illusory than real. Indeed, it might be fairly claimed that the *opposition* to the Sam's sign, Yonge St honky-tonk, etc is more symptomatic of that provincial clumsiness than the embrace thereof.

And even a lot of thoughtful, unbigoted New Yorkers might agree.

Now, re Ingrid's
"even though we are so desperate to be perceived as a "world-class city""
...er, no. Only the dumbest suckers for Chamber-Of-Commerce bumf and flaky nostalgists for the glory days of Mayor Eggleton are desperate for Toronto to be perceived as a "world-class city". It's like "cool"; the harder you try, the lamer you are...

Ah, but then why would New Yorkers have been hyperventilating over the last days of CBGB?. To paraphrase (if one must), "it was a venue guys, not a national treasure."

Not so much arguing against *you*, as arguing against the idea that dem woild class Manhattanites are, in the end, any significantly different from us...

The Conference Board of Canada released a scathing report about Canada's lack of innovation, its complacency and its decreasing ability to compete with the rest of the world this week. The Conference board's CEO Anne Golden says, "You can trace our poor performance to a failure to innovate in the broadest sense."

It would serve you all well to read it.

Also read Chris Hume's June 16 Toronto Star column, "How do you spell creative bankruptcy? R-O-U-N-D-H-O-U-S-E." Leon's the furniture chain is taking over the Roundhouse, a designated national historic site. A furiture store moving in to a national historic site. What an outrage.

Here are some excerpts from Hume's article:

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The most troubling aspect of the arrangement, more worrisome than the fate of a building, is that it signals a city devoid of imagination. We have run out of ideas. We have given up. We have no way to save ourselves but to offer the public realm, now up for sale to the highest bidder. This in the Creative City!

Never has that term rung so hollow. Never has the self-deception been so painfully evident.

[This is the] mindset of a society grown rich plundering its own resources, whether natural or cultural.

------------

Just one more idiotic decision by the incompetents running this city who are making idiotic decisions on a daily basis.

But WE are the ones who are pathetic for idly standing by while allowing our city to be ruined.

I'm all for saving the sign and putting it somewhere where people who like looking at it will go and look at it and remember the Sam's store and the nice, knowledgeable salespeople who helped them buy CDs.

But it's a sign! We are treating this piece of advertising like it's some sort of cultural treasure.

In the meantime Toronto's real cultural treasures are being destroyed and neglected. Our priorities are all screwed up!!

If only the Roundhouse for instance, which really is a national treasure, had as much of a public outcry as saving the Sam's advertising sign!!!!

This sums up the infuriating mindset of a city so mediocre in its outlook that it holds a tacky advertising sign on an even tackier street as an important part of our city's history, while it plunders our real natural and cultural resources.

That's the point. Our real cultural resources are what we should be putting our energy into fighting to save. But it's not happening. Torontonians aren't outraged or informed or enlightened enough to care it seems.

This city is going down the toilet while we just sit by and watch!

Here's a copy of the motion being put forward today [PDF].

Ingrid, I totally agree that there are lots more cultural treasures that aren't getting the attention that the Sam's sign is. But that doesn't mean it's not worth saving.

"We are treating this piece of advertising like it's some sort of cultural treasure."

Who says it can't be both?

How many times do I have to say "Fine. Save the Sign." If it matters to you, save it and put it somewhere where you can go and look at it!

The problem is that people care more about saving an advertising sign than saving cultural treasures like the Roundhouse or the two turn of the century buildings across from the Eaton's Centre or our waterfront.

Our standards are low and our priorities are mixed up.

Ah, now I get the logic:

- City sells off cities' treasures = Bad.
- City finally tries to save one of the cities' treasures = WORST THING EVER

As popular as Sam's was, a CD store is not a cultural treasure! It's a STORE!

If the Future Shop were to go out of business next door, would you want to save that too?

Perhaps you could explain what in your opinion makes Sam's a "cultural treasure." It's unclear to those of us who see it as nothing more than a great CD store with great staff. But in the end, just a store!

Well, in Ingrid's defense, I must say that I was the first to sound something like her kind of note earlier in this thread; that is, pondering the skewedness of all this Facebooking over the sexy Sam's sign while the less-sexy Walnut Halls fall down. Though nobody seemed to pick up on that; maybe because I wasn't using Walnut Hall's collapse as an absolute cudgel against Sam's, the way that Ingrid might.

The trouble with Ingrid's "our standards are low and our priorities are mixed up" argument is that she's assuming there *wouldn't* be this kind of grassroots Sam's-type gesticulating in so-called "world-class" or rich-built-history metropolises because, well, they're too "world class" for that. Uh, yeah, as if. I mentioned CBGB's in NYC. There's also stuff like the (now gone) El Teddy's (the Tribeca joint w/the Statue of Liberty crown in the SNL opening credits). Yes, people rallied for that kind of meaningless trivia, and not without reason. And it isn't like the worthy (and overlooked) old doesn't still get destroyed or denatured or disfigured there, either--heck, esp. apropos Yonge, a lot of people feel as dismayed by the Disney-fication of 42nd Street as they would by the Leons-fication of the Roundhouse here.

And again, forget New York. Look at Boston. All that rich colonial history, and that friggin' Citgo sign in Kenmore Square that gleams over Fenway Park is commonly accepted as a cherishable city landmark. Yes, a "tacky advertising sign" in what might be considered an even tackier location. Yet it's truly beloved. A lot more regular-folk Bostonians would rally and Facebook over Citgo than over some such "Walnut Hall" equivalent by Bulfinch or whomever--yes, maybe it's "not fair", but such is the way it is. Sure, maybe a generation or two ago the more priggish ultra-Brahmin preservationists would have gasped or rolled their eyes at the idea of Citgo being "cherishable"--but these days, Citgo's more vociferous opponents aren't those opposed to neon tackiness, but those opposed to Hugo Chavez...

King Kong from Dullsville says it best

" Mr. Alsop is absolutely right: we can only better this city when we own up to the current state of affairs. That means discarding the pretense that Toronto is hip, sophisticated and 'world-class.'

The reality is that it is aesthetically impoverished in every way imaginable. Its buildings are dreary, timid and uninspiring. Its public spaces are mediocre. Its streetscapes are monotonous and ill-kempt. (Yonge Street is like a long, embarrasing streak of brown in one's underwear that just can't be removed no matter how many times you put it through the washer. Between Dundas and Bloor it is appalling!)

Having returned from two years in London, I despair of Toronto. London is a visually dynamic, aesthetically sophisticated city, and Toronto doesn't even TRY to be that.

The final touch of visual desolation is added by people's dress sense. I was shocked on returning here to see how badly people dress: no sense of style, no color, no appreciation of cut or one's own body type.

This city looks like the set of Dawn of the Dead, and the lone figures that actually do dress well look like they could be set upon at any time by the slack-jawed, insensate zombies. Short of a totalitarian dictatorship of designers (which I would support), I don't know how this city can be salvaged.

But let's begin where Mr. Alsop suggests, by acknowledging just how dire the situation is. "

One thing we can all agree on, Toronto will never be known as beautiful or stylish. At least not at the current rate.

Toronto Designer Bob Crier says

" Toronto truly has the worst city planners and architects in the world. We must pick from the dullest in schools. "

Writer Christopher Hume chimes in with some thoughful comments and observations.

Last chance to fix this city

Mar 28, 2007 04:30 AM

Christopher Hume

What this city needs is a new country.

Toronto has emerged as a 21st-century city stuck in a 19th-century nation.

While our federal and provincial leaders play the same old political games – games that haven't changed substantially since the 1800s – Toronto, the Cash Cow of Confederation, sinks ever deeper into the mire of civic poverty and infrastructural rot.

Both Ottawa and Queen's Park made it consistently clear they believe Toronto can be safely ignored, except, of course, for the $27 billion in income taxes alone we send to them annually.

As the city the rest of Canada loves to hate, Toronto makes an easy target for most other governments in the country, especially Ottawa and Queen's Park.

Indeed, we have reached the point where the mayor of Toronto is talking publicly about suing the province to force it to pay the social services bills it has dumped on the city.

Bills the province is required by law to pay.

How dysfunctional can we get?

That's why it's time to revive the discussion about a Toronto Charter, a polite way of saying Toronto independence. The recent changes to the City of Toronto Act were a good start, but there's a long way to go still. Though the city can now levy certain taxes – on booze, parking, roads – and alter its system of governance, the big issues of fiscal sustainability and self-determination remain unresolved.

In her introduction to the 2000 book, Toronto: Considering Self-Government, Jane Jacobs writes:

"In Canada, cities were initially dependent, minor subsidiaries of the provinces but ... their development can no longer be constrained by the tutelage of the past. (Cities) are not only a country's economic engines, they are places where everything comes together and then is disseminated, again and again and again. And they – like most children – will certainly outlive the circumstances of their parents. To shed old dependencies in order to take on increased responsibilities and more self-reliance is not a sign of failure of either parents or children."

The city-region discussed in the above-mentioned volume recognizes that urban centres are a country's primary economic and social generators. The idea isn't to weaken the confederation, but, in fact, to strengthen it.

One of the few non-Toronto politicians to grasp this city's essential role is the former mayor of Winnipeg, Glenn Murray. He liked to point out that a healthy Toronto helped Manitobans and other Canadians cover the costs of their basic services.

How ironic then that Toronto can't cover the costs of its own basic services.

After more than a decade of deferred maintenance, the question arises about whether the city can ever recover.

As urban planner Joe Berridge notes in Toronto:

"We could, of course, decide not to compete, keep on cutting capital budgets and trimming services, and make no big or bold moves. Many once-great cities have declined to purely local regional stature: Liverpool, Bordeaux, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Montreal. The social and cultural cost to Toronto would be enormous. Our children will choose not to live here."

Michael Mendelson, senior scholar at the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, calls Toronto, "the constitutional orphan of Canada."

He suggests the creation of a regional government to deal with the issues of the GTA – transportation, waste disposal, the environment, and the like.

He admits, "It has the disadvantage of requiring a thousand-and-one compromises and the end result may not resemble what is actually needed."

The recently relaunched Greater Toronto Transportation Authority represents a step in the right direction, but it remains to be seen how effective the body will be.

And as the GTTA's only non-political member, former Toronto chief planner Paul Bedford quickly made clear, "This is our last chance to get it right as a city."

Can any of you listen to yourselves right now? Your repetitive whining is deafening. "but eeeww Yonge street is UUUGGLYY!" Get over it. Yonge Street is Yonge Street, it's been the way it is for as long as I can remember, and this is Toronto, despite what most of you think while you bitch and complain inside your little bubble. If you don't like it, leave. Go to Unionville, its as bland as can be there, you might like it; and plus Toronto won't have to listen to your whining any longer.

I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. Getting rid of the Sam's sign wouldn't make Yonge St less dingy or ugly. In fact, I bet if it was taken down, it would be replaced with a new billboard within a month.
From what I understand, some people think it is inappropriate to consider a piece of commercial signage as a part of Toronto's heritage that should be saved. Sam's was founded in 1937. Those records have been there since the 60's. As much as some people dislike it, there is a place in history for businesses.

Everyone who thinks saving the sign is crazy, go talk to your parents and ask them if they remember going to Sam's to buy music when they were young. Ask them if there is a single other thing on Yonge St today that was around back then. Ask them if they still have any of the records they got there.

"As popular as Sam's was, a CD store is not a cultural treasure! It's a STORE!" = "As popular as the Colosseum was, a stadium is not a cultural treasure! It's a STADIUM!" Ingrid, who are you to say what is important to me and my connection with the past? You keep talking about this Roundhouse place. Who cares about the roundhouse? I have asked 3 people who were born in raised in Toronto if they cared about it and none of them even knew what it was. I can't imagine anyone who isn't a rail historian caring about that place, however, if people do care about it then cool! Save it too!

People have funny ways of keeping in touch with their memories and for a lot of people, Sam's is part of their personal history. We all have some little useless trinket that we keep because it has sentimental value. Peculiar things can have great emotional importance and it just so happens that for a lot of Torontonians, 2 massive neon records on Yonge St remind them of their past and the music that defined it.

I was very happy to hear that the sign has been saved.
Good job, Toronto.

I agree with warmflash. I just don't know how this city (or even this country) can be saved. We are a complacent, uninspiring, small-minded, under-achieving place with a "can't do" attitude.

People who now come to Toronto do so because this place offers them a better place to live. But we are no longer capable of attracting people from cities that are already really great places to live (ie London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Milan etc etc)

People who live in those cities don't move to Toronto and don't even have much reason to visit this city unless it's for work or family reasons. Why on earth would you want to move to Toronto from places like New York, Paris or Tokyo? There is nothing we offer that these cities don't have more of and better examples of. (Our only selling point may be cost of living, since we're a bargain internationally.)

So unfortunately we don't have much of a well-travelled, international-minded population who would have the mindset to raise standards, and make changes in the city.

Most of the people here don't have much of a basis for comparison and either don't notice our decaying, third-rate buildings and streets, or defend their style as "quintessentially Torontonian." Ughh!

It's really hard to fall in love with a city which is mediocre, ugly, conservative and dull without style, attitude and romance.

"But we are no longer capable of attracting people from cities that are already really great places to live (ie London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Milan etc etc)"
===============================

Er...re this "no longer" business, that implies there once was a time otherwise. *Was* there ever such a time--at least, when war and/or politics didn't factor into the equation? (Or when--at least, back in colonial days--those we attracted might as well have been "rejects" from across the pond?)

=================================
"So unfortunately we don't have much of a well-travelled, international-minded population who would have the mindset to raise standards, and make changes in the city."
=================================

Er, there's pitfalls to that. Note my "Tyler Brûlé fascist-style-snob lunatic fringe" comment. Here's a quote by Tyler B. from the Herald Tribune from May 4, 2007...

"Rather than taking wrecking balls to some of these outdated structures and building efficient, elegant terminals to cater to commuters and visitors, traditionalists want to stifle development by holding onto facades, layouts and features that do little to ease the transport pains experienced by hundreds of thousands daily."

Yeah, he may have a point, so I won't bother protesting it. The trouble is, ***even plenty of fine enlightened citizens of London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Milan, etc*** would be up in arms over such "well-travelled, international-minded" idealism. Even *they'd* more likely think Tyler Brûlé is a snotty, insensitive prick who should FOAD, than say "oh, wow, he's right, progress, progress, progress, high standards ad infinitum". By and large, ***they're just like us***, and you can't simply stomp all over them except by dictatorial Beijing/Dubai means.

Ingrid, you're looking at those "world class" places and their populace through such rose-coloured glasses, I'm wondering whether I'd even make *you* look like a "lookit me, I'm world class" dumb-tourist yokel were we to travel to NYC together. Look; I've travelled by MTA bus and subway from LaGuardia, inching through the depths of Jackson Heights very well aware of the life and energy around me and of what I was doing--and I've felt richer for it than if I were to opt for "well-travelled, international-minded" limo service. Have you? *Would* you? (And you're still obstinately refusing to address issues like CBGBs, or Citgo in Boston, etc--perhaps because, by your standards, their defenders aren't/weren't "well-travelled, international-minded" enough.)

Jane Jacobs is dead. And with her passing goes all hope for sad old Toronto; The Town That Fun -- and good taste -- Forgot.

>David Topping says: "For the last time, this article is not about a Toronto aesthetic, or the lack thereof. It's about one store, Sam the Record Man, and its designation and protection as a heritage building.

I'm going to start moderating comments that have nothing to do with the sign, something I should've started doing fifty posts ago. I ask everyone, please, to keep it on-topic."

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David Topping: Your idea of keeping this discussion "on-topic" would make for a extremely boring, narrow conversation. While you don't seem to get it, this discussion does relate to the Sam's sign, while at the same time addressing much larger issues like what motivates people in this city to care or not care about things like saving or not saving the Sam's sign.

The fact that there are currently 92 comments on this topic -- the highest so far of any blog in recent memory -- attests to the fact that people really want to discuss Toronto's aesthetic, vision, outlook, aspirations, standards, and priorities -- or lack thereof!

Someone at Torontoist should post a piece about this topic specifically. It would draw a lot of interesting discussion.

I though Ryerson was buying up this part of the strip and extending the university out to Yonge.

I don't mind saving the sign and putting it somewhere else, but good lord, please let's get rid of the disgusting, tacky stores along Yonge!!!

Bear in mind, too, that when a visiting architect/designer-type speaks of Torontonian "urban ugliness", they might well be thinking less in terms of Yonge btw/Dundas + Bloor, than of Bay btw/Dundas + Bloor. Not archaic honky-tonk retail tackiness, but the the more sterile realm of cheesy contemporary condo tackiness.

Face it, people; we can blame the whole 60s "pop aesthetics" movement for this incentive to embrace the Sam's sign and Yonge St in general as something other than expendable urban blight. And while the co-optable/corporatization-flypaper pitfalls of that approach are now apparent (cf. Dundas Square), it's still difficult to tilt against that particular pop-aesthetic windmill without looking incredibly elitist, or anti-democratic--or conversely, like a well-meaning Sunday-painter urbanist...

The Sam the Record Man sign is obviously a fire starter on the topic of Toronto’s – especially Yonge Street -- over all shabbiness and neglect. It’s difficult to discuss saving a commercial sign, when all around it is decay and squalor.

Perhaps Torontoist should do a story on the Sam’s Thread – our biggest thread yet – or on the squalor of Yonge Street and Toronto in general.

In this manner, we could start a thread that remains dutifully on topic.

It's keen to see how many people are as alarmed by Yonge Street as me. Keep it up folks. Perhaps we should stop blabbing about it on Torontoist -- much to their delight I'm sure -- and meet up some place to discuss this in person?

It's a great idea to get together and discuss this somewhere.

Perhaps Torontoist or one of the other blog sites could organize such a night and also invite urban designers like Joe Berridge, architects like Bruce Kuwabara, and journalists like Chris Hume to attend. That way people can meet eachother and talk about this pathetic situation in person.

Massive public pressure and a demand excellence in urban design from citizens, journalists, politicians and leaders in the design and business communities is the only way we are going to ever change the apathetic, mediocre mindset of this city and ever have the hope of raising standards and competing internationally.

I can't imagine the people at Torontist have the time to organize some kind of town hall on Toronto Ingrid. We may be better served to try organizing this on our own. I would imagine the Torontist crew is busy up to its eyeballs trying to publish stuff everyday.

"It's keen to see how many people are as alarmed by Yonge Street as me. Keep it up folks. Perhaps we should stop blabbing about it on Torontoist -- much to their delight I'm sure -- and meet up some place to discuss this in person?"

Ah, but I've heard this kind of "alarm" before. It's the same kind of "alarm" that made Nathan Phillips Square out to be more squalidly dysfunctional than it was, and groused about the four NPS-remake finalists not "going far enough".

Indeed, the whole what-to-do-with-NPS episode was probably the pivotal coming-out moment for Toronto's Sunday Painter Urbanists. And now, they're bringing their misbegotten high-mindedness to crusade for a spiffied-up Yonge, etc--ah, well.

Hey, if you wanna meet someplace, the Zanzibar's fine by me...

Why is this thread now Register-or-Anonymous Only?

In the end, the Sam The Record Man sign is sold -- for only $1500.00's -- and will now be placed in storage. For those who loved it, at least it will be around. And for the rest of us who do not see it as a treasure, at least it's finally gone from view.