Both sides are welcome to continue to duke it out, but this feature isn't going anywhere any time soon. If you think this, or any other submission, is a lemon—and you aren't opposed to the overall concept of street art or graffiti—you really should submit stuff that you find and like. Vandalist is driven entirely by submissions; the more we get, the better.

"Hecho" means "done" or "made" in Spanish.

In terms of advertising, the ad that you're talking about, uskyscraper (which doesn't always appear, but does sometimes) is actually a context/keyword-sensitive Google Ad, not one we have ourselves sold to go with the page. The ads––like any and all other Google Ads on Torontoist––are inserted automatically, based on the content of the page they're inserted on. We're moving away from any and all Google Ads (text or image) on Torontoist over the next little bit, so those kind of ads should go away soon, to the benefit of everyone. We want more stuff like the Cinematheque ads, which we've sold ourselves and which are far more relevant and interesting to our audience.

In terms of legality, it's not as easy of a division as legal/good, illegal/bad––I think that plenty of good street art and graffiti is illegal and still counts as art. (There is plenty of bad art and graffiti that's illegal, obviously.) I think we should be judging these pieces based on a question Posterchild asked a while ago: is the art good? That's subjective and we don't and shouldn't discourage debate about that. My comment wasn't meant to discourage debate about individual pieces, but to make it clear that the people opposed to any and all street art and graffiti—whether it's beautiful or ugly, smart or dumb, legal or illegal—aren't going to have any effect on Vandalist.

On that note (this seems to come up a lot and I don't think anyone's said anything about it), the name "Vandalist" (like the tag "Vandals!") is supposed to be ironic and the pieces featured in it are supposed to be proof that graffiti and street art is not vandalism. According to the OED, a vandal is "a wilful or ignorant destroyer of anything beautiful, venerable, or worthy of preservation." In my eyes, some of the pieces are exactly the opposite—they're themselves "beautiful, venerable, and worthy of preservation." Vandalist is not condoning vandalism; it's trying to undermine the notion that the people who make this art are all vandals.

Svend: You ever take a look at the murals done (seems to me legally, or at least tolerated, but I'm not sure) on the wall bordering the north side of the parking lot at Keele Station? They are excellent, are completely redone every once in a while and provide some beautiful splashes of colour on an otherwise boring white wall. The people that craft these pieces are extremely talented artists and their work is far beyond that of mere taggers. (Sidenote: there is graffiti at the top of the wall which is admittedly bad and boils down to nothing more than tags--and at one point a declaration of love. But there are also strange and curious little figures on exhaust vents which aren't as bad as the tags.)

As for this particular piece, I like it. I'm not going to comment on its legality. We have no idea if it was done with or without permission, but I like the drawing. It's got nice details and it's pleasing to my eyes.

of course, i imagine that you're predisposed to find ANY graffiti to be bad art...

And the day David Topping owns his own house and lets anyone who wants to make "art" on his front facade is the day, i feel, he should be allowed to continue with this column.

it would count towards decreasing your property value. so that would give you street cred.

t-rek..."when really I should invite some no good criminals in to destroy my walls with their disrespectful lines and willful colours"...not really necessary...you can just go to art-expo and have your pick...it is on this weekend at metro convention centre. lots of material for a column named bad-art-ist

Surprise, surprise - more hipster cheerleading of vandalism because it's oh so cool.

As soon as you people actually own property, and some asshole comes and takes liberties with it with a can of spray paint, you'll all change your tune.

It's an annoying process the rest of us have go through - waiting for you all to grow up.

davedave - It's a weekly column celebrating Toronto's street art, so yeah, cheerleading of street art is to be expected. But who are you calling hipsters, hipster?

whether it's art or not. weather it's legal or not.

It's happening in toronto...ist.

Not the greatest bit of art i've seen.
I don't understand the negativity. It's a part of life happening in Toronto so why not show it on Torontoist?
It's one of the many reasons I like Toronto.
I hope you keep the Vandalist section.

This morning I saw a tag - "SURA" written somewhat stylishly on the wall of the bldg at 720 King W. It does break up the aesthetic of the building's facade. A lot of the time, taggers aggravate me no end - what a bunch of egoists! They go around writing their name on everything in both an effort to be noticed and a reverence for a tradition rooted in gang violence and poverty [and yet so few of them do anything to really acknowledge the tradition in which they "work" nor produce any art that moves it along]. I sympathise with owners of small businesses and homeowners who must regularly clean up after a thousand "DOSE-1" tags are slapped all over in a cheap scrawl.

But I do also appreciate the criminality of it. We live in a world where the architecture and design [visually] of our environment is approved and implemented by a class far removed from most of us plebes posting here. So the sloppy, ill-informed, immature, braggart's doodle - impermanent, and impertinent - disrupts what can be the monotony of our modern city. I mean, most taggers I just want to beat about the head until they get a job or something, but still the ridiculousness of what they do can provide an aspect of absurdity to the drab and dreary succession of advertisements for beauty products and McDonalds restaurants.

[If you care to investigate modern gang graffitti, you'll be shocked at how artless it is. It is a fascinating group of codes and signals, designed to be clearly and unmistakeably understood - thus a distinct lack of your usual tagger's cursive or illegiblity.]

Humans like to draw and write things on stone surfaces. I think it makes us think, even if we know it's gonna get buffed the next day when Waste Management or Municipal Licencing gets around to that particular garbage can, that someone will remember us and know that we were here.