The Making of a Medley
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Televisualist: A Kinder, Gentler Televisualist
On the second full day of the city workers' strike—June 23—Torontoist photographer Christopher Drost set up a camera rig in a window at the corner of Runnymede and Annette streets. Set to shoot one photo every ten minutes (and one every two minutes once the deals to end the strike were in place), the camera looked out towards the street and over two waste bins, one on the south and one on the north side of the street, snapping shots all day and all night for the whole rest of the strike.
From the seventy-five hundred resulting photos, Drost created a timelapse video, above, showing the incremental change (or lack thereof) that the strike caused on the streets of the city. Like Strike Watch, Drost's timelapse demonstrates the strange inconsistency of the strike's effects on the city's aesthetics, a change in part thanks to how Torontonians—out of necessity or generosity—often pitched in to help clean up themselves. During the strike, Drost explains, "three attempts were made to clean the environment around the [foreground] garbage can, while, across the street, someone (presumably the store owner) taped off the garbage can and put a small bin beside it."
Video by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.
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It was interesting to note how the motorists observed the bicycle lane and stayed out of it.
What's really interesting about this is how boring the trashcan is compared to all the other things you can see. I couldn't take my eye off the bikes being locked and unlocked except to notice just how much rain we had during the strike, and how it dried in the same way every time. And the workers painting the bike lane! That was very cool indeed.
It's interesting that once one person pulled the wrapper away to hold their garbage, suddenly everyone took it as permission to do the same and the wrapped filled, and then garbage started to appear on the ground around it, where previously the can hadn't been accumulating garbage at all.
"It's interesting that once one person pulled the wrapper away to hold their garbage, suddenly everyone took it as permission to do the same."
Absolutely true, and consistent with the broken windows theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows
Support for Broken Windows is pretty sketchy, while alternate explanations abound.
I really really enjoyed this video/these photos. I agree with the previous comment about how my eye is drawn to what is going on around the garbage can as opposed to at it. Thank you to those who took the time to remove the garbage bags and attempt to keep our city presentable!
Lu Galasso
Wow! This is great. I ride my bike from the Upper Beaches to downtown everyday and I feel like this is what I watch every day of the strike. I would notice which streets and intersections got messier and which ones got tidied up. It would have been great to see this in many more spots around TO - it gives you a view of the neighborhood people and businesses. btw - love the tune!
The video's now available in high-definition: you can watch it in glorious widescreen over at Vimeo.
Haha!! OMG, you call this garbage? This is a very cool video showing exactly how civilized your town is. I live in Brooklyn, NY, and I assure you after a few days you would not even be able to see the can for the piles of garbage burying it...and the rats gamboling in it. Our cans are far grosser without any type of strike.
Yeah, San Francisco isn't the dirtiest of cities, but this still only looks like a fairly normal day's trash in most areas.
You do have some very nice looking trash cans though with what looks like quite a bit of room for recycling. Perhaps the only good aspect of ours is that the recycling is separated out at the top in an accessible wire basket making it easy for the homeless to get at it rather than just digging through the trash as they would otherwise do.
I want to know who rides that white bike that shows up every day for the first half, and why it disappears by the end.
The bike owner is an employee to the company next door to my office. The reason why it disappears is interesting actually - it was stolen off the owner's porch mid July.