Results tagged “joeclark”

Obama Cybernet is no more, in name at least. Owner Amveson Fitsumbrahn made good on his promise to change the name of his Internet café on the Danforth to avoid confusion with the Obama Café just a few steps away. The "O" and one stroke of the "M" have been scratched off the original sign with surgical precision, neatly morphing Obama Cybernet into Bana Cybernet.

Toronto needs a song. Yes, there are plenty of tunes about Toronto, plenty of albums inspired by Toronto, plenty of lyrics that namedrop Toronto. But we lack an anthem. Songs that have this city as their explicit subject tend to be at least one of: a) ironic, b) mournful, c) novelties, or d) dated. Yet we suspect there are already some hymns-in-waiting that defy these categories; perhaps you've even written one yourself.

It's hard to know where to start in our analysis of this ad for the website accessibletoronto.com, found above Sparkling Bubbles on Dundas Street East by local Web accessibility expert/TTC enthusiast Joe Clark. Needless to say, placing your wheelchair-emblazoned logo above a restaurant without a wheelchair ramp is sending mixed signals at best. The fact that the second floor of the building is boarded up—inaccessible to the world, you might call it—doesn't help. To top it off, the website in question is not actually accessible, at least to visually impaired visitors using screen-reading software that requires alt text, an HTML attribute that helps such programs properly interpret images.

Local gadfly Joe Clark is well known for his thoroughly biting analyses of typography, the idiosyncrasies of Canadian spelling, and the TTC. But while we at Torontoist are more than happy with his generally curmudgeonly demeanour, Clark has decided to shake things up a bit and, in his own words, "work on a positive and uplifting project for a while." So with that aim in mind, Clark last week launched a new blog that zones in on another of his municipal loves, simply titled Fans of Toronto Public Library (a.k.a. TPLFans).

Though we're in the midst of a very un-February-like heat wave, the smart money is on a few more weeks of snow and pain. And when that snow strikes, you may notice the return of a familiar TTC glitch: our beloved automated stop announcements will, along with the rest of us, give up the will to live. Gibberish will flash across LED screens, and the comforting, measured voice of Cheryl Bome will no longer mark the passage of streets and stops.

At 7:46 Monday morning, Torontoist received a release from press@ttc.ca, headed "TTC launches the 'WARM WELCOME' campaign":

When we tried out the bench prototype at the street furniture unveiling at City Hall in June, it was one of the few items we were pretty much okay with. But because Astral Media can't do anything right (when it comes to street furniture and billboards, anyway—their other divisions seem to be functioning relatively well), they've managed to screw this up, too.

Photo of the New Canadian Library edition of Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel by David Topping. Note spelling of "colors."

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

This is Jörg Cieslok. He runs Titan Outdoor Canada. He is six and a half feet tall and has a thick German accent. He has a low opinion of "grassroots groups" like residents associations. He regularly calls up Rami to yell at him. He is more responsible for illegal billboards in Toronto than almost any other individual. He claims, under oath, to have lost $1 million due to sign bylaw enforcement. He threatened to sue Rami and is currently suing the City. And last night I learned that he is also an amateur paparazzo.

In our inbox yesterday appeared a link to a TTC tender for consultant services, sent to us by Joe Clark (as these things tend to be). They're looking to hire someone to (emphasis ours) "provide professional architectural, engineering/design services and specialized transit services to perform the study concerning the installation of platform screen doors at 75 locations in 69 subway stations and in the six stations that will be constructed within the Spadina subway extension, as well as the documentation to allow the Commission to install a test installation in an agreed upon location."

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

A little more of the renovation of Museum subway station has been revealed, showing oddly contrasting purple columns and white moulded volutes. (See also Rannie Turingan's video taken from a train pulling into Museum station.) Still under wraps until the official unveiling in April are the individual column designs themselves.

Selected quotes from "Toronto's Type and Tile Heritage" by Edward Keenan, from the November 14th issue of Eye Weekly:

Discovered going eastbound towards downtown on an old, very packed, and very hot subway car at 8:30 on a Monday morning: an old route map, sans Sheppard line subway stations; and an old ad advising riders against the gravest of transit crimes––leg extension.

Reader Cy Goldsbie sent us the above photos, taken at St. Clair West station, along with the following note: These aren't the greatest pictures, but I think they're clear enough. The hand-written sign is one of two on the same wall just above the duct tape sign. I think I've discovered a new font that even Joe Clark doesn't know about. Of the font mixture of which he spoke, 'Duct-Tape' was never mentioned. As...

This past weekend's TTC Type & Tile Tour (or TTTT) was such a success (50 people! some of them women!) that Joe Clark is doing it again, bigger and (maybe) better, this upcoming Sunday. While last weekend's trip kept to the Bloor-Danforth line, this one will see the tour take stops along the Sheppard, Yonge, and Spadina lines for maximal signage/font/TTC-critiquing––the itinerary so far ranges from the inspiring (Dupont) to the horrifying (Osgoode), with a few curiosities along the way. If you're interested, meet up at track level at Lawrence West station on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Oh, and be sure to bring a few extra cents: fares rise that same day.

If you really like typography, signage, and the TTC––like, really really like it––maybe you'll want to join Joe Clark this Sunday, October 28, at 2:00 p.m. at Scarborough Centre Victoria Park Station for the TTC Type & Tile Tour (or TTTT), a guided excursion through some of the Transit Commission's successes and failures with signage. (Mostly failures.) The itinerary includes trips to choice vacation spots like Victoria Park's bus bays and Spadina's Walmer Road exit, and, if it's successful, they'll be even more in weeks to come. If you're up for it, look for the man in the purple hat who seems super-enthusiastic about signage.

Above is the TTC's unnamed official font. Though other fonts are similar––like Futura, which we used for elements of our survey, or Gill Sans––there are none exactly like it. No one knows who designed it, or why it's not still being used consistently across the TTC.

On Monday, the TTC unveiled a survey that, in lieu of other public consultation, would be used to help the organization determine what cuts it may need to make this year. (For more on the TTC's potential budget shortfall, see our interview with Adam Giambrone, the TTC's documentation included with the survey, and Steve Munro's excellent summary of the situation.) The problem is, the survey really isn't that great: it's too vague, too incomplete, and a little bit biased. In short, it's not enough.

Reader Cy Goldsbie (yes, relation) sent us the above photos of a box that popped up in St. Clair station over the weekend. Marked "DEPOSIT PUBLIC CONSULTATION SURVEY HERE," the box is at the "end of the southbound platform tucked into the alcove of the non-working elevator." (In other words, they're about as conspicuous as what Joe Clark calls the TTC's "intentionally hidden online complaints form.")

Eight months after Torontoist, Reading Toronto, Spacing, and BlogTO all banded together to solicit reader comments to improve the TTC's website and after Adam Giambrone agreed to re-open the Request for Proposal (RFP) to allow for "a more ambitious and exciting project," there has finally been some news to report of late. Last week, Adam Giambrone told Torontoist that the website would launch sometime in the fall, and would definitely feature everyone's top request––a trip planner. Yesterday, in the process of a godammed-extensive breakdown of his grievances, transit nut Joe Clark synthesized some details about the way that the TTC wants its new website to run. Plausibility aside, the TTC's wishlist for it's site designer gives us a look––albeit a very incomplete one––into the general idea of what we'll get come fall when the TTC's website fills our hearts with joy and delight.

Photo by matthewpiers from the Torontoist Flickr pool.

Yesterday the City of Toronto unveiled the designs submitted for the "Coordinated Street Furniture Program," its plan to grant a billboard company a twenty-year monopoly on providing and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, benches, and other items for Toronto’s sidewalks.

Elected municipal officials across Toronto now have four-year terms thanks to Queen's Park. Citing the increased complexity of municipal affairs the province rushed through a bill lengthening municipal government terms. The reform divided council and raised criticism from local activists like former mayor John Sewell.

In due time, you'll be able to fold a map of city in half, with Yonge Street as the crease, and witness the more or less symmetry in Starbucks locations on Queen Street. One Starbucks is on Queen West in Beaconsfield, site of the infamous "Drake you ho this is all your fault" tag of last year. The other is planned for Queen East in Leslieville, home of the infamous commenter Joe Clark. More importantly, West Queen West (or whatever) and Leslieville may mirror each other in more ways than coffee chains - as condos, home renovations and, eventually, higher property values begin to appear.

Margaret Atwood is signing books, actually she's using her newly developed machine to sign books. It seems that Atwood is sick and tired of doing endless book tours and signing countless books, so she's invented a machine that allows her to remotely sign books. Torontoist sympathizes with Atwood, who is approaching 70, and would find whirlwind publicity tours tiresome after the 30+ books she's done. Frankly, if the invention let's Atwood spend more time writing she can use as many remote controlled signing devices as she wants! After all the Beatles did their best work (Sgt. Pepper's, the White Album) after they stopped touring, what does that tell you?

In the news of the world wide web, Joe Clark (not to be confused with the real Joe Clark) has just informed us of his new neighbourhood website, The Free City of Leslieville. Though it's purported to be about Leslieville, the content of Joe Clark's most recent web-venture concerns two subjects: Joe Clark and how much Joe Clark doesn't like Spacing.