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Paging Urban Decoder
Today’s article in the Globe Review about David Macfarlane was probably intended to tell us new and exciting things about David Macfarlane. But TOist couldn’t get past the giant picture of David Macfarlane and his city-issue bike post, a prop in his latest play. You see, for years we’ve lost sleep at night wondering about the validity of a rumour that we’ve not been able to confirm or disconfirm via snopes: Did NDP mustache Jack Layton invent those circular bike nubs? Is Layton our localized Internet-inventing Al Gore? Or is it all just an urban myth, repeated groundlessly each time we match kryptonite to concrete? We were going to shout out our query when Jack passed us by at this weekend’s College Street processional, but didn’t want to disturb the concentration of the thirty-odd, elderly Portuguese men that surrounded us. Any information pertaining to Layton’s inventing gene most welcome! We find it hard to believe that Jack has extra time to divert to such endeavours, but he does find time to meticulously groom that stache, so anything’s possible.
*Update* – An aide to Layton sends us this tip:
In short. Yes. Jack Layton did in fact have a hand in designing the ubiquitous bike posts you see dotting the streets of Toronto. I’m told it involved several pints of beer, a conversation with a good friend of his, the back of a cocktail napkin and a eureka moment. Not much else is known about how it all progressed from there.