These days, Toronto is exploding with downtown construction. New buildings are being built literally everywhere and cranes are now becoming an everyday part of our skyline. (I wouldn't be surprised if they started appearing on our postcards!) It seems as though the Big Smoke is on a roll now that the IOC has been wooed by its sleek "high-tech" Olympic bid and expatriate urbanites have begun to move back from culturally barren suburbia into all the new housing that's materializing.
One problem though: all that "housing" being constructed in the midst of what is undoubtedly the worst homeless crisis in the country is absolutely unaffordable. Prices begin at $150,000 CAD, quite handily surpass $1 million, and continue on as high as one's imagination allows.
There's something profoundly disturbing1 about a homeless man wrapped in three blankets lying under a sign proclaiming: "You living on Queen Street W. Starting at $250,000!". He sadly seems to be taking the ad quite literally...
However, the art of detournement is alive and well, so here are a few examples of construction site graffiti that I've seen:
On the ad mentioned above:
Build your walls and surround yourself with your emptiness
Loneliness capitalism
Directly under the logo of the bank financing the project:
Keeping you in debt...
On an ad sporting a close-up of a supermodel's grinning face, with the caption "It's you!":
Everyone is beautiful
On a concrete wall belonging to a somewhat run-down looking apartment complex:
Rent is theft!
And on a tattered poster, now blocked by the latest trendy boutique, a shocked 50s-era WASP housewife once gasped:
Why must this vandal deface my liberal utopia?
1Of course, homelessness in general is always disturbing, but the sharp contrast with unabashedly upscale advertising only amplifies the feeling...