I suppose I should really just forget about the spent force known as the Spacers. They had a good year or so, but really, it’s over. Eventually Blackett will hand over editorship of Spacing to Dylan Reid and fulfill his destiny by going work for his hero. It’s what Wanagas did. (Were Blackett as smart as the popular press claims he is, he’d go to work for the next mayor, a grey-haired man with glasses.)
Of interest, though, are the published ruminations of charges of vandalism against the Spacers for the so-called art attack on the Info-Must-Go pillars.
The company denies it, but one City Hall insider tells us that Astral is considering taking legal action for “damages” in revenue supposedly lost when their ads were covered up.
The company also reportedly talked to police about laying vandalism charges against TPSC activists. Seems their info pillars are equipped with security cameras.
No, the new ones are supposed to be. If the current ones are so equipped, it’s time to file a complaint with the provincial privacy commissioner, who is a tough broad. In fact, just this published claim is enough grounds for such a complaint.
Astral… says it has no plans to sue TPSC members, according to spokesperson Alain Bergeron. The group’s members are not taking Bergeron at his word. None we spoke to for this article wanted to be identified.
Well, that just shows how immature young these “activists” are. We know your identities already. You write signed posts on blogs, you show your faces in multiple photo galleries, you attend public meetings.
And anyway, getting sued would be the best thing that ever happened to the Spacers. It would be Toronto’s own McLibel trial. Even if they lost, they’d win. But these kids are so green they don’t understand that.
Don’t want to fuck up your middle-class career path with an arrest? Then don’t poster over private property. (And really, nearly all postering in the city is legally indistinguishable from that. Haven’t the Spacers been effective in arguing that, in a contest between cleanliness and free speech, free speech must prevail?)
Later, I was surprised to read the following in an Eye editorial:
The diversity of voices – including… the active participation of accessibility expert, blogger and friendly-fire critic of public space activists Joe Clark, who provided much of the technical ammunition for those who opposed the deal – was especially encouraging.
The piece reiterated several of my own points, though it did leave the impression that garbage cans are gonna have advertising under the street-furniture deal (they aren’t). Nonetheless, I quite appreciate the recognition.