A Month of Subways extra!

This is the penalty-box seat right behind the one with the most footroom in the fleet. Oh, and these buses, the slowest in that fleet, are 20 years old.

At various locations in the east end, and somehow still in business.

I guess guys are willing to cross the river to buy the last vinyl turntables still in manufacture.

You just can’t make nospace-emdash-nospace work in the long run. There are too many edge cases that become incomprehensible, as in this Report on Business cover (April 2007):

Rewritten:

Issy Sharp’s five-star,
platinum-plated,
exquisitely tasteful—
and Saudi prince–
endorsed—quest for world domination*

Note that “Saudi prince–endorsed” must use an en dash and doesn’t. They hang the apostrophe, but do nothing about the fact that five of the six lines have some kind of hyphen or dash. Why they didn’t break up the appositive phrase “and Saudi prince–endorsed” onto its own lines is beyond me.

Sorry, kids. You have to use space-endash-space. You can reserve em dash for introductions of dialogue, cut-short interruptions, and the like.

(There’s a similar example in Spy: The Funny Years, actually.)

I prefer the fictitious Peter Saville to the real one we’re stuck with now (q.v.).

All through April 2007 on my Flickr, I’ll be posting one or more photos per day of signage from the TTC that is “interesting” in some way, usually because it’s awful. When I’m done, the posted photographs (tag:AMonthofSubways; set) will represent a mere 10% of my inventory.

And while I’m doing it, I’ll be boning up on my four-inch-thick stack of materials on the topic, larger than any other inside or outside the Commission.

Inferences may be drawn. While you’re doing that, maybe somebody could explain why I receive no recognition, not even a link, for my noncommercial TTC “work,” while head Spacer Matt Blackett does paid work for them and that also goes without comment. I submit these are not equivalent efforts.

Recently, I dissected the TTC’s plans to pay A-list architects, like Frank Gehry, a full five grand to slap together some back-of-napkin drawings for new subway entrances. I decided to be extra-thorough in fact-checking that story. I asked the Art Gallery of Ontario, which hired Gehry to destroy a previous renovation and install a new one, if they had a media contact for Gehry’s firm. Here was the response: “Gehry [A]rchitects has requested we not disclose their contact.” (Not much of a “contact,” then, is it?) “[H]owever, we would be happy to forward any request for info etc. on to them through our office.” Sorry, no, I don’t need an intermediary, and this isn’t about the AGO.

Who wrote it? Here’s to you, Matthew Ross, “publicist.”

This is the same AGO that hired Eli Singer to invite selected bloggers (“the citizen-journalist community”) to the unveiling of Gehry’s new design and, later, to a Warhol exhibit. These bloggers had precious little to do with architecture or art. (What does computer programmer David Crow know about architecture, and computer programmer Joey DeVilla know about art? Apart, that is, from fuck-all?)

By contrast, which neighbourhood site, whose authors have architectural training and journalism experience, spent a year publishing illustrated architectural reviews?

Was Singer’s project concerned with inviting high-profile computer programmers or inviting blog writers with actual knowledge? Which of those options makes sense, and which, in typical Toronto fashion, was actually chosen? All told, it seemed like an exercise in kingmaking for Singer, who appears to fancy himself some kind of blogging tastemaker in this city, or some kind of official liaison between corporate culture and blogs. I also wonder exactly what he was doing at TransitCamp. (The AGO’s official blog, Art Matters, remains a complete mess, as it uses four frames and tables for layout. Art matters, but code doesn’t: The true sign of a blogging amateur.)

Blogs allow anyone to write; Eli Singer and Matthew Ross are all about controlling the message. How old-media.

Rather extravagant orange Didot (or didot, generically) italics with crapola Helvetica and ITC Bookman. And handlettering.

Bit of a Cabbagetown mishmash that could stand in for a Leslieville mishmash.