Shopping Carts in Ravines

When I reference Urban Hiking, what I’m thinking of in my mind is occasions where I’ve walked long distances through unfamiliar areas to reach a far-off destination (say, across a city) without ever having felt a sense of being lost but instead retaining a sense of exploration and enough focus to be charting the previously unfamiliar territory between my position and my desired destination. Part of my ability to do this is a keen sense for cardinal points, but honestly they sell that in stores and it fits in your pocket.

Here is an example from Aug 2, 2006 when I decided to walk home after a windy thunderstorm from Bloor downtown to Northern Etobicoke just using continuous course correction based on an awareness of directions and always choosing the path less familiar when presented with a choice.

Urban Hiking is fun, educational and exploration-based but has some more practical direct applications than the modern sport of Urban Exploration in places like warehouses (which is wicked) and storm drains (which seems to me like an unpleasant place to spend your time).

Urban Hiking is about assessing the often unfamiliar immediate environment for information (paths/potential paths) while remaining anchored in the broader geography.

With cardinal points, a sense of adventure and the ability to evaluate your surroundings for opportunities on the fly, it becomes irrelevant if you are unaquainted with your immediate location. You can avoid ever being lost yet still be constantly getting aquainted and discovering areas and experiences.

By retaining a conscious and lucid mind about your surroundings you can master their layout and choose routes through areas that avoid pollution (proximity to busy roadways), potential crime or physical obstacles. This allows you to choose your experiences-en-route as being as scenic or shortcut-quick as you desire.

For me, one of the definite highlights of the trip to NYC was visiting The Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill, an animatronics-based non-graffiti exhibit by infamous street and guerilla artist Banksy, who also happens to be my favourite contemporary artist. (Although for the record, Tom Green did the hang-your-own-painting-in-a-big-gallery trick in Ottawa first!)

I found out about the exhibit (and that it was by Banksy, as it exists anonymously and is staffed by randoms) from Wooster Collective, whose RSS feed I really need to stay up on because I just missed them speaking in Toronto by a day. I’m really glad they were careful about spoilers and left out some of my favourite things, like the leopard. (The exhibit is closed now.)

Many people who lined up did so only because they were walking down the rather busy street it was on and saw a line of people waiting to get into what appeared to be a pet store with a leopard in the window. I heard a lot of “Uh, I think it’s an art thing?”
Some things you had to see online though, like the record of the view from the mother CCTV camera’s lens:

Unlike his first North American exhibit in LA where Banksy painted an elephant to match a magenta-and-gold wallpaper print, officially decreed illegally animal abuse, much of this exhibit had strong anti-animal exploitation themes. Banksy not only said that this was a concious flip, but that much of the money from the elephant exhibit went into funding this one.

A woman outside was handing out Go Veg For Thanksgiving pamphlets but I rejected them because I’m already vegan, I already have good Thanksgiving recipes, and our Thanksgiving had already passed anyway. I don’t think she was officially associated with the exhibit, just using the opportunity.

So, I recently took a trip to New York City, leaving from and returning to Toronto via Megabus, a company that seems to mostly rent Coach Canada / Coach USA’s buses out and drive them themselves.

Our first driver was very conscientious and genial, and counted heads to make sure everyone was present after a stop. When we got to Buffalo, the driver switched. Nothing much happened for most of the trip, and after the Buffalo Airport stop we were down to 5 passengers bound for NYC.

I was sleeping in the back through part of New York state and awoke to find a woman lying injured in the aisle of 5-passenger bus and moaning / calling out for help saying her shoulder hurt and she couldn’t get up. She had apparently fallen, and the driver wasn’t pulling over or doing anything to respond to the situation, he just kept speeding down the highway.

Even with all the passengers on the bus standing up and yelling at him variations of “Stop! Stop the bus! Someone’s hurt! Pull over! Someone is injured! Don’t you have policies to follow? What is wrong with you, why are you not stopping? Why are you still speeding down the highway when a woman is injured back here and needs a hospital?” and so on, he continued to speed and not respond.

The bus continued down the road for ten to twenty minutes (in traffic and at or above the speed limit) with the woman lying, moaning in pain on the ground. One passenger called the bus company and the only thing that came of the conversation was him yelling “Don’t tell me he has it under control! He doesn’t have anything under control, he’s speeding down the road!”

The driver finally pulled over in Hackensack, New Jersey after some conversation in Spanish over his radio, and he asks for everyone’s information while the passengers use their own phones to call an ambulance and contact the woman’s local relative. He wrote down my name incorrectly even though I showed him my ID and explained which was my middle and which was my last name.

Volunteer college kid paramedics wearing track pants (one yellow with a robot bursting out of his rear) arrived to try to awkwardly lift the woman and load her into an ambulance. Apparently this is what happens in the states. The woman said that she had a checkered suitcase under the bus and “it” was loaded into the ambulance with her.

When we arrived in NYC, the only suitcase left was not our solid black one but a checkered (houndstooth) one with a pink ribbon tied around it. It then took the whole of the next 24 hours to deal with tracking down the hospital she went to, trying to explain to the staff there that they might need to remove it, trying to track down the relative the woman was going to visit, and trying to get the bus company to do anything at all to assist with this. What they did was misinform the woman’s relative, claiming that we had their bag with us.

We eventually had to make our way through an unfamiliar city at our own expense to locate the home of the injured woman’s relative and retrieve our bag that she had luckily taken on to NYC and not left in New Jersey. Luckily, they were some of the nicest people we interacted with in the States. We found out then that the woman had broken her shoulder.

Then, on the way back, we were given the wrong bus departure information on our itinerary and missed our bus. We ended up having to sleep for 11 hours on the floor of the subway level of the Port Authority bus terminal with random riders and homeless people and then as we waited for our Toronto-via-Buffalo bus at gate 309 as instructed, the driver called out “Buffalo” without mentioning Toronto at gate 310 and had I not gone and asked we would’ve been stuck there for another span of hours, playing Fuzzle and watching one-footed pigeons hobble around and fly laps inside.

I was walking by the Student Centre with Mike and, given the issues in the air at the moment, noticed a cop car driving into the loop. Yeah, I would’ve obviously noticed the cop car anyway, one for it being on campus, two for it being a cop car at all regardless of context.

The thing is, two more drove up and parked behind the first, near Vari Hall. This was followed by a York Security car.

Given what’s been going on lately at York, I figured it’d be handy to have some shots of police vehicles with York buildings, even if there wasn’t anything going on at this moment. I also on a whim decided to take this photo from higher up.

Not one minute after I snapped that shot, this powerfully loud clanging alarm started ringing that could be heard in and on Behavioural Sciences, as well as in Vari and Ross.

We went downstairs and outside and were advised to remain outside by staff who said they were planning on going home, but wouldn’t state anything further towards an explanation for the alarm.

A crowd of people accumulated outside Vari, a fire prevention van showed up plus another cop car.

That’s all the information I’ve got so far, as we got on the Glendon bus and spent the rest of the daylight exploring over there.

I can say that if an alarm had been pulled, a firetruck would have responded, if anyone was injured a firetruck and/or ambulance would have come, and if there was any sort of a situation involving serious weapons then the police would’ve brought the ETF. So all of that sniffing lands me at the foot of a safety drill, but I’m not so sure that’s what it was.

We were specifically cautioned not to go back into the Behavioural Science building and police were questioning a woman inside, which was visible from the window.

Just now, wearing only plastic trackpants and an old T-shirt, I threw my boots on and went outside to put something in the green bin for pick up tomorrow. The weather was so nice (Toronto, Canada, December 29th, 6˚ Celsius) that I decided to go for a stroll around the block.

I walked down to the bus stop on the off chance that Sa and her friend would be pulling up, but they weren’t, so I walked a few blocks down Lawrence and then came back around.

Either I’m the most Canadian person in the country, or climate change is still a relevant issue this year, despite having (barely, since the dump was mostly melted) the first white Christmas in years. Here in Toronto, our weather’s starting to feel like Victoria’s.

It was a very invigorating walk. It was hardly a walk by my standards, I take some pretty serious walks sometimes, but it was definitely refreshing. I was not only enjoying it, I was snapping a beat on my fingers and dancing along the sidewalk for part of it.

I guess I sort of have a bit of some wanderer’s soul in me… quelled somewhat by an overabundance of what a beautiful thing it is to have a loving home.

An excellent combination.

Me and Sa were playing the ’90s version of Trivial Pursuit the other day. I’ve had it for a while, got it at a garage sale, but hadn’t played it before.

The game pieces are Kurt Cobain, a latte in a mug, a PDA and a dot-com stock certificate. The question categories are also different from standard Trivial Pursuit:

“Important” - News, Headlines, Milestones
“Viewing” - Sitcoms, Videos, Movies
“Hanging” - Sports, Concerts, Hobbies
“Wired” - Internet, Gadgets, Technology
“Trends” - Fads, Fashions, Slang
“Oops” - Mishaps, Mistakes, Divorces

A few rolls in, and having no experience with the content of the question cards, I landed on my first “Important” square.

I looked at the description of “Important” (News/Headlines/Milestones) and immediately said “Ohhh god, this had better not be about OJ Simpson!”

Question: Whose parents won $21 million in a wrongful death suit from a man worth only $3 million?

Answer: Ron Goldman.

Well, had some downtime there, so this post is slightly out of date now that the exhibit has closed… but oh well.

I was delivering flyers for The Power Plant (the art gallery) to various galleries and cafes and whatnot around town, which was pretty cool because I got a chance to check out all the little independent galleries around West Queen West.

One of these galleries is Mercer Union on Lisgar St. I’d been in only once before, during Nuit Blanche of this year, but this time I encountered something I was already familiar with but totally I hadn’t been expecting:

On display was Michel de Broin’s “Shared Propulsion Car.”

The thing is, this “car” is actually totally stripped down inside (the engine is gone, which is apparent from a quick glance through the window) and the seats have been replaced with four chairs, each with bicycle pedals, to create something between a four-person bike and a Flintstones car. In fact, the “headlights” glowing in that first photo actually have tealight candles burning away in them, as the car has no source of power.

I’d previously heard about this piece on blogTO when it was taken for a four-person test “drive” that resulted in a $500 fine which has turned into an upcoming trial.

I believe the woman working at the gallery said a court date of April 8th was set, and they and their legal counsel feel confident that the court will rule in their favour - i.e. that this is not a car and not subject to laws pertaining to automobiles, but rather that it is a decorated bicycle and just as legal for road use as much larger multi-person bikes.