Today’s National Post Toronto Magazine has a series of 5 articles on evolving neighbourhoods in the city, including the Oakwood neighbourhood north of St. Clair, Queen West, the Gaybourhood, and the coffee-liberation of Leslieville & South Riverdale (not online) . There is also an excerpt of the Artburbia? essay I contributed to the latest edition of uTOpia (note, seems only 1/3 of the excerpt made it online — but all these articles look better in the printed magazine anyway, which itself has impressed us over the past few months).
In Artburbia? I argue the next logical place for Toronto’s arts scene to settle is in the suburbs, where it could find space and mix in with the neat stuff already happening there — maybe creating new forms of art and art practice (a “Toronto Suburban” perhaps). Two years ago I wrote an article in Eye called Scarborough Fair about the Bendale neighbourhood, one of the places I propose has all the makings of an art-friendly area.
With Mike Smith’s piece in this week’s Now and John Lorinc’s piece on stripmalls in the first uTOpia, all this attention on Toronto’s suburbs is great. To use election language, they are the places to watch in this city (been watching the Liberal convention all day, it’s the only way I know how to talk right now). It’s where the great big city experiment that is Toronto takes place most quietly-brilliantly and sometimes most awkwardly. At Spacing, we’re excited about the Intersections issue we’re putting together right now, where a number of our writers explore various crossroads in Toronto, many of which are located in these unsung neighbourhoods. More to come, in the years to come, for sure…
(Photo of Lawrence Avenue, looking west towards Kennedy by Brent Foster via National Post)
13 comments
OK, this is an *authorized* republication of your chapter, right?
I live at Yonge and York Mills, where there is no commercial, communal, or artistic activity at all. Does that mean I’m on the cutting edge?
^^Yes.
^No, that’s just North Toronto. The only cutting edge is from Restoration Hardware.
Wait, certain suburbs are hip, but uninteresting suburban-like parts of the city are unhip because they’re not the hip suburbs? I’m lost here.
Exactly. Also, Disparishun, the great thing about North Toronto is that they have a sense of humour.
Jonathan, sometimes the new epicentre for artists escapes the eye as it takes hidden in private apartments and locked warehouses. In New York, for example, Bushwick is considered to be hot hot hot for artists fleeing Williamsburg but you would hardly notice by walking around there.
First generation suburbs have some of the things that might appeal to artists: small, inexpensive and low-key industrial sites that would be good for glass blowing or working with metal, Googie architecture and Craftsman or ‘War bride’ bungalows that sell for a song. The Queensway in Etobicoke is sort of like this; it reminds me of an LA neighbourhood like Los Feliz or Silver Lake, both of which are very artistically prodigious.
One of the great things about Toronto is that you can lead both an East coast or West coast creative lifestyle with what the surroundings have to offer. You can either pedal your one-geared bicylce around the tight century-old alleys of Kensington or pass out on a vintage lawn chair on the front yard of your Etobicoke bungalow drinking Mai Tais and getting sun drunk. The second one is still undervalued here, but probably not for long. Sorry if I sounded like a dilettante just right then.
Um. Apologies if I offended, Shawn; it was not my intention.
What about Queen East (Jarvis to Parliament) or Queen & Boadview?
Disparishun> No offense taken at all. I was only kidding about North Toronto. Though I would say I didn’t say, here or in the essay, that these places were hip or cutting edge. I don’t know what those words mean exactly, and they mostly seem to be used poorly.
Brad> What about Queen East? I do mention easterly stretches of Queen in the essay as place where the arts are finding a home right now.
leonard> Ha, dilettante. Actually though that vision of Mai Tais and sun drunkeness on the lawn is my experience of a lot of the arts community in Detroit. Land/houses are cheap — so these people we knew who were in bands and whatever lived car oriented lives in suburban houses with lawns (that weren’t always as well kept as the non-rock-and-roll yards next door). Cities like Ferndale, Royal Oak — even Patti Smith lived in St. Clair Shores.
Shawn, a friendly question: do you see any evidence at all that your artburbia idea is actually happening?
And Leonard, where exactly are your
“Googie architecture and Craftsman or ‘War bride’ bungalows that sell for a song”?
asdf> This essay is a proposal mostly, but I do point to a few places around the city where arts are alive in the suburbs, and places that would make good arts-homes. Etobicoke’s New Toronto, and especially Bendale in Scarborough. This part of the essay didn’t make it onto the Post’s website, but it was in the paper version, as well as the full uTOpia version.
asdf,
I did a quick MLS search and you can get detached 1 and 2 bedroom bungalows in Etobicoke starting at $219k. That’s a song in Toronto, considering the prices of similar-sized semi-detached houses in more central neighbourhoods – and New Toronto/Mimico is actually pretty well connected as suburbs go.
There used to be a lot of 50’s motels along Lakeshore in Etobicoke and Kingston Road in Scarborough and they were pretty googie, although I admit they’re disappearing rapidly. When you travel around the first generation suburbs, you get some surviving elements of that retro-futuristic architectural style in places, mostly old signs.
Interesting to mention the Queensway–keep in mind that nr Queensway + Royal York is both Avon Park (a classic 40s “wartime housing” development, still by and large intact) and the Etobicoke School of the Arts (a crucible for the Broken Social Scene sphere, or so the newspapers want to tell us)