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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

An attempt at live blogging the Great Queen Street Psychogeographic Walk

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The idea of live blogging has never really appealed as writing is generally better when the author thinks about it for a while (there are exceptions of course) but we will attempt to live blog the walk tomorrow in this space as it possibly has some locative application. I’ll use my mobile device to update when we’ve crossed major streets along Queen — Landsdown, Dufferine, Dovercourt, etc. — those who can’t make the beginning will be able to either check at home or from their mobile device and possibly catch up.

It may not work. My device may run out of gas or some other technical glitch may come up. And even these updates might not make us “findable.” It also won’t be a pretty post, as I’ll remove the picture (loading even the simplest page tends to be costly in Canada, a country with some of the highest data prices on the planet that will likely be the biggest expense in this very cheap event) and the formatting might not be so elegant.

2:14 heading out with a nice group. hot. should have made this walk to the beach.

2:36 dufferine

2:55 trinity bellwoods

3:31 we go to the civic washrooms at the Bay at yonge.

4:17 don. moving fast. east looks like it is on fire. smoke billowing from broadview?

5:58 we lay in the sun on the grass of the filtration plant. we see the blue scarborough streetsigns. it is like a psychogeographic beer commercial and it’s miller time. fancy beaches designer dogs stand in for the usual beer commercial girls in bikinis. etc.

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11 comments

  1. I made a sign in my window (at Woolfitt’s art supplies, the one covered in Alsopian paint splashes) for you guys, not sure if you saw it!

    Also, Dufferine would be a good adjective, like saccharine but Dufferin-like.

  2. This woulda/coulda been good, but after my Nuit Blanche all-nighter, I was in bed. I’m surprised you scheduled it for the morning after! A different weekend would’ve been better, no?

  3. Did an all-nighter as well, and the walk was still good — as we said in the earlier post, Hair of the Dog! It was 2pm though — who can sleep past noon?

    We didn’t realize it was Nuit Blanche weekend when we scheduled it, as our focus was on this week’s Walk 21 conference and wanted this event to be in the run (walk) up to it. We may do it again though, along some different street, sometime. Come then.

  4. Mount Pleasant could be interesting. Definitely go downhill.

    Or something really nutty, like Coxwell.

  5. Coxwell and Mt. Pleasant might be too short. something in the 3-4 hour range is good for an epic event. you get to pass through so many different parts of the city. Thinking Eglinton or Bloor. Of course, they don’t have definitive start and stops the way queen does (or their start-stops are much father than 3-4 hours) so would be a bit more randomly picked.

  6. This weekend was PACKED with events all over the city. It was disappointing I couldn’t make all of them. Spread them out!

  7. I have walked Bloor from Shaw Street (near Ossington) to the West Mall west of highway 427 – about 12.5 km. It’s interesting to see the scale of the neighbourhoods grow as you go west.

  8. Yonge, from Steeles to the lake would work and it’s all downhill from there (literally, not figuratively).

  9. Well, I did offer my artschooly high concept of walking the length of the Kingston Road median. But, all high-concept whimsy aside, Kingston Road itself might make for the most sublime epic walk–perhaps meeting for breakfast at Ted’s in Highland Creek Village, and then coasting on down to the environs of Ashbridge’s Bay. It may pack more Will Self-ian wallop than any such walkable long-distance urban corridor in town…