A year ago, I went on a walking tour of the Harbord Village area that ended at Croft Street, an utterly charming, unconventional laneway that was in the midst of being revitalized by its residents.
The Star reports that the final part of the transformation is being completed — the painting of murals over much of the blank wall space, covering up the graffiti that previously existed. Many people will recognize in the photo, however, that much of the new art is itself by well-known graffiti artists. In effect, sanctioned, attractive graffiti art is replacing unsanctioned, random tagging.
There are other ingenious aspects to the laneway’s revitalization, including the marking of “gutters” along the side to make it more welcoming to walk along, so it is well worth a visit.
4 comments
Great news – I love walking down Croft and look forward to seeing the end results. Maybe this will catch on to other laneways around town.
I was part of the transformation event and it was truely amazing. Alot of great people and artists were involved in the project including well known graffiti artists and a group called the Laser Eagles (www.lasereagles.org) who are comprised of individuals who have limited use of their bodies, those considered to be physically or mentally disabled by some that express themselves through the creation of art. This was a true community building project and special thanks should be given to the Toronto Police Services 14 Division for facilitating such a great project!
Croft St. is slowly being infested once again with Tag Graffiti. It’s not fair that landlords were being forced by the City of Toronto to paint over this Tagging, they suffer enough by paying taxes to clean the streets, yet seeing ugly graffiti on their own buildings. Illegal Taggers should be caught and forced to apologize, paint over thier own Tags and forced to paint something nice with permission from the landlord as a community service!
I have painted over Tag graffiti on my own garage and my neighbour’s. I suggest the Police should install live video streaming onto the internet to help nab the
Taggers! This way, we can encourage tour walkers to truly appreciate this unique Street/Laneway.