{"id":51109,"date":"2015-03-18T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=51109"},"modified":"2015-04-02T16:21:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T20:21:34","slug":"stairs-nowhere-trap-streets-toronto-oddities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/03\/18\/stairs-nowhere-trap-streets-toronto-oddities\/","title":{"rendered":"Stairs to nowhere, trap streets, and other Toronto oddities"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a set of stairs on\u00a0Greenwood Avenue that lead nowhere. At the top, a wooden fence at the end of someone’s back yard blocks any further movement, forcing the climber to turn around and descend back to the street.<\/p>\n

What’s remarkable about the pointless Greenwood stairs, which were built in 1959 as a shortcut to a now-demolished brickyard, is that someone\u00a0still routinely maintains them: in winter, some kindly soul\u00a0deposits a scattering of salt lest one of the stairs’\u00a0phantom users slip;\u00a0in summer someone comes with a broom to sweep away leaves.<\/p>\n

These urban leftovers are lovingly called “Thomassons” after\u00a0Gary Thomasson, a former slugger\u00a0for the\u00a0San Francisco Giants, Oakland As, Yankees, Dodgers, and, most fatefully, the\u00a0Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The stairs on Greenwood Ave. The snow had recently melted leaving behind piles of unsightly garbage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After being traded to Japan from the U.S. major leagues in 1980 and signing the biggest contract in Nippon League history, Thomasson\u00a0spectacularly lost his mojo. He set a league record for strikeouts in 1981 and spent much of the next two seasons on the bench. In 1982, a knee injury put a lid on\u00a0the struggling player’s career for good.<\/p>\n

Thomasson’s inglorious final years might have been forgotten if it wasn’t for\u00a0Akasegawa Genpei, a Japanese artist who around the time of Thomasson’s struggles had\u00a0become interested in urban relics like the Greenwood stairs. In 1985,\u00a0Akasegawa published a book called HyperArt: Thomasson<\/em>\u00a0that collected examples from around Tokyo.\u00a0He called them Thomassons after\u00a0Yomiuri Giants’ expensive bench warmer because he too was “useless” yet\u00a0“maintained.”<\/p>\n

Akasegawa now admits appropriating Thomasson’s name was a touch harsh<\/a>, but, regardless, the name stuck.<\/p>\n