Nearly empty Nathan Philips Square. Inscribed on these "Freedom Arches" is the following: "The Citizens of Toronto dedicate these arches to the millions who struggled including Canadians, to gain and defend freedom and to the tens of millions who suffered and died for the lack of it. May all that we do be worthy of them. Only in freedom can the human spirit soar. Against the human drive for freedom nothing can long succeed. This plaque is mounted on a slab of the Berlin Wall."

June 25, 2010 – Toronto, Ontario

Welcome to the cop show

Day one (official) of the summit. I’ve been out walking downtown for a few days already and tossed out two pairs of shoes. I’m already limping, and with another big day tomorrow might have to break out the open toed sandals despite the best recommendations of “how to protest” articles.

Some observations from today.

It’s become obvious that much of what the public is going to see of this G20 summit is what could only be termed police theatre.

Outside the airport and downtown core, life seems to be proceeding pretty much normally. Except of course there are fewer people around.

I would like this more if the population hadn’t been replaced by roving squads of police. As it is, it’s much easier to get around Toronto (outside the security zone and motorcade routes) than normal.

The atmosphere at street level is not as paranoid and oppressive at the moment as media reports may make it feel. While there is definitely a great deal of intensity at the protest front (as thousands are funnelled down streets lined with cops to an inevitable dead end), tear gas and sonic cannon have yet to materialize.

All predictions point to Saturday.

On the flip side, it’s not hard to find joyous activities being carried out both inside and outside the walls of cops.

For example, I enjoyed two fine free concerts today— the 1930s swing stylings of Alex Pangman & her Alleycats at the Toronto Jazz Festival, then the raucous Brazilian samba batucada drum stylings of Samba Elégua in the post-march denouement at Allan Gardens. Both were fine reminders of how music can help us transcend an oppressive situation. And watching the Jazz Fest while two police helicopters and two spotter planes circled the downtown core was an exercise in contrasts.

Eyes to the skies during the Jazz fest

The Alleycats did their best to drown out the choppers as jazz lovers clapped and lindy hopped in the square. There was more than a little unspoken irony in their cover of  JJ Cale’s “Mama Don’t”:

Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here

Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here

I don't care what mama don't allow I'll play my guitar anyhow

Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here

Hey, Mama don't allow no bass in this place

Yeah, Mama don't allow no bass in this place

I don't care what mama don't allow I'll play my bass anyhow

Mama don't allow no bass in this place

Yeah, Mama don't allow no drumming going on

Yeah, Mama don't allow no drumming going on

I don't care what mama don't allow

Gonna play my drums anyhow

Mama don't allow no drumming going on

Yeah, Mama don't allow no piano players in here

Mama don't allow no piano players in here

I don't care what mama don't allow

Gonna play my piano anyhow

Mama don't allow no piano players in here

Yeah, Mama don't allow no reefer-smoking going on

Yeah, Mama don't allow no reefer-smoking going on

Yeah, I don't care what mama don't allow I'm gonna smoke my reefer anyhow

Mama don't allow no reefer in here

Mama don't allow us all playing at the same time

No mama don't allow us all playing at the same time

Hey I don't care what mama don't allow

We're all gonna play all at the same time anyhow

Mama don't allow us all playing at the same time…

This was such a nice break that I hope to do it again at 5PM tomorrow when the Club Django Sextet plays. (Gypsy swing to soothe wild and weary hearts? Hit me with some more of that.)

Dead centre - one of two choppers and two spotter planes circling the downtown core today.

With one eye on the activity of the copters to the North, it wasn’t hard to tell when the protest had been turned back or dispersed. I cut through the back of NPS and found a nearly-empty alleyway leading to… surprise surprise… University Ave, closed in both directions, with double layered barricades and standing ranks of cops in front of the US consulate. Above me to the right, snipers peeked from the corners of the court house, surveying the scene. (I got my first laugh of the day as a group of teenage boys spotted one and started pointing and laughing, calling out: “Ninja! Ninjaaaa!”)

Fail ninja.

Another contrast. To my surprise, upper catwalk access was open at Nathan Philips Square, where I had seen only two security guards and one police officer. Half a block away, on University Ave between the U.S. Consulate and court house, there were over a hundred police and assorted other personnel. Their showing was so strong considering the emptiness of the street and surroundings that a large number of passerby were stopping just to watch. In fact the police were outnumbered by curious onlookers— many of whom stood around staring and sniping photos of the snipers and the goings-on. A handful of accredited media was present as well. (Ironically, two Chinese press members had to get their pictures taken with this as the backdrop.) Emboldened by the number of civilian photographers, I got my own shots.

From there it was a short walk to Queens’ Park, where nothing was going on. Moving on, it was the same scene at Dundas Square: like NPS, a number of vendor booths and a free concert, with a few private security guards and the odd roving 8-man police unit. Otherwise it was the same hustle you find at Yonge and Dundas on any sunny summer afternoon. Even the boarded-up HMV nearby looked more like a construction site than a damage prevention attempt. But somebody was wise.

The “Toronto Batman”. I was tempted to give him $2 and ask him to make the G20 go away, but I know it's going to cost much more than that.

Today’s protest was constantly hemmed in and eventually turned back by police. It seems clear that the police can direct any protest group as they please; they have the manpower.

Tear gas was not deployed— although I got whiffs of honking bad smells twice. (But that’s just TO in the summer: dubiously stinky.)

A number of people wearing masks or other face coverings were present at today's protest, and all attracted far more attention than they might have liked. (Yep, thanks to the media, nothing screams “anarchist” now like a covered face.)

The Brasilian batucada stylings of drum troupe Samba Elegua energize the park.

I caught up with the tail end of the protest after they had decamped to Allan’s Gardens. Many had left to rest or find food, but at least a thousand were still gathered on the grass, resting or dancing to the energizing drums of Samba Elegua. The mood on the whole was peaceful and happy— in contrast to the morning’s illegal searches and seizures of sticks from protest signs. I got a dirty look for photographing a pile of megaphones belonging to the organizers, but other than that felt no friction while hanging out in the denouement.

 Ever wish you had a friend who could pick up a megaphone and summon a crowd to your defense?

After the drumming an announcement was made. Emomotimi (“Timmy”) Azorbo, a deaf man, was arrested after being unable to communicate with police— not the finest hour for Toronto’s Finest. His friend Saron Ghebresellassi spoke of the incident with great passion (video link TBA; Torontoist link here). She marshalled the first of several groups to go down to the Eastern Ave detention centre to demand that an ASL interpreter and lawyer be provided for him.

An offshoot protest catches the police off guard. Protestors get to walk a short ways before being "escorted" again.

As I walked out of the park ahead of the group (intending to go down the street ahead of the inevitable bike cordon and find a good place for a shot of it) I saw a man in white and black on a bicycle quickly ride out of the gathering and disappear down the street, merging with a squad of 8 bike cops. Wow: my first undercover officer spotting?

Evening falls on tent city.

Looking back over the day, there were so many odd incongruities: Cops standing in rosebushes. Kids pointing and laughing at snipers. Helicopters circling overhead to a soundtrack of live jazz. A fisting pageant at a local bath house— oh-so ironically scheduled for June 26th. A homeless man with his junk out, pissing in a bush not twenty feet from a school bus full of cops. A butterfly on the “NO ENTRY” sign at the mouth of the park. Expensively dressed hookers talking about the G20 with a pimp on Gerrard.

Yes— Toronto in all its varied glory, carrying on.

Oh the irony. It hurts, it hurts...

Postscript

Here I must admit that I have frequently complained of there being “too many cameras” at Toronto events. Over the last fifteen years, I've watched this trend grow almost uncontrollably as digital technology became widely accessible to all. Of course I joined it-- but sometimes I can't help but feel that it's a bad thing. At the annual Toronto pillowfights or Dyke Marches, for example, camera holders outnumber participants. Not so today, when Toronto’s street photographers were out in full force.

So many people were walking around with digital devices in hand that I overheard a local worker comment that you “could tell something big was going on.” After seeing the security zone emptying out and having much difficulty finding colleagues interested in shooting the event, I took a great deal of heart from all the people walking, cycling and rollerblading around with cameras, shooting everything G20 related in sight.

In the face of secret laws and excessive security, it may be the only form of policing that we have.

University Ave - empty and waiting. What will Saturday hold?

The full set of images which go with this article can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypersapiens/sets/72157624214845175/

Front Street after the rain

Toronto, Ontario – June 22^nd, 2010

In the interests of developing as a human being, at the age of sixteen I instituted a personal policy of confronting fears whenever I identified them. I’ve done a pretty good job over the years of ironing out any phobias that came up. Thus:

Fear of the dark? Go out every night and run around in the fields without a flashlight.

Fear of bullies? Take a stick; beat the snot out of them.

Fear of bears? Hike for a week in the woods North of Superior… alone.

Fear of whitewater? Remote canoe expedition on a wilderness river. Shoot level III rapids and avoid waterfalls until cured.

Fear of heights? Rappel off a railway trestle into the river below. Stand atop of several different mountains. Then spend 5 years living in an 18^th floor penthouse and get back to me.

Fear of falling? Jump off a ten meter cliff into a lake. Repeat.

Fear of guns? Go to a shooting range and try some out.

Fear of the ocean? Go to the Pacific Rim and learn to surf.

After several years of living out this personal “no fear” policy, beyond the few usual and inescapable fears (death, America, rectum cancer) I don’t have much in the way of phobias left. Except one. I seem to have this persistent and poorly defined fear of organized armed forces, both police and military. A mistrust, shall we say? Because even though I’ve got friends and family in the military, intelligence and law enforcement fields, there are few things in life I like less than having to deal with police or soldiers or security on the job. Why? Because these individuals can arbitrarily decide to take your freedom away, regardless of wrongdoing… and while this country has a charter of rights and freedoms intended to prevent that, there are plenty of examples of abuse of power and rights violations out there. (If you don’t believe me, freaking youtube it.)

So this week, to combat my fear of police, I decided that it would be a good idea to go for a walk in the G20 security zone. An excellent exercise: I recommend it to everyone. Instead of staying away like obedient sheep, get down there and have a look-see ASAP, before the gates close on Friday. Because it really does have to be seen to be believed... and because everything in the area could change in an instant if Toronto suffers the kind of terrorist attack that these preparations are intended to forestall. (In that worse case scenario, this temporary police occupation could easily become our reality. See also 9/11 attacks, lingering effects of.)

A dramatic backdrop to any news report...

There are a lot of reasons to stick around and subject yourself to the security treatment. This is arguably the biggest and most significant international event ever to take place in Toronto. Isn’t the world “coming to play”? Shouldn’t we be elbowing each other aside for front row seats? Nobody’s breathed the words nuclear threat in this country since the final throes of the Cold War. So why are so many people heading for the hills now? Is it the relentless media drubbing, the threat of angry teenage males in bandanas, or just the sense of intimidation that the mass police presence inspires?

Pick one. Then consciously choose not to be a victim of your fears. Because frankly, if you have to get your view of this event through a mainstream media outlet’s hysterical news filter – you’re not getting a sense of the immensity of the thing at all. As journalists with far better credentials than me have opined - this is security theatre.

Sure, this security fence has nothing on the scale of a truly big wall— take China’s, the Berlin Wall or that iconic divider on the Gaza strip as monumental (and far more permanent) historic examples. Sure, it'll probably all be gone by Canada Day. But as of this moment, it’s a more significant barrier than anything Toronto has ever seen. And it’s only one of the manifestations this event has brought to TO. In a short five block stretch, I witness:

• Minivans on every block— inobtrusive except that they are mostly burgundy and all full of cops, sitting and waiting, posted on side streets.
• Surveillance cameras on every major corner, building and entrance, watching private and public property alike.
• Private security in full force; still outnumbered by cops, but visible inside and out at all major buildings.
• Side alleys full of SWAT teams, dozens of men and vehicles, marshalling for convoy training drills.
• Bank buildings literally surrounded by police.
• The Westin Harbour Castle, a barricaded fortress.
• Streets denuded:

-Of parked cars (with meter maids standing by, ticket machines in hand, should someone stop and idle).

-Of mailboxes, bus shelters and even some statuary.

-Of garbage cans, excepting those in the GO bus bays alongside Union, purposefully see-through (for easier spotting of suspicious parcels, no doubt) and in well lit and surveilled locations.

-Of trees, at least the uprootable variety (although they missed a few “saplings” on private property north of Union and some just to the south)

• Areas of pebble-in-mortar and loose rock near the Gardiner have been half heartedly surrounded with construction fence to deter stone throwing. (I say half heartedly because they missed more than a few sections. Crews also missed removing all the adjacent bike lock loops. Oh dear, street ammo.)

Dangerous pebbles.

A subtle shift has also taken place in the mood of people in the downtown core. While I never would have considered Toronto friendly per se, the demeanour of the public as a whole has visibly changed. There’s a palpable undercurrent of annoyance and suspicion.

I remember visiting New York City for the first time in 1991 and noticing the difference in how city-dwellers regarded each other compared to Toronto. In NYC, as two strangers walked towards each other, they performed what amounted to a quick and instinctive full body scan: checking and assessing each other for threats, weapons bulges and the like. (Even as a teenager I got a lot of double takes, for I had taken to carrying my camera under my coat in the same position as an under-shoulder holster. Imagine a rosy cheeked 17-year old female Dirty Harry and you get the picture. Yeah.) I'm used to getting looks just for being myself, but today was the first time I’ve felt that same constant civilian cross-examination in TO.

And I'm in the same boat. Walking around Union, seeing all of these preparations, I find it hard to control my reactions. Normally I try to maintain a bland and pleasant mask in public. I have a general policy to ignore cops… but walking through crowds of them it was next to impossible. I think I might have been grimacing like I was in pain. Or maybe my face was stuck halfway between the sneering and crying. I wasn’t the only one— moues of ennui were everywhere… except on the security forcers’ faces. Was I doing anything illegal, to actually warrant worrying about losing my freedom? Hell no. But I was taking pictures of privately owned buildings from public property, and in this day and age that sort of activity is at best… iffy.

Fortress Westin

So I did my thing and got some photos. Was I detained? No... not this time anyway. Unlike the many other guys who were stopped (or even arrested) for doing the exact same thing I was, some within minutes of my circuit. What with a minimum of two surveillance cameras and five security personnel adjacent to every shot, I doubt I was ever actually under the radar… so what was the difference in my case? Being female? Not shooting with a video camera? Not riding around wearing a mask? Or was it just because I avoided taking obvious direct shots of the police and their surveillance set ups? Could I have done this and gotten away with it? Well probably, but I’m not stupid enough to push my luck. Or angry enough. Not yet anyway.

Double walls on Front

More than anything else I'm angered by the apathy involved; I hate to think that more than two million people are staying home or leaving town just to avoid facing the reality of this. So here’s what I encourage my fellow Torontonians to do: park a few blocks outside the zone and go for a walk. Or take public transit; blah blah blah. Just stop pussing about and do it. Go for a stroll and check out this rolled-steel monument, the six kilometers of fencing that has galvanized Toronto— and become a handy visible metaphor. (You’ll probably want to do this before Friday evening, when the fence closes and universal security checks begin. If you decide to pass by after that, might I recommend subwaying into Union station and walking out the East side exit for a taste of the security experience. Prepare to be funnelled away behind crowd control barricades, of course.)

Gated landmarks

What will the next few days hold? Personally, I think I will exercise my freedoms of press and peaceable assembly… all in pursuit of photography, of course.

Am I scared of protesters? Hell no. I was going to protests as a babe in arms— some of my earliest memories are of watching anti-nuclear actions from the back of a bicycle. I was a whopping four years old. I’ve been bored by a lot of protests since then. (So much yelling… I’m bringing earplugs for the sound cannon, but they’ll probably get deployed in vicinty of a megaphone.)

And what about the anarchists? Are they the real threat in the equation? Nope, sorry, not even close. The whole “anarchists who want to destabilize our society” thing is a shuck. Let’s apply some common sense to the equation: weigh a bunch of bandanna-faced dudes frothing insensibly with rage against highly trained police and security forces equipped with the latest and most expensive “less lethal” armament. Who’s going to win? The guys in body armor who can’t talk to you without a media relations department? Or the dudes who can’t find a spell check?

Are the politicians the real threat? Naah. Politics and politicians are transparent. They’ll just keep doing what they do; same bullshit, different bunghole. (In fact I kinda feel sorry for them, dragging their asses from all over their world to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I go to a variety of events there every year, and believe me, it’s a shitty venue. Not world class at all.)

Is it the police force? Not really, because they’ll be busy dealing with convoys and crowd control and the angry young male contingent that’s rattling the cage. Doing their jobs, for the most part.

So what is the biggest threat to the City of Toronto— and summit security in general? What is the real elephant in our front room? Want to guess? Here’s a clue. It’s 553 metres high and weighs 130,000 tonnes. And it’s standing right next door to the visiting dignitaries.  

That could be dangerous. I’d recommend dismantling it ASAP.

View of the CN Tower from within the Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Will I be staying clear of the security zone this weekend? Fff. Only one thing’s for sure— I’ll be steering clear of the tower in Toronto that controls people’s minds.

My full set of images from the G20  (in progress) can be viewed here.

Not the usual rush hour street scene.

/placeholder for awesomeness

                                                                                                      This Maserati explains everything.

Never mind the Auto Show, I’ll take the Gumball 3000 instead...

Not 24 hours ago I was standing in the warm wash of a Lamborghini’s exhaust, thinking: I can’t believe this is happening. It’s finally here. After many years of waiting, the Gumball Rally has come to Toronto.

I started watching videos of the Gumball back in 2001, thanks to a certain Jackass episode. Something about “the spirit of pure raging” that this annual rally embodied stuck in my head. It left me with an inexplicable fondness for covering large sections of country at speed— supercar or no. (Um, no.)

I have always loved to drive— probably because I grew up on summer-long road trips all over the continent. But after watching all the footage available from the Gumball that year, I started driving for extended periods of time, going across the country just because I could. Often alone, sometimes accompanied, I spanked every province accessible by road… driving up to 1200 kilometers daily, stopping only to eat, sleep, gas up… and of course take photos.

Okay, sometimes not stopping. Photo on my camera by Spott the Loonie. I was holding the wheel at the time.

I started calling these annual journeys the Rumball 7000 because they typically lasted for about 7000 miles (Toronto to Vancouver and back again, with a few side trips)— or until I got bored with living on the road and came home. No rum was actually involved. Like a pilot tracks his flight hours, I tracked my life kilometers and tacked these trips onto the running total. (510,000 kilometers to date and climbing.) I got a serious kick from looking at a map of the world and knowing that I could drive all the way across a continent in a handful of days if so inclined.

Along the way I became a TransCanadian, took about ten thousand photos, taught myself every trick in the world to stay alert, even developed a heightened sense for police presence on the road ahead. (The proof of that is in the driving record, for in five trips I only recieved one speeding ticket, an RCMP pull in Saskatchewan. My co-driver was a giant squirrel at the time. “He’s not hiding any nuts, honest officer.” Long story; fun night.) Most of all I learned that nothing cleans the accumulated crud of city life out of the brain like large sections of Canada served at speed.

Somewhere in Saskatchewan the travelling trance sets in...

But this country is huge. Every trip left me lots of time to think about how great it would be if the Gumball rally were to hit Canada, somehow, someday… So when I heard that there were Canadian legs on the 2010 route, I was ecstatic. Using only the internet I assembled enough information to get a clear picture of what was going on: wheres, whens, whos, and of course what they were driving. Although details from actual official sources were scarce, I knew more than enough about how the rally rolls after years of absorbing Gumball vids. It wasn’t hard to figure things out.

First off, you need some prestige lodgings. That means five star hotels only, and there’s not many of those in TO. These digs are mostly clustered near Yonge and Bloor. Rich neighbourhoods? Same again. (We’s mostly po, the new-worlders: there aren’t many party-worthy mansions or old-money castles around here, and all our royals are imported.) Cross reference these two basic needs and add required access to secure parking garages, posh clubs and closeable roads, and you come up with Yorkville as the most obvious location for the Gumball to land in this city. Random tweets and ferrari club forum scuttlebutt quickly confirm it.

Betsy, a silver Lamborghini Gallardo belonging to Sheikh Amro Kayal, spends a night on the streets of Yorkville.

…All of which leads me back to this particular evening, where the exhaust of a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 Superveloce is beating at my pantlegs while pro skiier Jon Olsson revs the engine and the crowd around me cheers. Six hundred and seventy horses have us collectively fizzing at the brain stem.

In the midst of this scene, I have a moment of enlightenment. I’ve been all over this continent— from deepest concrete-jungle megacity to untouched wilderness, and through every kind of dirty industry inbetween. So I’ve smelt a lot of things in my life... even whale breath. I’ll take the backwash from a finely tuned supercar any day.

Cooling the engine... a peek at the still-ticking heart of a Mercedes McLaren SLR. Top that, car show.

I’ve overheard a number of people this evening describing the event to clueless locals as a “car show”. I have to object. This is much better than any car show, because these cars aren’t just for show, sitting on pretty pedestals, taken out for a monthly show-and-shine or Sunday drive. These are bug streaked, dust covered, ticking-engine mass horsepower road bombs… all pretensions of celebrity and stardom aside, these are mind boggling works of engineering, and they're out in the real world doing pretty much what they were designed to do: cover ground and turn heads.

Turn head. TURN HEAD.

Of course tree huggers and nanny-staters will object to this rally and the very existence of these types of vehicles. “A bunch of rich kids,” I heard repeatedly. “D-bags in fine automobiles.” (But, it being Yorkville, there were no hippies or ecomentalists around to actually protest.) Meanwhile— ignoring the fully apprised involvement of provincial, state and local police all along the rally route— the media hopefully rabbited about threats to public safety. In the process most missed the point.

The public enjoyment of a fine vehicle goes up exponentially when it’s revving in the street in front of them. People want to see these cars in action… Hell, we want to see fine cars, period. While we might not have the deep-seated and competitive car culture of Europe, Ontario is a hotbed for car love of all kinds, and home to a large share of North America’s automotive history. Ontarians on the whole really do love cars… obsessively. Racing, tuning, imports, exotics, vintage, collectors... you name it, there’s a local club for it, a regular shine or cruise or display. The biggest of these is of course the Canadian International Auto Show, which runs each February. More than a quarter million people (myself included) visited this show in 2009. It's largely new-car-industry focused, expensive, overcrowded, and exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to drive to the middle of nowhere at top speed.

Another McLaren SLR. (There were three in the rally this year, which is two more than Toronto has  seen before.)

Yes, I love cars. I just don’t love how people treat other people’s cars.

For example? Every year at CIAS I see a variety of clueless chickies blithely planting their chunky bubble butts on the hoods and bumpers of unlucky men’s automobiles while posing for shots. I wince, thinking of the scratches that will ensue, and wonder why the hell the owners are not there to backhand them off the hood. Ask for permission, dammit.

There's nothing wrong with admiring a stranger's vehicle, or taking photos. But people want to pose with them. Touch them. Sit in them. Pet them. Lick them. And do unnatural things to their exhaust pipes.

“Something goes wrong in people’s heads when they see cars… mine included.”  -Jon Olsson

 Crowds gather to pet a Bentley lavished with strips of croc skin. This was one of my favorite cars, a textural and visual treat. In addition to the leathery slices the Bentley had a map pattern with polaroids of the team from each of the Gumball's road stops taped to the outside of the car. You could literally walk around it and follow their adventures.

This then is the essential truth of supercars, and the reason why the really nice cars at auto shows are roped off and distant: people get absolutely retarded around them. For example, when Team 05 arrived in Yorkville last night in their $1.9M Bugatti Veyron, they were swarmed and quickly got stuck. An escort of six bike cops was necessary to push back the crowd just so they could roll down the street.

One pass like that and they were off again, buzzing the city streets. For obvious reasons, the Veyron and several other similarily precious vehicles were not left out overnight. Rather they redirected to a secret underground parking garage in the area— “exact whereabouts unknown”. Until the next morning, when it turned out to be a different hotel.)

Veyron, comin through!

Online or IRL, even a casual observer of the Gumball scene would quickly observe that it attracts a fairly high percentage of wannabees and wankers… myself included, probably. (Except that all I wanted were some nice shots of amazing cars, which I happily got.) Clueless internet users aside... there is something disturbing about the single-minded relentlessness of hundreds of slack-jawed teenage males, all in the same place, all bent on shooting video of supercars with assorted cel phones and point-and-shoot cameras. (I'm not talking about the casual photographers here either... I mean the guys who stalk vehicles like paparazzi, ignoring police warnings to get back or clear the street— instead getting as close as possible and filming every single thing almost compulsively.)

I saw a lot of that in the uncontrolled chaos of the Gumball Toronto street scene. What I didn’t see— which a lot of people seemed to expect— was Gumball drivers being douchebags. Between the night of arrival and morning of departure, I encountered around fifty of them. Every one I came across was polite, tolerant of crowds, patient with questions, happy to show off their vehicles and answer questions from the throng of onlookers. They were good with the press… even the fake press, taking the time to do video shout outs and answer questions for the youtube peanut gallery. Those who didn’t feel up to this chore ignored the crowds, unloaded their bags and headed for the hotel, and— being Canadians— we left them alone.

Sure, some guys were tired and clearly running short on sleep. And one guy was swearing his head off when he got back to his car in the morning and dicovered one of his license plates had been stolen. (Wouldn’t you? Do you know how hard it is to get a car over the border, missing plates? What kind of an ass move is that?)

 Photographers await the arrival of a Ferrari F430 Scuderia 16M bianco.

 So... almost a decade of waiting. Which then culminates in moments like these:

-Waiting around three hours for the Gumballers to roll in— then not having my camera ready when Xzibit burns down the street, parks and heads straight for the hotel.

-Although none of the Jackass crew was on this year’s run, there was plenty of mischief about. (A limo crew full of rampant luchadores. Xzibit’s car got caution taped by terror clowns overnight.)

-Getting stopped to do an audio interview for soundbites to a lady from 680News on Friday morning. Nice lady but asked way too many leading questions. It seemed they wanted a sound bite from someone hysterical about the speeding aspect— perhaps in case of incident. She didn’t even know the difference between a race and a rally. I had to straighten that out and fill her in on Gumball history. (Pretty bad when a carhag with a camera is better informed than a member of the mainstream media. This and the other local coverage of the rally opened my eyes further to how the media tries to make themselves look good by being “public safety watchdogs”.)

-Chatting with an Aston Martin dealer from the UK the following morning. He just happened to be visiting Toronto and discovered the rally was in town quite randomly. (It's impossible to get so close to the vehicles in Pall Mall, so his timing couldn't have been better.)

-Estevan Oriol pausing at the curb so that I could get a shot. I knew he was a photographer! Check out some of his work here: www.estevanoriol.com

-Getting the thumbs up from Maximillion en depart.

Clever decalling on a number of vehicles.

This cloud might have a carbon graphite lining, but there were still a few downsides to the event.

Spend a little time researching the whos and whens of the Gumball online and you’ll quickly notice that they’re short on information. There’s a need for secrecy in the planning stages, sure… but secrecy aside, there are some massive and visible gaps in communication in the organization. In trying to piece together what was going on with the rally, it quickly became clear to me that what the Gumball 3000 needs most is a dedicated media person to manage their PR, web and press releases, and social media. For a registered brand name, they aren’t communicating with mainstream media well, or leveraging the massive fan base.

For example? The media made a big deal of the roadside impoundments, but in reality this was the least of the factors affecting who— and what—  made it to TO. What was not mentioned in the scarce official promo material was that some drivers did the European leg only, and some joined just for the North American portion of the tour.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t in it for the celebrities, then— as most of the advertised celebs completely failed to appear. The Hoff wasn’t on the rally this year at all… unless he managed to clone himself and twitter from other events, that is. The A-team van carrying the Hawk and several other skaters did not appear in Toronto. Nor did some of the most hotly anticipated vehicles: the Ferrari Enzo and SLR Sterling Moss, for example, stayed on the London side of the ocean.

A bit sad there, personally: I was dying to see that chrome Ferrari Italia 458. It didn’t materialize… but the part where I got to take pics of the Veyron made up for it. In the end— although there were a lot of chunks and gaps— the whole thing made me quite ridiculously happy.

"You gotta live life, you know. You can't just stay in your own environment where you feel comfortable all the time, you gotta go out of your boundaries and check out some new shit."

-Estevan Oriol (Interviewed in NYC, 5/7/2010 - http://vimeo.com/11808009 )

The full set of images which accompanies this article can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypersapiens/sets/72157623890658323/

Postscript

I don’t publish much here— too preoccupied by shiny objects and ADHD, for the most part. I’m starting to sense some themes in these posts, however.

I think this year my mission will be to find good alternatives to the beaten paths. Fine (and preferably free) alternatives to over-crowded, over-run, popular events— with a focus on the transient things in life that I enjoy the most.

This year for example I eschewed the Canadian International Auto Show (with its mega-crowds and auto-industry shills and $20 admission) in favor of waiting for the Gumball Rally to hit town.

I intend to round out the car show portion of this project with a few more free vintage and exotic car shows (see calendar), then then kick it airborne in September by attending the Brantford Charity Air Show in lieu of the Canadian International Air Show at the hellishly packed CNE.

At the same time I want to highlight some of the finer things in life… or the ephemerial things, anyways. Thus: supercars, sakura, colorful costumes, street art and the like.

Diesel and circuses. Petrol and cherries. Jet fuel and tolulene. Yeah.

Food... $7
Parking... $15
Getting pulled from the crowd to take pictures of the Bugatti Veyron arriving by a team member because his camera battery died... PRICELESS

Until next time, Gumball!

IMG_2762-1-3, originally uploaded by hypersapiens.

Friends and fellow Toronto photography buffs know that for many of us the annual cherry blossom viewing in High Park represents the first breath of spring. Always on or about the first of May, the thousand-odd trees in the park open their petals and create a fragrant ceiling of white branches. I’ve been going to Toronto’s High Park hanami annually for over a decade now, partly for photos, but mostly to enjoy the temporal fragrance and atmosphere of this a once-a-year event.

Unfortunately, I’m sick of it. Not only is it horrendously overshot, in order to get an eyeline that doesn’t have another body in it, you now have to either shoot directly upwards or show up at 6AM. (Or shoot at night, long exposure. Do I really want to hang around High Park at night? Well no, not since that incident a decade back with the guy in the trees. It’s not a real Midsummer Night’s Dream there if you get my drift. Muggers, lurkers and angry geese. Plus, there’s the skunks.)

Can you relax under those lovely trees and compose fragrant thoughts, while all around you families squall and couples neck and scratch the bark? It might be a sure sign of spring in Toronto, but— I must argue— as a photographic or even cultural event*, it’s a washout.

Drinking up the clouds,
It spews out cherry blossoms -
Yoshino Mountain.
-Yosa Buson (1716 ~ 1783)

Or, the 2010 version:
Drinking under trees
That spew screaming children
High Park hanami flops

Frustrated by the growing shortcomings of this annual hanami haunt, I started a comprehensive cherry hunt of the Toronto area last year. Motivated by filming for a documentary, driven by photo frenzy and general otakudom, I visited all the parks in TO and the surrounding area rumored or reputed to have cherries— searching for the perfect cherry blossom viewing and photoshoot location.

Alas, around here, there was not much to tell.

In the sakura department, Edwards Gardens sadly disappointed: although well manicured and rich in other seasons, other than a couple sparse magnolias and crabapples, in early spring it was not a happy place to be.

The U of T and York campuses had only a few trees. Those at the St. George campus were still young and more ornamental than the mature trees started at High Park in ‘59.

At the start of the season, Kariya (Mississauga's postage-stamp sized Japanese garden of goodies) offered only a few small white cherry trees, already dropping. The luscious pink kanzan zakura and white hanging shidarezakura had not yet begun.

And High Park? High Park was insane.

The first day we made the attempt (on a Sunday, high noon) the Promise ambient music festival was playing… A relatively new annual event; think DJ culture X Toronto party scene X hanami happening; add every DSLR owner in Toronto and mix. Holy frick. There were no spots left to park; even the no-parking road margins were full, and the parking enforcers doing brisk business writing tickets for every vehicle in the row. Traffic was at a standstill due to the volume of pedestrians wandering dazedly across on the road. Beneath the trees in one small area were thousands of people, dancing or sitting, ass-bombing the once-beautiful petal carpet of the park. Witness this 2009 photo by Alexander Synapse of Ektoplazm.com for reference… or this year’s shot by Scott Snider (Sniderscion). Contrast them with the image below from the same "peak season" weekend in 1999. Just... no.

But I wasn’t willing to miss a season. The next evening I returned to find parking equally nonexistent. I left the car in a neighbourhood nearby and hiked around Grenadier Pond. The park was lovely, but only a little less over-run. (It’s just not fun when every photo you take of sakura includes multiple other photographers shooting photos of sakura. Everybody’s shots start to look the same. After a couple years it loses its lustre. Nowadays it’s like eating photo ass, frankly.)

Knowing that I will never actually get to Japan to breathe deep the rarified air of Mount Yoshino and utter the classic haiku** (I’ve been classically trained in this sort of thing, you see) has bothered me for the last ten years. It's not that Canada itself is lacking; I’ve been constantly made jealous by the early outlay of Vancouver’s cherry-lined streets. (Did you know that they have more than 37,000 trees there, both on the streets and in over 50 parks? Twenty-three cultivars, whereas around here we see maybe four.***) And for years I’ve been yearning for a proper sakura photoshoot and the locale to do it in… not knowing it was in easy reach of TO all along.

So thanks to Jeremy & Tara for today’s enlightenment and guided tour, rurex style. (The reward shall be photos. Lots and lots of lovely photos.)

And I’m not mean. I share my location secrets with other photographers. (See also: Guild Inn, General Awesomeness Of.) Which is why I am suggesting that right now, if you’re a photographer or cosplayer or just general stroller in lovely natural settings, and it’s daylight and not raining, you drop whatever you happen to be doing and get yourself to the Rock Gardens area of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Burlington. Please note that the parking lot may be closed, in which case you’ll want to park down the road at the Laking Gardens lot, and walk a kilometer along Plains Road West to the area. On one side of the road you will find a sunken meadow which hosts an assortment of massive sixty year old cherry trees. It's a perfect spot to relax while cars whiz past, oblivious to the beauty nearby. On the other side of the road is the actual rock garden (another amazing construction, a deep planted valley laced with man-made streams) and a beautiful rolling lawn which holds the other half of the Garden's collection. I counted more than 12 varieties of cherry between both sides of the road... and then there's the extended collection of magnolia, forsythia, azaleas, and lilac. If the rolling gates are not standing open I suggest you gently nudge your body between them (or, if taking the underpass, use the handy railing to climb over and around them), then make your way tracelessly over the grounds, taking only photos, leaving only footprints etcetera. It will be worth it.

Notes

To see many more images from the Royal Botanical Gardens or spring cherry hunt, visit the Hanami 2010 or RBG sets.

*For a contrasting taste of what modern, urban hanami is like in Japan, check out TokyoCooney’s entertaining vlog on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VrbRojnoZw .

Per Cooney: “As much as people try to make it seem deep it really is just an excuse for people to go sit in the park and get blotto.”

**The classic sakura verse by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694):

Kore-wa! Kore-wa!                           Oh! Oh!
To bakari hana no                            Was all I could say
Yoshino-yama                                   On flower-clad Mount Yoshino

Or perhaps more elegantly:

Oh! Oh! Was all I could say
For the cherries that grow
On Mount Yoshino

***Somei-yoshino! Oshima zakura!
For a comprehensive list of the cherry cultivars North Americans might come across in their hunting, see: http://www.vcbf.ca/the-cherry-tree/cherry-cultivars

Kanzan zakura, Kariya Park, Mississauga (2009). More images from Kariya can be found here.

Cherries on the brain. Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington (2010). Photo by Otaku-Minette.