Photography of Toronto that shows both the beauty of the city and what it's like to really live there. Photos range from high art to snapshots.
A cardboard cut out silhouette of a man and a vine placed on a wall behind the Salvation Army store on Bloor Street by an unknown artist.
One of the things I enjoy about my walks in Toronto is seeing all the street art that gets put up. This particular one has been up for over a week.
Priestly demolition always makes me think of a bunch of angry priests with crucifixes and hammers.
This is the expansion of what use to be called the mental hospital and is now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health or CAMH.
This is on Shaw Street in Little Italy. At first when I saw this site over a year ago I thought they were incorporating the church in their condo building. I guess not. it's almost all torn down and the site is a mess with broken bottles and graffiti. It doesn't seem like the condo building is proceeding very well, at this rate the market may crash and recover again before they are done.
It's funny, I've seen the side of this mural many times but never knew it continued on the back of the building until I saw this photo.
Check out this great slide show by Suresh Doss on Afrofest with music by Babatunde Olatunji. The festival celebrates the food, music, dance and culture of the Continent of Africa.
It's a festival that I did not attend, due to the fact we had an open house both days at our apartment. I would have rather gone to Afrofest. Especially the food looks great. I guess I'm hungry right now.
St. James Cathedral - thanks for correction in comments
This is not one of my photos. I had to put it in the blog because it just screamed Toronto to me, with the streetcar and the old church, the streetcar wires in front of the sky.
These people have created a structure in their front garden and hung plants, stuffed animals and flags on it.
Click on the photo to see it on flickr where you can enlarge it. It's really not that interesting small.
I wonder if this bugs their neighbours.
The Tulip
1606 Queen E, Toronto ON, M4L1G2
Phone: (416) 469-5797 The Tulip is kind of a Toronto institution - one of those places that has been there forever.
My husband and I went on a long walk from our home in West Toronto to Riverdale, on the east side of the city. First we walked around the Chinatown East area around Gerrard and Broadview, but we didn't really feel like eating Asian food that night so we headed down to Queen Street to Leslieville. There's a bunch of trendy new restaurants there, but I wasn't sure I was cool enough to eat in any of them, let alone that we could afford it. Then we came across the Tulip and I knew where we were eating.
I had read about the Tulip online and decided it was somewhere we should go. It's a traditional steakhouse that's been there for a long time. It has a very casual look to it, more of a diner in appearance than the more opulent surroundings I usually think of in a steakhouse.
Are you a vegetarian? If so, then don't go here. Don't bring your vegetarian friends unless you want to make them miserable. I think even the air has tiny meat particles floating around in it. There's certainly not much on the menu for them. Even the Caesar salad I ordered (3.950 had bacon on it, which I've never seen on a Caesar salad before.
My husband ordered the weekend special, Minced Sirloin with Spanish Sauce (a very reasonable 7.95). His comment: Good, but salty gravy. I ordered the Black Angus New York Cut Sirloin (19.25) It was good. A solid value traditional steak dinner from the 1950s without any bells or whistles I would say.
Service was great. The waiter was attentive but not over attentive. The food came pretty quickly, but not so quick that we thought they had it sitting around in the kitchen under a heat lamp. They brought our check promptly when asked. Best of all, my husband realized he forgot his wallet and when I went back they were already trying to call our house to tell us.Say bye-bye! This truck through the wall artwork/sign/whatever is scheduled to be moved from Queen Street.
Seen from the roof of the Royal York - I think this is right near Union Station. You can see the lake in the background.