My Kind of Town (Toronto is …)

Toronto is a city of surprises, even for its own residents.

It’s an American city in gross appearance but it has no ghetto neighborhoods or pervasive poverty. Chicago is very similar in population size and is also established on the shore of a Great Lake so its climate is also very similar. Yet Toronto has exactly one tenth the homicide rate. Toronto is not a more European version of Chicago because its population is extremely diverse and although there is a tendency for immigrants to settle in distinct regions of the city, citizens move freely throughout the city to enjoy the international gastronomic offerings of restaurants, bakeries and groceries. My son has a nut allergy and I often rub shoulders with ultra orthodox Jews in their all black garments and fur hats at nut free Jewish bakeries.

It is, of course, still a city with a myriad of problems. Traffic. Elevated cost of housing. Homelessness.

As the completion of the Vespa Series, I wanted to stage the final image in one of the seedier neighborhoods of downtown Toronto. The Filmores Hotel is a very tired establishment where rooms can be rented by the hour and access to the Front Desk is through the ground floor strip club. But apparently security is very tight and the spartan rooms are clean.

The hotel featured prominently in the 2001 movie Angel Eyes with Jennifer Lopez. She played a Chicago police officer and in one scene with her partner portrayed by Terrence Howard, she makes a particularly violent bust just outside the front doors of the Filmores.

With my two tripods, a 1:6 model Ducati Desmosedici painted in Italian national colors and a riding figure reminiscent of Trinity from the Matrix movies, I garnered a lot of attention from the local residents. Many wondered what I was doing. Many understood quickly what I was doing. All were polite, approving, and many stopped to chat for an extended period. One guy had even been a part time DJ at the strip club many years ago and had been happy to leave because naked women can be difficult to work with. Who would have thought?

And I’m clearly the stranger. Asian. With the incongruously expensive car parked on the side taking photos of a toy. Yet I never felt more accepted or comfortable in Toronto.