Photo: I Don't Think They're Coming Back

While on walkabout along Yonge Street in North York a couple of weeks past, I couldn't help but notice this bicycle locked up outside one of the entrances to Finch Station--although "locked up" is kind of unnecessary at this point, when you consider how hard-packed that stuff must be. It makes me wonder just who these more-or-less abandoned bicycles you find around the city belong to, and how it happens that they're left where they're left.

It also demonstrates the effect which the removal of Igor Kenk has had on the city's bicycle ecosystem. Time was that a bike like this would've been stolen by one of Igor's flunkies long before it had a chance to get buried.

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PDP #61: Abandoned Arches

Not even McDonald's outlets last forever. I found this one last May 31st, on Yonge Street in North York between Ellerslie and Empress Avenues. According to the sign on the door, it had been vacant for months - its lease had run out on September 30th. It's been some time since I've been in that area, so I don't know what's happened to the site since - but knowing North York, it's even money that the building's been levelled to clear the way for either a condo tower, a parking lot, or a statue of Mel Lastman to dwarf the Statue of Liberty.

It's only a matter of time, you know.


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PDP #50: Sheppard East

The thing I've always found odd, and slightly disturbing, about North York is how swiftly the transition is between the built-up downtown around Yonge Street and the sprawling suburbia that seems to comprise nine-tenths of that city. On Sheppard Avenue East, there are a few glass-and-steel corporate headquarters such as the ones pictured below, none of them towering and yet not out of place in a downtown either. East of them, though, you enter the residential domains of Willowdale, and after five minutes' walk from Yonge you might as well be in Mississauga.

It's even more stark along Sheppard Avenue West - once you're past Beecroft, from the lay of the land downtown North York might as well be a million kilometers away.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.