[PHOTO] “Anthem” by Cohen, in chalk and in song

The other day, I was walking along College Street in west-end Brockton Village when I saw that someone had written, in chalk on the sidewalk, the lyrics of the Leonard Cohen song “Anthem” from his 1992 album The Future. I had seen similar chalk inscriptions on nearby sidewalks, but this was much the most extensive, occupying eight panels of concrete.

A 2008 live performance of the song by Cohen is as close a we’ll have to an official video.

Four years ago, Quartz shared an explanation by Cohen of this song, a rarity.

The future is no excuse for an abdication of your own personal responsibilities towards yourself and your job and your love. “Ring the bells that still can ring”: they’re few and far between but you can find them.

This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect.

And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.

The full lyrics, of course, are sheer poetry.

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

You can add up the parts
You won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

[PHOTO] Thirteen photos taken walking down Yonge Street, Friday evening (#toronto, #yongestreet)

I took a walk Friday evening down Yonge Street Friday evening, starting at a quarter to 7 at the Toronto Reference Library just above Bloor and finishing a couple dozen minutes later at Yonge-Dundas Square. The city was tense, but still alive.

[PHOTO] Five photos of Spadina Avenue at night

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: food, McDonald’s, cell phones, cricket, renoviction

• NOW Toronto notes that poor and racialized people in Toronto find it difficult to access healthy food.
• blogTO observes that the McDonald’s at King and Dufferin has installed blue lights in washrooms to try to discourage the shooting up there of heroin.
• The TTC is set to offer cell phone service in some downtown tunnels. blogTO reports.
• Perry King at Spacing reports on how Toronto needs to expand its facilities for the growing number of players of cricket.
• Samantha Edwards at NOW Toronto reports that the owner of 795 College has been fined $C 135 000 for the renoviction of prior tenants.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: grocery games, real estate, housing, Shermans, Goldy

• blogTO notes that grocery chain No Frills has come out with a side-scrolling video game.
• blogTO notes that Lakeshore Apparel is making shirts and other garments representing often-overlooked Toronto neighbourhoods.
• Famed Little Italy nightclub The Matador has been sold to condo developers. The Toronto Star reports.
• The East Side Motel, a Scarborough motel once used by the City of Toronto to house homeless people, has been demolished. The Toronto Star U>reports.
• Front-line housing workers are finding themselves faced with problems impossible to solve thanks to the housing crisis. The Toronto Star reports.
• Anne Kingston at MacLean’s notes that estate documents belonging to Barry and Honey Sherman will be unsealed in a couple of months, attracting interest from people interested in the billionaire couple’s murder.
• This PressProgress report on the many well-off businesspeople in Toronto who supported the Faith Goldy run for mayor of Toronto is eye-opening.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: McDonald’s, Faith Goldy, school lunches, Yonge/College, Scarborough

• This blogTO ranking of the best and the worst McDonald’s restaurants in Toronto makes sense to me.
• I look forward to what an audit of the campaign finances of alt-right poster child Faith Goldy’s mayoral campaign will reveal. The Toronto Star reports.
• This article at TVO notes that cuts in school lunches for needy children in Toronto should not necessarily be blamed on the Ford government.
• Urban Toronto looks back at Yonge and College before yet another of the intersection’s transformations.
• This initiative by a Scarborough church to rebuild itself in such a way as to create affordable housing for its neighbourhood is certainly innovative. The Toronto Star reports.

[PHOTO] Little Italy, College Street, @sumartist

[PHOTO] Looking west at blues, Yonge and College

[PHOTO] Stardust Convenience, 9 pm

The evocatively-named Stardust Convenience has been on the northwestern corner of Dufferin and College for as long as I’ve been in Toronto, but I only noticed the mural painted on the building to its west last night.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: 1908, first apartments, 1930s photos, TTC stereotypes, Scarborough

• Jamie Bradburn took a look back at one weekend in 1908, as revealed in the pages of the Toronto World.
• blogTO looks at the surprising controversy surrounding the creation of the first apartment towers in Toronto, on College Street near the University of Toronto.
• blogTO shares a collection of photos examining the dynamic, suffering Toronto of the 1930s.
• Vice shares an amusing feature listing just some of the passenger stereotypes the average TTC user might encounter on the subway.
• Aparita Bhandani at The Discourse takes a look at how residents of Scarborough feel about the often unflattering stereotypes directed at their part of Toronto.