[PHOTO] Chalk balloons, Cloverdale Road

[CAT] Cat sitting guard, vertical and horizontal, Seekers Books

[PHOTO] Graffiti on a Bloorcourt alley

[URBAN NOTE]Seven city links: Ottawa, Montréal, NYC, Calgary and Edmonton, Vancouver, Sao Paulo …

• Ottawa mayor Jim Watson vows to vix the LRT Confederation Line. Global News reports.
• Home-buyers in Montréal are having to buy outside of the city, in the West Island and even the mainland. The Montreal Gazette reports.
• VICE looks at the legacy of Michael Stewart, a New York City graffiti artist famously killed in the 1980s, here.
• The LRT projects in Calgary and Edmonton are currently facing terrible uncertainty thanks to new legislation. Global News reports.
• New maps show the great damage that could be caused by sea level rise in Metro Vancouver. Global News reports.
• Spacing reports on an amazing graphic novel biography of Sao Paulo.
• Guardian Cities looks at the problematic gentrification of Soweto, here.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links

• blogTO shares photos from Yorkdale Mall during its power outage Saturday.
• blogTO reports that Toronto hosts, by one measurement, one of the biggest housing bubbles in the world.
• The story of how a neighbourhood project painted over the Ossington Laneway, vandalizing the graffiti there, is a sad one. blogTO has it.
• Judging by his filmed confession, the only chance Alek Minassian has to avoid a very lengthy prison sentence is a perhaps-unlikely insanity plea. CBC reports.
• NOW Toronto reports on the climate strike protests held Friday in Toronto.
• The Toronto Star reports on the mass protests held on Sunday to keep homophobic Christians from marching into Church and Wellesley.
• Steve Munro reports on the statistical sleight of hand apparently used to make the TTC Bombardier streetcars of the TTC look better.

[PHOTO] Four photos of murals in Kensington Market, and one old fruit cart

[URBAN NOTE} Five Toronto links: Corso Italia, Danforth, Davenport Diamond, books, Graffiti Alley

• blogTO notes that Corso Italia is one of the hubs of Latin American food culture in Toronto.
• The Danforth Music Hall recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, NOW Toronto notes.
• The cancellation of a mural for a rail bridge in the Davenport Diamond is a shame. The Toronto Star has it.
• This bookstore at Queen and Ossington looks particularly unique in conception. blogTO reports.
• Melanie Zettler at Global News talks about the origins of Toronto’s Graffiti Alley.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Hillsborough, Derry, Paris, Mecca

• La Presse looks at the challenges facing changing Lachine-Est, here.
• The small New Brunswick town of Hillsborough may lose its only grocery store. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities looks at the vexed question of how, or if, the Northern Ireland city of Derry should celebrate its political murals.
• Guardian Cities notes that Paris will soon host a substantial rooftop farm.
• Tom van Laer and Elif Izberk-Bilgin at The Conversation explain why reviews of facilities in holy cities, like Mecca, tend to be so inflated.

[PHOTO] Seven photos of the underside of the Spadina Road bridge, and more

Passing underneath the Spadina Road bridge over the Nordheimer Ravine reveals, on the concrete underpinnings, surfaces dense with graffiti dating back perhaps two years. The ending of the trail to the southeast of this location, in Royston Park, is much more sedate and green in the foreground.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: HTO Beach, street art, transit, Draper Street, real estate

• Toronto’s HTO Park, a fake beach on the waterfront of Queens Quay, has been flooded out by Lake Ontario, too. blogTO reports.
• This open-air street art museum around Dundas West is an ingenious idea. blogTO reports.
• David Hains at Spacing explains how the TTC plans for major sports events, like the recent Raptors series.
• One house in Corso Italia has just gone on the real estate market for the first time since 1919. The Toronto Star reports.
• The row of vintage homes on Draper Street and its recently passed keeper are memorialized nicely here. The Toronto Star reports.