vic.gedris.org Never mind the blogs, here's the website.

Red Rocket coming Red Rocket going.

Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist

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Hi folks. Here is some video of last month’s CM. It is on the long side, so you are best to wait to watch it when you have some time on your hands or you are at work. Sorry the audio for the video is out of sync. Had a hardware problem with the recorder. Fixed the hardware problem but do not know how to fix something that is already shot.

Ok who was the dipshit that gave E-Bikes car horns? I was on Queen St working my way around some parked cars. Had enough room to stay in the lane and keep a door length away from the cars. Then I have this moron on an E-Bike tooting his horn at me. WTF? He wanted me to move right so he would not have to ride on the streetcar tracks, not like there were any cars in the passing lane at the time. So far I have not been bothered by E-Bikes on the road yet with every run in they tend to get more and more obnoxious. Think someone needs to tell them to leave their car like habits at home.

Just as Richard Florida finally thought he was comfortably settled in Toronto, the city which embraced him with open arms upon his arrival has become increasingly hostile to his theories.  Foremost among his critics are the Creative Class Struggle, a Toronto collective whose explicit purpose is to challenge Richard Florida, the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T - created specifically for him - and his theories on the creative class.

I must admit that upon reading his breakout work, The Rise of the Creative Class, putting dollar signs on certain demographic groups and ranking cities based partly on a Bohemian Index made me more than a little uneasy.  But, as I was told by another Spacing blogger who attended the recent Creative Class Struggle debate last week, some criticisms are better than others.

Under the radar of the media, however, has been a longstanding critique in academia of Florida’s creative class that preceded - and likely inspired - some of the growing grassroots opposition to Florida’s work now surfacing in Toronto.  Foremost among those is Canadian geographer Jamie Peck, whose 2005 article “Struggling with the Creative Class” threshes out the causes of that uneasiness that many of us feel to Florida’s theories.

In defence of Florida, he is in part a victim of his own success.  As a recent article in the Star points out, he knew before moving to Toronto that most of his critics “will come from the left,” rather than from the social conservatives he faced south of the border.  Florida also claims in the Star’s piece that he finds himself “intuitively agreeing” with many of the concerns being leveled against him in Toronto.

In the end, it comes down to one key work: correlation.  Is Florida simply elaborating on observed economic phenomena (he comes from an economics background) or do his widely popular books that reduce demographics to monetary value implicitly disadvantage underprivileged groups and promote their exclusion from creative - and prosperous - cities?

The next issue of Spacing magazine will feature an interview with Richard Florida where he addresses many critiques of his work.

Photo by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Tiny car seen on Front street at Jarvis.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was looking for a new flatbed trailer to augment my BOB Yak for use in the city.  Armed with my requirements, I headed down to Urbane Cyclist, fully expecting to ride away from the store with a new Burley Flatbed or equivalent. But after considering the options and talking to the staff about my needs, they recommended that I either get a DIY trailer kit from Wike and build my own trailer, or call Wike and get a custom trailer built to my specifications. I opted for the former, and am really happy with the result.

It’s done duty twice so far: its inaugural trip was ably carrying three Rubbermaid totes crammed full with much of the equipment and materials required for the Ward 29 Bikes meeting two weeks ago, and it pulled 80 lb of cat litter home last weekend. It’s big enough to be used for flats of flowers, bags of soil, and many other large or awkward loads that would have overwhelmed or overflowed my Yak.

Read below the fold for more details about the construction.

Requirements

My requirements were actually fairly simple: I wanted a large flatbed trailer that could take virtually any odd-sized load that I’d want to throw on it. The two specific applications I had in mind were carting home a rain barrel from one of the city’s Community Environment Days, and hauling a good-sized load to the local Goodwill. A larger trailer would also be handy for many other regular tasks: fetching bags of cat litter, bringing home flowers and plants at the beginning of gardening season, and carrying most large purchases that I’d otherwise have delivered. My BOB Yak can do some of those things, but it’s better suited to long-haul riding rather than carrying random loads of stuff around the city.

All of the flatbeds I saw at Urbane were smaller than I would have liked. The Burley Flatbed was closest, but it still wasn’t quite what I was after. So I ordered the Wike DIY kit the next day and started work.

Design

I considered a few layouts before picking my final size: 2′ x 4′. That’s big enough to hold three of those ubiquitous Rubbermaid Roughneck totes. I’d originally hoped for a trailer big enough to hold four totes, but it would have been huge and far less practical for smaller loads.

Materials

In addition to the Wike kit, I used the following materials:

1″ square aluminum tubes:

• 3x 48″ for the sides
• 1x 53″ for the side piece that connects to the tow bar
• 3x 24″ for the crosspieces

5x Red oak slats, each roughly 5/8″ x 3″ x 48″

3x Red oak crosspieces, each roughly 3/4″ x 1″ x 20″

50x pop rivets (could also have used bolts or self-tapping screws)

6x #10×1-1/2″ self-tapping screws

4x 160mm aluminum bar handles for front and rear tiedowns

Tools

Power driver (optional, but it’ll make your life much easier)

Drill press (optional)

Screwdriver, rivet tool, and/or wrench to drive your chosen fasteners

Gotchas

Building the kit is fairly straight-forward, but I’ll offer tips based on my experience:

• The documentation with the kit recommends making the arm that connects to the tow bar 8-’12″ longer than the others. About 3-5″ in addition to the supplied tow bar is more reasonable. Do a dry fit and make sure that your rear wheel as adequate clearance.
• If you don’t have a drill press, just use #8 or #10 self-tapping screws instead of pop rivets. I wanted the cleaner look of rivets, but I’m not sure about how durable they’ll be. If they start shearing, I’ll replace them with self-tapping screws.
• I had to grind down the tang on the tow bar supplied with the kit so that it would fit into the tubes that I bought.
• 1″ square aluminum tubes should be available at any halfway decent hardware store. I got mine at my semi-local Metal Supermarket. They cut your order to length for free and I didn’t need to make any adjustments to their cuts.

Depending on the material and finishing touches you use, you can have a large custom cargo trailer for under $200. The kit saved me many hours I would have needed to spend in the shop if I was building the trailer from scratch.

Here’s a partial gallery showing the building process and result.

Ever get the feeling that one of your vendors is trying to tell you what they really think of you when they deliver a quote? Maybe it’s just me, but doing a turkey installation doesn’t seem like that professional a service.

(The quote is littered with other errors as well, including the name of the product itself. It sure inspires confidence.)

Past studies of electrification together with information on the technology’s use in other cities and countries is now available on the Metrolinx website.

I will comment on this information once I have a chance to digest all of it.

Let’s just call it like it is; I’m in pretty rough shape. I haven’t been on the bike enough, I definitely don’t sleep enough, I drink too much and I haven’t been eating anywhere near as well as I should. I’ve been under a tremendous amount of pressure and, like it or not, I’m a bit of stress eater / drinker / masturbater… wait… shit. My friends are pretty good and cutting me off when they see me acting too foolishly but I’ll definitely go home and sneak a tub of Soy Delicious to myself. C’est la vie.

Fortunately, even beyond my friends just mocking and shaming me into better habits – I’ve got a few friends that know a thing or two about a thing or two and last night A Death For Every Sin Final Word Throwdown Matheson / Madball drummer, potential lesbian baby factory and personal trainer extraordinaire Ben Dussault came over and wrote a program for me to help me get back into fightin’ lovin’ shape over the summer.

He leaves for tour on Monday and while he’s gone I’ll do some work on his bike and he’ll do some work on my bod. Pause… Check Madball’s tour schedule and if he’s playing in a town near you be sure to check ‘em out and say what’s up to my boy! For the locals (read: 99.9% of the people reading this) check out Matheson this Saturday night @ Sneaky Dee’s!

–

Hey Sean, remember that time you randomly decided to put a hot BBQ lighter on my leg?

The modern primitives would be so proud!

“From the rez to the city, my people are you with me?  You’re tuned in to the chief of the concrete city,” rapped hip-hop artist Wabs Whitebird at last Friday’s pow wow at Eastview Public School in Scarborough. Sharing insight into his experience as an aboriginal person born and raised in Canada’s largest urban centre, Whitebird’s a cappella performance provided a hip-hop interlude amidst the day’s traditional pow wow festivities.

Kids from the neighbourhood raced around the event, hopping from the playground to the barbeque and into the dance arena, where they joined head dancers Nadjia Melanson and Joseph Harper. On-lookers and vendors surrounded the dance arena, where three drum groups (two local and one visiting from Peterborough) performed from the centre of the circle, seated next to the flags and ceremonial staff.

This was the third annual pow wow to be held at the Scarborough elementary school, originally organized by Waabanong Head Start, a preschool program for aboriginal families in the neighbourhood.

While some may find grey high-rises and Kingston Rd traffic a curious backdrop for a pow wow, it shouldn’t be unexpected, as the aboriginal population continues to increase rapidly in Canadian cities.  The 2006 census reported 54% of aboriginal Canadians live in urban centres.  Nevertheless, some people are still surprised to learn of a pow wow happening in Scarborough, said organizing committee member Sue Rogers, going on to discuss what a meaningful moment it was in bringing the community together.

With National Aboriginal Day taking place on June 21st, the message Rogers hopes to communicate through the pow wow is one of celebration and awareness.  She emphasized the importance of pow wow in teaching the next generation about their heritage so they will continue to keep it alive.

To check out some more photos from the event, click continue reading below.

Head female dancer, Nadjia Melanson, with drum groups

Intertribal dance

Head male dancer Joseph Harper

Note the teeny addition to his regalia… a purple Spacing button

Photos by Emma Feltes

The bike lanes on Annette and Dupont are almost complete and Jerrold of BlogTO has gave his impression of the "narrowing" of Dupont and Annette from a recent drive along Dupont.

But as someone who both cycles and drives on Dupont and Annette (often enough to be quite familiar with the area's traffic issues), I'm not particularly happy about how this was implemented and the effects it has had on congestion. It's gotten really bad for motorists, and seems to have been done without much consideration for Toronto's mighty ruler - the car.

Is that true? Was this done with little consideration to the car? I think quite the contrary, traffic engineers have always given full consideration to car traffic and congestion. The staff reports always contain figures to show how much it will slow down travel times (Jarvis will slow cars by 2-3 minutes.) The secret is that the City is trying to both accommodate the growing cycling traffic as well as squeeze the car a bit.

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STRIKE
• Will strike save City money? [ Toronto Star ]
• Christie Pits group says it won’t back down on pesticide spraying at temporary dump [ Toronto Star ]
• Fault lies with city and unions [ Toronto Star ]
• Who’s keeping Toronto going? [ Globe & Mail ]
• Let crews cross lines to spray trash: health officer [ Globe & Mail ]
• Hudak urges local solution to Toronto strike [ Globe & Mail ]
• Christie Pits dump safe: top Medical Officer [ National Post ]
• Back-to-work doesn’t work for province [ Toronto Sun ]
• Official complaint lodged over dumps [ Toronto Sun ]
• Stench on a country road [ Toronto Sun ]
• Resident pitches in [ Toronto Sun ]

CITY HALL
• Councillors unwilling to forgo pay increase [ Toronto Star ]
• A modest proposal for council [ Toronto Star ]
• No July meeting for Toronto council [ Globe & Mail ]
• David Miller’s moment of truth [ National Post ]
• City council latest casualty of strike [ National Post ]
• Councillors staying away [ Toronto Sun ]
• Council’s weak excuses [ Toronto Star ]

OTHER NEWS
• Patio languishes without permits [ Toronto Star ]
• TTC, Viva team up to make rush-hour service to York University easier [ Toronto Star ]
• Possibility of greatness awaits on the Waterfront [ Toronto Star ]
• 5 things to hate and 5 things to love about the city [ Toronto Star ]
• Police rule arson in Mississauga townhouse fires [ Globe & Mail ]
• A taste of home [ National Post ]
• Green concrete [ National Post ]

I waited by this Michael Jackson sidewalk memorial on Yonge street at Dundas for someone to walk by and capture a pose that looks like the moonwalking. This one was the closest.

At the launch of this year's "Safe Cycling - Share the Responsibility" campaign aka the "bike blitz", the cops promised to focus on aggressive cyclists and car drivers endangering cyclists. How effective have they been in targeting the worst offenders? Or have they once again mostly set up sting operations to catch cyclists doing "rolling stops"?

The results are in (pdf). Sixty-two percent of all tickets were given to drivers with 59% of all tickets going to drivers in incidences with cyclists. There are bound to be more tickets for drivers than cyclists since there are just more of them on the road, but it's interesting that the police have ticketed a lot of motorists where cyclists are also involved. I can't find the results from last year so I can't say if this points to the police changing their tactics at all.

Last year the police gave out 6,671 tickets, according to the Bike Joint, and this year 5,907. I have to agree with Bike Joint that it doesn't seem like they tried too hard to find bike lane parking violations.

Officers issued 5,907 tickets to motorists and cyclists who were found committing offences. Of
the tickets issued:
• 3,502 tickets were issued to motorists for offences such as opening vehicle doors improperly
and failing to yield to cyclists,
• 1,373 tickets were issued to cyclists for moving violations including disobeying traffic signals
and failing to yield to pedestrians,
• 747 tickets were issued to cyclists for bicycle equipment offences,
• 84 people under the age of 18 were charged with not wearing helmets,
• 198 parking tickets were issued for parking in designated bike lanes,
• 852 motorists and cyclists were cautioned with respect to a variety of related offences, and
• 10 bike rodeos/lectures involving 411 participants were held across the city.

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