Ok, so having a house with bare walls is a blessing and a curse.

FIRST, it’s a curse for someone like me, who CANNOT leave things un-done.  I must have everything completed immediately.  Also, once I want something, I must have it immediately.  It’s my “crazy-bitch” nature.  I gotta have it.

SECOND, it’s a blessing, because it gives me the opportunity to be creative and allow my ‘super-cool and interesting’ core-persona to be reflected in the things I choose to buy and create.  Because how else can people see how cool I am, other than the things I purchase?  I mean, COME ON.

Anyways, so I’m pretty stoked about some of the pieces I’m in the process of putting together for my house.  My “art idea” for the bathroom is so exciting to me, that I get all jiggly just thinking about it.  I’ll update you when it’s all up and installed and pretty.

However, my kitchen is being a bum-licking dink bag problem.  I CAN’T find anything that suits the space right now.  It’s basically a big space, over the countertop and to one side of the room… under some track lighting…

My first thought was to take this historical map I have and cut it up and put it into a bunch of frames that slide across that one wall onto the side wall.  Then I realized that would look like poo.

I’m really into Toronto history and all… and now that I’m living in this old house, so I thought I would try to find some old pictures.  I decided to look through the City of Toronto Photo Archives.

Then I found out that THE CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES IS THE COOLEST THING EVER.

You can basically search any word and find a bunch of pictures from like 1885 that are scanned, FULL SIZE, and you can just save those mofos and print them out FOR FREE.

At first, I wanted to find a bunch of mug shots of Toronto women, with their crime identified… like I saw some in some museum a while back and I thought it was so cool, because women were arrested for like “elopement”, and “indecency”, but also for like “grand larceny”… anyways, I thought it would be really interesting to print them off and do like a line of mug shots around the kitchen.

So I searched for “mugshot” and “mug shot” and “mug” and “shot” and “criminal” and “crime” and “arrest”… nothing.  Then I searched “police”, and some wicked stuff came up, including this beauty:

No big deal, just hanging out with some nude boys.

Incidentally, I found out that when you search “police”, you find a bunch of pictures of the “Miss Toronto” pageant… which seemed to be sponsored by the Toronto Police Department.  Does that sketch anyone else out?  Because it totally sketches me out.

No?  It’s not sketchy that the police department sponsors a beauty contest?

HOW ABOUT NOW.  That guy is mega-creeping and it’s sketching me out.  Damn police. 

Incidentally, I discovered through my search that there is an exhibit going on right now that features historic mug shots at York University called “Arresting Images“.  I’m going to try to go see it before it closes shop.

ANYWAYS, as much as I’d like to feature historical pictures of policemen with nude boys and policemen creeping on young women in bathing suits, I decided to change direction and started looking up street names, to see if there were some interesting historical pictures of streets in the area.

Honestly, this shit is awesome.  I got lost for like, an hour looking through it all.  It is SO COOL seeing streets before they got all developed and built and re-built… I pulled some awesome ones from my area, and went on google maps for a quick “before and after”:

Queen Street West, looking south from Triller Avenue:

BEFORE (taken in 189?):

AFTER:

King, Queen and Roncy Intersection, looking East from Queen:

BEFORE (taken in 1928):

AFTER:

Dowling at Laxton, looking South:

BEFORE (taken in 1927)

AFTER:

So I super stoked now and can’t wait to put all this shit together and make a wicked-cool “old Toronto” installation in my kitchen.  I’ll send you an update when it’s all complete!!