The urban warrior

When I lived in Toronto, way back when, there was an urban warrior.

Dressed in army fatigues and armed with nothing but a large plastic bag, the urban warrior had but one task in mind: picking up litter. Over the seven years I lived in Toronto I saw him all over the city, slowly but surely making it a better, greener place - one piece of litter at a time. 

I often tried to find information about the urban warrior, but to no avail. 

He was nameless. He was faceless (not literally, but figuratively). But he certainly wasn't useless. 

In doing a little research for this post, I decided to try and look him up again. While I didn't find him, I did find this guy, Mark Giesbrecht, aka "the litter guy." Much like the urban warrior, Mark spends his days picking up litter in Toronto. Unlike the urban warrior, Mark asks for donations/supplies via a large, handwritten sign that he keeps strapped to his back.

While you can't blame, or shame, a guy for asking for money for a job done, I kind of love the fact that the urban warrior did what he did payment, and glory, notwithstanding.

Either way, both the urban warrior and the litter guy are special people - angels, in their own special way.

According to this article from the Toronto Star, incivility and unfairness trouble Mark.

I know how he feels.

Can you imagine the kind of world we'd live in if everyone cared about the planet, and people, as much as Mark and the urban warrior do?

Mark used to be homeless and his dream is to help the homeless. He works seven days a week to make his $450 a month rent (this is back when the article was written in 2009) and he loves morning talk shows "because ignorant comments about the homeless fill him with the indignation he needs to start his day."

I know how he feels.

One last word.

According to David Suzuki, cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world, with 4.95-trillion (trillion!!!) tossed onto the ground or water every year. "Cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, a non-biodegradable plastic, which can take up to 25 years to decompose. The toxic butts are ingested by animals, especially birds and marine animals."

 
And so the urban warrior in all of us must fight on!

Art or shmart?

"The whole street is just kind of like, 'Oh yeah, the dolls.'" 

The dolls in question number in the hundreds. They adorn the fence, lawn and even the front of the house. They're creepy (in my opinion) and I definitely don't get what they're doing there.

But some people might call it art.

The doll house is a two-storey, semi-detached in Leslieville - a great neighbourhood in Toronto's east end that I had the pleasure of living in some years back - that is literally decorated with hundreds of dolls. The first time I came across it I was on my way to the gym, taking a leisurely walk down a tree-lined and sun-dappled street.

It was quite a sight. It definitely provoked a reaction. Does that make it art? Or shmart?

I asked myself a similar question not long ago in Montreal, when I first saw a parking metre wrapped in a scarf.  

My father, who I was with at the time of the sighting, quickly launched into a (rather comical and off-topic) tirade about how young people should spend their time leaf  sweeping, so as to prevent the sewage drains from overflowing, "instead of wasting it being scarf artists." 

Ummm... okay. That's one way of looking at it.

Since that time I've seen quite a number of public poles (that sounds weird) wrapped in a variety of fabrics. Referred to as "yarn bombing," "yarn storming" and even "knit graffiti," the practice consists of wrapping public architecture with knit or crocheted material. Apparently it was started by a group called Knitta Please in Texas in 2005.  

Ummm... okay.

All I know is that I'm coocoo for birdcages!