Tag: posters

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Uncategorized

It Might Have Been

I saw this hand-made poster taped to a parking meter on College Street near Caplansky’s yesterday and had to take a photo:

i wish i had kissed you

As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!"

All too true. The stuff I really regret – thankfully, there’s very little of that — is what I didn’t do.

Thanks to the ambiguity introduced by the word “just”, the author of the message might be expressing regret that the act had escalated beyond kissing and into serious “viewer discretion is advised” territory, which is probably something you shouldn’t be doing in a friend’s kitchen.

Categories
Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Seen on the Street: The Ethnic Show

Poster: "The Ethnic Show, featuring Mo Mandel (the Jew), Aron Kader (the Palestinian), Bret Ernst (the Italian), Ron Josol (the Filipino), Wil Sylvince (the Haitian)"

Here in incredibly multicultural Accordion City, where it’s okay to wear your ethnicity on your sleeve, you can do a poster for a comedy show like this.

I took this photo on Bloor Street near Christie yesterday afternoon.

Categories
Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

The Toronto Transit Civility Commission’s Etiquette Poster Campaign

The folks at Posted Toronto, the National Post’s Toronto-centric blog, have come up with a clever idea: The TTCC – the Toronto Transit Civility Commission. Their mission is to remind people who use the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, Accordion City’s public transit system, comprising the subway, light rail, buses and streetcars) that etiquette isn’t just for fancy dinner parties, but for everyday living, which includes riding public transit.

They’ve created a series of posters that provide riders with gentle reminders that good manners make for a good experience for their fellow transit riders. Better still, these posters are beautifully done, with far more design sensibility than anything the TTC has produced in this transit user’s vast memory.

Here are the posters – you can click on any of them to download a full-resolution, printable version:

TTCC Poster: Hand using nail clippers with caption "Seriously?"

TTCC Poster: "Whoa whoa whoa stop the presses - breaking news! Backpacks aren't actually people! It's true! Science has proven it! So, the next time you're on transit and people need a seat, move your inhuman bag. Seriously."

TTCC Poster: "We're crammed in like sardines, but there's no reason you have to smell like them too. Please, please think of our noses before getting on. Please."

TTCC Poster: Ticket - "Admit one - today: neverending drum and bass track blaring through headphones, with opening acts 'Woman talking loudly on a cellphone about her friend's abortion' and 'Guy on a handsfree yelling at his assistant'. Remember, your phone does not create a magical bubble around you where no one else can hear your conversation. And those headphones of yours playing Insane Clown Posse are also not magical bubbles."

Categories
Life

The Recipe for “Happy”

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while know that hedonics – the study of what makes us happy or unhappy – is a pet topic of mine. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I like the graphic below:

The "Are You Happy?" flowchart poster

Yes, the “Change something” part of the flowchart covers a ridiculously large amount of ground – the “something” could be “your world”, “yourself”, “how you see things” or a mix of the three — and up to several years of work, personal journeying and possibly therapy, but the procedure outlined in the poster is the basic recipe for “happy”.

Here are links to the people and/or entities that appear in the credits at the bottom of the poster:

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It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

That’s a Little TOO Neighbourly for Me!

While biking down to the Hacklab (which I use as a day-to-day workspace) on Dundas Street West this morning, I noticed this ad at the Landsdowne bus stop’s shelter:

Bus shelter featuring the ad "My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken"

“My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken” might sound like the sort of situation that would make for a pleasant freshman year in a dorm, but in this case it refers to the Jamaican style of cooking in which you dry-rub meat with jerk spice. It’s pretty tasty, and I recommend trying it if you’ve got a Jamaican restaurant in your neighbourhood.

Speaking of restaurants in your neighbourhood, that’s what these posters are all about: encouraging you to support your local businesses. There are plenty of great ones around my place – Sweet Flour, My Place, Bloor Meat Market and Crema Coffee come to mind – and I’m sure that there are plenty of businesses in your ‘hood that deserve your business.

If you look closely at the bottom of the poster, you’ll notice that they were sponsored in part by Tabia, the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas:

Closeup of the "My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken" poster

A little farther east on Dundas, I stopped to take a picture of a less racy poster in the series:

Another poster: "My Neighbour Saved My Marriage"

Categories
Life Music

Have You Seen This Cat?

Most “Have you seen this cat?” posters don’t make me smile, but this one does…

Post of Frank Sinatra - 'Have you seen this cat? Because he is AWESOME.'
Photo by Jason Carlin. Click to see it on its Flickr page.

Categories
Life

Actually, Life’s BOTH Short AND Long

Sign: "People say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it's your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You're probably not gonna get hit by a bus and you're gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years."