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Dear Toronto #13 - Poster Child’s Big Day Out



Poster Child is a bitchin’ street artist and promoter of all things nifty that coat our city’s urban landscaping. We recently got in touch with Post and he let us know that he was up to something nifty. On May 2nd Rebecca and Ryan set up shop at Nathan Phillips Square, awaiting the drop. Gotta say that we hope the pieces he followed with in the days afterward fared better!

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Poster Child’s Blade Diary

Music: Urban Tapestry’s “The Friendship Song”

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Dear Toronto #12 - Cut&Paste

Cut&Paste is a digital design tournament, putting designers head to head in a battle of creative digital arts. Their goal is to promote the idea that design is a tangible, real thing and to promote the people and who make all the magic happen. Each contender is given a few minutes, a theme, a set of tools including a digital camera, Wacom tablet and a suite of software including Illustrator and Photoshop. A live audience looks on as the designs are created before their eyes. The Toronto chapter of Cut&Paste happened this year at the FITC festival of design and technology and saw a couple of Toronto’s finest, Justin Broadbent and Alex Kurina take on New York’s Guillo Echevarria and Edward Ubiera. Look for me in one of the designs as I happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time with my camera.

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Cut&Paste
FITC

Music by Bitstream Dream (via the Podsafe Music Network)

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Dear Toronto #11 - Metronauts

Metronauts is an evolution of last year’s Transit Camp - a community of enthusiastic, open-minded people who care about the future of their city and the role transportation has in their lives. This was my first unconference and I was really inspired by the free-flow of ideas and open-mindedness most people showed. Metronauts will continue to hold events around the Greater Toronto Area with officials from Metrolinx there to hear ideas and contribute to the conversation. This is a pretty brief look at just a couple sessions out of the dozens held at Metronauts. Full-length, unedited video will be available soon at the Metronauts site.

Update: This irony is not lost on us that this video was released mere hours before the TTC strike. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now; Toronto’s transit system is in dire need of innovation and fresh thinking.

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Metronauts
Metrolinx

Music by Kaimoku (via the Podsafe Music Network)

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Dear Toronto #10 - Bax World Tour

The Bax Bears World Tour is hitting Toronto, bringing the DIY (design-it-yourself) toy-like bears to our city, and enlisting a number of local artists to take on the task of creating unique designs based on the bears. I stopped in to talk to Rafi Ghanaghounian, the owner and curator of Keep Six Contemporary, the gallery hosting the bears, and got him to show me some of the very creative designs on display. The tour runs March 28 to April 6 at the Keep 6 Contemporary gallery (938 Bathurst Street). On Sunday April 6 they’ll have several panel discussions with some notable folks from Toronto’s illustration community, as well as the owners of the Queen West eclectic design shop, Magic Pony.

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NEW! High Definition 720p video (Available on Vimeo)

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Keep Six Contemporary Gallery
Bax Bears
blogTO: Bax Bears Invade Toronto

Music by Animal/Monster

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Dear Toronto #9 - Pillow Fight League



Fight Club made it cool to beat the crap out of your friends all the way back in the 90s, but The Pillow Fight League (PFL) made it cool to for woman to beat the crap out of each other with a couple of thick feather sacks. Given the choice between watching Ed Norton shadow box and watching Mickey Dismantle thwack Eiffel Power with a pillow, I’d choose the latter. If you know what’s good for you, and you don’t want Laina Beaton to tear you in half, you’ll watch our latest vid, chronicling the competition to crown the number one contender to Boozy Suzy’s PFL throne. Watch the vid to find out who comes out on top.

NOTE: Boozy Suzy has since retired, which means the winner of the above matches is in need of an opponent! The next PFL match happens on April 24th at the Gladstone Hotel. If you can’t make it, the PFL is promising to stream the action live over the net.

If you like what you see, please don’t hesitate to send this vid to an awesome friend with those sharing buttons below!

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The Pillow Fight League
Music by Woodhands - www.Woodhands.com

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Dear Toronto #8 - Toronto Ice Race

The Toronto Ice Race is an annual event put on by owners The Bike Joint that’s usually held on Toronto Island, but has been recently moved to the vibrant community centre at Dufferin Grove. Racers outfit their typical bike tires with homemade studded tubes and hit the ice (usually with a few bruises to show for it). I swung by Dufferin Grove for the night to see what the event was all about, and to get the word from some of the very colourful characters who took part in the race.

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The Bike Joint
Friends of Dufferin Grove Park - The Unofficial Website of Dufferin Grove
Reuters’ Photo/Audio Coverage of the Race
Helmet cam from one of the racers (YouTube) (spot Adam shooting this episode for bonus points)
Music: Datarock (myspace)

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