Community Street Sign

Beyond complaints about the rampant eye-guck of the commercial landscape, there are the ubiquitous signs that tell us what to do, so that we can “keep it together” as city dwellers: Signs for traffic flow: one way, don’t enter. Signs for bumps. Signs for parking, no parking, no standing, no stopping. no turning. Be nice. Clear your ice. Signs to the Gardiner, the 401, the DVP, so we can get out of town. Signs to the Art Gallery (in case they ever stop remodeling) and the ROM (in case you still want to go there). And then there’s the old stand by: Don‚Äôt be a litter bug.
This sign, spotted by Graeme Bacque on Baldwin St., just west of McCaul, takes the urban sign outside its banal convention, turning the invocation to keep Toronto clean into a softly-played reproach to all of us, making each of us responsible for the travesty that is homelessness. This is my kind of public art. Thanks to Lucy Costa for circulating it.
-Deb Wise Harris