the BackStory to:   Toronto Street Sweep Strut *Toronto, Canada -- 2007

               I'd been hanging out on the corner of Spadina Ave. and Queen Street West in Toronto for a couple of minutes and nothing was going on. It was my last hour back on the streets of Toronto after 11 years away, and I didn't want to waste it. But after 10 days on the streets of Ontario I was tired -- and on the train to Kingston I'd developed a miserable summer cold with a sore throat and a nasty cough. And just two nights before, I'd been hit and nearly run over by a van on the streets (actually there is only one street) of tiny Jones Falls. So instead of seizing the final hour and heading up or down Queen Street or going a couple of blocks up Spadina to Chinatown, I leaned against a postal box and lit up a cigarette at the corner of Spadina and Queen, locking me into stalking that corner for another four or five minutes -- regardless of the lag in early morning street action.

          Despite getting hit by that van (more on that later) and being sick and tired and generally being in a bad mood about a lot of things including my ever-throbbing leg and the effect of the drugs that treat it -- I was already satisfied with many of the images I was able to cull in my seventh lifetime shoot on the streets of Toronto. TIFF, the globally received Toronto International Film Festival, was about to launch and as the week on the streets went by, the fashion Toronto is known for in its everyday flow got amplified by festival fever. In my experience, when Toronto turns out -- it turns out in clogs (see Odd Man Out). Huge uber-clogs, outrageous enough for any Toronto occasion. And last night, my last night in town, I played with three uber-clogged young women out on Queen Street West -- one dressed in grey Goth, one in a psychedelic post Goth outfit, and one in black and white who was just quite girly in her extra black and white uber-clogged height.

          And despite my mood and the never-ending heat wave and the way I was feeling about nearly the entire world as it was, I was able to capture that uber-clog series and I also brought back with me to Lawrence on the Amtrak Train a few other stellar street moments worth sharing during my week limping about Toronto in my antihistamine and morphine fog. So as I leaned there on that mailbox at the corner of Spadina and Queen smoking, with the morning breaking out all around me and with nothing more interesting occurring nearby then had been occurring before, I took another drag on my cigarette and decided I'd done well enough and had spent my time well here in my quest for the global street and in its solace to ward off misunderstanding, the inevitability of aging, and the effects of a miserable summer cold. And I was about to go back to my room to check out and head down to the train station early, when out of a truck popped a Toronto street sweep in full street sweep regalia, an empty garbage sack in one hand and a street sweep's rake in the other.

          As anyone who follows my work can tell you, I love making art out of street sweeps in the wild. Often these shots I make all over the world lean toward the subtle or toward the documentary. Street sweeps that spend their days tidying up out there after the rest of us, very metaphors (of and for) the love of all things street. Typically, like on the corner of Spadina and Queen, you'll see them in the early morning hours before most anyone else notices what last night's party left behind, alone out there, pirouetting here and there in a street sweep dance, picking up our trash. Uniformed for safety and armed with sharp tools, and going from spot to spot clearing the way for another day of business and another sultry Toronto party night of clubbing, overindulgence, clogs, and trash.

          He didn't spot me working on my street photography at that intersection until the third or fourth shot, but after he noticed, he immediately turned away and kept working. So I continued to mine the moment until in fairly quick order he'd finished cleaning up the corner of Spadina and Queen. The evidence of yesterday and last night now filling the plastic garbage bag and the corner clean enough for this creative late-sleeping town to finally wake up to. And when he finished he did an astonishing thing that nobody else had ever done outside combat zones on faraway exotic jungle roads and that time in Amsterdam when I was accosted by a gang of pissed-off lesbians. He approached me with his bag of trash and his gnarly 6-prong trash rake and he threatened my well being, my very life in fact, for having taken his picture doing his work in public on my (his? our?) corner.

          That, less then two days after I'd been hit by a van in Jones Falls while taking a picture from the street.

          "Hey," he began, "I'm not saying that's what I'm saying I'm gonna' do to you or anything, but has anyone ever told you they were going to kick the shit out of you for just taking their picture without asking them first? Without their permission and all," he added, shaking the gnarly trash fork at me -- the sparkle in his eye indicating to me that aside from being menacing he was also humorously curious as to how I was about to react to his very thinly veiled threat.

          I have, in fact, been heckled now and again here and there along my way for doing my work out there in the wild -- so I was well prepared for his question -- if not for his 6-prong street sweep impliment.

          I smiled and said, "No. In 25 years of doing this, nobody's been that uncivilized as of yet," causing him to lightly moan and turn his head away from me and smile in faux denial at the 'civilized' crack. "And besides, I'm an artist who's known for rarely if ever showing anyone I portray out in the wild in a bad light." I told him that I taught students in street photography and I told him how I teach them to never make fun of people out in public. I tell them about two photographs I'd made in my early days, photos I never could stomach to use because they somehow made bad fun out of unsuspecting souls. One was at a demonstration at Washington Square in New York. A great shot, ruined for me because a man walking on the sidewalk behind the demonstration was picking his nose, his right index finger unmistakably inserted up his left nostril. The other lost photo occurred at the train station in Oslo Norway where I'd captured a man asleep on concrete steps surrounded by stainless steel handrails, a superb black and white shot ruined upon developing when I noticed for the first time that the man had a thick wad of drool hanging between his mouth and slumping chest. I told the menacing Toronto street sweep in front of me at the corner of Spadina Ave. and Queen Street West in Toronto about my teachings and my philosophy of caring and I ended my answer by reminding him that aside from not being immoral (based on my long track record), that taking his photograph in public on the street was legal and that if anyone in the free world ever would kick the shit out of me for taking street photos, that it would be them I'd later photograph being carted off to jail, not me.

          "And besides," I said, "whomever I've photographed and later met for whatever reason -- I've always offered them a signed print if they'd tell me their name and give me their address. I consider that karma."

          Well, he liked my answer and apparently respected it for coolly addressing his concerns following his threat and in light of his fork, so instead of stomping me, he smiled, lowered the rake, took off his glove, shook my hand, and told me his name was Peter. I took out my pen and Peter wrote down his contact information on a card and told me if I got anything good I should please send one along.

          We looked each other in the eye, shook hands, and then Peter put his glove back on and we both headed off in separate directions. He east to clean up the rest of Queen Street -- and I south toward home...
 

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