intro

i started this while i was failing art school in halifax as a desperate distraction from & alternative to drinking myself to death; i'm now living quite happily on the other side of the country in vancouver. needless to say, i don't miss halifax. i do miss toronto & new york however. especially on those days when i just need an hours-long subway ride at three in the morning or feel like trying to convince a convenience store clerk that yes, i really am 21 so gimme my beer, dammit.

other than saying that i'm doing this In the Name of Art, i can't justify my actions but it does keep me out of more serious trouble & that's always a very, very good thing.

spring's a girl in the streets at night

nope, still not dead yet. i'm just kinda stranded & more-or-less internetless in this dirty old town called nelson, b.c.... a new batch of vancouver pics will be uploaded soonish, & nelson photos after that.

i've been drawing on the inside of toilet tanks.

vancouver, february to april '06

as much as i profess to hate nature, i suspect that the absurd abundance of green, growing things in vancouver has something of a sedative effect on me, making the past several months the most angst-free i've been in ages. either that or (horror of horrors) i'm finally growing up.

except for the second photo, which is there because cigarettes are pretty, all of these have been written in.

the first one is one of several, all with the exact same code/bible citation/whatever-the-hell. tres mysterious.

the 4x4 block was up on that board for almost a week, getting 2 stickers filled in [middle row, last one - "this sentence is false." last row, third from right - "mom told me not to eat watermelon seeds."] before it got pasted over with a giant drawing of johnny cash.

fourth photo: "my mommy hates those things." "i hate his mom."

the ones on the phonebooth were up for well over a month & would probably still be there if someone didn't smash all the glass out last week.

last but not least, a thoroughly shitty shot, there only to give y'all a glimpse of the elusive author in action, trenchcoat & all.

toronto, february '06

i was there for a grand total of 3 days in february, to sort out my school records & argue with my family, so of course i had to spend one cold day stickering downtown toronto.

i really do like toronto (it's bigger than vancouver & further removed from nature, for one thing) & would have probably stayed there if it weren't for my soap opera-dysfunctional family...

the first shot is of the only sticker that got filled in while i was there, by snowyowl of rythmicru who chased me down to talk & swap stickers.

it says "don't buy gremlins?"

manhattan, january '06

a couple of days after the brooklyn photos, after i'd stopped up a bar's sink with my vomit after drinking several-too-many chartreuse & tonics & cans of pbr on christmas.

stickering billboards & telephone booths is a largely futile excercise as they get cleaned off every day but i figure it's a decent tradeoff in terms of visibility so i still make a point of doing as many of those as i can afford.

i had to climb a few lampposts in broad daylight to put my stickers up because every available surface was already covered in other people's streetart/posters/flyers. no-one stared or asked me what the hell i was doing, although a trannie hooker with red boots did tell me my hair was nice.

my hair is nice.

brooklyn, december '05 to january '06

done during several amazing weeks of being semi-homeless in new york. (bad cough, pissing blood, naps on subway trains, stayed for a bit with a guy who not only let me eat his gourmet-food leftovers & drink his cheaper beer [ie: anything that cost less than $4 a bottle], but gave me my own key -- all without me selling my ass, i have to add.)

i experimented a bit on this batch & did some of them with a 3/4" tip paint marker. (see the third & fourth photos) there were also ones done with a fineline caligraphy pen, but those didn't turn up so well on film.

technical note: i take all my pictures with regular disposable 35mm cameras & get them developed by whoever does them cheaper.

look closely at the ipod ad...

halifax, november '05.

this was my first batch of stickers, plastered all over what passes for 'downtown' halifax last november. a surprising number of them stayed up for at least weeks, some of them being still kinda around when i went back to halifax this january (for a week of cheap chartreuse, more stickering, bondage & goodbye-sex) -- most of them, notably the ones on lampposts on barrington & duke streets, had just been painted over by the city (rather then scraped off) so one could still see that they were there through the paint if one knew where to look. the garbage bin featured in the top 2 photos (before & after passersby made their additions) had been taken down outright.

i didn't start properly recording what people put in the stickers until very recently (& i'll be posting the more amusing/cryptic ones of those eventually) but the best 'reply' so far is still from halifax --

[2 stickers, one of a guy with his back turned, one of a carton of "mulk."]
guy: "lactose, why have you forsaken me?"

the stickers in the eighth photo were peeled off & repositioned like that by persons unknown.

miscellany

- lost chihuahua (manhattan)
- found t-rex (manhattan)
- boner (brooklyn)
- art+sanity=anarchy? (brooklyn)
- obligatory 9/11 patriotic graffitti (brooklyn)
- guy (toronto)
- clitoral heart (toronto)