Toronto Reflections - Geet

**pictures were taken by me unless otherwise noticed**

The Experience:

Day 1:

This area was our home base, encompassing the hotel, Queen St., Kensington Market, and Downtown (Google Maps screenshot)

The moment we got outside the airport, we knew that it would be nearly impossible to skate outside in this weather (except for one committed soul we met outside of Longboard Living later in our trip), and many of the skaters we talked to mentioned the same thing: either they skated at indoor skate parks or snowboarded.  We learned that the summer skateboarding season starts around the end of June (21st-23rd), around the events of Go Skateboarding Day and Luminato (as talks with PHD Toronto and Melissa's insights revealed).

Thursday ended up being dedicated to diving into skate culture. To gather more intel, we hit up Queens St., which was one of Toronto's major skate culture hubs. As we walked down, we admired the graffiti that adorned the walls all along our path. It was like being in a Kid Cudi music video. 

Another curious trend was that if there was a store that had a corner, more often than not they would have graffiti that we assumed was commissioned to decorate their walls. It was later learned through our talks with skaters that Toronto's view on graffiti is far more understanding and nurturing that cities like New York. This tolerance extends to the art culture in the area as well, which we felt was communal, and wide-spread. 

By way of the music scene, we noticed that the communities of skate & music, even food, were interconnected. Local publications would be out in skate shops (So Hip It Hurts was the best one) and vinyl stores (we walked into Rotate This) that would publicize artists like Hundred Waters and Ariel Pink playing at local venues. Of the mentioned, El Furniture Warehouse had a water interesting skate and advertising connection (described in Ian's post) involving Red Bull and a connection to Girl.

We visited C.J. Skateboard Park and School, though well-funded and equipped, came off as "franchisey". There, while Ian blended in with the skaters and did tricks along side them as he interviewed them, the non-skaters talked to various Nicks and Nickis, and even a tiny Mike (I attempted scooting about on a scooter and talking to the skaters, but after many close calls with my face on the ground I decided to stay on foot and pursue conversation with those who were stationary and on safe ground).

What NOT to do: Personally, I think the whole plastering a branded sticker at the wall of the skate park is a definite no-no. What I found common among the converse wearers was that they loved converse for a non-superficial reason, so the advertising aimed at them cannot be basic level, as we've discussed. So I feel like these basic opportunities shouldn't even be looked to as something on the side of a major activation. Everything should be genuine and meaningful when manageable.

The common thread among their stories was that skating was something that was indeed a part of their life...part of growing up and an experience they use to connect with their kids, if they had any. We spied a mom helping her son with the half-pipe. She did this by holding his hands and rocking him up and down the length of the pipe (so much cooler than teaching your kid how to ride a bike, no?) The boy seemed to be around seven, so we are sure they start young! The little Mike we talked to proudly declared when asked that he loved his Converse shoes and that he would soon be getting new ones as he was growing out of his current pair. A nod to how Converse consumers seem to also be "good" people...when his friend was teasing him about thinking he was "so cool", little Mike laughed it off, saying to his friend "you'd be just as cool too, probably even cooler" as he shrugged the teasing off. Kid's going to grow up with good character, and it made me happy for his parents. Anyway, I digress.

After filling our bellies with cheap, fried food (perfect skater diet...except I'm not a skater) at El Furniture Warehouse, we proceeded to Lee's Palace for a concert. The lineup: Moon Runners, Kid Genius, Squat, and eventually Hundred Waters. The crowd was super supportive and young. The girls and guys both came off as super edgy, aware, and worldly. And much braver than me (a lot of the girls had nose rings...something I have yet to muster the courage to attain). The atmosphere seemed incredibly supportive, communal, and most importantly genuine. 

With the mood lift from the atmosphere, we came back to the hotel and busied ourselves with some last minute assignments before falling asleep (I'd like to shout out here to Carissa's patience and kindness for tolerating my snoring. You're the best! ^-^ Be sure to check out her post on the Toronto Radio Project!)

Day 2:

Day two, bright and early, we had an appointment with Andrew Young at the PHD Toronto office, which is so beautiful inside, you could pretty much feel the creative inspiration, even though most of the office was gone for their annual company ski trip. We took notes and bounced some ideas off of him that we will be discussing during the meeting back at PHD NYC upon our return. A note: apparently everyone in Toronto loves Drake. Drake is their hero. Just thought that should be shared (I'm half-kidding). Andrew confirmed that the Kensington area should be where we should do our sleuthing for the day.

As the others have mentioned on their posts, we first went into an art gallery curated by Mark Liam Smith, the January winner of Art Battle, a twenty minute art competition organized by The Artist Project. Imagine our luck and walking into his gallery on that day. Turns out there's another fair and competition happening that very night. With our evenings planned out, we continued to venture up the street towards Kensington Market, with two stops at Livestock, skater apparel and shoes, and Homebase, graffiti supplies and customized toys, (perfect for our potential consumer market). At Homebase, we saw this little guy outside the entrance, and then began to notice him in some form everywhere.

His name is Lovebot, and his story is as follows (from Wiki): 

The Lovebot character is a design created by Toronto artist and designer Matthew Del Degan,^[1] consisting of a geometric, faceless robot with a red heart logo (called the "hero heart") on its torso.^[2][3] The character is used as a symbol for Del Degan's campaign named Love Invasion, which he describes as a global movement aimed to spread love and kindness. He came up with the idea for the campaign after moving to Toronto and viewing the actions of fellow subway passengers as "robotic" and stating that he felt that people "[needed] more love" and chose to add the heart to the robot's design to signify that Toronto needed more love.^[4] Del Degan decided to use concrete as the Lovebot's artistic medium, which he felt referenced "our architecture, the concrete jungle".^[5]

The campaign was initially created as a street-art sticker campaign but Del Degan eventually chose to also create the small concrete statues, which he placed throughout Toronto.^[6][7] Each robot is dedicated to a person who has "made a difference in the lives of those around them" and is intended to inspire others into performing additional acts of kindness.^[8][9] In 2013 The Grid gave Del Degan a Mensch Award for his work with the Lovebot campaign and named him one of fifty individuals that had "made Toronto a better place this year".^[10]

It was interesting to see the figure pop up everywhere, from street art, to stickers, to the backs of trucks, to concrete statues like the one picture above. Also noteworthy is the partnership between It was as if the citizens of Toronto had something that for a moment connected them all together when one happened to see then. And when we finally figured out who Lovebot was, it was great to be part of the cute, well-good insider knowledge. After some digging, We realized that the two managers of Homebase, Skam (famed street artist) and Chris Tsang (custom toy designer) are in a collaboration with the creator of Lovebot. My hunch is that Skam and Matthew Del Degan are the same person, but it's just a theory. 

Activation opportunity discussed amongst us: Converse could have something like a beacon that the skater community would recognize that would help them maybe scan and see other tricks done in the are, community events, words of wisdom, etc. If Converse set up the infrastructure for that, it would be a long-lasting, woken-in part of the existing community. Looking at the Vice-Intel Creators Project, this would have the potential to be much, much cooler.

After finally arriving and walking around Kensington Market a bit, we zeroed in on this boutique calls Longboard Living, where one of us board a cool skateboard (guess who?) and all of us learned a little bit more about the skateboard culture.

We were told by the owner that the community of skaters is super close knit. In fact, they were scheduled to have a little pizza party that very nice. Before we started talking to the owner, he himself was just finishing up a meeting with another fellow skate enthusiast/entrepreneur (who also happened to be visiting from NYC and is also in media-WHAT are the odds?).

My impression of Toronto skate culture: though hidden from public knowledge, the skateboard community didn't at all seem rude to me, while still being exclusive. It seemed like they were all very nice, as long as you respected and showed interest in the art. "Nurturing" is the word that kept coming to mind throughout the various encounters with skaters, artists, and community members. At the same time, as Carissa mentioned in her comment on Ian's post, the skateboarders are single-minded: my tricks, my improvement, etc.

After some guidance from the community members, we ventured to some outdoor skate parks.

Outside skater haunts included Toronto City Hall (pictured) and Dunbat. Upon closer investigation we found that Dunbat was a good example of makeshift parks that we were told were not particularly well-funded, infrastructure wise. However, despite this skaters still frequent the area...something to be said about the dedication and loyalty they have to the art and community presumably. 

Activation opportunity discussed amongst us: Perhaps Converse could establish a warehouse skate park that would be like the crown jewel and headquarters of sorts of its community outreach initiatives. More details to come during the post-trip briefing.  

Last but not least on our itinerary was the art show/competition:

1. Same colors
2. Same time
3. 20 minutes

That's all these artists had. And the work was amazing. Here's some footage during the initial few minutes:

[trying to upload the video and failing, will try again at home]

The pieces were edgy and relateable, two characteristics that often do not come together for me with art. 

We took it all in, picked up contacts, noted the insights and said goodbye to the wonderful experience (and the tundra-like cold). 

NYC - Converse Social Sentiment

After all our scouring of the NYC skate, music and street art worlds this past few days, I decided to take an informal litmus test of my social platforms and ask those who wore Converse All-Stars

A) Why they did and B) What 2 places (Besides FB) they checked for news each day

The result was a lengthy discussion on my Facebook wall with Vans wearers in one camp and Chucks in the other.  The overwhelming sentiment from a Converse All-Stars wearer was that they had been wearing them for decades and had a few pairs in rotation, let's call this wearer the "Legacy Consumer".  Most LC's have been wearing Chucks since before the Nike buy out of the brand and have noticed some quality issues/changes since then but still continue to wear them because they are comfortable, durable, casual and cheap enough for a good pair of sneakers. One male wearer said they are "lightweight, durable and breathable which really cuts down on man Stinky Foot".  Noted.  Some wearers, including a past PHD Director, Andrea Wolinetz, have passed along their love of Chucks down to their offspring and even take professional photos in them.  

Some of the places people mentioned they checked for inspiration, news, etc (outside of Facebook) were:  Huffington Post, Netflix, Google, Instagram, Daily Mail, The Fashion Spot, 

Opportunity: Obviously, LC's have a love affair with their Chucks and they should be looked at as Converse brand evangelists and perhaps focused upon in continuity media as well as ancillary media plans. 

Some friends wished to share pics of themselves in their Converse All - Stars, suggesting their might be some sort of #OOTD with your Chucks kind of campaign program that Converse could easily and efficiently sponsor. 

Chucks on friend Mya Birrell

Andrea Wolinetz, a legacy consumer with her son Rory in their Chucks 

Converse Store #LA Santa Monica

Checking out the shop on the Santa Monica promenade! Great space that's frequented by tourists that come in for the All Stars, while the local skate kids come in for the Cons. Employees were very friendly but didn't seem to have much knowledge to share on the Cons Project - something that should be communicated clearer for consumers wishing to engage with. From all the activity they did sell a Local natives t-shirt from rubber tracks. Also you can make custom shoes in store even with your own artwork which is pretty rad.

Toronto - Ian's Perspective (Day 2)

Team Toronto felt relatively good after Day 1 especially regarding the skate and music scene.  Melissa reached out to our local PHD Toronto contact, Andrew, and set up an early morning meeting to pick his brain on how to best utilize our Friday.  After walking Andrew through the briefing deck we began to casually discuss Toronto as a city and how it has distinguishing characteristics in comparison to the LA and NY market.  We learned the north-end, east end, and downtown Toronto were areas we should still consider investigating, however the west-end was the clear front runner to explore as it is responsible for generating the majority of edgy culture, art, and music.  Andrew recommended various streets, shops, bars, and areas to check out which we prioritized as a group before heading out.  The meeting itself lead to some interesting grass-roots media execution ideas, which we can run through during next weeks recap sessions.

After our meeting we decided to walk to Kensington Market, roughly a 25 minute trek away from PHD Tornot. On the way we stopped at a handful of shops in the areas which ended up heavily influencing our gameplan for the day.  First stop was an art gallery staffed by one, Mark Liam Smith.  We took our time walking around and ended up sitting down to chat with Mark about his own work, how he became involved with the gallery, and upcoming events.  Mark told us we came to visit Toronto at the right time as that very night there was a highly anticipated event called Artist Project.  We took down some information and continued uptown to Kensington Market.

Making our way down Spadina st. we hit up sneaker/clothing bodega Livestock and graffiti specialty shop HomeBase.  Both shops were aimed right at our audience; Livestock sells more high-end clothing, sneakers, watches, backpacks (as well as custom designed Converse), and HomeBase provides artists with the best spray paint on the market for graffiti projects.

While the rest of the team headed into HomeBase, I checked out an alley which one of the customer service reps in Livestock advised us to locate.  Created by local street artists SLAM, his work weaved and wrapped across brick, metal, and various obstacles to make an enormous tapestry.

After Homeback we made it to Kensington Market.  Kensington Market is crunchy. Record stores, thrift sales, headshops are all packed tightly together. If Queen St. was a reflection of Toronto's support towards street art and graffiti, Kensington Market may be the home for where this movement originated.  Because Kensington Market is a combination of homes and small businesses the architecture is noteably unique.  We worked our way from the outskirts of the market into the central core and explored various alleys, shops, and restaurants.  The density of the market was overwhelming so we split up, which was when I was able to meet two street musicians performing outside of a coffee shop, Taniqua and Juliana.  Taniqua was playing a small travel sized ukulele, and quietly acknowledged me pausing to listen.  Shortly afterwards Taniqua's friend Juliana joined us and began improvisationaly singing to Taniqua's music. I paused to enjoy their music, snapped some photos and videos, thanked them for their performance and kept on my way.

We linked up at this point to head into a small shop called Longboard Living.  Open for about 6 years Longboard Living is a grassroots skate shop which originated from a small garage shop to one of the most popular longboard boutiques of Toronto.  Most boards are made in collaboration with local Toronto artists, making the board designs unique and one-of-a-kind.  Speaking with the owner he walked us through the company history and was kind enough to even give us a discount on one of the decks (which I was more than excited to purchase for myself).  In the summers longboarders meet at Longboard Living on Fridays @ 7 to cruise the streets of Toronto together.  The owner is excited about the upcoming 2015 summer and plans to leverage social media (primarily twitter and instagram) to continue to grow the group.  We asked him about local areas they skateboard at in public that he enjoyed, where he commented on one right down the street that's a favorite of Kensignton Marketer's because of its close proximity.  He did say however that the park is way overdue for a facelift, which could be a possible opportunity for Convers to consider?  He even discussed the desire of working with a brand in the future to help grow the business and community support even further, obviously depending resonance and alignment.  As we wrapped up our time in Longboard Living, a longboarder came into the store with his deck and set it down in the corner.  His deck was covered in dirt and mud, so I asked him if he skates year round.  He commented as long as the streets are relatively dry it doesn't stop him.  This was the only skater we came across the entire trip who was out in public.  He was a cool dude.

We bought tickets for Artist Project 2015 when we got back to the hotel and headed out around 6:00.  When we arrived we were only a few minutes late, yet there was already a huge number of people already there.  The Artist Project event had two main attractions; Canadian artists debuting work (most for sale) in their pods which were scattered throughout the convention hall, and the live art battle.  

The Artist Project Art Battle was set up in rounds.  Eight artists stood on the elevated pedestal facing a blank canvas placed on an easel.  All artists were given acrylic paint (the same colors), 20 minutes, and were challenged to create the best piece in the allotted time.  We learned that these artists were not possibly just Toronto residents, but from all over Canada, which lead to a huge variety in style and design.  After 20 minutes, painters were required to drop their brushes and step down.  The audience was then encouraged to vote on their favorite piece electronically by entering a unique code found on their tickets, and the top two artists from the round moved up to the finals.  All work was available to purchase after each round via silent auction.  There was an undeniable energy to the live painting event.  A DJ mixed music live in the corner, cheers from the audience became more frequent as time ran out, and there was even an MC who encouraged patrons to snap photos and use the Art Project hashtag on social platforms to grow reach.

After a few rounds I moved on to explore the convention hall itself and view the work of artists not partaking in the art battle.  I stopped to chat with artists when I found their work particularly special or different, which occurred much more often than I expected. The sheer variety in style was particularly entertaining.  Grouping the artistic styles into general categories (as best as I could) we found; drawing and painting, sculpture, audio & visual, performance, and experimental.  It took roughly two hours to walk through the entire show, where we snapped as many photos as possible along the way, nabbed business cards, and called it a night.