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.