Is it still graffiti
if it’s beautiful?
    Beyond the parking lot on the west side of Clarence Street between Dundas and Queens is a sight to lift your spirits and make you smile.
    This bright, playful mural not only turns the once-drab side of the building at 196 Dundas into a treat for the eye but also cleverly directs your attention to other aspects of downtown that are well worth your consideration. It’s a celebration of the city’s core.
     You note the allusions one by one: the Market Tower's clock; miscellaneous details of heritage architecture, the crenellation of chimneys that crown our surviving stock of 19th-century buildings; the Victoria Park gates and the green oasis beyond . . .
    Below all these is a vivid confusion of coloured shapes that I take to be the signature, or perhaps a manifesto, of the artist, a ‘tagger’ who has gone impressively upmarket but still acknowledges a cultural link to the defacers of post boxes and railway cars. Lower still, a welter of this and that — lesser things that one is tempted to think may have been added by friends or rivals yet to make that artistic leap; tributes perhaps, or spite.
    Graffiti this may be, but art it undoubtedly is as well — a stimulating visual pick-me-up.

It’s meant to be
a hands-on job
    A bus driver has his passengers’ lives in his hands. This one had 27 in his — plus a plate of hot pizza.

    Bowling down Richmond Street in a London Transit No. 4 bus (Oxford East), he stopped to grab  the take-out lunch, then pulled back into traffic and carried on, steering with one wrist while holding the paper plate with his right hand and feeding himself with his left.

    No other vehicles are in the photo, but there were lots about; it was the middle of the afternoon rush — 5:26 p.m. to be precise. It would have been instructive to see our man’s reaction if a car ahead had done something unexpected. Or if a slice of hot pizza had slid into his lap.

   London Transit has some fine drivers — capable, friendly, helpful, patient men and women ready to get out of their seats to show a young cyclist how to use the bus’s bicycle rack, willing to take an extra minute to make sure a newcomer knows where to transfer in order to reach his destination. They take their responsibilities seriously. We also have the other kind.

    Both the LTC and the union say these guys get no lunch break. Both the LTC and the union should be ashamed. Endless studies have shown alertness declines after four or five hours without food. Drivers need to eat. But if they absolutely must do it on the job, they should eat something they can manage while leaving at least one hand for the wheel.