A stroll down Princess St. and up through Doug Fluhler (sp?) Park…
Chicken at Gallery Raymond
The People’s Hammer!!
Old Timey Chemist Stuff at Graham Pharmacy
A Cute Booth at Midori
I love the Screening Room!
Window display at Minotaur
A painted utility box
Overgrown graffiti wall
Garden Madonna. I think this is also a New Order album cover?
Frieze outside the Bell Canada building on Princess
Spooky narrow alley
Authorized Service. Is this guy’s house a service place? Did he gank this sign and put it up on his porch? Mysteries abound.
Kingston Chinese Alliance Church signs (1-2)
Blue Spheres
Shutters Without a Window
BEST OF LUCK & STAY IN TOUCH
Oakridge Birdhouse (two angles)
Uninscribed Memorial
L’il Chunky Bear Statue
I Think That Graphic Says Dogs Are Allowed?
Community Garden: Look But Don’t Pick
Beach Town in the Swap Box (No Fodo)
Concrete Sworls
Morning Flowers (1-2)
True Patriot Lawn
Stair Crack
Teal Garage
Old Gate
Mid-Move
The Plywood Says It’s Open
Martha’s Table
Just Bead It (Metaphysics)
My New Friend Karl Tomatillo / Fingy of Fwiendship
Closed During All Hours
Zen Frog
Porch Disco
Lonely Flowers
Sunflowers (1-2)
Sign Plants
Classic Ol’ Holler
There Is Nothing In The Rules That Says A Dog Can’t Play Basketball But There Is At Least One Rule That Applies To Those Dogs While They Play Basketball
No Skate Boards
Terrifying Vent Hole (Big Al’s Back In)
Love is Love
This House Continues To Be Eaten By Vines
Windmill Door
Two Building Names That Significantly Overpromise
Sunrise Through Wildfire Haze
Painted Utility Box (1-2)
Tree Lights
We Love You!
Walking north of the causeway, I took the split off toward the tiny hamlet of Barriefield because I’ve never gone that way before. Seeing this small footbridge to the side of the road, I poked my head in and saw paths…
…turns out this was the back entrance to the Barriefield Rock Garden, which is a goddamn delight. Winding paths, stone and wood benches, even small altars for child sacrifice.
On the far side there’s a cairn and the proper sign for the place, as well as a disintegrating church-shaped birdhouse.
Bonus photos: both sides of the elevated walkway by the Royal Military College.
Apartment Fancy
Charitable Air
Stairs to Nowhere
Artillery
Walking down around Cataraqui Street and up River Street, I came upon an overlowing dumpster next to a clearing in the woods.
Behind it, a cleared-out homeless camp. I don’t know if this was a police/city action, or what. But it was vast. I initially stuck my head in, then took a few steps in, then kept going, and going. I must have walked 250m into a long chain of connected clearings, beat down by human traffic, before I backed out. Largely because I was being devoured by mosquitoes. I don’t know how far back it went. There was lots of expected detritus — tarp, mattresses — but also a car bumper and other stuff.
Coming back out, the dumpster again. Tents, tarps, clothes, construction supplies.
Just past the dumpster, written along the sidewalk, a poem by Mary Oliver:
(forgive my anti-steadicam lurching gait!)
Where are all these people now? It can’t have been easy back there, in the heat, the humidity — as mentioned, I was being gangstalked by a horde of mosquitoes after about 30 seconds. It surely can’t be easier wherever they are now, without whatever community was back there in the sprawl of clearings, tents, and tarps.
There are a zillion studies that show that homeless people are not all drug users or petty criminals, but that default stereotype drives a lot of resentment — even hate. Hell, I’ve had trespassers steal things out of my back yard, off my laundry line; my garage has holes in the door where somebody tried to pry it open. I’ve been furious about “them” making me feel unsafe or inconveniencing me.
This really unsettled me in its scope. It’s easy to see a tent in a park or a couple of tents by the roadside and think you’ve seen “the problem”. The depth of this, the extent, really hit home for me. This was an entire village, out of sight, now wiped out and scattered and thrown in a dumpster.
Here’s that Mary Oliver poem, for those who don’t want to watch me read it poorly:
Of the Empire
© 2008 by Mary Oliver
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
From her 2008 collection, Red Bird, p. 46
Published by Beacon Press 2008
Yeah. That.
Murals from the barn at the nearby Memorial Centre. Clearly somebody has had a little fun with black spray paint.
From an earlier walk, my new friend Wilbur Potatoes.
Artsy House (New Mexico Vibes)
Morning Mart (also retroactively adding to my Convenience Store round-up)
Pretty Window. I tried to angle this to not invade the privacy of the sweet l’il old lady who lives here. Any day that the weather is nice and it’s not raining, she’s out on the sidewalk on a folding lawn chair in a dress and a pink hat, saying hello to anyone who walks past.
Pizza Monster (best pizza in Kingston, hands down) and its side mural.
Blaney’s Florists, owned by the Blaney family.
Forty feet away, Kevin J. Blaney, Florist. I suspect Succession-type drama!
no one dies
Maple Stump
Fancy Door
Imperious Window Kitty
Portal Window