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MLSE paints illegal sidewalk ads

Postering has to be reformed to improve aesthetics in the city. Infrastructure like those poster cylinders you see on St. George should be ubiquitous around the city like bus shelters. They should be for community posters, and not for mass commercial posters.
 
I must say, that slogan "Spirit is Everything" is really like rubbing salt in a wound... the wound being that the Leafs never ever win.
 
mattblackett said:
Spacing does NOT have a blind spot for postering. Its 100% legal if its done within the rules. I think there are tonnes of crappy postering going on and most of it is illegal (too big, too many on a poll, etc). The city has a way to deal with this, the same way they do with graffiti, which this MLSE ad is. The Leafs have the money to pay for ads and don't need to go out and spray paint our sidewalks. If it was around the ACC it may be much more acceptable, but they are everywhere.

Its much different when a stupid teenager paints his tag on a sidewalk then when a "respected" corporate citizen with a billion dollar yearly revenue goes out and does it.
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IIRC, Spacing magazine started as a campaign to keep postering legal.

I do see the hypocracy here.

As far as sidewalk grafitti goes, city hall seems quick to erase any such grafitti done by Urban Repair Squad.
 
mattblackett said:
Spacing does NOT have a blind spot for postering.
Click to expand...

This is disenguous. Your very first issue had as its cover a wooden, staple-pocked pole cleared of posters with a headline to the effect that a clean city was not worth stifling freedom of speech. That's the tone you set. You realize that by coming out with such a stance, you gave the impression (deliberate or not) that you support postering, which can take in everything from lost cat ads to the hundreds of ads put up by Think in Spanish, Best Body, big box nightclubs (looking at you, Guvernment), and other assorted lowlifes. Again, perhaps not your intent, but that seems to be what has happened. Now we have a downtown that looks like my email junk folder.

Now if, as you say, you aren't supportive of illegal, obnoxious commercial postering, why don't you return to the issue of said postering, and come out with a firm stance that "street spamming" on the part of companies like nightclubs, essay mills, boot camps, and other businesses is, in fact, a threat to public spaces, and that the city should take all measures it can to eliminate it (such as spreading the Downtown Yonge BIA model of street furniture maintenance) and thereby be on the side of angels rather than shady internet businesses who seem determined to wallpaper the city with their junk.

Your silence on this issue implies acceptance, and for good or ill, your opinion on this will be influential. If Spacing says commerical postering is wrong, that the city should crack down on it, it will then be a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, and I think an initiative on the part of the city to really crack down on spam postering will be supported in ways it wouldn't be if someone from the right initiated it, with the inevitable whining - from certain elements who no doubt support your publication - about the "sterilization" and "suburbanization" of public spaces.

Can't have it both ways, can we? Do you really want a city covered in "Booty Camp fitness" posters, nightclub ads, and other ad crap, and then at the same time say you are opposed to ad creep in public spaces with a straight face? Do you not see the inherent contradiction in that? If so, then you *must*, as an organization, take a stance on this. Because if you don't, then in my eyes, and in the eyes of many others, you are hypocrites with a blind spot to this practice.
 
Whoa shit. Back on the topic of these ads...I just realized that the Leafs traded away their first round draft picks for the next two years. Are they completely and utterly insane? They have a very good chance of getting the first pick(s) overall, and now they're going to Boston? No wonder I don't follow them anymore.
 
A few other examples

I came across these today. This sucks.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge, then click again on the image for full size.

 
is there no bylaw that would allow a big fat fine to be delivered to Pepsi & MLSE for this?
 
kettal said:
is there no bylaw that would allow a big fat fine to be delivered to Pepsi & MLSE for this?
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I think the problem is that this is a new way of advertising. Existing bylaws only cover billboards, posters and signs on buildings.

IIRC, Toronto Hydro also used this type of advertising over the summer. The paint wore off within weeks.
 
unimaginative2 said:
Whoa shit. Back on the topic of these ads...I just realized that the Leafs traded away their first round draft picks for the next two years. Are they completely and utterly insane? They have a very good chance of getting the first pick(s) overall, and now they're going to Boston? No wonder I don't follow them anymore.
Click to expand...

They traded the picks for a 22 year old winger from Boston who's supposed to be as good as anyone coming out of the next two drafts.
 
Any one, maybe, but any two? I find that hard to believe. And since it's MLSE saying that he's so amazing and he hasn't even played yet, I'll take it with a grain of salt...
 
I find the term "Maple Leafs" to be offensive, as is seeing these ads (even if it's just in pictures).

Maple Leaf Nation is really no different than any other religion... just a bunch of sheep following the herd while everyone else looks down upon them shaking their heads. I do find it funny that a lot of my Leaf supporting friends still watch wrestling, I don't have the heart to tell them that wrestling isn't real and the Leafs will never be a decent hockey club in this lifetime.
 
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