… in which the agents of Section B debate the identity of their shadowy and dangerous nemesis.

You might not know it by the dearth of posts in the last few months but Toronto City Life officially passed it’s 15th year this January. I also turned 50 round about this time. Perhaps I was supposed to make a big hullabaloo about it, maybe produce some fireworks effect for the front page, throw together some cheesy and self-congratulatory retrospective, but that all seemed like a waste of time.

I was too busy living to reminisce for more than the few seconds it took to re-post some old photos and pithy one-liners on Twitter (or “X”, or whatever). Most of the pictures and paragraphs that I’ve produced lately are being put into a printed publication. The aim is to produce something that I’d want to hang on my walls — and that takes time.

I’ve also been putting a bunch of effort into /sectionb. While I hope that the story comes across as a fast and effortless narrative, producing it is often none of those things. I can safely say that I’ve put at least a few years’ worth of research and practice into the endeavour. The arcs are purposeful, the details are planned with care, and there’s substantive background material holding it all together. Even the tense and style needed some time to be worked out. I have to feel that I’ve done my due diligence.

There was also the added complication of moving beyond the keyboard in order to “write what you know”. It’s the foundational ethos of TCL and I’m hoping that the modest yet convincing success of this philosophy will translate into this project.

Granted, although I have an affinity for Cabo Verde (did you know that their unofficial national instrument is the electronic synth?) I’ve never actually been there. That’s a big part of the reason why Rebekah and Brock spend so little time there — but I try to keep such second-hand writing to a minimum.

I’m still making music and there are a number of /sectionb themes on the go, possibly for use in the next video. In previous episodes the music tracks were well synchronized but subtitle timing was a bit wonky so I had rethink my approach. Then I had to code it. Now I have to produce the actual episode.

On the same note, I still write software but these days it’s mostly for personal / agency use. As with the crypto stuff, I dabble deeply enough to (hopefully) add some authenticity to the Section’s modus operandi, especially as regards Dmitri’s home-made tech.

And, of course, the research and digging for the project never really stop; they just lead deeper underground.

The tl;dr to all of this is: I’m rarely bored, sometimes in up to my neck

Speaking from the safety of hindsight I can say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ride so far and if there’s another decade and a half of this sort of thing lined up then I’m game. I’m sure it’ll get my blood pressure up at some points but if I can just remember that it’s all a part of the experience then I should be okay.

I’m happy with the result but much of the process is manual so I may have to spend some time slapping together some automation for the next installment.

From: https://www.torontocitylife.com/sectionb/2022/03/25/2-brush-pass/

I’ve been thinking about producing a more immersive rendition of /sectionb. I’ve also been thinking that producing a “Parapsychological Spy Thriller” via conventional means is not be the correct approach. It needs to be a little more artsy, interpretive, associative. Unfortunately, illustration and animation aren’t really my thing.

Although I can draw some basic proportions and I try to pay attention to composition and colour, I can’t produce the type of visual output that modern artificial intelligence can. But as it happens I also dabble in code so it wasn’t long before I was fucking around with Stable Diffusion and similar software. Unfortunately, if I wanted to use the AI to produce short films the still images it spat out would need to be animated using something like morphing — doable but laborious.

By one propitious circumstance a fairly recent upgrade to Stable Diffusion by Deforum popped up in my search results one day and as soon as I saw a few samples I got giddy. Not only is the animated output of DSD dream-like and trippy, which is very apropos for /sectionb, it also improvises around the periphery of supplied prompts/themes in surprising ways, which is also quite apropos.

Initially I tried adding voice narration but it just didn’t fit so instead I converted the text to subtitles/closed captions, chucked in some original music, and after that the video basically just produced itself.

… in which a new acquaintance offers to help put Section B’s broken plans back together again.

Needing to replenish our stock of incense, Sarah and me recently dropped by Shanti Baba.

Aside from being a perennially cool store packed full of intriguing paraphernalia, rare objects, and numinous curios (a sort of spiritual head shop), the longtime owner is pretty knowledgeable about the Queen West area and offers interesting tidbits whenever we visit.

This time around he wrote the name “KENK” on a pink Post-It and handed it to us with instructions to look it up. When I did I realized why the name sounded familiar: up until about a decade ago Igor Kenk had been a fixture in the neighbourhood and was widely recognized as “the world’s most prolific bicycle thief”.

I don’t know how many of the nearly 3000 bikes strewn across his properties Kenk was personally responsible for stealing but I suspect that his reputation is well-earned. He’s so notorious that TVO even decided to produce an interactive graphic novel about him. The guy has lived an interesting life.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Igor Kenk no longer lives in Toronto but he definitely left his mark.

For the last two years the Canadian National Exhibition, a.k.a. The Ex, has been shut down due to the government’s benign love and concern for us all. So for a while there it was looking like The Ex was going to become The ex-Ex.

But it looks like management managed to turn it around and revive the moribund fair.

And we went.

Off the top I’d like to voice my disappointment at the entrance fees. Frankly, $25 for an adult with a measly $5 discount for junior or senior is a bit steep just to get you onto the grounds. And once you’re in, almost everything else costs extra.

By the time we got in it was starting to get dark and stormy and moody but in every other way it was the traditional ex-ex-Ex we remembered.

The same old (heavily weighted) games of chance line the main concourse. The games reluctantly release the same old ubiquitously crappy prizes into the stream of humanity as it flows by.

If I sound a bit snarky it’s only because I have some insight into those prizes beyond merely having them start to come apart a few weeks later. It’s not even that I remember the toys being of any better quality during my lifetime, it’s just that I got to look behind the curtain, as it were.

But I digress.

As you can see by the dearth of photos when compared to some past expeditions, we didn’t stick around too long. We’d gone out on a lark, not really expecting to be able to get in. I grabbed only the camera, and only “just in case”.

To our mild surprise we did find a way in but there would be no frozen ketchup or iced mustard, just mild paranoia followed by cops performing desperate CPR on a man with a cane and an artificial leg.

Should we manage to get in again, next time we’re coming prepared.

There’s a western stretch of the delicate, crumbly Gardiner Expressway called The Bentway. To be more accurate, The Bentway is below the Gardiner and it’s about as aesthetically pleasing as can reasonably be expected.

Every year at this time there’s an event called the Bentway Block Party and since we’d never been, me and Sarah decided to mosey on down to check it out.

I imagined the entire length of the walk being occupied by barbecues, boom boxes, and beverages. Instead, everything was crammed into a small area just off Strachan Avenue.

There was a small stage and square performance area which, when we arrived, was being used for some sort of lame strut exhibition involving what seemed like randos from the crowd. I still don’t quite understand the MC’s directions to, “OWN THE CATWALK! BE THE CATWALK! EAT THE CATWALK! STOMP THE CATWALK!”

It was just a little too fierce for me, I guess.

I honestly don’t know what was happening there but it came across as some sort of weird debutante diva show. No one seemed happy to be walking around. Some may not have been conscious.

But the “entertainment” aside, when combined with the apparent lack of food, dearth of drink options, and an overall lack of expected block party accoutrements, the whole thing was monotonous and thoroughly underwhelming. I’m genuinely surprised that it attracted as many people as it did.

Possibly the most interesting part of the Bentway Block Party was that they had a RSVP link on their website that invited you to add all sorts of information in order to confirm your “free ticket”. I’m not sure how the collected information was used because there wasn’t even a hint of anyone checking “tickets”.

Would we go again next year? There’d have to be a pretty compelling reason, that’s all I can say.