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totothewolff · 6 months ago

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Chemtrails Over the Yacht Club Collection

[🗯+18][👩‍❤️‍👨 Toto x reader(fem service staff)][💘 Romance][🥵Smut][🎀 Age-gap][❤️‍🔥Daddy Kink][🛳Yacht Culture][✍️WIP]

Summary: The number of sleepless nights you spend thinking about what you would say to his face, to that gorgeous, gorgeous face, if he ever dared to cross your path again. And here you have him, the fucker! Did he get amnesia or something?! Why is he acting so calm? As if Toto didn't leave you the way he did? The fact he still looks at you THAT way after all these years, and he is aging like a fine wine, looking even better with those couple of numbers added to his age. Still fit, still charming, still intimidating, still him, doesn't help you remain angry at him for abandoning the ship. No pun intended.

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3 - Not all who wander are lost

Your life after Toto and college has gotten much better. You like your current job. It's not the highest salary, but it's enough to enjoy yourself, buy cute clothes, and invest in revamping the apartment you once shared with your aunt.

It's nothing glamorous, though. It's just some cosmetic repairs and better decor, but you couldn't imagine affording it before.

Humidity is such a bitch in Monaco. There's more hidden inside those walls than you expected when you started restoring them.

Your phone buzzes in the front pocket of your washed-down tiny shorts, the ones you are wearing right now along with an old oversized T-shirt. A proper attire for working with paint!

A text from an unknown number got in.

"Are you in town?" it reads.

You dismiss it and continue your "Bob The Builder" activities.

"I'm near your place," comes a following text.

"Hi, wrong number! No idea who you are."

"This is Y/N's number, right?"

"Yes... but who is it?"

Now, you need help. You have all your friends and family in your contacts, and then a photo loads in the chat before you can text back.

It's a picture of one of Toto's hands. His long fingers appear in the snap as he is about to press the bell button of your unit's building.

It takes you a minute to grasp the reality of what the fuck is going on.

Okay, this is indeed happening.

This is not one of your fever dreams.

Don't panic! Don't panic!

Fuck. It's been a while.

Fuck! Fuck!

For the past four years, you have successfully avoided the thought of him.

You even feared it, back in the day, knowing quite well what the mementos of Toto did for your body and mind. A lethal cocktail for your mental health and well-being. Self-harm is a dangerous buddy you don't want to welcome back.

You did your best to get clean of him, casting Toto away from your soul and memory till there was left no trace of him in you at all.

And now this?! Shit.

But your body reacts on its own and instinctively for you, hitting the button for the entrance to get open so fast.

A buzzing sound on the front door allows Toto to access your building.

What the fuck?! What was that sort of Spider-Man reflex?! Girl, get yourself together, jeez.

Toto's footsteps on the stairs and a soft knock on your door follow.

You walk so quickly to get the door, more than you feel proud to admit, already feeling the self-love leaving your body by your actions.

Fuuuuuuck.

The view that greets you feels like something out of a stupid rom-com movie. Argh! Toto is the reason why you despise those films and distrust men, romance, and relationships.

He looks gorgeous as fuck! With that stupid beautiful face and those ridiculous bambi eyes, he is putting on, holding those stupid breathtaking flowers, and sporting that perfectly tailored suit, accentuating his best features.

He is aging like a fine wine and looks even better with those couple of years added to his age. Still fit, still charming, still intimidating, still him.

He is holding a massive bouquet for you. In his other hand, he carries a paper bag with a bottle of wine and other items unknown items inside.

"This one is for you." The sound of his deep voice reaching your ears brings back many memories, more than you can handle and you don't know what to do, if you faint, scream at him, or cum.

To your lack of response, he moves to place the flowers in your hands, observing you frozen before him, and then reaches closer to kiss your cheek as a greeting, way too close to your lips and more tenderly and slowly as he should be allowed to.

That warm wet touch you feel in the corner of your mouth takes you out of the trance and back to reality.

This is happening, he is really here. It's not one of those frantic dreams you used to have, ala Bella Swan.

"And this is for your aunt," he adds as he walks past you and enters your place inviting himself in.

He goes straight to leave the bag on the brand-new trendy table you recently bought. That table at the momment is pulled all the way to a corner, away and safe from the chaos and the paint.

Toto is already walking around your apartment as if he had the right to it, checking out what's going on.

"It's a good thing you haven't changed your phone number! That's a nice wall color," he tells you with a big smile, his beautiful teeth showing.

Did he get amnesia?! Why is he acting so calm, as if he didn't leave you like he did and in pieces?

"Us regulars can go with just one phone number our entire lives, you know?" There's a hint of anger hidden in your first words to him. It's been a while, yet it feels like yesterday.

Oh, the number of nights you spend fighting to sleep in your bed, thinking about what you would say to his face if he ever dared to cross your path again, to that gorgeous, gorgeous face.

And here he is, the fucker! What a nerve!

You move peacefully to place the flowers in a vase, which is contrary to how you feel inside. Still, a frown is visible but you hold your feelings. You bite your tongue not to lose it.

Silence reigns for a moment.

"Are you planning on moving out?" Toto asks, his voice lingering with worry and nervousness. He points with his finger to the revamping.

"No, I'm just making it my own since now it's just me here."

His eyebrows go up immediately. "Is your aunt..?" He doesn't get to finish his question as you instantly reply, interrupting him.

"She moved in with her longtime boyfriend. It took her a while to finally decide to move out, she kept returning to the apartment most of the nights just for me, knowing I don't cope well with sudden changes or people leaving abruptly" There's the jab! You go, girl! "She feared I could go back into a bad place... once more." you finish explaining.

"The one you sent me to. Thanks for all the trauma you caused me!" it's what you feel like screaming at Toto, but you don't. You are grasping at composure with your nails.

Toto stares at you solemnly, sensing the mood shifting. "Frankly, it's going better than I hoped for. I'm surprised you are not screaming at me or slapping me so far," he expresses with a smirk, arms on his hips, flexing those biteable, toned arms.

Your eyes finally move from the water stream coming from the tap to face him. Hurt is visible in them. "It's been years, Toto. You chose to move on without me, and so I did."

He clears his throat before slowly walking closer to you, closing the gap between you, and stepping over the splatted plastic covering the brand-new wooden floors of your place on his way to you. It's the only sound heard in the apartment.

You feel a nervousness in the base of your stomach as his towering body approaches, feeling tiny and like a little girl.

"Answer me this question," he looks at you so intensely. You lean back on the kitchenette counter, his big body almost trapping yours against it. "Do you regret me?" he whispers, his body nearly rubbing yours.

You take a minute to answer.

"I do regret..." you answer, with each of your words gaining momentum and you pause to look up at Toto straight in the eyes, confronting him, not letting him win. The man looked so hopeless for a second, and so tempted to break those inches setting you apart and taking you right there in the spot. "...not grabbing that juicy tip you offered me." You let out with a smile, feeling victorious.

You little shit. His facial reaction is a poem.

If he wants to play games this time, they will be with your rules.

As the bottle of wine reaches its end and the coat of paint on the wall is almost complete, he taunts you with the fresh brush he's holding, getting you an ivory splat of dye on your forearm with a cheeky smile.

You playfully toss yours on his way, staining his nose too. You two start making a mess, throwing paint at each other.

"Hey! Don't fuck up my clothes! Is this your cheap excuse to make me take off my shirt?" he teases you.

"Oh, no, none of that! I love myself nowadays!" you snap back, laughing.

"Fuck you," Toto pushes you to the side.

"Let's grab dinner somewhere. I'm getting high with this smell! I need some fresh air" Toto invites you.

And you accept.

Being around him feels so good. Indulging yourself with him is fixating and delicious, like the most fantastic and fatal drug. You have his full attention, and you can make him laugh and smile like that and make him look at you with those eyes in THAT way.

The moment he reaches your cheek over the table to caress it with his hand and thumb, provoking you to close your eyes, rub against it, and seek more of his touch immediately, enjoying the contact of his warm skin on yours desperately, makes you feel like a trained pet waving his tail to his master, and it breaks something inside you.

God, you used to be so desperate for him, craving anything he gave you. No matter if it were crumbs or leftovers, you would settle for anything to have him even if a little, a taste. Gosh, you were so young and dumb.

By the moment you get the question that Toto silently asks you with his imploring eyes, as he drops you back at your place late in the night after spending an honestly great time together downtown, you are strong enough to resist it.

Even after you two just had a, you don't want to throw around the word "date," but yeah, basically, you just had one. You feel powerful enough to shake your head no, even if, in reality, you were scared to death by what Toto provoked in you with the simple touch of his hand.

Oh, and to think there was a time when the mere idea of Toto taking you someplace fancy, out of that fucking Yacht Club, in public, holding the door open for you, pulling your chair, looking at you with adoring eyes across the table, and sharing soft touches and kisses here and there, was something you only could dream of and you used to beg for it to happen.

As you take off his jacket, the one he gave you to keep you warm in the nightly breeze now by the entrance door of your building, Toto's eyes speak volumes to you, almost in a plea to let him inside, not only into you but into your life once more, into your bed and fill you every single inch till your very core.

You feel his nose tenderly brushing yours, the warmth of his mouth brushing your lips, his muscular arm stretching next to your face as he leans in on you.

"Good night, Toto. It was great seeing you," you say almost in a whisper, getting on your tiptoes and kissing him on the cheek before entering back to your place without looking back, without falling for it.

Every once in a while, texts from Toto arrive.

As the days go by, your chat remains pretty active.

Here and there, you two have a casual call to share, you know, life or when important things happen.

Maybe once a month, you find yourself Facetiming with him when you feel you miss or need him, even if you hate to admit it, or when he feels he wants to tease you by appearing with his shirt off, just wearing those briefs that leave nothing to the imagination and make you salivate.

The number of immediate likes he gives you on Instagram every time you post something —the only social media account you own, and that he has, you are sure he mentioned one he only joined for you— constantly reminds you that Toto is there, looking over you. That you still his girl.

It doesn't matter if you appear in photos hanging out with random dudes or kissing your new Portuguese boyfriend. Toto still leaves you a like, maybe just to let you know he saw it or to remind you he is there for you no matter what.

He gets to know all about your relationships anyway, even the details.

How can the two of you talk about each other's love lives? It's an enigma your friends simply don't get. Speaking of, some of them are team Toto and others just hate him. Calling your weird status as toxic or codependent.

You don't let them know the whole truth, it's mostly about your love life you two talk about.

Toto only has flings, and sometimes, he doesn't even remember the names of the girls he sleeps with. He confessed to you during a drunk call around 3 a.m. - he went out with his friends on a boys' night out - that he only fucks girls that are the spitting image of you.

But still, none of you seem able to dare to talk about your past relationship, which is something that needs to be studied.

Two more years pass by without seeing each other in person, until that one day Toto randomly shows up at your place at a terrible time. Which wasn't a mere coincidence.

You are dealing with your painful breakup with "the French boyfriend", which Toto knows as "The One".

You believe he showed up to be supportive, since and by accident while entirely intoxicated, you disclosed to Toto on the phone in the middle of the night, that same night right after Manu ended things with you and you sought comfort in a bottle and his voice, that you felt Manu was the one, that this one truly hurt, not as much as when he left you, but close second.

And that you had no idea how to fix things with Manu since what he asked you was to get rid of "your dynamics" before he agreed to move further with you.

"To leave the other relationship you sustain! Which sometimes feels like the real one!" the memory of Manu confronting you comes alive in your mind, while he raises his voice, angry and jealous, referring to Toto and what you share.

Toto and you are having the most friendly chit-chat, chilling around in your finally completed, rebuilt place. When he lets you know, he will be staying in Monaco for some weeks this time.

"I'll be staying at the Yacht Club," he says and looks amused at your reaction to his words.

"Shocker!" you answer, pulling a faux stunned face, making him chuckle.

"Well, not so. That place has outstanding customer service! 5 out of 5." His eyebrows go up and down several times, teasing you and hinting about your past whereabouts. "Well, still..."

"Oh, so you are fucking the girl in turn?" escapes your lips, without much thought, interrupting him.

Yes. You are still bitter after all those years, even if you like to pretend you are not. Four? Five years have passed by?

"I didn't mean that," he clears his throat before answering. "You cut me halfway through the sentence, well, still... it's not the same without you. That's what I was going to say."

"Oh, please, don't mind me if you are doing so! It's none of my business. Just, if you have another fiance you want to leave, please inform the girl she's an excuse beforehand." You start vomiting words coming from deep within you, out of nowhere. Jesus! Since the break up you have been so incendiary.

"Like a ticking bomb!" your aunt described your current mood perfectly.

Shit, sentiment got the worst of you, and Toto's presence is not helping much either.

It gets quiet and awkward so fast.

"You weren't an excuse. You were the reason," Toto confesses, getting visibly irritated too.

"Ahem... Weren't you already running away from her? If I remember correctly, that's why you arrived at the Club unexpectedly in the first place! Before you got yourself all inside me, and what for?! Oh, yeah, to immediately leave me? That makes total sense! How romantic of you, thank you!"

"It wasn't the right moment for what you asked of me. You were too young, and we just had met, to move in that fast. I wasn't ready for that back then, to take you fully as my responsibility. It was for the better. I don't regret my actions." He sounds dead honest.

"I wasn't ready then?!"

You roll your eyes at him, and you're done with the conversation. You change the subject. You don't feel like going to war right now.

The following day, at dawn, Toto is already there at your place, all joyful, with iPad in hand, as if you hadn't discussed heavy subjects last night.

He always looks too comfortable in your place, claiming the armchair for himself as usual.

Some minutes later, another couple of knocks come on the door. Toto quickly gets up, stretching those long muscular legs as if he knew who was on the other side.

He skates in his socks, like a kid, on the freshly cleaned wooden floor and avoids stomping the Roomba currently doing its work, on his way to get the door.

He lets in his hot, busty redhead assistant.

She enters your kitchen holding two massive fancy paper food bags. Toto made her get you breakfast from your favorite dinner in town. He still remembers which one is it and your favorite order.

As you finish setting the table, his assistant prepares him his coffee, grabbing things from your drawers.

Yeah, girl, go ahead! Feel free!

Halfway through your Croque Madame, you remember you need to install a higher bookshelf, so you ask Toto for his help.

"I don't do that, but my people will handle it. Please leave it to me, anything you need." He offers you a big smile. "You know that, right?" he looks straight at you, placing his fork down on the table for a second. "Anything you need of me, you just ask me for it, a quick text or a call," he leans forward on the table. "And I will get it done."

Your face shifts to an expression he wasn't expecting and a prominent frown forms on your eyebrows. "Oh! Now you do that, huh?! Good to know!" you let out, angry.

Fuck, here it comes.

He stares at you, serious. Everything goes silent.

"Y/N..."

"It's not like I had asked you for something before!" you laugh off, resentful. "Not a single "I'm sorry" has come out of your lips, yet"

"Kid, I won't ask for your forgiveness since I don't regret what I did. I have told you that before," he sounds solemn now, his smile fading.

"Don't call me kid," you answer, rage building up.

Okay, you sense those repressed feelings coursing out.

"Then stop behaving like one." He sounds so calm, but his voice is more in-depth than usual. His beautiful dark eyes dispatch you a glare.

Oh, he is mad but not as furious as you are.

"Would you mind?!" you let out loud, losing it at the noises coming from the kitchen amidst your fight. You turn your head to the hot girl still doing shit for Toto at the counter.

Okay, that was rude of you, but you are pissed off and this is your house!

She looks at you, perplexed, before nodding and exiting the place to give you two some needed privacy.

"I don't have to eat shit in my own house," you warn Toto, returning your attention to him.

"You are the one who allowed me back. You let me spend all the time I want here and be by your side whenever I feel like it. Oh, please don't tell me it didn't cross your mind all things that could happen by doing so?"

"Oh, right, then save me the fights. Why don't you go back to stay gone? How about that?! Why don't you leave, better? I mean, must be easy, you have done it before."

"Y/N," he exheals your name, exasperated, his hand running through his hair, a tic he has.

"No, seriously, 'cause I was doing perfectly fine without you! Or do you need to fuck me first to then disappear?"

HOLY FUCK! You are taking things that far? Phew.

Toto looks visibly hurt by your words, but he only slightly nods. He is still sitting in the chair across the table from you, arms tightly crossed, his tight white shirt displaying his muscles.

Then, starts shaking his head in an "I'm about to lose my cool" way.

And yet you dare to push for more.

You want to let it all out of your system. You have been holding it, eating them, carrying these feelings for years! And you are done.

There's no point of return when the following words exit your mouth: "Let me ask you the same question then, you showed up here, don't tell me you weren't expecting this," you point with your finger referring to this exchange, "to happen at some point after you had me relentlessly for your own enjoyment and pleasure, and then left me out of the blue, not caring about my feelings, why don't you use that energy better to..." tears are menacing to slide down your eyes, you finally lose it and he looks like he does too.

Toto looks at you with such dangerous intensity, then he jerks to his feet in a sudden move and drops his hands on the table forcefully, shaking it, before leaning in his tall body overpowering you still sitting down.

You immediately shut up, witnessing his reaction, his body language screaming at you, "Abort, abort, danger."

"Go on," a threatening sound comes from his trembling lips. It's both a command and a whisper. His long nose is almost touching yours, he leaned in so close you can see the pores on his skin. You can feel his anger and the extremely tense static in the air. "What were you about to say?"

"...To fuck another idiot who is willing to keep your bed warm, and your dick wet like I did." you let out against his mouth.

"You know quite well there's no other like you," he says without hesitation. His hand pulls you by the neck closer to him, his nails digging into your hair. He looks angry in capital letters.

"Lies. Be honest for once, say it" You confront him, no rodeos. Toto starts rounding the table, coming straight to you. He looks menacing.

You feel intimidated for a brief second before adding the killer punch, "You just were looking where put your dick in"

"That's enough!" In a brisk movement and with a firm grip, he pulls you up from the chair, wrapping your legs around his waist, and smashing his body and yours against the wall, pressing himself on you, with no inch of space between your cores, trapping you against his warm body and the cold wall.

He starts whispering to your ear and neck, "I keep coming to your place because I can't bear to be in my villa without looking at the bed and desiring you wrapped around me, bouncing on me, to be buried deep inside you, to have you moaning and begging me for more, don't you think that every corner of that place reminds me of you loving me" his hand slide from your calf to your tight. At the same time, he leaves a trail of kisses from your neck to your lips.

"I fucked your twin the night you didn't let me come in. You have no idea what number of girls I have called your name. They all look like you," he admits again between ravenous kisses as you run your hands on his hair and undo his shirt.

You feel the adrenaline rush coursing through your veins as your eyes lock and memories flood you until you finally can articulate between groans, "I missed you."

The corner of Toto's mouth twitches upwards into a small smile, his eyes sparkling with fervor. "I missed you too, kid," he replies, a hint of huskiness in his tone that is too much for you to bear, you feel yourself so wet.

His eyes scan you from head to toe, drinking you in like a thirsty man, and you suddenly feel naked under his gaze.

You take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of his cologne. He still wears the one you picked for him, the one you liked, the one that's for you. His eyes meet yours again, and you mirror back that same hunger.

The years apart melt away like a morning fog, and with it, the anger, pain, and regret.

His lips brush over the curve of your neck, and Toto starts pressing in circles his erection against your thighs and core. You let out a gasp, the pleasure so intense that you break away from him.

"We shouldn't," you mumble, struggling for air. Toto's hand reaches up to cup your cheek, and you feel his smile against your lips.

"Yes, we shouldn't," he echoes your words, but his fingers are already tracing your lower lip, as addictive as always.

"But we will," you say as your fingernails dig into his now naked back, and you pull him closer by the waist, your legs still wrapped around him, and he captures your lips in a more urgent, passionate kiss as his dick gets pressed hard against you.

The more pieces of clothing slide from your bodies, the more urgent you two become. As if you two were magnetically drawn to each other, stumbling towards the bed, unable to separate a second.

He carries you there while smooching you, throwing stuff to the floor by accident in the desperate pursuit to merge your bodies.

"You have no idea the number of times I have jerked off to your boudoir photos; I need new ones," Toto mumbles as his intense gaze looks into your soul, stirring sensations that you had long tried to bury, memories that you had attempted to obliterate.

His thumb finds its way to your lips, gently pressing against the softness, leaving an imprint of his skin on yours before his mouth reaches your breasts, taking a rigid nipple within his lips, teasing it with his teeth and tongue until you cry out.

When he releases it, Toto turns his attention to the other breast, showering it with the same love and desire.

His hard-on is pressed into you, eager and persistent, a hot, demanding presence between your thighs. You let out a moan as you wrap your legs tighter around his waist, pulling him closer. With every lap of his tongue over your sensitive flesh, you feel your hips bucking against him.

You want him to fill the void he'd left behind. The throbbing of your pussy lets him know just how much it craves him.

Toto pauses for a moment as he takes in the sight of your sweat-slicked body, your heaving chest straining with every shallow breath. He reaches down and wraps his fingers around his cock, positioning himself at your entrance.

You feel the head of his dick rubbing along your swollen, aching pussy lips, the warmth of his skin so intense.

Toto leans back, his brow furrows with concentration, and with a crude growl, he pushes himself hard inside you.

You let out a guttural moan as he fills you balls deep, your bodies connecting in the most delicious of ways. After a second, his hips start to move in earnest, pounding into you with focused intensity.

There is no time for tenderness or affection, just two bodies engaging in an animalistic rhythm fueled by pent-up lust and long-denied desires.

Your nails cling to his sweat-dampened muscular shoulders, desperate for something to hold onto as he smashes your pussy so hard.

"Fuck, you have no idea how much I missed your tightness, this pussy," he grunts, withdrawing slowly before slamming back into you with bruising force.

The bed squeaks and creaks beneath you, and your intense pleasure movements shake the bed frame as well.

You can feel every inch of him, the veins snaking down the length of him, the hot, heavy weight of him inside you. "Daddy, more!" you cry out. He groans and flexes his hips again, grinding deeper.

The sound of your heavy breathing fills the room as he starts to piston in and out of you in a steady rhythm.

You hear the slaps of skin on skin as he thrusts you harder, as well as the growls of pleasure and the filthy, dirty talking that comes out from both your mouths.

It feels as glorious as you remembered it, this relentless pounding leading you to a fantastic climax.

"Oh daddy, daddy, daddy," you moan eagerly, hips colliding with his.

Toto is really here, plunging deep and hard all those years without him. Your hands grip the sheets, and you arch your back as his thickness claims you entirely, he is so fucking hard.

"Fuck yeah," Toto's voice is almost unrecognizable between your gasps and moans. "That's it, kid, take it all."

The scent of sweat and sex clings heavily in the air as you feel like your body might shatter with each push into you.

His fingers dig into your hips as he pulls you to another position again, and you claw and scratch at the sheets beneath, searching for something to ground you as he fucks you so painfully hard.

"Don't stop. Don't ever stop," you moan desperately, your teeth grit as Toto gives it to you relentlessly. "I'm so close, fuck! Please!"

You are his, completely and utterly and only his, after all these years. It's inexplicably raw and it shows in how you two are devouring each other at that moment.

"Oh," Toto moans loudly. His cheeks are all red, and his eyes are becoming watery.

Loud and extended growls from both of you start coming out as you reach your peaks.

Within a second, you feel yourself releasing with such force, unable to hold yourself a minute more, trembling on him.

"Kid, you are so gorgeous," Toto moans out as he enjoys the view of you, his eyes filled with lust as he watches you climax in front of him, dripping, enjoying that extra sleekness of leave on his hard cock for his final thrusts.

He is barely able to thrust you completely three times more before pulling himself out, quickly and between loud groans, as you stroke him, you feel his warm release on you, his cum falling in your skin and his big fat dick throbbing on your belly as you tenderly keep stroking it, enjoying the sensation of having him in your hand.

"I love you" he lets out, between heavy breaths and as sweat drops go down his muscular pecks and arms. You run a hand on his abs and hairy firm thighs.

When Toto wakes up after taking that much-needed post-angry intense sex nap and doesn't feel your body weight on top of his, he instantly knows what it means.

"Until you are willing to say I'm sorry, don't forget to close the door on your way out."

He reads on the sticky note you left for him on the pillow next to his.

Join us at The Wolff Pack Discord Server > https://discord.com/invite/tpgArxqbfd

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Portraits of Queen West

Tomorrow (September 14), I'm hosting the EFF Awards in San Francisco. On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy.

Portraits of Queen West is Kevin Steele's extraordinary photo-book, a work of "sequential art" featuring time- and space-series of a single – rather glorious – stretch of Toronto's Queen Street West:

https://crowdfundr.com/queenwest

Steele himself is as extraordinary as his book. I first ran into him through Mackerel Multimedia, the pioneering Canadian multimedia shop that he co-founded in the early 1990s – one of those art-school kids who discovered the Mac, fell in love with the radical possibilities of digital art, and changed the world:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/mackerel.html

Steele's pioneering work – in Hypercard, then CDROMs, then Flash – helped define the look-and-feel of the old, good internet; an urbanist feel that owed a debt to Toronto's most beloved adopted urbanist, Jane Jacobs. Steele and Mackerel made things that were beautiful and human-centered, human-scaled and human-adaptable.

Not for nothing, Hypercard presaged the web's critical "view source" affordance, which allowed people to copy, modify, customize and improve on the things that they found delightful or useful; this affordance was later adapted by other human-centered projects like Scratch, and is a powerful tonic against enshittification.

Mackerel didn't survive the first great multimedia mass-extinction, but it launched the careers of a whole generation of talented web-writers and builders, and not just its former employees, but also the millions who were touched by its work.

I haven't seen Steele in person in decades, but I follow his work – not as a multimedia artist, but as an urban photographer. Kevin and I follow each other on Flickr – the once great and great again photo-sharing site that survived decades of abuse from Yahoo and Verizon before being taken indie and rescued by the Smugmug folks.

Back in November 2010, Kevin started posting photos of individual storefronts on Queen Street West to Flickr. They were painstakingly labeled and dated, and they multiplied. By the end of the year, there were a couple dozen of them:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-posted-desc&safe_search=1&tags=queenstreetwest&user_id=92518741%40N00&view_all=1&min_upload_date=1073368800&max_upload_date=1294552799

A year later, there were hundreds:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-posted-desc&safe_search=1&tags=queenstreetwest&user_id=92518741%40N00&view_all=1&min_upload_date=1073368800&max_upload_date=1326088799

Today, there are over 1,200 of these:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=queenstreetwest&user_id=92518741%40N00&view_all=1

Now, I know Queen Street West very well. It was once one of Toronto's most bohemian neighborhoods, where my paternal grandfather's fellow refugee Benny Yacht has his schmata shop and where my maternal grandfather took my mother and her siblings to trade in their comics for credit at cramped, crammed used bookstores.

I discovered Queen West as a pre-teen, thanks to Bakka Books – now Bakka Phoenix – the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world. I haunted Bakka, and, on the way, found myself drawn into the other stores around it:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/48476314831/in/photolist-2gRFMvz-2oJJDCY

There was Silver Snail, a massive comics shop, but a bounty of used bookstores, vintage clothing stores, thrift shops, the indescribably great electronics store Active Surplus and, later, nightclubs like the Rivoli, the Diamond, the Bovine Sex Club and the Zoo Bar.

For a critical decade of my life and more, the stretch of Queen Street that Steele obsessively documented in his Flickr feed had been the center of my life. I watched it thrive and grow – and then collapse into a kind of self-parody, as the original landlords (like Bakka's landlord) died, and their failsons and faildaughters kicked out longstanding tenants and replaced them with multinational "brands" that turned Queen West into a less-convenient, open-air version of the sterile Eaton Centre mall.

Steele, it turns out, was having similar feelings of dismay as the organic, grown, chaotic delight became groomed, sterile and homogenized. After a 2008 fire wiped out an entire block of Queen West – including Duke's Cycle, a city institution that eventually shuttered after more than a century of service – Steele began his documentation project.

Steele had started documenting the street in 2001, but that fire turned a hobby into a project. Over and over again, Steele returned to the street, meticulously photographing the same storefronts, capturing a time-series that eventually spanned 16 years, from 2001-2017. Steele gradually stitched these photos together into panoramic collages, reproducing whole blocks:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=linearpanorama&user_id=92518741%40N00&view_all=1

It is these "linear panoramas" that form the backbone of Portraits of Queen West. The book runs 162 pages, and it meant to be read forwards and backwards – start from the front cover and turn the pages to see the north side of the street, along with insets showing details (like the storied Graffiti Alley), and then flip the book over and start again, seeing the south side.

For more than a decade, I've thrilled to my unexpected trips through Steele's time-machine, as he posted his space-and-time-series images of a vanished urbanism, an old, good city that paralleled the old, good web. I got a peek at a PDF of the new book that collects these extraordinary image and immediately pre-ordered a copy.

Steele and his publisher Black Eye Books are crowdfunding presales of the book on Crowdfundr; the book is CAD40 with shipping (there's also a deluxe edition at CAD55, which comes with a signed bookplate and six postcards):

https://crowdfundr.com/queenwest

After a string of ghastly mayors – each finding new depths of depravity, selfishness and mismanagement to plumb – Toronto just elected its first progressive mayor in a generation, the wonderful Olivia Chow, for whom I used to ring doorbells support of her city council campaigns:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/27/olivia-chow-wins-election-as-torontos-first-chinese-canadian-mayor

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. The enshittification of the old, good web continues apace, but there has never been more energy to build a new, good internet – and banish the enshitternet of Big Tech to the scrapheap of history.

In the same way, Toronto's much eroded urbanism, pluralism and liveability are both at their lowest ebb in my lifetime – and also at their most hopeful moment of the century. In 1998, the dead-eyed Romneyoid Premier of Ontario Mike Harris "amalgamated" Toronto with its suburbs, putting it at the mercy of car-addled out-of-towners in an act of gerrymandering that all-but-guaranteed that city residents' political choices would be swamped by suburbanites who could be convinced to vote for laughable Tory bumblefucks like Rob Ford.

Overcoming the gerrymander required a massive turnout – not merely a supermajority, but an ultramajority of politically motivated, organized, committed, pissed off Torontonians; Chow's election is a minor miracle that part of the wave of other historic reversals, like the DoJ awakening from its coma to drag Google into court on antitrust charges.

We are a long way away from making a new, good internet that's a worthy successor to the old, good internet, and at least as far from a new, good Toronto that the people of the old, good Toronto would have built but for Tory wreckers and the Christmas-voting turkeys who elevated them to office. But both are possible – and both demand that we fight for them.

Steele's beautiful photodocumentary of one slice of that old, good city doesn't just memorialize the world we lost – it is inspiration for a world that is ours to win.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/13/spadina-to-bathurst/#dukes-cycle

EFF Awards, San Francisco, September 14

#pluralistic #books #gift guide #photography #urbanism #toronto #kevin steele #mackerel multimedia #canada #queen street west

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