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totothewolff · 5 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 now here he is, that 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 the years, and that he is aging like a fine wine, looking even better with those couple of years added to his age, still fit, still charming, still intimidating, still him, it doesn't help you remain angry at him for abandoning the ship.

< Previous chapter | Masterlist >

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, which you wear with an old oversized T-shirt. A proper attire for working with paint!

A text from an unknown number arrived.

"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. All your friends and family are in your contacts, but a photo loads in the chat before you can text back.

It's a picture of one of Toto's hands. His long finger appears in the photo as he is about to press the bell button on your unit 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.

You did your best to get clean from him, casting Toto away from your heart and body 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 entrance button fast.

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

What the fuck?! That was a fast reflex.

Toto's footsteps on the stairs and the soft knocks 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! He is why you despise those films and distrust men, romance, and relationships.

Toto looks gorgeous as fuck! With that stupid beautiful face and those ridiculous bambi eyes he is putting on, holding those silly flowers, and wearing that 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 inside.

"This one is for you." The sound of his deep voice reaching your ears brings back many memories, more than you can handle.

To your lack of response, he moves to place the flowers in your hands, watching you frozen before him, and then reaches closer to kiss your cheek as a greeting, way close to your lips.

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

This is happening, he is 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.

He goes straight to leave the bag on the brand-new trendy table you recently bought. That table is pulled in a corner away, 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 happening.

"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, you frown but 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, and she kept returning to the apartment most of the nights, knowing I didn't cope well with those changes. She feared I could go back into a bad place... once again."

"The one you sent me to. Thanks for all the mess 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 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.

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

You take a minute to answer.

"I do regret..." you answer, each word gaining momentum. You pause to look up straight into Toto's eyes. The man looked so hopeless for a second. "...not taking that juicy tip you offered me." You let out with a smile, feeling victorious.

You lil' shit.

If he wants to play some game this time, it 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 paint on your forearm with a cheeky smile.

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

"Hey! Don't fuck up my clothes! Is this a 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!" Toto invites you.

And you accept.

Being around him feels so good. Indulging yourself with him is fixating and delicious, like a fantastic 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.

The moment he reaches your cheek over the table and caresses it with his hand and thumb, provoking you to close your eyes and seek more of his touch immediately, wanting the contact of his warm skin with yours desperately, makes you feel like a trained pet coming back to his master, and it breaks something inside you.

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

By the moment you get the question, Toto silently asks you with his eyes, as he drops you back at your place later that night after spending a great time together downtown.

After you two, you don't want to throw around the word "date," but yeah, basically, you just had one. You feel decisive enough to say no, even if, in reality, you were scared of what Toto provoked you only by a simple touch.

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

As you take off his jacket, the one he gave you to keep you warm in the nightly breeze, both of you stand by the entrance door of your building. His eyes speak volumes to you, almost in a plea to let him inside, into your life once more, into your bed and your 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 your place without looking back.

Every once in a while, texts from Toto start to arrive.

As the days go by, your chat remains active, not daily, but every week.

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.

The number of instant likes he gives you on Instagram every time you post something —the only social media account you, and he have— constantly reminds you that Toto is there, looking over you.

It doesn't matter if you appear in those 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 that he is still there for you and that none of it matters.

He always knows all about your new relationships anyway.

How can the two of you talk about each other's love lives? Well, it's mostly about your love life. Toto only has flings, and sometimes, he doesn't even remember the girls' names.

But still, none of you can even dare to mention your past one, the one you two shared, which needs to be studied.

Almost two years later, Toto randomly shows up in person at your place again and at a terrible time.

You are still dealing with your painful breakup with now the French boyfriend, which Toto knows as "The One," and you are all frail.

You believe Toto showed up to be a supportive friend since, by accident and while entirely drunk, you confessed to him on a call you made him in the middle of the night. That same night, right after Manu ended things with you and you sought comfort in a bottle and Toto's voice, revealing to him how you felt Manu was the one, that this one truly hurt, not as much as when he left you, but close enough.

But you had no idea how to fix things since Manu asked you to get rid of "this weird dynamic" before the two could move further. "To leave the other relationship you have! Which sometimes feels like the real one!" Manu confronted you, raising his voice, angry and jealous, referring to "him", to Toto.

You and Toto 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 weeks.

"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 these years, even if you like to pretend you aren't. Four? Five years have passed?

"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.

Shit, you have been so emotional lately, and his presence is not helping.

It gets quiet and awkward so fast.

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

"Weren't you already running away from her? That's why you arrived there in the first place! Before you put it inside me, isn't it? And to what?! To immediately leave me? That makes total sense. How romantic!"

"It wasn't the right time for what you asked me for. You were too young, and we just had met to move together that fast. I wasn't ready for that 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?! 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 slides in his socks like a kid on the now freshly cleaned wooden floor and avoids stepping on the Roomba currently doing its work on his way to 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 and your 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 any of 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, you just ask, 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 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 pouring out of you.

"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.

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

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

"You are the one who allowed me in. 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, you have done it before."

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

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

HOLY FUCK! Are you going to take things that far? Phew.

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

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

Yet you dare to push for more. You want to let it all out of your system. You have been holding, eating, and carrying these feelings for years!

You go on: "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 used me relentlessly for your 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 lose it and he looks like he does too.

Toto looks at you with such dangerous intensity that he gets on his feet and drops his hands on the table forcefully before leaning in his tall body and overpowering you.

You immediately shut up, witnessing his reaction.

His body language screams 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. 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, like I was." you let out against his mouth.

"You know quite well there's no other like you," he says without hesitation. He looks angry in capital letters.

Toto starts walking your way, rounding the table. He looks menacing.

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

"That's enough!" In a quick move and with a firm grip, he pulls you up from the chair, wrapping your legs around his waist, and smashes his body and yours against the wall, pressing himself on you, no inch of space, trapping you between 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, 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 confesses to you between a ravenous kiss 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 articulate, "I missed you."

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

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 was for you. His eyes meet yours again, and you mirror back that same hunger.

The years apart melt away like a morning fog, 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 get pressed hard against your core.

With each piece of clothing sliding from your bodies, the more urgent you two become. As if you two were magnetically drawn to each other, you stumble towards the bed, unable to separate a second.

He carries you there while kissing you, stumbling and 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 inside you. 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 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, oh Daddy, oh Daddy," you moan eagerly, hips colliding with his.

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

"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 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!"

You are his, completely and utterly his, after all these years. It's inexplicably raw and shows in how you two devour 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.

"Unf, 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.

He is barely able to thrust you three times more before pulling himself out, quickly and between groans, while you stroke his cock, feeling him release over you, his warm cum dripping in your skin and his big dick throbbing on your belly.

When Toto wakes up after taking a much needed post-angry sex nap and doesn't feel your body resting 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 door.

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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