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| No, not really London, ON January 2020 This photo originally shared on Instagram |
To wit, #LdnONT’s attempts to make the downtown core look festive and vital in advance of Country Music Week in 2017 and the Juno Awards last year. With thousands of industry heavyweights descending on the city to celebrate the best of the best, a fresh coat of something was needed to hide the usual warts that normally cover this neighborhood.
On a streetscape pockmarked by empty storefronts often populated by members of the city’s burgeoning homeless population, it’s a tough illusion to pull off. And now that the events are long over and the glittering crowds have returned to wherever they came from, the remnants of these times look even sadder than they did then.
The only thing worse than a sad scene is a sad scene punctuated by half-baked attempts to make it look less sad. Which, as we know, only amplifies the sadness.
Such is the case here. No one, especially the individual looking for warmth in the barely sheltered doorway, would realistically read the slogan and buy what its creators are trying to sell, especially in light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that crowds into - and beyond - this frame.
You can load up a pig with a decade’s worth of lipstick, and no one will be fooled into believing there’s anything but a pig underneath it all.
The completion of the slick-looking flex street only adds insult to injury. Tens of millions of dollars worth of fancy grey-and-black-shaded pavement stones, but still countless souls live outside, on those very stones, in torment and addiction.
If only a liberal dose of makeup could fix what ails this place.
#london #ontario #canada #random #urban #downtown #dundas #street #photography #building #community #crisis #hope #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #google #pixel2 #teampixel #lifeinthemargins #family #everything
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