my Saturday morning

Last Saturday was the third annual World Wide Photo Walk. It is ultimately a competition, but really, I just enjoyed the company of so many other photographers (professional and amateur) getting together for a 2 hour walk along a designated area and then seeing what we all came up with on the flickr site.

Last year we wandered along Ottawa St South; this year it was James St North. This was one of the areas I considered taking you on way back in March when you all chose the Pier 4 destination for a tour. So now we finally make it to Jamesville, or James Street North, not far away from the waterfront park and Pier 4.

It is a gritty area, with many old business and empty buildings

still in need of some new investment

there is some interesting architecture and the main cultural group seems to be the Portuguese, with the requisite old men hanging out at the coffee shops

but it is slowly trying its hand at becoming a bit of an artists' enclave

there is still some old advertising art

I tried to follow along with the conversation between another photographer and a worker from the restaurant in this renovated building while they tried to decide what was here originally

later on, we had an interesting converstation with a local man sitting on his front porch who turned out to be a house painter. he is trying to convince homeowners in the area to at least paint their brick homes in pleasing complementary colours (if they must paint at all). obviously, there is some limited success in this endeavour!