A foggy night in Toronto

I was sitting at home reading fascinating tales about the Yakuza in preparation for my trip to Japan (exciting news, dear readers. The next blog post will be coming at you from Japan . I’m leaving Thursday) when I saw an update from my friend Emery :

Awesome night for a fogwalk.

Fog? My ears perked up. I’m a sucker for the stuff

I looked outside and sure enough, it was gorgeous. I grabbed my camera and jumped on my bike.

Was it worth going outside at 2am for?

(Oh wait, I’m jumbling the order. Forgive me — I’m just extremely proud of this shot.)

I stepped outside into an eerie version of the Annex.

I sped south on my bike. First stop: Central Technical School . The school is composed of two adjacent, but visually dissimilar buildings. The historical main building:

On Harbord, I headed towards another Toronto brutalist masterpiece, Robarts Library at UofT.

One more concrete masterpiece in fog: the medsci building.

From there, it was more traditional UofT. Soldier’s Tower and Hart House and the UTSU world HQ:

4:30am. I biked north to Bloor. Another architecture landmark (of the world-class-ier variety ): the new ROM Crystal:

From here, I headed through Queen’s Park (without stopping to shake hands with any of the creeps on the prowl) and hit Yonge Street. At almost 4am, the afterparty on Yonge was still in effect. These party animals thought it would be a entertaining to hurl paper over the signs.

Note the police. They (or their colleagues, anyway) make a guest appearance later on.

I didn’t encounter a single soul in Yorkville. (But does one ever?)

Back in my home turf, Bloor looked better than ever.

You think it ends there, do you?

A postscript

Ironically, before I went out, my friend told me:

@hyfen Wandering around at night through a residential area with a camera. Seems legit.

Little did I know…

Just as I was entering my apartment building, I heard a car screeching down my driveway. “That’s strange,” I thought. The car was coming the wrong way.

Two big guys flashed police badges at me. They even had the customary cop stache . Legit, all right. One jumped out.

“What are you doing outside?”

“It’s a beautiful night outside and I was taking photos of the fog.”

“You weren’t taking photos through peoples’ windows were you? Can I see your photos?”

I started flipping through my camera but he cut me off. “That’s good enough for me,” he said and grinned.

I asked how long they’d been following me: “About half an hour.”

Bizarre. I hadn’t noticed a thing. That was either not quite true or spotting tails is a lot harder than in the movies.

But at least it wasn't this:

@Chiussi well-called. @hyfen could have had a repeat of @nruuuuup's experience, nailed for "walking outside after dark with electronics"

— Home (@oldjetsam) November 15, 2009