The Best Gift

The greatest gift I’ve ever received was from Alistair for my 26th birthday. We had gone on a camping adventure for a couple days and when we returned, Alistair revealed that he had been conspiring with a local graffiti artist to paint a mural in the back alley during our absence.

Being the nosey creep that I am, I would sun myself on the back porch with my binoculars and watch the local crackheads gather in this same alley to smoke. I have a nice collection of photos. It used to look like this:

Before

Alistair had sent the artist an extensive list of things about me, including several photographs, and gave him total creative control as to what he produced. So the final product was a complete surprise to the both of us on our return. I really love the idea of a stranger being given a random assortment of details and he extracted what he found visually interesting. Among the details listed, was my fondness for the HBO series The Wire–this turned out to be the crux of the piece.

After

During the series The Wire, in an attempt to compartmentalize the drug trade that was wreaking havoc on the streets of Baltimore, the police chief cordons off an area and instructs the dealers that if they restrict their business to this specific area, they will not interfere. One officer jokes that the block is like Amsterdam as drugs are essentially decriminalized; the street kids, not familiar with Amsterdam, come to call it Hamsterdam. I’m sure you can see the connection I’m drawing here–a steady stream of people come to this wall to do crack, and the wall proclaims it as the place where drugs are legal (which, of course they’re not, but nobody interferes). Afterwards, the artist had told Alistair that he was sort of touched by the community spirit he encountered back there–people seemed very encouraging and offered to help or act as a lookout.

Now, that creepy looking lady on the right? That’s me. Alistair had made a point of  focusing on my big red hair, but the artist chose the one photo where no hair was visible. For comparison:

It's me!

I think he really captured my bulbous eyes. Look, it’s not the most flattering of portraits (or photographs), but I kind of love it for that reason.

The final, and certainly the strangest, aspect of this mural is the dude on the left. We actually had to comb through the initial email correspondence to figure out where he found this creepy character. Alistair had shared my fondness for photography and, in particular, the work of one photographer–Weegee. Weegee is known for his crime photography…lots of accidents and death. Anyway, the artist chose to immortalize Weegee himself on the wall. I suppose I see the connection; his work is voyeuristic, grotesque and focused on street scenes. Still, it is strange.

Kind of incredible, right? Being immortalized in a Parkdale alley is no small thing. I call this the best gift I’ve ever received, but the initial email sent from Alistair to the artist–detailing every little thing about me–was truly the most thoughtful tribute.

And there’s nothing I love more than staring off the back porch into my own giant face.

 

 

 

Tags: hamsterdam, Parkdale, the wire, weegee