Both sides of Queen Street West, Toronto

© Christine Mastroianni, all rights reserved

I am looking at a row of stores, teeming with clever merchandising displays, trance inducing sale racks, and the next big deal.... a cavalcade of retail rendezvous and commercial camaraderie. But at which side of the street am I actually looking? What I really see is the building behind me, which is the same view that the people inhabiting the floors above EB Games and clic klak are viewing. Mirrored architectural facades are a bit of a guilty pleasure with me; I always find myself enthralled by very simple concepts such as these, and so indulge. I like to imagine how much more interesting a city's streets would be if every historic building were able to look across the street and see its own reflection, or to muse about how flat and colourless this building might be without its vermillion costume of bricks and arches. I suppose if a storefront were situated across from a derelict, hulking shell of a structure, one would not want to apply reflective panes to its exterior. But here, it works. I also enjoy the way a clean image on one side is delightfully distorted on the other, a watery, stylised version of a predictable arrangement.

This was taken on one of my favourite days of 2010, a late afternoon jaunt full of autumn freshness, intriguing photographic exploration, and a breezy, schedule-free itinerary... it was one of those episodes that found me dangling before everything stimulating, frequently with a unabashedly silly grin on my face. I think as adults, we don't engage in enough frivolous downtime, we don't often allow ourselves an afternoon to guiltlessly unhook our responsibilities and toss them into the trunk with the other incidentals as we purposely seek out a locale that inspires us... or simply causes us to grin incessantly. Of course length of exposure and quality of human accompaniment affect the effectiveness of such an escape, both of which satisfied my needs quite nicely on the day in question!