Watermelon on the tracks?

How would you feel riding a watermelon to work?

First reaction would be: "Yeah, that's pretty cool."
Well, now you might get the chance to imagine that possibility.

The Toronto Public Space Committee will put on a show at XPACE from Jan. 5 to 8 exhibiting 200 ideas how the TTC can rid the ads on its property and turn them into moving pieces of art.

Public school kids submitted most of the entries along with independent artists in the city. Dave Meslin of the Toronto Public Space Committee said that some ideas from the kids were abstract where "things were growing from the sides and top of the bus" but are still really interesting. Others have various patterns of fruit on streetcars, buses and subway trains.

"It's hard to get people to imagine the city changing in a significant way," he says. "So if you grow up in a transit system surrounded by ads, you grow to assume that's natural. This is to show by example, an alternative transit system that can get people to realize how different the TTC could look."

XPACE is located at 303 Augusta Ave., just south of College. For more info. call (416)654-8772 or (416)849-2864 or e-mail betterway@publicspace.ca.

[Photo courtesy of Toronto Public Space Committee]