TORONTO — JUST the other day, a definitive Toronto image was making the rounds on Twitter. One of the turnstiles in the subway system had broken and no guards were around, so passengers had left their tickets and change in a small pile on the side. I live in an absurdly law-abiding, rule-following city. There’s one major exception: the mayor. He smokes crack. He said so on Tuesday. Twice.

The old clichés are beginning to fall away from the city where I live. What has happened to Toronto the Good? Where is “New York run by the Swiss”? Mayor Rob Ford’s crack smoking — “probably in one of my drunken stupors,” he admitted — is only the most extreme example of his recent illicit adventures. Perhaps the most telling anecdote from a police file that surfaced late last week involves Mr. Ford’s heading into the woods with his buddy Sandro Lisi, currently out on bail after being charged with extortion, and leaving the pathway strewn with bags of empty vodka bottles. His mayoralty has been an experiment in what would happen if you had a feral 16-year-old boy for mayor.

So far, none of this has affected his popularity, which actually rose five points last week, to 44 percent. This was after the police chief confirmed the existence of a video “consistent with” reports that first surfaced in May that described the mayor smoking crack cocaine, evidence the mayor denied existed until Tuesday. That poll makes Mr. Ford roughly five times more popular than the current United States Congress.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the mayor has refused to resign. He used his confession to smoking crack to announce his campaign for re-election next year. “We must keep the city of Toronto moving forward,” he said in a prepared statement. He could easily win, too. After the mayor offered a pseudo-apology on his radio show this past Sunday, one caller compared him to John F. Kennedy. Another commentator noted that Winston Churchill was a “bottle-a-day man.” Mr. Ford is a populist, no doubt, but his popularity is real. He captures, better than anyone, the deep currents of outsider rage against the city’s institutions.