news A Good Pac-Man Is Hard To Find







On Friday, reader Russ Morgan spotted Pac-Man on Spadina. Someone had converted one of the panels of the streetcar shelters between Baldwin and Nassau to depict a stand-off straight out of the classic video game: to the south, a big pixelated Pac-Man; to the north, Pokey, a big pixelated orange ghost; and, between them, a big pixelated cherry power-up. The yellow dots that always line the streetcar shelters, untouched by the artist, magically became pac-dots.

Sadly, by the time we hurried down to Spadina to look at the shelter, only the bright yellow Pac-Man was left, his fuel and foe both gone. Originally, Russ thought that the whole scene might have been an advertisement, but from what we saw, the Pac-Man, pasted onto the back of the shelter, looked homemade; we haven’t seen or heard of any other Pac-Men roaming around the city; it’s just outside of Kensington Market, a favourite site for street artists; and if the installation was an ad, it’s not likely that two-thirds of the setup would have been removed by the end of the weekend. Astral—who is (like Viacom/CBS) somewhat contentiously in charge of selling ads on the clear transit shelters throughout the city—was not able to get back to Torontoist in time for this article, but we’re putting our money on it being an unauthorized addition rather than a bought advertisement. Not that we’re not utterly charmed by it either way.

Top photo by Russ Morgan. Bottom two photos by David Topping.