^
Interesting...
According to Etymonline.com "Avenue" originally derives from the Latin "
advenire," meaning roughly "to come to;" while "Road" comes from the Old English "
rad," apparently meaning, among other things, a "hostile incursion."
So, in a roundabout way, "Avenue Road" might be loosely translated as something like "Going to War" - as opposed to a pleasant, leafy boulevard...
Man, the state of signage in this city is deplorable. Do blind monkeys put them together?
It certainly is a gargantuan mish-mash of shapes, styles, sizes, and states of condition out there. As much as I personally enjoy the variety, a little more uniformity, 15 years after amalgamation, is probably in order. But I'm not sure how much the new signs are helping - or even how far they'll go. I started taking all those bus shelter pics after they began replacing them with the new Astral ones, thinking by now they'd all be gone. But, howevermany years later, there's still as much variety as ever (including the new shelters, even more)! And if funding, interest, or whatever happens to run out along the way you're stuck like that until the next updating initiative, with a whole new design, etc. And on and on it grows.......
As for the new signs themselves, I actually don't mind them that much - while a little bland, I find they do project a certain "Torontoness." My main issue is with the neighbourhood/distric nameplates. Granted, the blue and silver colour scheme certainly limits your options with regards to other colours on the sign, but still, so much of what I've seen so far I find minimal to the point of being just lazy. If anyone compares the old "Korean Business Area" signs with the new "Koreatown" ones, you'll see what I mean. Or, as per my original post, near where I live they've recently installed new "Danforth Village" street signs: plain black arial/helvetica text with this little logo of - I think its supposed to be some buildings? - that I swear was lifted directly from the clip art files of Windows '95 or something. Of course, that my have more to do with the local neighbourhood association or BIA. Perhaps that's their official logo or something. Around that area there's also been a bunch of other new street signs going up with rather corny/gimicky BIA names like "Danforth Mosaic" and "Crossroads of the Danforth." I can only hope these are all as temporary as they look.
