Pie Palace

Centretowners will have noticed “swap boxes” cropping up around town recently. I don’t know who puts them up, but they’re kind of fun. I have yet to find anything of interest in them, but I always look (and I usually try to leave something).

Most of the ones that I’ve seen have just been fun (and occasionally anti-consumerist). The most recent (seen outside of Invisible Cinema, and across from Venus Envy) took a decidedly political bent. It’s the “Mayor Larry Budget Edition (Running Ottawa Like a Business – Nortel!)“, with “Mayor Larry swapped libraries for a tax freeze. What’ll you swap?” painted on the side.

The piece de resistance has to be the “Ye Olde Apothecary” installed outside of Section off of Bank Street (across from the inappropriately located Telus building). It featured a series of vials in a case, with captions painted in the background “to attract a mate… essence of mayoral swagger“, “for virility, cat scrotum“, and “for charm, pompousness and obscurity harvested from local hipsters.” By the time I got to it (about a week after I first saw it), the front had been smashed in and the vials were gone.