(Soft music and traffic sounds)
- I- I must say that when
I pass one at a street corner,
it gives me a, a kind of
an eerie feeling.
- The first time I saw it,
I didn't know what it was
until I saw a couple of them.
I thought like why would someone paint their bike white?
They must be kind of weird.
- It- it speaks volumes.
I just think that maybe,
if more people were aware of what it was
and what it was for,
that it would definitely get the message across.
- It's kind of mysterious
and kind of beautiful.
- It's really eerie.
- I think it looks
really dead and lonely.
- It looks like it's miming,
which is ironic.
And it's missing its, um,
it's missing its rider.
So there's that, uh, sense
of loneliness,
of, uh, despair
and loss.
- I think it's sad.
It's kind of, I don't know,
it's sort of a combo
of it's sad and it's beautiful,
you know, because of what it is
and what it stands for.
(soft music)
- A ghost bike is a, uh, bike that's taken
and painted completely white
and is put at the scene of
a cyclists death as a memorial
and a reminder that a cyclist
had died at that spot.
- Take the wheels off first and then
take every little thing off of it, right?
Don't have breaks on it,
don't have anything that-
Don't have a basket, don't have a bell
or anything like that.
Just make it very minimalist
as possible.
Because then you could actually get
the proper shape and form of the bicycle.
It can stand out more instead of
just simply being an abandoned bike.
Like, if a bike doesn't have any brakes,
there's something special about it, right? It's not going anywhere fast.
It's a very global art form.
They're um- they're canonizing
the deaths of cyclists
in the United States. St. Louis -
that's where it first originated.
Though, after that,
Poland got it.
New York City's taken off with it, Chicago.
- If these unfortunate symbols do
keep sort of popping up all over the city,
then we'll have sort of
a visual reminder of how many cyclists
actually do get killed,
which is a lot, uh, in Toronto.
- So I guess in a sense,
it is raising awareness for cyclists,
but, uh, not in a real positive way.
- I think that art should mix-
that art should be somewhat
political in, in every sense
of the word.
I think that art
uh, motivates people,
inspires people,
moves people to action.
I think that it really is the, uh,
the ultimate way of promoting change.
(soft music)
I think that it transcends
politics,
or politics the way
we sort of perceive it.
Imaginative, good art-making
is- is really
the best message
that we can possibly generate.
(soft music)