When are we going to acknowledge that the new Eaton Centre bridge looks like a giant penis?

By Dylan Freeman-Grist

We need to have a frank conversation about Toronto’s obsession with penis architecture. It’s not so much that we build penises everywhere. It’s not even that we mounted a giant free-standing phallic structure near lake Ontario and made it key to our city’s identity. It’s the fact we do all this—and just don’t talk about it.

Case and point: the new bridge connecting the Toronto Eaton Centre to Hudson’s Bay that’s been erected over Queen Street. Bridges by themselves, by default, look like penises. Why add ribbing? Why make it crooked? Why give it a round, suggestive shape and put into contention the concept of girth?

Everyday shoppers walk between the labyrinth of Hudson’s Bay into the overpriced blur of the Eaton Centre, doing so by walking through a literal penis. Mere metres below its schlong-like dimensions people conduct themselves, catch street cars, and converge beneath an actual sex organ.

There have been selfies posted in the shaft. Art instagram has saturated their portfolios with black and white photos detailing the finer nicks and crannies of the city’s newest publicly accessible urethra.

I’m not even mad, I’m just disappointed. Disappointed we can’t be more creative in our self-deprecation. Disappointed we can’t openly acknowledge that we build penis structures to compensate for our lack of being New York. I get it: where we lack in density we try to make up for in inches. But come on.

Toronto used to be known as Toronto The Good. Now it’s more along the lines of Toronto The Hard. Everyday the decent citizens of Toronto allow another architect to propose another penis is another day e wallow in our self-pity by approving shrines constructed in the name of toxic masculinity. The City Planning Committee operates like an IV pumping viagra. It finds places were penises don’t need to be and just pumps them out anyway.

Having the Eaton Centre literally penetrate the Hudson Bay Company is a new brazen low. We as a city need to come together and demand more. Call your councillor and tell them the run on joke has gone long enough. Think of the children growing up in literal erectile dysfunction! Defund dicks, not just for me, but for generations to come. 

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