[URBAN NOTE] "Bert Xanadu Guides You Through Toronto’s Hidden Infrastructure"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist shares this authentically amusing comedic take on Toronto's underground infrastructure.

There is a secret city.

Behind the Toronto you endure each day lies another city, one known only to the megalapolitan cognoscenti.

But I’m not going to write about that today.

Instead, I will celebrate the sinewy and sewagy infrastructure of the City of Toronto and its skeletal underpinnings—pipes, wires, troughs, spittoons, and curbettes—that keep this town functioning and from collapsing into itself, like a half-eaten sponge cake.

It is estimated—for no one truly knows—that 79 per cent of your tax dollars go to maintaining and ruthlessly expanding this infrastructure. As you faint backwards upon reading this, be assured that it is the infrastructure itself that will break your fall, and perhaps your coccyx.

Like your random thoughts about orangutans and trousers, the municipal layers of steel, stone, and stucco are intricately interwoven, yet show an uncallous disregard for one another and an aloofness that ensures efficiency.