Can snow clean dirty shoes?
December 14th, 2013 Posted 7:06 pm
Earlier this week I pulled some Bear Grylls moves through the brambles in order to reach a near-frozen river, which left me with slightly dirty shoes by the end of the day. I hadn’t yet bothered to wash them, but a thought struck me this afternoon while admiring the first proper snowstorm to hit Toronto this winter:
Can a walk through the snow clean dirty shoes?
I donned my filthy footwear, took my camera along for some company, and set through the chilly streets of Kensington Market to find out.
Can snow clean dirty shoes?
I began my shoewashing circuit at the southern end of Kensington. A good couple of inches of snowfall graced the usually-grey pavement as I made my way north along Augusta Avenue
Healing Crystals & Organic Tea at House of Energy
“Safety First”
A bicycle attached to the perimeter of Bellevue Square
Normally full of hipster skateboarders, Bellevue Square was deserted today except for a young family strolling along the invisible pathway through the centre of the park.
Some Kensington townhouses
Rob Ford’s crack video made an appearance
Half way through the shoewash!
The deliciously snowy My Market Bakery along Baldwin St
Cheese Magic: one of Kensington’s many cheese shops under snow
Frozen apples, anyone?
Truck artwork
The sludgy Spadina & Dundas West intersection
An aerial view of Spadina & Dundas West under snow
A few urban objects at the Dundas & Kensington street corner
Frozen haircut
And so after 50 minutes, two slippery falls and some minor frostbite to the fingers & cheeks, I made it back home. I scraped off the layers of ice that had built upon my footwear, anxiously awaiting the answer to my question: can snow clean dirty shoes?
No it can’t.
Tags: canada, dirty shoes, kensington market, shoes, snow, toronto, winter
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 14th, 2013 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Blog, Canada, Photography, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
9:19 pm on December 14th, 2013
Toronto looks so beautiful under those few inches of snow. Love the Healing Crystals shop front and the cheese shop and the bakery. They all look as though they belong in a dolls house village. Great pity about the shoes. One thing that’s for certain, keep walking in snow and they’ll fall apart. Hope you have heavy duty gloves, hat and scarf!
12:00 am on December 15th, 2013
Lmao loved the pics and reading only to come to the end with a very blatant outcome of “No it can’t” You made it sound so exciting, lol!
I love how the snow looks in front of the camera lens. And agreed with Barb, those shops are so old school, and when covered in snow, its like a scene from A Christmas Carol, 1800s style epic Christmasness!!!
i like “safety first” it looks really effective that pic.
This part of Toronto looks a lot like Melbourne to me . . .
9:51 pm on December 15th, 2013
I’ve got a great pair of gloves @Barbara, a friend at work kindly got me some before I left and they’re fantastic! They do a very effective job at keeping the fingers warm.
Cheers @Simone, yeah I found if I use the flash it captures the reflection off the snowflakes which gives the shot that extra-Christmassy feel. There are indeed certain areas of Toronto that look very similar to Melbourne, and Kensington is one of them 🙂