The Old and the New

Once upon a time, Levi's were the dress uniform of the working poor. These days they're just another luxury item sold through a chain of brand-specific stores in shopping malls around the world. The image below, snapped just west of Toronto's Eaton Centre (a shopping complex that spans an entire city block) shows the contrast between the old and the new. The ad on the side of the bus shelter romances affluent buyers with a nostalgic and highly-glamourized image of a working man (playing on the iconography of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) while the stolen shopping cart containing a homeless person's possessions reveals the reality of urban poverty today.