Legal Research

The Friday Fillip

By Simon Fodden

Slaw may not be a family website but that doesn’t mean that anything goes here. We exercise restraint, avoid the crude and generally stay within the bounds of taste, if not always good taste. And yet the word “porn” has appeared here before, and not in some dry discussion of the Criminal Code prohibition either. I’m speaking of library porn, of course (Porn for Librarians, More Library Porn). However, no more book smut today. No, today is porn that is a cut above, that should elevate you, indeed.

I’m speaking of stair porn.

Uh huh. There is such a thing, apparently. And a whole site dedicated just to it. Stair Porn is a photo blog that supplies you with your daily fix, if risers and treads are your thing. (So passionate are some people about these thing that legal and other threats can get bandied about, it seems.)

I have to confess to a liking for some staircases. Partly it’s the pleasure in the repetition, and partly it’s the challenge designers face to do something attractive with what must at the same time be utterly functional. This, by Le Corbusier, is simply beautiful and would be a delight to use every day. The new Gehry staircase at the renovated Art Gallery of Ontario is also splendid. And there’s a particularly nice staircase going up to (or down from) the Supreme Court library, pictured here.

Lest you think that this… interest in what’s under foot is arcane, I should tell you that there are over 136,000 photographs in Flickr tagged with “staircase,” most of which it seems are spirals. For something completely different, however, have a look at a video of an eternal staircase — a paternoster — at Leicester University, and ask yourself what happens if you stay on at the top…

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).