In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell explains the mysterious decline in the crime rate in New York City in the early 1990s. In fact, crime in the city didn’t simply decline. It plummeted. Within five years, the murder rate dropped 64%. And the total number of crimes halved.

In the 1980s, New York and its subway were covered in graffiti, and whole blocks of the city were deserted, smashed, fenced off. Tens of thousands of subway riders rode free every day, jumping or forcing the turnstyles. Nobody bothered the graffiti painters or the turnstyle jumpers. With over 2,000 murders and over 600,000 other ‘serious crimes’ a year, the cops had more important things to do.

Then something odd happened. Power in the city passed to authorities who believed in The Broken Window theory of crime. It said that crime blossoms in an environment that essentially says nobody cares. If a broken window is left broken, soon all the windows will be broken. If nobody stops turnstyle jumpers, why not take a pee on the platform? Why not mug that old lady?

Soon, subway hoodlums were being arrested and cuffed together in daisy chains for avoiding a buck twenty-five fare. Subway cars were scoured of graffiti inside and out. A car returning to the barn with new graffiti was not allowed back onto the tracks until it was scoured again. Under Giuliani, even squeegee kids were driven off the streets. Hey, at last, somebody cared.

And darned if ‘serious’ crime didn’t take the hint, and plummet.

Rambled ’round downtown Toronto this past summer? If broken windows branded parts of New York as crime-friendly, what message does an eight-story-high wall painted with a jeans or beer or vodka ad deliver to the thousands of suburbanite kids who descend on The Entertainment District each night? You’ve got to think that buying a wall in a cool and sexy neighbourhood rubs the brand the right way in the fevered teenaged brain.

Speaking of murals, driving up Church Street in Toronto, you’ll notice the nice people at Molson left no brush undipped to remind us we were in the heart of Boys Town.

Yeah, Molson has painted the southern wall of one bar with a truly weird ad depicting two cowboys (with bum-less leather chaps, of course) watching a sunset while holding hands. Just up the street, there’s a bar called Wilde Oscar’s, and Molson has decreed there be painted upon the outside south wall thereof a portrait of Oscar Wilde thinking about a Molson Canadian, if the thought bubble above his head is to be believed.

Yes, gay person, the folks at Molson understand you and approve mightily. And if you happen to be a straight guy who’s wandered over from The Brass Rail by mistake, you may think twice before ever drinking a Molson product in public anywhere south of Sudbury, but hey, you’ll never think of cowboys the same way again either.

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Okay, I simply cannot leave the summer just past, the summer Mick and the Boys came to Save Tourism Toronto from SARS Hell, without one of those six-degrees-of-separation stories. Closest I ever got to The Stones was bumping into them in an Indian restaurant called The Rajput at Bloor and Spadina when they did the El Mocambo gig. Pretended not to notice.

But I recall a friend of mine, the wonderful Art Director John Speakman, got even closer to Mr. Jagger, back when all the world was young and English. John was a North Country lad come down to London to go to art school. Saturdays, to earn a pound or two, he delivered furniture on a truck for a brutally expensive Sloan Street emporium.

One such Saturday, they took a couch to an address on Cheyne Walk, that row of 18th century townhouses right on the Thames. What if Mick himself didn’t come to the door.

‘What the fuck you want?’ says Mick.

‘We got a fuckin’ couch to deliver, Mr. Jagger’ says John.

‘I didn’t order no fuckin’ couch’ replies Mick.

‘Says here a Marianne Faithful fuckin’ ordered it!’ says John.

‘Do I look like fuckin’ Marianne Faithful? How much does the fuckin’ thing cost?’ asks Mick.

”Bout five hundred fuckin’ quid!’ says John.

‘Don’t fuckin’ want it then, do I?’ observed Mick. And he didn’t.

Now, we have Speakman look at the camera and say This calls for a Bud Light! Hey, is this the ultimate Head-for-the-Podium-at-Cannes script or what?

Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He creates this column for fun, and to test the unproven theory that clients who find the latter amusing may also find the former to their liking. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.