Toronto Named a Street After BTS and V Is Out Here Looking Exactly 22

BTS's V uploaded a short, unscripted video from Toronto earlier this week, and within hours fans were pulling up a seven-year-old photo to put next to it.

The clip shows V walking the streets in a black T-shirt with his hair cropped short: no stage styling, no production polish, just a low-key afternoon in the city. The image fans reached for was a May 2019 photo posted through BTS's official account, where a then-23-year-old V stands under a bright blue sky in, remarkably, a black T-shirt and the same close-cropped cut. Set side by side, the two moments read almost like a before-and-after that forgot to change anything.

V was born in 1995, which puts him at 30 this year. Look closely and you can find what seven years actually did: there's a quiet maturity layered over the youthful sharpness that made him so recognizable early in BTS's run. But his distinctively clear features and bright expression have held their shape in a way that made the comparison genuinely hard to argue with. Fan accounts across platforms flooded with the split images, with many captions leaning toward some version of aging doesn't apply here.

A city painted purple

The timing of V's Toronto wandering is no coincidence. BTS performed at Rogers Stadium on the 22nd and 23rd as part of their ongoing world tour, ARIRANG, and the city leaned fully into the moment. Toronto officially declared both concert dates BTS Weekend, a civic recognition that went well beyond a banner or two.

A stretch of Young Street in North York was temporarily renamed BTS Boulevard for the run of the shows. Nathan Phillips Square, home to the iconic TORONTO sign, was lit up in purple, the color fans and the group have long associated with the BTS-ARMY bond. For a weekend, one of North America's largest cities essentially handed over its visual identity to seven people from South Korea.

With the ARIRANG tour in full swing and moments like this Toronto takeover generating attention far outside the fandom, V's casual sidewalk video ended up being something more than a lifestyle update. It landed in the middle of a city-wide celebration, looking exactly like something he might have posted in 2019, which is precisely why fans couldn't stop talking about it.