Newsstand: October 5, 2009

What a weekend! Floating four-letter words, Fun Slides, and a Stephen Harper look-alike who staunchly tickled the ivories and sang out a tune from Sgt. Pepper's—wait, that wasn't a look-alike? Hm, well, "With a Little Help From My Friends" (go ahead and rub it in, by the way) was on the Blue Album. Bonus points go to the artsy gala crowd if it's true they shouted back "we want a grant!" after the performance. Dare we admit it, though...Harper actually does a decent Ringo impression.

Annnd now we all need to rinse our brains out. Hey, look! Someone just gave away one hundred thousand apples for charity!

Whew! Okay, ready for a bit more semi-icky news, now. See, there's this website for checking on a house or apartment building before you move in? The thing is, there're a few bugs in the system. Get it? Ha, yeah, well, some landlords out there wish you didn't. The site, bedbugregistry.com currently has 172 Toronto complaints online. Prospective tenants: make it your new homepage until you're done moving in (don't worry, Torontoist knows you'll come back to us).

Uh-oh, here comes Joe Pantalone—hide the wine! The deputy mayor, whose name has been floated as a candidate to replace Mayor David Miller in good time, is leading a one-man war against licensing a chichi restaurant in his ward. Originally, Pantalone had the support of many of his constituents when he argued that permitting Ici, a bistro, to serve beverages of an intoxicating nature for four hours a night (plus brunch on weekends) would set the neighbourhood on a slippery slope towards underage drinking, underage stabbing, and eventually underage tax evasion. Now, though, a couple hundred of the locals have actually signed a petition supporting the reluctantly dry eatery...which means that saving the neighbourhood from itself is all up to Joe.

A Toronto dominatrix and two other sex workers are launching a constitutional challenge to Canada's prostitution laws, arguing that the rules perpetuate violence against women. Terri-Jean Bedford is going to court and bringing her trusty riding crop with her according to the Star—who, oddly enough, out of infinite possibilities, settled on "Toronto grandmother" and "street hustler" as the two most relevant descriptions of Bedford herself. Opponents of the women's case say that striking down the laws would turn Toronto, and indeed all of Canada, into a "sex-tourism location."

Hooray! Toronto saved $93 million by giving up all those city services during the strike! But, oh no! We then spent all but $33.2 million of it coping with the strike itself and its aftereffects. And you can't have any of it back. While some would undoubtedly be fine letting the strike savings stay in municipal coffers, that's precisely the sort of budgetary allocation that Etobicoke Councillor "Mad" Doug Holyday calls shenanigans. He's demanding the city give residents direct refunds, and maybe throw in a free can of air-freshener. Another crank prominent voice on council, Karen Stintz of Eglinton-Lawrence, wants to send the money straight back to the garbage, only differently! She says the city should direct a massive chunk of the savings to offset an expected four- to eight-dollar increase in garbage-collection fees. [Publisher's note: One key member of Karen Stintz's mayoral campaign exploratory committee is Rob Silver, who is also a co-owner of Ink Truck Media, Torontoist's publishers.]

Someone wants To Kill A Mockingbird banned from the city's schools? Again? It seems an aggrieved parent filed the request with the Toronto District School Board, pointing out objectionableness in "some of the words used in Mockingbird or some of the experiences the book's characters endure." 'Kay. And finally, seeing Chicago lose the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro may have been just the shot in the arm we needed to give it a third try. Yup, Toronto could put in another bid to host the games.