Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
Shall we begin today's Newsstand in the gutter? (Were you expecting anything less?) Yesterday, the Executive Committee approved the application of the savings gleaned from this summer's city strike to offset a 2% rate hike in our garbage fees. Sounds good, right? Well, the mayor doesn't think so. "I thought they were taking a short-term gain for long-term pain," he lamented. "I thought cancelling the rate increase this year means that the increase next year will have to be over 4%." Councillor Pam McConnell, on the other hand, is lamenting the fact that the green-bin program will now take longer to implement, citing "pent up desire on behalf of residents...to be able to participate." And with that quote, you know in what direction today's news is going to go...
When is a grain silo just a grain silo? When it's allowed to remain erect, of course! Wait...did that sound wrong? Well, kids, it's true: despite abandoned plans to turn the Canadian Malting silos site into a museum, a new plan by the city to preserve heritage sites will be combined with private funding to avoid tearing down the silos to create a "symbolic outline" (which, unfortunately, would have been anything but Freudian). Shocker of shockers, our good friend Councillor Doug Holyday has something to say about the whole thing. “It is nice to preserve things but you can't preserve everything,” he said. “This is valuable property we should be doing something about.” You know what, though? He's right. Maybe we should cut off the top halves of the outer two silos, leaving the middle one intact, and name it in his honour.
Speaking of phallic symbols, CP24 is launching its own broadcast euphemism with On the Rocket, a monthly show where TTC Chair Adam Giambrone will "discuss everything from daily transit operations to improvements and plans for the future." Ooh, baby. What's even better is that the station promises that "viewers are invited to get on and off for a free ride" during the show. Hold on. A free ride on Giambrone's rocket? Only once a month? Must...not... go...there...
And finally, here's another one for the shocker files: a university paper has been forced to shut down because it spent too much money on booze and parties. An even bigger shocker is the fact that we're choosing not to make a puerile joke about the fact that the group behind the decision to halt The Gargoyle's iniquitous splurges is called UC Lit. We'll leave that one up to you. Own it. Love it. It's all yours, baby.
This article originally stated that it was City Council dealing with the garbage fees yesterday; in fact, it was the Executive Committee.
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No way, the Gargolye is shutting down???
I used to edit another U of T college paper and the Gargoyle staff would always invite me over to their production night. I'd be like, "Ummm, aren't you going to be crazy busy, tearing your hair out, crying at 2 am because someone didn't save the Opinions section?" and they'd be like, "No...but we will be drinking this entire bottle of Jack Daniels though." I have no idea how they were able to pull that off for so long. I campaigned tirelessly for weeks to have our budget raised so we could get 3 toppings instead of 2 on our production night pizza. That third topping makes all the difference.
Those were the days, eh Karen? I remember hearing about those drunken cut-and-paste slackers over at the Gargoyle. Never took it upon myself to witness their debauched production nights firsthand though.
Neither did I; I was too busy running a functional newspaper! LOL.
Oh snap!
Snippety snap!
Oh, okay, so it's just having its funds withdrawn for the moment.
Why does Giambrone have to be front and centre? Brad Ross is the real public face of the TTC these days, and a CP24 slot for Admiral Adam is just one more demonstration that incumbents have a near unassailable electoral position in this town.
As for the malting silos, I'm all for preserving things in context, but that quay no longer has an industrial context as opposed to say these silos. The reality is that these silos are nothing more than a structurally unsound impediment to opening up the Quays in that area. Remember that right beside that is Ireland Park, a park the city opened without safe public access routes. According to Staff, options run from $8m to $20m (PDF) to a structure which can no longer provide a useful function to Torontonians apart from just standing there. The City of Toronto does not have a funding source to keep buildings which are unusable when it is cutting funding from TTC for things like fire exits.
Seriously, we're talking 20th century grain silos, not the Parthenon. Build something pretty there and in 70 years that can be a Heritage Structure.
Today's edition of Newsstand admittedly had me LOL-ing. But as usual a correction: the budget you refer to in the first item went through executive committee yesterday, not city council. It was last week that city council voted to use the strike savings to offset the garbage fee increase.
Fixed.
And correction issued.