Culture: February 2010 Archives

Valentine’s Day is less than a week away—have you selected a special card, a heart-shaped trinket, or a generic box of chocolates yet? Stereotypical gifts to suit every degree of thoughtfulness, or lack of that, were much the same in 1960 as they are now, whether you shopped at tonier shops in Yorkville or the neighbourhood five-and-dime. more ›

Ever wish you could do your laundry, look at a painting, have a latté, and pick up some organic produce all at the same place? Lauren Pirie and Natalie Boustead are trying to bring such a place to fruition. Their pet project, the About Face Collective, would be Toronto's first non-profit solar-powered laundromat, organic café, and gallery space—that is, if they can get it up and running. more ›

Toronto-based filmmaker Clement Virgo is one of Canada’s most intriguing directors; some say he's Canada’s own black cinema king, akin to Spike Lee. His breakout feature film Rude, a radical and ballsy depiction of life in Regent Park, is largely considered to be the first standout piece of Canadian black cinema. It won the Best Canadian Feature Film award at TIFF in 1995 and Virgo has gone on to make other notable films including Love Come Down, the sexually revealing Lie With Me, and Poor Boy’s Game starring Danny Glover. Virgo is also one of the country’s most successful television directors with episodes of shows like The Wire, The Listener, ReGenesis, Soul Food, and The L Word under his belt. more ›

Last spring, we had the privilege of meeting the amazing chef instructors and students of the YMCA's Basic Culinary Skills Training Program, which we nicknamed "The Original Fifteen" (they've been at it since Jamie Oliver was in grade school!). Led by experienced chefs, the program has been successfully teaching Torontonians on social assistance how to become confident, professional cooks for the past twenty-five years. So, when we heard they were moving from the basement of the YMCA on Charles Street to a brand new facility at Metro Hall, we had to be there. more ›

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist. more ›

"I understood viral before, but now I really understand viral," Kevin Gallagher told us yesterday while sitting at the bar at Mildred's Temple Kitchen, the highly respected restaurant he co-owns with his wife, executive chef Donna Dooher. Before this past Wednesday, Mildred's was locally famous for its impeccable food, comfortable atmosphere, and skilled service, but with one article by Toronto Star critic Amy Pataki, it became known worldwide (discussed on Huffington Post, the Village Voice, even the Jay Leno Show) as the restaurant that encourages you to have sex in its bathrooms. more ›

Of the possible futures for those in the current race to succeed David Miller as mayor of Toronto, there is one distinction that the victor will not likely achieve unless death or scandal strike immediately: the shortest term in office. Those vying for that title have generally been caretakers brought in to fill out a term, as happened when Fred Beavis filled in for Mayor David Crombie in 1978 when the latter ran for federal office. The winner of the short-term sweepstakes is David Breakenridge Read, who owed his fifty-day tour of duty to a police scandal. Make any jokes you want, but, as a study of the city’s early high officials noted, it would “be an injustice to Read to belittle his talents, abilities, and accomplishments because of his being somewhat a cipher as Mayor.” more ›

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute. more ›

Embrace your pear-shape. Learn to love your curves. Celebrate the ample-bosomed body Mother Nature gave you. These are the kinds of phrases that TV host Zain Meghji coos over and over on the W Network’s latest reality show, How To Look Good Naked Canada. Judging by the name of the show, and by Meghji’s illocutionary predilections, one would assume HTLGNC’s mission might fit into the “helping women come to terms with their wobbly bits” category. But what HTLGNC promises in title, it ultimately fails to deliver in content. more ›

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When Hubert Davis set out nearly five years ago to tell the story of two Regent Park boys becoming men, he wanted to shed light on an untold dimension of the well-known low-income neighbourhood. The ongoing billion-dollar redevelopment of North America's first social housing complex has sparked all kinds of creative protest in an attempt to attach a face to the casualties of gentrification—including everything from the uproarious, louder-than-life Trey Anthony–produced play, Secrets of a Black Boy, about a youth centre's closing, to Dan Bergeron's larger-than-life poster project featuring the community's real faces. more ›

Some of the most exciting parts of Toronto are the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods and areas that stitch the city together both geographically and culturally. With that comes the countless regional and cultural specific film festivals that happen here ever year—helping seal Toronto’s status as a film geek’s paradise—and this February marks the third edition of the Toronto-Romanian Film Festival (ToRo). more ›

The TTC's new trip planner is finally online, and feedback is mixed. It probably doesn't help that the TTC's own planner has a predecessor that's been standing in for a year and a half now to serve the function it didn't: MyTTC.ca. Launched in July 2008, MyTTC is the work of Kieran Huggins and Kevin Branigan, two developers who—completely independently—rebuilt and reorganized the TTC's service data, built and rebuilt their own trip planner on top of it, then shared the data they compiled to developers who wanted it for other purposes. (Their work has helped make projects like the terrific iPhone application Red Rocket possible.) more ›

Coming out of a year that saw one long-standing institution buried and another putting out a last-ditch S.O.S., you’d be crazy to get into the independent bookselling business in Toronto right now. more ›

Last month we reported that the first few weeks of the Best of the Decade programme currently unfolding at the TIFF Cinematheque (née Cinematheque Ontario) are jam-packed with arty noodle-scratchers and slow-moving snoozers. more ›

The only way to get even a tiny piece of Fucked Up's shockingly abundant (and mostly really rare) discography is to spend your life and its earnings on eBay, trolling for piles of vinyl treasures, or, if you like life instead, you can dig into the beast that is Couple Tracks: Singles 2002-2009, out now on Matador Records. It's a twenty-five-track compilation of those hard-to-find nuggets, alternate takes, and new stuff, too; it's worth the wade through, as every track sounds as vital as the band proved to be in the era that the discs span. more ›

On yesterday’s edition of Metro Morning, host Andy Barrie announced his retirement from waking up Torontonians for fifteen years. Since arriving in Toronto from Montreal in the late 1970s, his style has drawn praise from listeners of public and private stations for his ability to put a human face on issues and complaints about being in love with the sound of his own voice. Barrie’s tenure at CBC marks the second half of his Toronto radio career—today’s ads look back at his bearded years on-air at private broadcasters. more ›

If city cycling staff get their way, downtown will be transformed by cycling projects in 2010. Partly to accommodate the planned launch of the public bike program and partly to address concerns over the way the Bikeway Network has been assembled piece by disconnected piece over the years, staff are concentrating this year's efforts on a comprehensive and dense network of cycling infrastructure south of Dupont between High Park and the Don Valley. more ›

Between TIFF, Hot Docs, Images, the Reel Asian fest, After Dark, and umpteen others, it seems like you can’t swing a cat around this city without hitting a film festival. Likely eager to further fortify their post-Avatar bottom line, Cineplex Entertainment is hopping on the train, capitalizing on the apparent fact that Torontonians appreciate getting their movies in festival format. Presented in association with Metro and Space, the bombastically titled Great Digital Film Festival lines up a whole bunch of films that are, well, great. And presented in digital format. And it’s a film festival! more ›

When you visit a museum you expect to see collections of items well past their prime: mummified corpses from the tombs of Egyptian rulers, dinosaur teeth that ripped prey to shreds millions of years ago, a gaping hole in the back of a dusty skull left over from the Battle of Thermopylae—relics of things that were once alive but are now most vibrant in our imaginations and memories. more ›

Speaking to Bruce McCulloch, it’s odd to find out that he doesn’t consider himself a performer. Maybe he's unaware that to many Kids in the Hall fans, it’s his sensibility that seems to most distinguish the troupe's humour. Besides playing some of the most memorable characters on the Kids’ sketch series—the self-pitying womanizer Cabbage Head, pipsqueak know-it-all Gavin, the barrel-rolling Flying Pig, and many others—McCulloch grounded much of the show’s patent silliness. He was their George Harrison. The dark one. The angsty one. Peter Murphy in ripped Levis and a beat-up flannel shirt. more ›

Zeus has just blown our minds. Using stop-motion animation—a technique as comfortingly nostalgic as their warm and familiar classic pop sounds—and combining it with live performance, they've created one of the most impressive videos we've seen in a long time, for "Marching Through Your Head." It's the lead single from their hotly anticipated full-length debut (and was also on their surprise gem summer teaser EP, Sounds Like Zeus), Say Us, out later this month. (Look alive, Sound Advice.) more ›

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist. more ›

“That job stole my dignity, that job stole my sense of safety, that job stole my sense of purpose,” reminisced employment consultant Rachel Cantelon. She was describing the slew of paid gigs she'd had over the years, ranging from waitressing at a country-western bar to working as a beer tester for a Molson brewery. “At my first job babysitting at the age of twelve, I stole the parents’ booze. So karmic payback occurred in my twenties, when work began stealing from me.” more ›