The Raptors have reached the halfway point of the season, and almost every news outlet in town has been engaged in the mid-season ritual of handing out report cards. Jose Calderon gets top marks across the board, and deservedly so. His name is even being mentioned as a potential reserve selection for the All-Star Team. Of course, on his own blog and in interviews, Jose has tried to remain humble about the whole thing. That's... [continue]

Toronto-based Naked News (NSFW, duh), which already broadcasts both an English and Japanese version, will soon also be available in Spanish, Italian and Korean. That's right. While other newsrooms are cutting back, laying off correspondents, and eliminating foreign bureaus, Naked News is (insert your pun of choice here). If you are not familiar with the Naked News phenomenon, the site offers subscribers 22 minutes of headlines, light news, and celebrity interviews, six days a... [continue]

In the best campaign commercial since HuckChuckFacts, Chris Bosh has assumed the identity of a Texas used car salesman in order to try to drum up votes to make it to this year's NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans. Bosh has appeared in the All-Star game for the last two years. Last season he was voted into the starting lineup for the first time, but achieving that feat again became nearly impossible when Kevin Garnett... [continue]

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. Two years ago, the Toronto Raptors were the laughing stock of the NBA. Vince Carter and his mom had... [continue]

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. Rob Ford has said some remarkably stupid things during his tenure as a City Councillor. We could harp upon... [continue]

Andy Warhol's Factory parties were the ultimate hot spot for an elite cabal of celebrities, radicals, drag queens and porn stars. There has never been a better place to rock out while on an amphetamine high amid mass-produced silkscreen paintings and a fleet of floating silver balloons. Now, just replace Warhol's notorious gang of New York vagabonds with a bunch of over-stimulated children, and you have the idea behind Bunch's next edition of their popular... [continue]

Mark Renton knew what the ideal bathroom would be like: "Brilliant gold taps, virginal white marble, a seat carved from ebony, a cistern full of Chanel No. 5, and a flunky handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll." Of course, like the rest of us, under the circumstances he'd settle for anywhere. Now, thanks to MizPee, you won't wind up in "The Worst Toilet in Hogtown" again. Just type in your location and...... [continue]

If you haven't been following the Raptors too closely this season, it's possible that you may have missed one of the greatest stories in professional sports at the moment. Jamario Moon is a 27-year-old rookie who had been kicking around just about every minor league on the continent until he finally got his shot with the Raptors this year. And he's tearing things up. Even though he's years older than a number of Raptor veterans,...... [continue]

At Torontoist, we spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not Toronto is ugly. We fret about bad buildings, inappropriate signage, and street furniture, but this is the first time we've gone out of our way to call-out a website for contributing to Toronto's ugliness. Streets.to uses the tag line "Toronto's Visual Search Engine," and setting aside the fact that there's no way to actually search this site (other than navigating through...... [continue]

Canadians can no longer access Demonoid.com, the world's second-most popular BitTorrent tracker. According to a statement on Demonoid's website, legal action treatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has forced them to block connections from Canada. This can only be seen as a major victory for the CRIA. Thanks to them, it is no longer possible to download pirated music off the internet...unless, of course, you happen to live outside of Canada, or you... [continue]

Torontoist has seen its fair share of Google Maps mashups. For geography nerds like us, maps are always fun to play around with, but most of the mashups we've seen so far have not been particularly useful. That is, unless you're dying to know where they keep all the Timmy's or bust all the grow-ops. Enter Taxiwiz. The site is far from slick, but the idea behind it is great. Taxiwiz takes Google's driving... [continue]

Open Cities Toronto 2007 is an unconference being held June 23rd and 24th at the Centre for Social Innovation that hopes to explore how the concept of "openness" (as in: open source, open doors, open space, etc.) can be expanded to improve the way the city and its citizens work, live, and play together. There are no speakers, only participants, and the shape of the event will be determined by the will and interests... [continue]

This is Corky and the Juice Pigs performing their song "Eskimo." If you're not familiar with the song, or if you haven't heard it in a while, then Torontoist should warn you: this clip may be offensive to the Inuit, gays, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Ric Ocasek, seals, and anyone without a sense of humour. This comes up, not because Torontoist was jonesing for novelty songs from the mid-90's, but because we recently learned that... [continue]

bill bissett is Canada's world champion hippy poet freak. Best known for his phonetic (funetik) spelling, it's fair to say that bissett's poetry anticipated the text messaging age by several decades. What once seemed like an avante garde approach to language now seems like the inevitable evolution of communication. He's the poet laureate of SMS. Tomorrow night, bissett launches his latest book of poetry, ths is erth thees ar peopul, at the This Ain't... [continue]

Photo by Kurtis Billard on Flickr. Hey, Toronto sports fans, it's time to wake up. The Leafs did not make the playoffs, now take off the black armbands and get over it already. The Blue Jays are dealing with a number of injuries, but even if they weren't, the season's just begun and there are still approximately 800 games left to be played this year. Sadly, Toronto's brand new soccer franchise has been outscored 9–0... [continue]

Those fans who are lucky enough to be attending the first two Raptors playoff games will be happy to learn that the team is giving away red T-shirts for fans to wear during the game. The official shirts will supposedly read "Let’s Go Red. Let’s Go Raptors." However, a few entrepreneurial fans think that they have a better idea for a T-shirt. These FUVC shirts are just one example of the anti-Vince Carter sentiment that... [continue]

Now boarding at Platform 1: The Toronto Raptors Bandwagon. Please form a line to the right, and have your tickets ready. Prepare for a bumpy ride, this trip is standing room only. For the first time in five years, the Toronto Raptors are going to the NBA playoffs. And if making the playoffs wasn't enough for Chris Bosh, on Monday he was also named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. Despite the loss... [continue]

One of the greatest collaborations in Canadian musical history is coming to an end tomorrow night at Massey Hall. The Rheostatics are bidding farewell to bassist Tim Vesely, who is leaving the band to spend more time with his young family and dedicate more energy to his side project, The Violet Archers. The break-up is amicable. Well, as amicable as these things can be. Custody of the Tarleks has yet to be determined. Current... [continue]

Ah, the road trip. According to some, the greatest college tradition of all. Just about every university has some variation of a Ride Board, a place where you can post a trip that you're taking in the hopes that someone will come along to share the driving and the gas. It's usually located in the basement of the student centre, next to propaganda from the Students' Council and thirty posters offering guitar lessons and... [continue]

Starbucks might not make your favourite cup of joe, and you might even believe that the coffee giant is ruining your neighbourhood, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to refuse a free cup of freshly-brewed stimulation. This morning from 10 a.m. until noon, Starbucks locations across North America are giving away free Tall brewed coffees in their Second Annual National Coffee Break. While you're waiting in line, feel free to discuss the commoditization... [continue]