SPOTTED BY: Eli Singer, followed up and photographed by Kyle Bachan WHERE: College and Bathurst streets WHEN: Saturday, 4:30 p.m.; photographed Sunday at 7:30 a.m. WHAT: On Saturday afternoon, some unknown/heroic Torontonian(s), clearly fed up with Astral Media’s enormous info(less) pillars that have been sprouting up around the city, decided to take a stand. Two [...]

Joining the ranks of rejected garbage bins with huge ad panels, transit shelters that don’t shelter, and push-pedal garbage bins that have been falling apart at an alarming rate, lately Torontonians have been confronted with a new form of failure in our street furniture: giant “InfoToGo” pillars. Today though, there were a couple of very [...]

Over the course of the past few weeks, new sidewalk accoutrements have been installed on many downtown streets. They’re called “InfoToGo pillars,” but they contain very little information—at least, very little pertaining to the city. Every single pillar is supposed to feature a neighbourhood map, right on the skinny part that faces the sidewalk. The [...]

WHERE: The TIFF Bell Lightbox, 35 feet up WHEN: 8:20 p.m. WHAT: This is why people hate TIFF. Many press releases, earnest attempts to create intrigue and build-up, all promising a “spectacle” to kick off the festival. And what we got was a dancer hanging off a wire martini glass, advertising Skyy vodka. Keep an [...]

Click on the map to view a full-size version. Back in March, the TTC indicated that it would entertain proposals to sell naming rights to subway stations and subway lines. It was a small clause buried in a long document outlining the requirements for those seeking to bid on the TTC’s advertising contract, and we [...]

Photo courtesy of Ian Pattillo. SPOTTED BY: Ian Pattillo WHERE: Bloor Street just east of Bedford Road WHEN: Monday afternoon WHAT: They say that money doesn’t grow on trees, but in this case it at least latched onto one. While walking yesterday afternoon, reader Ian Pattillo noticed this five dollar note “taped in an upper [...]

Far be it from us to deny you, our faithful readers, the joys of our new SUBWAYTM system in all its glory. After receiving numerous requests, we now have available for downloading: the complete route map, and all four mock-ups of the stations in the newer, shinier, sponsored Toronto(ist) Transit Commission.   COMPLETE ROUTE MAP [...]

So apparently the TTC is contemplating, or at least willing to entertain proposals for, selling the naming rights to its lines and stations. Now, some boring hippies will probably be all “oh that sucks we’re branding everything and we will forever live in a sea of advertisements.” That is the sort of thing that hippies [...]

Apparently, these types of ads are called “kings.” Photo by intrepidacious, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Currently, CBS Outdoor holds the contract for selling advertising on the TTC, but that agreement is set to expire at the end of 2011. On Monday, the TTC publicly put the advertising contract out to bid, and buried in [...]

Detail of cover of Trevor Norris’s new book. “How can the education system maintain its democratic function in the face of commercial forces?” Over the past few months, this quandary has been debated all across the province—from the legislature at Queen’s Park to high school faculty lounges. OISE professor Trevor Norris explores the larger dimensions [...]

Photo of a Basic Funerals ad in Osgoode Station, by Harry Choi/Torontoist. The TTC’s advertising spaces are generally the domain of ads hawking life-improving things, like continuing education, or foreign language lessons—or otherwise things that only seem life-improving while one is consuming them, like Taco Bell. But lately, one company has been using public transit [...]