“I want to learn to code (a bit) and I want other ladies in #Toronto to join me. Anyone at #swtoronto know any women who might be interested?” tweeted Heather Payne on June 10. It was a fateful missive, as that tweet launched the mini-empire that is now Ladies Learning Code, a series of workshops [...]

Given the recent turmoil in markets both international and domestic, it seems like a good time to look back at our city's history for tips on how to handle a stock market crash. One story goes that, following the harrowing experience of trading shares on Black Tuesday in 1929, a Toronto investor arrived home with news for his wife. He told her that due to the heavy losses he incurred that day he resigned from six of the seven clubs to which they belonged, sold their second car, advertised that their garage was for rent, and cancelled nearly all of their charge accounts. He promptly fired the maid and went to sleep. As Doug Fetherling asked at the end of this tale in his book Gold Diggers of 1929, “What else was a gentleman to do?”

The organizations behind the MaRS Centre Phase 2 announced today that the project is back in motion, with an expected completion date of September 2013. The 20-storey addition to the MaRS Discovery District will create 4,000 jobs and offer space to science and technology businesses. The first phase of MaRS has been at capacity since it opened in 2005; once the expansion is completed, it will offer more than 1.5 million square feet of office and research facilities for approximately 5,000 employees. Phase 2 also includes a conference centre.

Getting behind the gates of Pinewood Toronto Studios is kind of exactly like securing a golden admission ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Except instead of chocolate waterfalls, everlasting gobstoppers, and jolly, ginger-skinned Oompa-Loompas, Pinewood has well-maintained offices, an impressive ventilation system, and a muddy old berm out back. And a whole lot of movie [...]

Let's face it: Toronto has a well-deserved reputation for clique-ishness. Previously, nifty new cafés with fancy snacks were reserved for hipsters, bloggers, and left-wing pinkos in general. Board games and other socialized geekery were confined to comic shops—which, no pun intended, aren't everyone's cup of tea—or the games cabinet of that one friend willing to step up and be the designated dork when someone's Catan needed Settlin'.

This year has been cruel to independent booksellers, and for much of 2010, it looked as though the Toronto Women's Bookstore was doomed to the same bleak fate as its comrade in biblio-cool, This Ain't the Rosedale Library, which closed its doors in July. After a desperate community request for support in December 2009 was followed by a “so close, but so far away” update in February, it seemed as though the store might be gone for good when it closed “for renovations” in May.

I Want Your Job finds Torontonians who make a living doing exactly what they love to do, in any field, and for any salary, and asks them how they did it. Name: Eric Kamphof Job: General Manager of Curbside Cycle, Founder and Manager of Fourth Floor Distribution. If you want to work at Bloor Street [...]

The new Starbucks, at 3077 Dundas Street West, has been open for a week. Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist. It’s basic physics: if a gritty neighbourhood grows cool enough and wealthy enough, Starbucks will result. Until last week, the Junction was the exception that proved the rule. Now, it just proves the rule. The Junction’s first [...]

Hits and Misses and Rotate This: the Macy’s and Gimbels of Queen West? When Bloor West vinyl institution Hits and Misses packed up and stole south to Queen and Niagara a few weeks back, many local crate-diggers were surprised that the shop set down at 799 Queen Street West—right next door to neighbourhood favourite Rotate [...]

The carnage of brick and insulation beside Salad King’s former location earlier this year. Photo by ronnie.yip from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Downtown Thai restaurant Salad King had such a command over its curry-craving customers that even as the walls literally crumbled around them, diners were reluctant to abandon their plates of pad thai and [...]

Motorists line up at Costco’s gas station at its Scarborough location. Over the past couple months, Costco, the members-only wholesaler better known for its massive quantities of just about everything, added gasoline to its product line by opening gas stations at its Etobicoke and Scarborough locations. What’s resulted could best be described as utter insanity. [...]