Even with the success of acts like Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords, people still tend to view musical comedy with some suspicion, and not without reason. Those high-profile success stories aside, at the club level, musical comedy is too often the province of people who aren’t quite good enough to make it as musicians, but not quite funny enough to make it as comedians.

Two local comics, Robert Keller and Rush Zilla, are out to change that perception with their show, Off Key Comedy, which features a wide variety of acts whose only commonality is that they combine music and comedy in one form or another. The third edition of the monthly show will take place on May 23, at Comedy Bar.

Despite the fact that the last show in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 2012/2013 season is titled Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical, Lady Gaga herself takes a secondary role. There are no homages to raw-meat dresses and gold-plated wheelchairs here. Instead, writer and director Alistair Newton uses the House of Gaga as a pathway into the history of the notable performance-art stars that came before her in the pantheon of queer iconography, and how she is and isn’t a construct of all of them put together.

It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Next Wave Presents: Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

“It should be dissolved. It’s a failure.”

—Toronto mayor Rob Ford speaking to reporters today about the future of bike-sharing program Bixi, which is facing an operating shortfall. Bixi opened in Toronto with some help from the municipal government, which guaranteed the company’s loan. On advice from staff, city council may soon look at renegotiating the terms of that loan in light of Bixi’s financial woes. As a result, several councillors are floating ideas for completely overhauling how Bixi would work: Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) wants to work with developers to create incentives for installing new bike stations, and TTC chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) wants to investigate making Bixi part of the TTC.

Cyclists line up to have their rides blessed by Reverends Vicki Obedkoff and Hans van Nie.

Dozens of cyclists came to Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church in the Annex on Sunday hoping for a little divine protection.

The Blessing of the Bicycles, as the event is known, started fifteen years ago at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John of the Divine. Trinity-St. Paul’s picked up the tradition four years ago at the urging of Martin Reis, a cycling advocate and box-office manager for Tafelmusik, a baroque orchestra and choir that has its offices inside the church.

“About five years ago, they said, ‘We want to do Earth Day celebrations, what can we do?’” said Reis. “They asked all around, and I said, ‘Well let’s do a guerilla garden,’ which they did. And then the next year they wanted to do something different, and I said that this had never been done in Toronto before, but they’ve been doing this thing in New York called the Blessing of the Bicycles. And they said, ‘Well, I’ve heard of blessing animals before. Why not bicycles?’ And it’s just been growing ever since.”

Reverend Vicki Obedkoff said that the blessing, which involves both a prayer and the sprinkling water on both bike and rider, twins nicely with the United Church’s focus on the environment and social justice.

“I found the liturgy online. I believe it had some Episcopal roots in the United States…and it has a really great scripture text from the prophet Ezekiel, all about ‘wheels are spinning, and the creatures on the wheels are in motion,’” she said. “It’s prophetic, but it’s also a lamentation about what we’re doing to the Earth.”

“It’s even more prophetic now,” she added, “because we know we need public transit, and we know we need cycling infrastructure.”

“I see [cyclists] as prophetic people, with the kind of spirituality that’s called for right now.”

Reis said that, whether or not you believe in the spiritual aspect of the event, things like the Blessing of the Bicycles help build a sense of community among the city’s cyclists.

“We know what it’s like to ride a bike in Toronto, whether you’re in the suburbs or downtown,” he said. “All the road space is for cars…That’s made very clear by the design. Anything I can do to fly in the face of that and show how great and wonderful bicycles are, I will do that. I couldn’t think of a better way to just say thank you to people who ride bikes in Toronto.”

Cyclist Dave Cronsilver, who brought his bike to be blessed, agrees. He thinks the blessing could, in a roundabout way, help with the fight for better bike infrastructure.

“People come by and get their bike blessed,” he said. “And then they meet other cyclists and can organize around being interested in the same things.”

While Trinity-St. Paul’s is the only church currently doing the blessing, parishioner Lyn Gaetz, who is part of the organizing committee for the event, is talking to other faith groups about doing something similar.

“A woman [from another church] came through today and said she’d be very interested in working on that with me,” she said. “I’m very concerned, as many of us are, about our Earth and climate change.”

“My only inkling of hope is that there are faith communities in every city, town and village around the world. If we could all be in solidarity with each other for the Earth, regardless of what else we believe, then we might be able to do something.”

Photo by Mi*Li, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Yesterday, we learned that Bixi Toronto is having trouble sustaining itself financially, possibly because the bike-share system is still too small to attract a healthy user base. Now, Cycle Toronto (formerly known as the Toronto Cyclists Union) is calling on the City to resolve the problem by opening up its wallet.

The weird thing about Bixi Toronto is that the City hasn’t actually invested any significant amount of money in it. The whole system was provided by a private not-for-profit called the Public Bike System Company, which was founded as an offshoot of Montreal’s parking authority. To set up Toronto’s Bixi system, PBSC took out a $4.8 million loan, with the City as a guarantor. The idea, at the time, was that the company would pay off its own debt, mainly with user fees. There was never any money dedicated to expanding the system.

Cycle Toronto, in a press release issued earlier this morning, suggests that the best way of getting Bixi Toronto out of its financial hole is for the City to buy it by paying off the remaining debt (which would cost about $3.9 million). The City could then spend taxpayer money on expanding the geographic boundaries of system, so it could serve more users.

“It costs the City roughly $1 million for a new bus,” says the release. “For the cost of 15 buses, we can purchase the program and expand to 3,000 bikes.” There are currently 1,000.

Following through on this idea would have the added benefit of uncoupling Bixi Toronto from PBSC, which has had some financial troubles of its own. Even so, we probably don’t need to tell you that this won’t be an easy sell at City Hall. Who wants to be the first to broach the topic of publicly funded bikes with Mayor Ford?

In any case, the arrangement between the City and PBSC will have to change somehow. Right now, the City’s plans are confidential, but we should know more next month.

Photo by enedkl from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Bixi Toronto launched on May 3, 2011, to much fanfare and after much anticipation. Many residents embraced the city’s new bike-sharing program, eager to have a way to ride around without dealing with the stress of stolen wheels or finding a place to lock up.

Today, there is word coming out of City Hall that Bixi is in at least some financial trouble—though it isn’t clear yet how much, or whether this will affect the long-term viability of the program.

The details are murky right now: as is the case with all financial arrangements, many of the particulars are confidential. What we do know is that City staff issued a report today, advising that “BIXI Toronto’s current business plan is experiencing difficulty in covering its operating costs, primarily due to the cost of servicing a 100 percent debt-financed asset-base.”

This affects the municipal government because it guaranteed the loans which enabled Bixi to start up in Toronto, in the amount of $4.8 million. In order to protect the City’s financial interests, staff are outlining options for restructuring the arrangement with Bixi; those options are also confidential, however, and so we have no way of knowing just how much trouble Bixi might be in.

City staff and councillors, bound by the confidentiality of those agreements, couldn’t shed much light on the subject. “My understanding,” said Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), who is chair of the City’s public works and infrastructure committee, “is we gave them a loan guarantee and they’re borrowing money but they can’t make the payments on the loan… Council’s going to have to deal with where it wants to go forward and how it wants to move forward with the future of Bixi.” And this all may, he went on, be part of a larger issue with Bixi, which is based in Montreal; as he understands it, the central organization “has been told to divest itself of Bixi Toronto.”

Bixi officials were not immediately available to comment.

City staff were careful to emphasize that, while Bixi is facing financial problems, in terms of actual uptake and use, things have been going well: “From an operational perspective the BIXI public bicycle program has been very successful. In a very short time it has become an important part of the transportation mix in the downtown area with 4,630 paid subscribers and more than 1.3 million bicycle trips generated since the program launched. BIXI is also a key component of the transportation plan being developed for the Pan Am Games.”

Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) is a big proponent of Bixi, and says that the problem may be that the system is much smaller than it needs to be in order to hit a threshold of financial viability. “The original [City staff] report suggested that we needed to get up to a certain number of bikes and stations to make it sustainable at all, so why is this a surprise that it’s not sustainable at a third of the [size]?” He remains convinced that Toronto needs a bike-sharing system, and thinks most of his colleagues on council won’t use this financial issue as an excuse to try to shut Bixi down. “I don’t suspect that will be the case—it’s been fairly successful. A lot of tourists use it, a lot of local folks use it, so if we’re talking about trying to attract tourists and make this a city that people want to come and visit, this certainly is one of those pieces.”

When City staff first set out a vision for a bike-sharing program in Toronto, they laid out something that was much more ambitious in scale than what we ended up with. That plan [PDF] called for 3,000 bikes servicing an area that stretched from High Park in the west to Broadview in the east, and from Bloor to Lake Ontario. The agreement with Bixi, when it was eventually settled on, included a plan for the 1,000 bikes we have now as an initial phase, with an eye to expanding the system as time went on. That expansion never came.

City staff’s new report on Bixi’s finances will go to the executive committee at City Hall next week for further debate; we anticipate much of that discussion will take place behind closed doors, so it may be a while yet before we know exactly what’s in store for the bike-sharing program.

It’s one of the surest signs of spring in Toronto. Every ten or so minutes at Dufferin Grove Park, a shout will ring out: “Three, two, one: POLO!” With that, a frenzy of hard-riding cyclists pedals forward, chasing the ball from one side of the park’s hockey rink to the other.

Yes, we said “cyclists.” Welcome to bike polo season, 2013 edition.

Occasionally, bikes will get knocked over. Many pairs of wheels have spoke guards fastened to them, some splashed with a little more character than others. These seemed to be personalized for each rider, as if bearing their signatures.

Every time a game is played, it’s like a kaleidoscopic blur of spinning wheels and cranking ankles. In a given day—four hours of play in total, usually—players swarm the pitch in whirlwind fifteen-minute intervals. Observers, meanwhile, watch the flailing mallets with a mounting urge to wince, hoping they don’t end up wedged in someone’s spokes.

You can’t help but imagine the hardy, battle-tested riders at Dufferin Grove—or Scadding Court, Trinity Bellwoods, or any other “random schoolyard,” to quote Bike Polo Toronto’s Facebook page—laughing off the usual traffic-related threats on city streets.

Cars or other obstacles? Just watch the smooth, serpentine alacrity with which these players ride around each other, every offensive and defensive move on the court a study in precision cycling. Collisions? After two or three rounds of polo, it’s clear that what sets these players apart is their willingness to bear a little black and blue in the event of a worst-case scenario. And that’s only if their skilled cycling fails—which, from a spectator’s standpoint, thankfully doesn’t happen often.

2013′s season kicks off with a new round of outdoor league play. League games will be happening on Friday nights at Dufferin Grove.

Rookies can test their pedals at Dufferin Grove from 7 to 9 p.m. Veterans with two-plus years’ experience have the run of the court from 9 until 11 p.m. on Friday nights. And all eager spectators—including hecklers, they say—are invited to check out informal games on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, as well as Sundays from 3 until 7 p.m. (All the details are on the league’s website.)

A word of advice if you do decide to try out, though: bring a helmet.

Photos by Todd Aalgaard/Torontoist.

Photo by moonstream, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

If you see someone attacking a bike lock with an angle grinder at some point over the course of the next month or so, there will be a better-than-usual chance that they’re not just an incredibly brazen thief. The City announced yesterday that it’s going to be removing abandoned bikes from city streets during the next few weeks.

“Abandoned,” by the City’s definition, usually means a bike that isn’t in rideable condition and that has been locked in the same place for a long period of time—generally more than a month. The City’s press release says workers will be removing bikes that are “clearly abandoned,” but that neglected bikes that look as though they may not be totally forsaken will be taken away only after seven days’ notice, to be given in the form of a little note stapled around the frame.

They do this every year. We’d have nothing to lock our bikes to except other, rustier bikes if they didn’t.

Bikes in Nathan Phillips Square during 2008′s Bike to Work ride. Photo by rob.harris28, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

City councillors have voted to revive a plan to build North America’s largest bike station in the underground parking lot at Nathan Phillips Square. The project, which would include 380 bike parking spaces and shower facilities, was delayed after Toronto Parking Authority staff said that removing 24 ordinary parking spaces in order to accommodate the new facility would cost $70,000 in lost revenue.

Monday, councillors on the City’s government management committee voted 3-2 in favour of reviving the plan, subject to approval from city council at its meeting in May.

Councillor Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East), who chairs the committee, said the underground lot doesn’t appear to be operating close to capacity, meaning the lost car parking wouldn’t make a difference. “When you get down to the lower [parking lot] floors, nine times out of 10 there’s a good chunk of it that’s vacant,” he said following the vote. He added that the planned showers and bike repair shop within the facility would encourage cyclists who currently avoid riding to work. “Who wants to be beside somebody that’s biked all the way from Scarborough or Etobicoke on an 80-degree day?” he wondered aloud.

Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North), who voted against the project, slammed its $1.2 million budget as “reckless spending” and objected to the loss of parking spaces. “What we should be doing is utilizing that [space] for cars,” Ford said following the decision. “I’m sure there’s other places that bikes can park around here. We don’t need to take out parking spaces out of prime locations to build showers.”

The bike station was initially proposed as part of the Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization, a project approved under former mayor David Miller. City staff told the committee that half of the $1.2 million budgeted for the station has already been spent on design and planning. Transportation staff quietly deferred the project in 2011 after parking authority officials objected to the potential loss of revenue. Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) found out about the delay, and filed an administrative inquiry, which led to the committee’s vote.

Jared Kolb of Cycle Toronto, the city’s largest cycling advocacy group, praised the committee’s decision. “It sends a strong message that cyclists are an important part of the transportation mix,” Kolb said. He argued for the efficiency of using 24 vehicle parking to accommodate up to 380 cyclists. “In terms of a return on investment, it’s a fantastic use of space,” he added.

A 2009 City study found that 91 per cent of commuter cyclists believe “more secure indoor parking would improve cycling in Toronto.” Bike stations at Victoria Park Station and Union Station are already up and running, and one is planned for the future Finch West Station on the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line.

The overall cost of the Nathan Phillips Square revitalization has ballooned to approximately $60 million, up from about $40 million in 2007. Ainslie attributed this to council-approved additions to the project—such as enhanced landscaping—after the original approval. He assured reporters that the bike station wouldn’t contain unnecessary frills. “I don’t think you’re going to see any brass or marble in there,” he said.

Having part of your bicycle break or get stolen is frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.

At the Community Bicycle Network, you can fix your own flat tire for $10 (versus about $20 in a bike shop), or, as I did, replace your stolen tire for $26 (normally about $100).

The CBN, founded 20 years ago, provides used parts, tools, and supervision, but lets you do the actual repairs. Depending on when you visit, you might catch some smooth jazz, or a good, long discussion about mediation and artistic expression.

The space is located at Queen Street West and Euclid Avenue, on the first floor of an old church. (There’s no storefront, but look for the yellow sign and the bike racks on the sidewalk.) It’s one of a handful of Do-It-Yourself bike shops serving downtown Toronto. Some others are Bike Pirates, Bike Sauce and Bikechain (the latter is partially funded by the University of Toronto, so U of T students should bring their I.D.; if you’re not a student, they suggest you leave a small donation). They, like the CBN, promote affordable, intelligent, and sustainable cycling.

“When people want to know something, they come here,” Jerry Lee Miller says. He’s CBN’s lead—and only—full-time mechanic. On the day I visit, he’s simultaneously supervising, answering questions, and helping people find whatever part or tool they need. (He repeatedly does that thing where he knows someone’s making a mistake without looking. It’s uncanny.) While Jazz.FM91 plays in the background, people rummage, query, and tinker. Jerry glides here, points there, and because he’s also an artist, has a discourse with yours truly on theories of creative expression.

The CBN works as follows: used parts are collected from donated bikes. You can buy them for about $5 a piece. You can rent a repair stand and the use of tools for $12 an hour, or the same plus Jerry’s supervision for $18 an hour. (You can also leave your bike for Jerry to repair, for $60 an hour, but few people do this.)

Jerry says that even a novice can fix a flat tire in fifteen minutes. It took me—an extreme novice—only 45 minutes to replace my entire front wheel.

Parts-wise, the CBN has whatever you need to fix or improve your bike. Along one wall are neatly stacked cartons of brakes and levers, cranks, pedals, handlebars, seats, reflectors, chain rings, and water bottle cages. From the ceiling hang wheels and tires. There’s even a tangle of wires that might help fix your lights, or an odometer.

If Jerry doesn’t have the part you need, he can order it—or, if you’d rather not wait, he can tell you where to go find it. He’ll even let you use the CBN’s phone to call ahead, to make sure the part’s available.

(Speaking of parts, the CBN is always looking for bikes. They’re especially keen to clean out that room in every condo building’s parking garage where abandoned bikes are stored.)

Most of what’s good about DIY cycle repair is obvious: it’s cheaper, fewer bikes end up in landfills, you learn something, you can better evaluate service at bike shops, and your bike will just ride better, which means you’ll both ride more and encourage others to do the same.

But DIY is also, less obviously, a kind of activism: the collaboration that makes all the obvious stuff possible ends up creating, one repair at a time, a real community. “It’s a different kind of experience,” Jerry says. “You come down here and give your time. Paying for parts, that just keeps the lights on and the rent paid.” People who share knowledge also share understanding and come to depend on each other. Practical skills build confidence and reduce the world to a manageable scale.

As warmer weather approaches, Jerry and the CBN remind everyone to keep their bikes clean, chains oiled, and that WD-40 is a cleaner, not a lubricant.

Consider that your first lesson.

CORRECTION: April 2, 3:45PM The post mistakenly referred to Jerry Lee Miller as Jerry Lee Brown. The correction has been made above.
CORRECTION: April 2, 4:15PM The post previously implied that a University of Toronto I.D. was required to access Bikechain, when, in fact, the public is welcome as well, but are encouraged to leave a small donation.

“Feeling Congested?” is the City’s attempt to gather input on the future of getting around Toronto, whether on foot, by car, or by some other means. Photo by {a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcronin/5663226238/”}Dan Cronin^{/a}, from the {a href=”http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/”}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

About two dozen Toronto residents went to the Scarborough Civic Centre Wednesday night to take part in “Feeling Congested?,” a City campaign to build consensus around transportation priorities.

In contrast to recent politically-driven conversations about the modes of transportation residents prefer, this campaign is being led by City staff. Information gathered from several public sessions and through the campaign website, FeelingCongested.ca, will be delivered to Metrolinx, Toronto’s regional transit authority.

After some introductory remarks by staff, attendees began to discuss how the City could go about improving the way it moves people and goods across the region. Norm Feder, a retired Scarborough resident who primarily uses a car, spoke up. “Improving the travel experience for commuters is my number one priority,” he said. He added that he’d like to see developments along public-transit corridors be planned in better consultation with existing residents. “The City and the province have to co-ordinate development instead of doing it unilaterally,” he said.

Others, like Guled Arale, a student and public transit advocate, argued in favour of density and an accompanying transit network as a way of addressing inequality. “People use cars not because they choose to drive,” Arale said of residents in Scarborough, “it’s because they need to drive. We need to think about building communities where people can live and work without going across or out of the city.” He favoured more walkable communities and transit connections within Scarborough.

The scale of new developments was a recurring theme throughout the evening, one that Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) addressed. “Look at how long it’s taken us to build what [former mayor] Mel [Lastman] promised us,” she said, referring to development along the Sheppard subway line. “It’s a huge challenge to develop with density because many people don’t want the buildings, but they also don’t want taxes for transportation.”

Carroll agreed with a comment from one of the City staff members at the consultation, who said that the cancellation of the vehicle registration tax has made Torontonians wary of future City levies for transportation. “The mayor doesn’t seem to accept that the streams of revenue need to match the projects we want to build,” Carroll said. She accused the mayor of “playing political football with revenue tools other municipalities are embracing.”

Rob Hatton, a corporate financing staffer with the City, noted that since Metrolinx is expected to release on a report on how to fund transit in the GTA, now would be a bad time for Toronto to begin its own conversation about taxes and fees for transportation. “We’re not going there,” Hatton said bluntly. He pointed out that one quarter of the approximately $2 billion Metrolinx plans to raise annually will come back to municipalities to fund their priorities.

John Taranu, a volunteer with Cycle Toronto told staff that “the first consideration of any transportation network should be safety.” Taranu noted that Toronto’s public transit network is generally safe, but walking and cycling is often very dangerous, especially at large intersections and near highway on- and off-ramps. “Sometimes it’s very hard for people, especially seniors, just to get across the street in one light,” Taranu said. Cycle Toronto is pushing Metrolinx and the City to include considerations for cycling in all its consultations.

One issue that seemed to garner consensus was the need for dedicated funding for transportation infrastructure improvements. When moderator Nicole Swerhun polled the audience on support for dedicated revenue tools, practically every hand in the room went up. But residents differed on which tools would be most appropriate for raising revenues.

Transportation advocate Jose Ramon Gutierrez cautioned against taxing drivers who commute long distances across the city. “I see that there’s a big bias against car drivers,” Gutierrez said. He said the City should convert unused hydro and transit corridors into new highways.

Others, like resident Ross Jamieson, favoured parking levies and highway tolls that would raise revenue and discourage driving to major city centres. “The people who use the most should pay the most,” he said. Revenues derived from vehicle use dominated the discussion, while few favoured options to tax income, sales, and payrolls.