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Spotted: Packing Up Garden Car

SPOTTED BY: Dean Perlmutter WHERE: Kensington Market WHEN: 9:23 a.m. WHAT: One sure sign that winter is on its way: the annual packing up of the Garden Car. Each year it gets stored over the colder months, but fret not, for it shall be reinstalled come spring. As summarized by Kensington BIA coordinator Yvonne Bambrick: [...]

Vandalist: Fordzilla

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute. BY: Justin Pape LOCATION: Kensington Market and Queen Street West PHOTOS BY: Scott Snider (top left and right) and Connie Tsang (bottom) FIELD NOTES: With Stephen Harper and Rob Ford seemingly [...]

Vandalist: Heart Attack

Sometimes all it takes are the simplest of materials—in this case cardboard, markers, and nails—to augment our urban environment. But, like all street art, there is a risk. Do you think, if the artist(s) responsible for these pieces were caught, they would be under cardiac arrest?

Urban Planner: July 27, 2008

FESTIVAL: Kensington Market’s Pedestrian Sunday is today! This month’s theme is “Water! Streams of Consciousness”—not to be confused with a tribute to Virginia Woolf’s life and death. The magic of water will be celebrated through sea shanty sing-alongs, message-in-a-bottle crafts, and something the event’s website refers to as a “water challenge.” Most importantly, no cars [...]

Not Just For Idiots

If you’re like us, you’ve been waiting to put that old shopping cart you lugged home from the grocery store one day to good use. Well, what if we told you that you could participate in an event that allowed—nay, encouraged—you to dress up in a silly outfit while pushing said cart in a death [...]

We Are the Holloman

Fish Shak isn’t what it used to be. Literally. Last fall, that place in Kensington that always advertised enigmatic “fish tea” turned itself into Bread & Circus Theatre Bar, one of the tiniest places in the city to catch a show and drink a beer. And Fish Shak Co-op is the name of the company [...]

The Rump Shaker: March 13–19

Photo by Caesar Sebastian. Justice brings their gigantic glowing cross and their hot electro-house beats to the city on Monday. While the Sound Academy (ex-The Docks) is usually an awkward place to see music, it’s well suited for this show. There will be plenty of space for people to “D.A.N.C.E.” and the duo has a [...]

Might As Well Jump

Mark Oliver Tessaro just sent us a link to the video above, of an unbelievably fun-looking do-it-yourself ski-hill that he and his roommates built in mid-February on their Kensington Market deck. Says Mark of the hill: I live with 3 other guys above a used clothing store in Kensington Market and we have a ridiculously [...]

Party Like It’s… You Know

Miss the fourth installation of YO! Remember the 90′s?? As if! Unless you’re totally clueless when it comes to comebacks, you know the nineties are the dopest thing since, like, the eighties. And if you don’t, you oughta know. No, we’re not talking overplayed nu-rave, just good old-fashioned dance mixes: hip-hop, pop and rock, plus [...]

Snappy Answers: In Which We Get a Little Blunt

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. Dear Snappy Answers, I moved here from the U.S. a little while ago. Down there, I would hear these stories about the lax marijuana laws here and the more lax enforcement of those laws. When I got here, I [...]

Chili Scenes Of Winter

Kensington Market’s Left Feet and Heart On Your Sleeve will be hosting its first annual vegan chili cook-off this Saturday, January 26 in support of homeless outreach. Amateur foodies, in addition to local restaurants Urban Herbivore, Sadie’s Diner, and the Magic Oven will compete to find who’s got the best vegan chili in Toronto. The [...]

Capturing the Iconic Kitsch of Honest Ed’s

What Honest Ed’s lacks in architectural artistry compared to more high-brow institutions, it makes up for in self-promotional bombast. From its “quirky hand-painted signage” to the low-price Toronto souvenirs, badly painted Elvis busts, and abandoned theatre props, Honest Ed’s is a museum of kitsch. Now a local illustrator, Christopher Hutsul, has designed a stationery set [...]