If bikers really are “swimming with the sharks,” good thing they’re not sharp-toothed burrito fans. Sari Lightman has spent years crafting her signature burritos. They come in vegan or vegetarian varieties, with pinto beans, rice, homemade salsa, and optional cheese or chipotle sour cream. She even has corn tortillas for those giving up gluten. They’re [...]

Coffee-making at Crafted by Te Aro (135 Ossington). With a Tim Hortons popping up in espresso-centric Little Italy and Starbucks sneaking its way into the Junction, neighbourhood coffee shops are in need of recognition just to stay in the brewing business. With that reality in mind, two coffee enthusiasts—who were previously uninvolved in the food [...]

Origins is Torontoist’s new video feature, which aims to tell the stories of Torontonians with roots both here and elsewhere. Benjamin Nii Kpani Addy is the first of his family to have been born in Canada after his father immigrated to Toronto from Ghana in the 1970s. He grew up in the Ghanaian neighbourhood near [...]

If Toronto has an uncrowned urban enthusiast-in-residence, it’s Shawn Micallef. Senior editor for Spacing magazine, urban matters columnist for Eye Weekly, co-founder of the site-specific documentary art project [murmur], and instructor at OCAD, Micallef wears many a city-related hat. This week, Micallef launches his book Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. The premise: he takes [...]

A total of 178 Toronto neighbourhoods are mapped out in Jenny Beorkrem’s city poster. With ridiculous East v. West turf wars promoting regional competition, Toronto could use a little urban unity. That’s just what Chicago-based artist Jenny Beorkrem delivers with her city posters, which map out the entirety of a city’s neighbourhoods while squeezing their [...]

In October 2009, nearly two hundred potential names for the area east of the Junction and north of Roncesvalles were chalked along the West Toronto Railpath. Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist. Torontoist would like to give a big shout out to all our readers in the Junction Triangle. What do you mean, you’ve never heard of [...]

One of the original “Jerks My Chicken” ads from TABIA, from last fall. Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist. TABIA (the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas) is about to introduce a second round of double entendre–laden transit shelter ads like the ones they started putting up last fall. (Remember “My Neighbour Jerks My Chicken?” How could [...]

Dufferin Grove Park is home to a bonfire pit, wood-burning ovens where residents can bake pizza and bread, an adobe courtyard, a weekly farmers’ market, dozens of year-round art festivals, two skating rinks, a cheap and healthy cafe, and regular pay-what-you-can community meals. It’s a chaotic, eclectic, and fairly idyllic public space, but what makes [...]

Photo of Kendell by Hubert Davis. When Hubert Davis set out nearly five years ago to tell the story of two Regent Park boys becoming men, he wanted to shed light on an untold dimension of the well-known low-income neighbourhood. The ongoing billion-dollar redevelopment of North America’s first social housing complex has sparked all kinds [...]

Located at the corner of Nassau and Augusta streets in Kensington Market, 234 Augusta Avenue has been a focal point of anxiety for neighbourhood residents and businesspeople since fall 2008, when the fruit market that used to occupy the space was closed after a disastrous health inspection, and local press learned that Starbucks was interested [...]