Results tagged “biking”

SPORTS: Are you sick of taking your baby or toddler to a sports event and hearing the aggravated spectators around you groan every time your kid cries? The Rogers Centre sympathizes, which is why today is their monthly Babies at the Ballpark Blue Jays game. Parents with young children can buy discounted tickets and sit together in a special 200 level section. Diapers and wipes will be available at no extra cost, and there will be free juice and snacks for the kids. The Blue Jays are playing the Cleveland Indians, and rookie Scott Richmond is scheduled to pitch for the Jays. Rogers Centre (1 Blue Jays Way), 1:07 p.m., $9-$63.

We don't know what exactly spawned their big decision, but the big guys at the Toronto Cyclists Union sat down and decided they needed some kind of fundraiser. Bike-a-thon? Nope. Bikini car wash? Nope. Star-studded screening of Pee-wee's Big Adventure? Why not?!

Forget the snow, it's time to start planning your summer of cycling. The Toronto–Niagara Bike Train will be returning this year with an expanded schedule, more travel options, and some getaway package deals. Building on last summer's successful pilot program which saw dozens of cyclists and their bikes riding the train between Toronto and Niagara Falls on each of four weekends, the 2008 edition of the Bike Train spans eight weekends from late June through the end of September. The September trips should be popular thanks to events like the Niagara Wine Festival.

Sarah Lazarovic––curator of the garage-based Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada––is painting a portrait of a Torontonian (be they Mirvishes or Meashas) every day. Each Monday, we'll feature one of those portraits here.

In the battle of who owns the roads, cyclists and motorists are frequently at each others' throats. Over the last few years we've seen a heated altercation in Kensington Market and another that resulted in a motorist being stabbed with a screwdriver. It seems that the threat of a streetside melee is always looming.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

How many times have you been biking down the street and thought to yourself, "Wow, I wish I had a Pop-Tart!" Well, one enterprising cyclist (here parked near Yonge & Lawrence) has found the solution to this age-old problem––attaching a toaster oven directly to the handlebars of the bike. No word on exactly how the thing works, but we're guessing it's solar-powered.

Last week, we reported on a confrontation at College and McCaul Streets where a cyclist stabbed a motorist in the neck and face with a screwdriver. Police have arrested Yonan Inwia for assault, but give no further details. It's stories like this that need Rosie DiManno: "Yonan Inwia fell roughly to the ground, his hands reaching out in a Christ-like fashion to break the heavy fall. Little did Yonan know, today he would be the messiah of cyclist rage, wielding the cuspidated tool of justice."

Remember when, nearly two years ago, a motorist and a cyclist were involved in a particularly newsworthy physical altercation which involved cup throwing, car-keying and bike stomping?

As we know, the bike lanes in Toronto leave something to be desired. Cyclists have been talking about it for a while, and now city officials have proposed a plan that would make Toronto more bike and pedestrian-friendly by creating special downtown "bikeways" (including one on the Bloor-Danforth corridor) as well as implementing pedestrian-friendly traffic signals. Daniel Egan, the city’s manager of pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, said that they're looking at "creative solutions," such as shared lanes for cars and bikes in addition to bike-only lanes.

This weekend, the Ex is once again hosting Toronto's popular Clothing Show, the retail sales event offering "the unique, the unusual, and the handcrafted" to the citizenry.

Me and some of my co-workers left early today to see Blue Rodeo, who were playing various spots around Toronto, promoting their new album. By the time we'd arrived, a sizeable crowd had convened on the patio of the Black Bull, and a couple of stragglers and curious passers-by milled about its perimeter.

Continue reading "A Thousand Shining Pamphlets Waiting Just To Rain Down On You"

With some 2,212 responses in just under two weeks, our TTC survey is done, and the complete data is in the hands of Michael Anders, the TTC’s Market Research Director. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the organization will be holding a special meeting in Committee Room 1 at City Hall to discuss their next steps, and Anders has told us that they "will be prepared to discuss [Torontoist's] findings" (whatever that means!––either way, Torontoist will be in attendance).

Yesterday, after spending the morning and early afternoon at Day 1 of the Cabbagetown Festival (article to come), Torontoist decided to go for a relaxing bike ride through the Don Valley. Clearly the relaxing part of the plan didn't pan out, as we happened to be first on the scene of a wild brush fire, the flames of which were moving rapidly west and south thanks to unusually hot and dry conditions. Then, while waiting for the fire department to show up, we decided—against all good sense—to try to put it out ourselves. More photos after the jump.

We’ve mentioned the Bicycle Film Festival a few times before, but we’re going to give special mention to it again today because tonight at 7 p.m. is the screening of the festival’s first shorts programme, featuring Warriors: The Bike Race.

In a recent jaunt to London (England), Torontoist saw colours on the road. No, these weren't hallucinations brought on by too much ale at the local pub. The colours were those of lanes on the street: red for public transit vehicles and green for bikes. (And in case you're wondering, bikes can use the public transit lanes.) The message? If you're in a car, stay out of them.

We publish a lot of articles here on Torontoist, and sometimes it's hard to keep up with all of them. Populist is a weekly recap intended for the casual Torontoist reader, featuring some of the coolest, most interesting, most commented, and most recommended posts from the past week on Torontoist. Populist will appear every Sunday night.

Cyclists rejoice! One of Toronto's long-lost cycling routes is resurfacing this weekend when the Lower Don path south of Queen Street will reopen after sixteen months of construction. Those attending the official ceremonies on Saturday morning should expect dignitaries, celebrities, balloons, a marching band, and...oh, wait a second. It turns out that for the reopening of a major bike and pedestrian path, all we get is some burly guy in an orange safety vest and a hard hat pushing aside a portable barrier. But even that is vastly preferable to continued closure.

This is precisely the idea behind MyBikeLane Toronto. A North American network of blogs launched in 2006, MyBikeLane is dedicated to outing the road hogs and other boobs blocking the way. All cyclists who have experienced lane blocking are invited to post photographic evidence and license plate numbers, track re-offenders, and use Google geotags to record the scene of the crime.

Signs telling people not to feed birds in Nathan Phillips Square were suddenly installed and just as suddenly removed over the past week, reports the Toronto Star.

Torontoist just bought a new bike. It's blue and shiny and for some reason hasn't been stolen yet. In celebration of this fact, here are three bike-related items we thought you'd be interested in.

When deciding who to see at this year's Over The Top Festival, we luckily opted to check out Halifax's Rich Aucoin. Between his musical pedigree (he's the brother of the Hylozoist's Paul Aucoin) and the fact that his EP was synched up to How The Grinch Stole Christmas, we knew he would at least be interesting. His set turned out to be far better than just interesting, so it seemed natural to give his Personal Publication EP (Independent) a proper review.

Whether you associate the myriad back alleys that criss-cross Toronto with crime and filth or art and beauty, Graeme Parry's laneway tours are sure to be a treat.

If you've ever noticed half of a bike coming out of a wall, naked plywood people screwed into the facade of a building, a portrait of the Gladstone pasted to the Dufferin bridge or a fat rope chain hanging from the next of Adam Beck, then you've seen the work of Specter. A self-proclaimed prankster, Specter's canvas is the city. Always inventive, his art is meant to brighten one's day and cause people to rethink their physical surroundings. On the verge of his first solo show, Cardboard Gates, which opened Friday night at Resistor Gallery, we caught up with the mysterious man to chat.