Yesterday was a tough day for fans of free ice cream. You see, April 29th was Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day, at participating store locations worldwide. Los Angeles residents, like much of the rest of the world, easily (and, we assume, happily) got theirs. The Ben and Jerry's at 238 Queen Street West, however—Toronto's only downtown store—was closed, with a sign in the window that declared it was "Closed for the season! See you......

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.......

Because nothing says "I'm sorry" like cash in hand, the TTC has just announced a fleet of refunds for all day passes, metropasses, weekly passes, GTA passes. As repentance for that whole surprise strike thing, owners of an adult metropass will get $7.50 back (or $7.00 for those with the Metropass Discount Plan); those with an adult weekly pass will pocket $9.50; and those with a day pass for April 25 will get $3.00 for......

Now, normally our coverage of anything Rogers is best downed with a tall glass of Haterade, but Toronto's technophiles and status-hungry business execs have reason to give thanks today to the Evil Empire, for the most anticipated gadget of the last gazillion years is to finally land in our fair city: Apple's iPhone. In a curt press release this morning, Rogers announced that a deal had been conclusively inked with Apple and the device......

Have you asked yourself recently "Hey, what happened to the "s" in my local Loblaw's sign?" If so, you probably live in Toronto or Collingwood and are curiously attentive to detail. The missing "s" comes as Loblaw Corporation, parent company of Loblaw's grocery chain, tries out a rebrand at three of their stores. Two of the locations are in Toronto, one on Burnamthorpe, and the other at Yonge Street and Yonge Boulevard (between Lawrence......

Well, it sure is classier than the Scotiabank. For one thing, the AMC Yonge & Dundas 24, opening today, isn't called the "Scotiabank." And its interior design scheme (seen above) is premised on the role that movies play in the popular imagination, rather than the role that you play in Taco Bell's quarterly profits. And the music selections playing in the lobby (Soundgarden, Nirvana, and The Who during Tuesday's press preview) don't seem to......

Yesterday afternoon, a group named AlwaysQuestion organized a "day of action" protesting a fee increase for New College residence students at the University of Toronto. The day was to end with a sit-in at Simcoe Hall intended to garner the group a meeting with U of T President David Naylor, to get "the proposed fee increase removed from the University Affairs Board meeting," and to get fifteen minutes at that meeting for a "presentation......

Recently, our own fair U of T released a new and highly controversial study [PDF] that claims men (of all skin colours) are more attracted to women with lighter skin. The story was quickly snapped up by Jezebel, which tied the recent influx in the long-standing demand for "skin lightening creams" in India to the trend. Dr. Shyon Baumann, a sociologist at the University, doesn’t go this far—he asserts that the preference for lighter-skinned......

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie. According to a December 2004 article in the Globe, Mike Harris is (or at least was at the time) the chairman of video advertising company Onestop; he got on board "in return for an equity stake" in the business. Presuming that he still has that stake (and why wouldn't he? he may be evil, but he's not stupid), Harris became a richer man two weeks ago, when the Toronto Transit......

Plagued by complaints, the City of Toronto has finally gotten around to ticketing some homeowners who don't clear the snow in front of their property. A city spokesperson said they prefer not to send out inspectors in the winter because it's so difficult to get around. Anxious to cement a reputation for self-serving indifference to the public interest, more than 99% of TTC workers have voted more to reject their most recent contract offer.......

It snowed again last night, so if you're going anywhere, it'll probably take you a long time. However, we're getting another storm on the weekend so you might as well wait before you start shovelling. Actually, it'll be spring in a couple of weeks anyway so if you have enough cans of SpaghettiO's, it's probably best to just stay home til then. The Bank of Canada slashed interest rates by fifty basis points yesterday,......

No Country For Old Men cleans up at the Oscars. The Coen Brothers finally got some big-time recognition with nods for best picture, best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best husband of Frances McDormand. In other news, a bunch of Canadians got nominated for stuff and didn't win any of it. (There! We could totally write entertainment news for any major Canadian newspaper now!) Visa IPO expected to be worth nineteen billion smackers. MasterCard responded......

Fire at Queen and Bathurst. Adios to Duke's, the Suspect Video outlet, and a bunch of other cool places. Check out Torontoist's coverage of the fire here and here and here––Queen West will be closed until next week. Home sales in Toronto drop significantly after land tax kicks in. Of course, one has to account for the fact that home sales in January, before the land tax was initiated, were significantly higher because people were......

Snow globes, ice sculptures, and an ice bar...sound like an arctic paradise? Even if you're sick of slipping on the white (and sometimes yellow) stuff, you're still invited to Bloor-Yorkville's IceFest Festival this weekend—and you don't even have to get your feet wet! IceFest ent-ice-s with enough of the cold stuff to carve out a ship—and that's 25,000 pounds! By donating five bucks to the Heart & Stroke Foundation, you buy yourself a pose......

A three hour Blackberry outage affected millions of people across North America yesterday, leading to much wailing and handwringing over the temporary unavailability of a technology that didn't even exist ten years ago. Truly we are a nation of whiners. The Toronto Maple Leafs braved the cold to hold an unannounced outdoor skate at Withrow Park yesterday, where they were cheered on by 300 local grade-schoolers. Following the warmup, the kids formed a pickup......

Photo by Denmar from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Canadian telcos are masters at exploiting customer tolerance limits—when you need a mobile device and are locked into a contract with few alternative options, you're pretty much forced to accept the beatdown levied by one of the three majors. And the carriers benefit greatly by confusing customers, whether it be via despicable "system access fees" or by giving meaningless, unhelpful names to monthly rate plans, like......

Behold what might eventually become of Sniderman's Corner: an attractive first rendering of the Ryerson Student Learning Centre. To be built at Yonge and Gould on the former sites of Sam The Record Man and the freshly-vacated Future Shop, the building represents Ryerson's desperately coveted access to the Yonge Street strip. To be designed by critical darlings KPMB Architects and Daoust Lestage, the institutionally glassy building will incorporate the historically designated Sam's marquee, which......

TTC subways twice as costly to build as Madrid's. And they got tapas while they were building it. Rogers increases their fake "system access" fee. Torontoist has learned that this is only the first in a proposed system of additional fees, including an "energy cost of making your phone ring louder" fee, a "remembering that you're paying for additional services" fee, and the obviously necessary "keeping track of all the fees you owe us"......

Unless you're just coming off a three-day bender, you already know that Australian actor Heath Ledger died in New York yesterday, an event covered by the media with the familiar dead celebrity combination of prurience and gravitas. Still, he was good at what he did and he had a little girl and it's sad. Good news, everybody! Dalton McGuinty has announced that there will be no recession, in spite of deepening pessimism on the......

The Star reports that TTC operators have a rate of post-traumatic stress disorder four times higher than Toronto police officers. The syndrome is often a result of witnessing, or becoming the victim of, physical violence, and is now the second leading cause of missed work days at the TTC. Arming operators a la Mad Max probably isn't the right solution, but hoping that the assholes who assault drivers will magically disappear may not be......

That’s right! Ontario Power Generation, that ever-so-lovable corporation owned by the Government of Ontario (responsible, according to their Wikipedia page, for 70% of Ontario’s electricity) are being forced to change their name by Prince, after he noticed that “Ontario Power Generation” (founded in 1999) is suspiciously close to the name of his backing band, the New Power Generation Or! We’re lying, and it’s in fact Ontario Power Generation, the local band (unrelated to Prince or......

Sections of downtown core shut down for fear of falling debris. David Miller responds by initiating the "Less Wind Now" campaign, encouraging Ottawa to build "a giant wall" around Toronto to serve as a windbreak. Forty year mortages have arrived. Suggested advertising slogan: "Now you can be in your seventies and still not have paid down your house! Federal poll shows Tories back on top by seven points. Apparently, the secret for the Tories'......

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. Despite the loonie's heroic achievement this year, there was still an unpalatable flip-side to its gratifying performance for many......

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. Most people would respond with shock if you expressed your distaste for the ever-growing music festival (read: conference) that......

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. Named Time’s Canadian Newsmaker of the Year for 2007, the loonie reached parity with the U.S. dollar this past......

It looks like there will now be a reprieve for all of you filthy, dirty scum who have dared to engage in file-sharing, downloading, and the elusive but nonetheless nefarious "time-shifting." Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice has, for now, backed off on plans to introduce a new and comprehensive copyright bill to the House of Commons, at least until late January of 2008. The new bill was supposed to be introduced this week. The......

Well, it's about time. Two years after launching downloadable television shows south of the border, Apple has finally flipped the switch here, albeit with a dearth of content. Single television episodes are available via iTunes for $1.99, and full seasons range from about $10–$30. Most of the shows currently available are for domestic productions, like CTV's Degrassi: The Next Generation and the CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie, but non-Canadian shows, like South......

It's the holiday season, which means that stress is high and we're not always thinking when we spend our money. But this time of year is also a busy season for fraudsters, who love to take advantage of people's holiday forgetfulness. Paying by debit is one of the easiest ways of paying for your goods, but it's the easiest to compromise. We know several people who have had thousands of dollars drained from their......

Photo by William Self from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It seems like everyone in the city is looking for a new place to live. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of competition to find that oh-so-perfect abode, and you’ve only got a few (relatively meagre) resources at your disposal to help you in your search. Luckily for you, we have your back.......

In Tuesday's news round-up, we told you that the plan to sell McDonald's the land at Bloor and Avenue had been halted until January 18. It's a good thing, too, as there are many questions that must be answered before the $3.38 million sale is finalized. Is it in the best interest for Toronto taxpayers? Is the sale a smart corrective action to the bungled 1971 lease agreement or another dumb move we'll regret for......