No, prominent city councillor Kyle Rae is not in California, getting gay (re)married, but if you read the Huffington Post—the biggest player in the field of left-leaning American news aggregators—you might be forgiven for thinking as much.
Results tagged “california”
Kennedy Station will remain closed today, at least for the morning. So, if you live in Scarborough, enjoy those shuttle buses.
Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Each Sunday, the editors of every site—from LAist to Londonist—choose their most interesting article, a list which is compiled into the network-wide feature Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse.
Just in case this is something you like to be reminded of, you're going to die someday. The good news is that day is likely to be further off than ever, because average life expectancy in Canada has risen, with a baby born in 2005 likely to live to 80.4 years of age. On the other hand, who wants to be an 80-year-old baby?
In some households, hockey is a key element during the Christmas break. Skates under the tree. That long-desired California Golden Seals sweater from Santa. Fans that cannot be pulled away from the TV during holiday games and tournaments. Christmas songs recorded by a favourite player.
The half-wit OCAD student who planted a fake bomb at the ROM on Wednesday has turned himself in to police and been charged with mischief and common nuisance. Ha, closing a major thoroughfare, wasting the time of hundreds of police and emergency service personnel, and forcing the cancellation of an AIDS gala—what a lovable scamp. The death rates at Canadian Hospitals have now been made public in a report from the Canadian Institute for...
Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.
Eat Me is a regular feature about the nooks and crannies of Toronto's restaurant scene, about the amazing restaurants that are––for some reason––criminally underpatronized. It's pretty easy to find sushi places in this city. From the Bloor Street strip to North York, sushi places range from suspiciously cheap to ridiculously expensive, from having incredibly creative culinary creations to the same old rolls. Quietly tucked on the east edge of Little Italy is Jun Jun Sushi...
Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (covered by Amanda Buckiewicz earlier this week) is at the Bloor Cinema this Saturday, October 13 at 8 p.m, but if you’re a person of milder tastes (soft liquor and corn?) this week’s festivals of interest include the Toronto Latin Film Festival, the Macedonian Film Festival, the DNA Film Festival (it’s a busy week for festivals!), and the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival, which continues to win us over every year with its brilliant poster designs.
No word yet on whether that giant lemon will be making an appearance (Yonge and Dundas anyone?), or whether it will finally be revealed how one might actually dismantle an atomic bomb, but hundreds of U2 fans will be rattling and humming into Toronto for the fifth annual (!) inTO the Heart U2 Fan Festival, taking place from November 1 to 3.

Photo of My Chemical Romance in California by cantsaynotohope.
Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown takes over. For those not familiar with British politics, an analogy: remember when Jean Chretien stepped down and Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister, and everybody agreed that although it was clearly time to go, wow, was Paul Martin boring or what? It's like that, except pretend that Paul Martin was even more boring.
Downtown Toronto experienced a hotel boom during the first half of the 1970s as modern skyscrapers and buildings like the new City Hall changed the face of the core. Among those that made their debut: the Sheraton Centre (1972), the Holiday Inn on Chestnut (1972), the Chelsea (1975), the Harbour Castle (1975) and, opening its doors 32-years ago this week, the Hotel Toronto.
CityNews and the Toronto Star are reporting that Canada's Wonderland has closed its free-fall ride, the Drop Zone (named after the Wesley Snipes skydiving movie) due to a grisly accident on a similar ride in the States.
Sam the Record Man is closing its Yonge Street store on June 30. Remember when Sam's was the only place you could get a cassette of The Lowest of the Low's Shakespeare My Butt? Remember cassettes?
There’s nothing quite like leisurely strolling on a warm, sunny Saturday, exploring shops, nibbling some treats, and sipping some wine. Can this enticing combination be had in Toronto? Yes—tomorrow is the last day of Santé, the 9th annual Bloor-Yorkville wine festival, with several events left to round out your activities this Mother’s Day weekend.
There is some lively behind-the-scenes discussions happening at this year's Hot Docs festival. Yesterday, the industry got together to talking about the environmental impact of cinema. According to the Greencode Project, "A recent UCLA study of the environmental footprint left by Hollywood finds that California's media industry creates more greenhouse gases than the apparel, hotel, or aerospace industries in the region." Yesterday, Greencode Project organizers met with filmmakers to unveil their proposal to draft a process "similar to the code against the inhumane treatment of animals in films." For a film to receive the Greencode stamp of approval, it would have to show that it followed environmentally friendly, on set principles such as using production car co-ops or sourcing craft services coffee from fair-trade suppliers. The environment will also be the focus at his year's Doc Summit on Friday at the Rogers Industry Centre.
Jim Jones was not your typical self-proclaimed messiah. The man preached love for all races and classes, freedom of speech and socialism through Christianity. In 1978, Jones and more than 900 followers, known as Peoples Temple, moved from California to Guyana. They were going to build the ideal society. Dubbed Jonestown, after Jones himself, it was to be a utopia for the disenfranchised; a place where believers of all races and classes could lead self-sufficient lives as equals, far away from the oppression and immorality of the USA.
Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to...
Hey fan boys and girls! Are you still gushing over comic book legend Stan Lee’s cameo on last Monday's episode of Heroes (pictured left)? Well get ready to get giddy again. Lee will be appearing at an autograph session this afternoon at HMV (5:30 – 6:30 at 272 Queen St. W.).
We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the new graffiti king in town, Bill Cosby's adorable dog, and the disturbing tale of a yoga instructor who was found guilty of killing his girlfriend, a dancer from Ohio who stripped to make ends meet.
Not only are you eating rice noodles out of that Styrofoam takeout container, you may be feeding yourself tasty carcinogens. Oh, and you'll pollute the environment when you toss the container in the garbage (or on the sidewalk, for all the difference it makes). Of course, that won't matter if the styrene in the Styrofoam gets to you first.
He was best known to children of the eighties as the iconic host of Canada's first major daily music video show, CFMT's Video Singles in 1983, which pre-dated MuchMusic and led to the legendary Toronto Rocks program on CityTV (click here for a clip of the intro). Perched before multiple TV screens on a tiny set, John Majhor's loose style and low-fi production would foreshadow the oft-copied format that CityTV would make famous over the next two decades. Majhor quickly became a pin-up veejay in the mid-80s, along with his MuchMusic compatriot J.D. Roberts, while Flashdance-style Toronto Rocks! sweatshirts became ubiquitous across the city.

Like driving? Like skunks? Dislike compensation? Dream job alert!
It's about time that Toronto started a feud with a major American city, and we think that Los Angeles, California has gotten off easy for far too long. The over-the-top Hollywood sign compared to our noble and restrained skyline; their smaller phallic symbol compared to our much, much bigger one; their cloud of smog compared to our green bins and green thumbs; their palm trees compared to our pine ones. So we were thinking, what easier way to begin a full-fledged attack on LA than to knock a few pegs off of one of our sister sites, LAist?
This is going to be one big downer of a news roundup today, folks. Some seriously sad news from our sister site, Phillyist, where co-Editor Star C. Foster passed away suddenly yesterday. We'll miss her. Be sure to lend your support for her friends and family in the comments on Phillyist.
Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Of all the things Canadians will boast about, our banking system isn't one of them despite being one of the strongest and most advanced in the world. Early co-operation between the financial institutions allowed Canada to become world leaders in the use of debit cards and internet banking, and we have the highest number of ATMs on the planet, per capita.

Newsstand: November 19, 2009