Photo by Daniel Kahn. Last night, amidst the falling snow, the torrid wind, and the downtown lights, a sizable contingent of ironically-dressed hipsters, amateur figure skaters, tiny tots, and bewildered parents skated to the sounds of Stars, Major Marker, and Kevin Drew. All the while, Craig Norris froze his ass off while hosting the R3-30, CBC Radio 3's weekly indie rock countdown, at the Natrel Skating Rink at Harbourfront. Besides the music, there was......

For some magically ridiculous reason, CBC Radio 3's weekly countdown, the R3-30, is broadcasting from a skating rink this week in a move that's heavily dividing the hipster set after the announcement of another free—and markedly less active—event that same night: Tokyo Police Club at Nathan Phillips Square. But host Craig Norris offers this pitch in their favour: "If you've ever listened to The R3-30 in the comfort of your warm, cozy home and......

Many of us developed an affection for opera early in life through Looney Tunes versions of Rossini and Wagner. For some, having Elmer Fudd chant “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Chuck Jones's animated masterpiece taught us everything we wanted to know about opera. But if your ambition to appreciate the finer things in life extends beyond Bugs Bunny, real opera could be an intimidating world of old rich......

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. Michael Redhill’s had a big year. His novel Consolation, in addition to being nominated for the Man Booker Prize......

For anyone who missed this year's Massey Lecture last Friday at U of T, don't fret. The City of Words, by celebrated writer, essayist, novelist, and anthologist Alberto Manguel, will be broadcast on CBC Radio One's IDEAS each night at 9:00 p.m. beginning Monday, November 5 running to Friday, the 9th. As a new feature this year, each of the five lectures (unedited and complete with audience discussion) will be available for download starting......

William the Conquerer may have been a great tactician and a bit of a bastard, but we're not quite sure if he was a talented musician. William the Conquerer (the band), however, is a talented musician. Five of them, actually. If you haven't heard their stuff, you should. They're a a buzzing mix of indie-rock and classical training, a blending of instruments and a quasi-seductive husky voice that makes you want to get up......

Originally published by Viking Press in 1957, Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been wearing holes in the back pockets and floppy canvas knapsacks of gaggles of come-find-yourself road trippers and college-aged who-am-I types ever since. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of its publication, Wednesday night will see the Gladstone play host to something of a symposium on the life and legacy of their main man, Kerouac. Authors Ray Robertson and David Creighton will......

Photo of In-Flight Safety courtesy of Craig Norris of CBC Radio 3. There are those who snidely believe the Hillside Music Festival is all politically-motivated tie-dye and body odour, but that’s a cursory dismissal. The 2007 version of the festival brought together the indie-kids and the hippies, the families and the staunch loners, and the musicians and the fans into a community of solar-powered folk and rock music that blistered throughout the weekend. Toronto......

Photo by bitefight from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Torontoist has a soft spot in our heart for CBC Radio One. We kind of want Stuart McLean to be our grandfather, we can often be seen funking out and/or singing along to the addictive theme song of The Current, and we think that Jian Ghomeshi is just dreamy. The summer, however, brings strange and disturbing changes to everyone’s favourite public broadcaster—the summer schedule, full of......

Yesterday, the Lakeview Generating Station in Port Credit was demolished as crowds looked on. Toronto usually gets weepy over the destruction of buildings, but the station was a pretty ugly example of Soviet-era industrial architecture and it was powered by coal. Are you going to miss it? Andy Barrie, host of CBC Radio One's Metro Morning, has early-stage Parkinson's. Three men have been charged with pimping out a 17-year-old girl at strip clubs and......

MP Peggy Nash and MPP Cheri DiNovo protest the closing of Toronto's swimming pools. At 8:30 this morning, hundreds of protesters gathered at the corner of Keele Street and Glenlake Avenue to save their community pool slated for closure next month. Extremely fit-looking senior citizens with youthful energy wore bathing suits, goggles, and swim caps. Young children, chanting “Save our pools! Save our pools!” waved signs which read, “Swim skills save children’s lives,” and......

For the entire month of May, the Deep Wireless festival will be taking place at various venues, from the west end to your very own living room. Presented by New Adventures in Sound Art, this is the sixth edition of the annual festival that explores the medium of experimental sound and radio art. Don't let the idea of experimental audio art put you off. It's far more accessible than it sounds, and with a......

Final Fantasy alert! Over the past week, the always-lovely Good Hodgkins has twice graced us with new Owen Pallett tracks. First came a grand total of six tracks from Owen Pallett and rapper Cadence Weapons's CBC Radio session in mid-April. Pallett is featured on three of Cadence's tracks (check out "Sharks," in which Pallett incorporates some sweet Andrew Bird into the mix) and then has three of his own songs: "What Do You Think......

Despite Canada's love-hate relationship with the CBC, we're big fans of York theatre grad Barbara Budd. Budd has co-hosted CBC Radio One's venerable As It Happens since 1993, and the Toronto-based show is known across Canada and satellite radio for its off-the-wall take on current events. Probably the show's most cringingly infamous clip is from 1976, when Barbara Frum is goaded into profanity, trying in vain to interview a hard-of-hearing British farmer about the world's......

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, the organization wants us to get involved in their "50 for 50" Arts Challenge. Canadians are invited to meet the challenge by engaging in 50 arts-related activities over the course of the year. Do not fret if you’ve neglected the arts since Jan 1 due to laziness and winter hibernation; there's still ample time to reach the goal in the 45 weeks that......

When Torontoist joined forces with blogTO, Reading Toronto, and Spacing and asked our readers for feedback on the TTC's website at the beginning of this month, we had absolutely no idea that we would get such an enormous response. We'd like to thank you all again for participating, and we've taken each and every one of the ideas that we received to heart. Now, it's time to move forward. The Editors and Publishers of......

Chart Attack and CBC Radio 3 reported that hackers have gotten in and deleted the MySpace account of local indie rockers Magneta Lane. The popular band lost over two years worth of fan comments and 7,000 friends. The ladies are getting back on their feet though. As of the writing of this post Magneta Lane has a functional page again, with videos and music and 372 friends. As for those alleged Turkish hackers that did......

Heather O’Neill’s debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals has been garnering rave reviews since it’s release this past October. Cementing her reputation as one of Canada's break-out authors of 2006, O'Neill's book has been included in the 2007 Canada Reads competition, held by CBC Radio, having been nominated by John Samson of The Weakerthans. The book is one of five finalists. To celebrate her nomination, HarperCollins is throwing a party tomorrow night (December 7) at......

Photo credit: Victor Tavares. Toronto is the white heterosexual male of concert audiences: we rarely dance unless very intoxicated, and the movements are awkward and self-conscious at best. Auditory satisfaction is usually conveyed by a bounce of the head, or an occasional thrust of a fist towards the stage. Despite our legendary history of aloofness, Shout Out Out Out Out made Toronto dance their asses off earlier this month at a sold-out gig at......

Move over Red Bull there's a new energy drink on the market, and with the Toronto skyline emblazoned on each can Skyline has local pride as a selling point. The drink is a "healthy, lightly-carbonated Premium Beverage designed as a great tasting alternative choice as a source of energy. Possessing a tropical berry flavor, its unique colour gives it a smooth neon-red glow." It has guarana, royal jelly, maca root and ginseng extract. Best of......

Cute sign on The Ghost is Dancing's merch table. Not pictured: delicious cupcakes. A fun time was had by all at Torontoist's Back to School party on Thursday night: great bands, great people, great prizes (courtesy of Arts & Crafts, Penguin, CBC Radio 3, and many others). Thankfully, the lovely photojunkie was in attendance and got some candids of the fine folk at the party. And if you missed this one, no worries; we'll......

If you're a listener to the CBC Radio 3 podcast then you already know about their free ticket giveaway. On Oct. 1st at the Kool Haus Radio 3 will be presenting See Vous Play, a cross-Canadian showcase of independent music featuring The Joel Plaskett Emergency, Emily Haines and the Soft Skeletons, Les Trois Accords, and Les Breastfeeders. The best part it's all free. So no, Ticketmaster won't be screwing you over on this one.......

Back To School* Cheat Sheet: Thursday, September 21st @ The Tranzac (292 Brunswick Ave.) Doors at 9pm ▪ $5 cover ▪ 19+** Featuring: Dollarama ▪ Idiots! The Ghost is Dancing ▪ DJ Wes Allen Summer is all but done. The sun's gone into hiding. Sure, the Film Festival is going strong, but when Brad Pitt leaves, what's left? Evenings of studying, or, worse, working, reminiscing about how much you miss studying? Another long, depressing......

Forget Hockey Night In Canada give us your overwrought German opera any day of the week. CBC Radio 2 will be broadcasting the COC's production of the Ring Cycle this fall. It's the first time Wagner's mammoth opera quartet will be staged in its entirety in Canada. All four operas will take about 15-hours so get comfy before you turn on your radios. But why just radio? With the cancellation of the One we think......

Those hard working people at CBC Radio 3 have scoured Youtube and found 24 classic '80s videos including stuff by Martha and the Muffins, Gowan, Rush, and Maestro! But really, because it's Friday and we've had a long week we couldn't help but play this video and crank it.......

Hey Toronto! Today is the launch event for the first ever Humanitas Festival, "A festival of what was, is and could be Toronto". Starting at 6pm at the Cooler By The Lake Tent at the foot of Yonge Street, at the water’s edge, you can come on down and Join Mayor David Miller, City of Toronto Poet Laureate Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, NOW Magazine’s Alice Klein and CBC Radio One 99.1 host Garvia Bailey......

In honour of Jane Jacobs CBC Radio One's Ideas will be re-airing their programs on Dark Age Ahead, her last work. The book describes how cultures decline and dead end and why our society might be sliding into a dark hole that might not be so easy to get out of. Part one of the the program airs tonight at 9:00. Half an hour later in Newfoundland (we don't get to say that often on......

As was reported in last Saturday's Globe and Mail, the CBC is in dire need of our help. And it's not exactly for funding or to fill an empty archives position -- it seems that there have been a number of strange occurrences in and around the Mother Corp recently. The CBC Radio has put Promo Girl on the case, who is making public appeals for help with the mysteries. This week, it appears that......

We're just going to come right out and say it - we don't get podcasting. Yes, we know what it is and how it works, and what mp3 player du jour it takes its name from. But it's really just taking a pretaped file and putting it on your player to listen to a later time, no? Taping for the digital age. Why does that warrant a fancy name? And do people actually listen to......

- Rogers, having bought Fido, is now buying Sprint's parent company as well. Rogers calls the deal "another logical and healthy step in the natural consolidation of the Canadian communications market." TOist calls it a bummer. - Monte Solberg blackberries to his blog from the floor of Parliament. A play by play of those exciting non-confidence events: "They can't believe that their iron-grip on power and pocketnooks might be loosed. Kilgour just voted with the......