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. When the Festival Cinemas chain was shut down last year by supervillains The McQuillain Kids (after inheriting the business......

The Missed Connections forum on Craigslist is usually a repository of "the urban equivalent of messages in a bottle." It’s home to those wishing for a second chance at a serendipitous encounter and to cute, shy-person flirting, as nameless, faceless people share their private emotions in a very public way. The messages usually affirm that no matter how much coldness there seems to be at street level, there’s just as much hope and optimism......

Bell is launching a preemptive strike before the much-drooled-over iPhone lands in Canada. The Star reports that Bell customers with the new HTC Touch phone (pictured right) could get unlimited wireless data for just $7 a month. (Data transferring is necessary to get music, games, television and the web onto your phone.) The Touch is similar to the iPhone in that both substitute a keypad for a touch screen and can run applications, but the......

The status quo for cell phone-using motorists in Toronto won’t be changing in the near future. Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty has decided not to follow Quebec’s lead in banning the use of cellular phones while driving. This despite warnings that driving-and-dialing is a dangerous distraction. Whether you’re walking, biking, driving, or taking the TTC, be warned, Toronto. There’s a cell phone driver out there with your number! Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

Premier Dalton McGuinty says that he is not prepared to follow Quebec's example and ban cell phone use while driving, in spite of studies showing that the practice is more dangerous than driving drunk. McGuinty said that "some people also distract themselves by drinking coffee, eating and applying makeup while driving" and he wouldn't know where to draw the line. Because if you can't stop one stupid and extremely dangerous practice, there's no point......

Photo by Qehven from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. If "free contemporary art things" happen to be your thing, then chances are you were one of the 425,000 people wandering around at last year's inaugural Nuit Blanche. And unless you've been living under a rock, you know that this year, it's back this Saturday night—with a vengeance. Boasting 123 museums and over 150 projects, teamed with all night subway on certain routes and txtArt allowing......

Wireless number portability (WNP), the ability to keep your cellular phone number when you change service providers, came to Canada in March of this year. The masses of consumers looking to free themselves from their frustrating cell companies cheered. Those cheers turned to grumbles with the realization that the spiffy new phones received for “free” came attached to lengthy service contracts. Breaking a contract can make switching to (or from) the company with the......

Overheard this afternoon on the bus. The TTC driver, while in traffic, is in conversation with a fellow driver. An accident has occurred outside of Downsview station. Driver: Did you see that? The car was almost ripped in half! He must have had a heart attack… Fellow Driver: Maybe he was on his cell phone. Driver: By the way, can you hear my latest entertainment device? They’re getting really strict about this stuff. It’s top......

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......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

Each week, Torontoist chooses the most interesting cases from the Toronto Police Service crime blotter. All charges are alleged until proven under law. • Shortly after midnight on Sunday, a patron of Flirt Lounge on Adelaide West assaulted another patron, biting the victim's ear and separating a chunk of cartilage. A cell phone camera snapped an obscured image of the suspect during the altercation (pictured at right) and police say that most people in the......

Last week, Matthew Blackett quietly announced that his comic m@b would be taking an early retirement after four years of syndication in Eye Weekly. "I'm still happy with m@b", he writes, "[but] I've lost the energy to think about it. The spark of inspiration of when I saw someone do something insane, or say something off-kilter, has dulled and rarely goes off these days. I'd rather play Tetris on my cell phone that try to......

It's tough to get excited about Kikkoman soy sauce bottles. They've been around since 1961, and you find them at every sushi dive in the city. But, at one time, they were the height of tableware innovation, and for that reason, they're included in a new show at the Design Exchange: Japanese Design Today 100. This exhibition, co-presented by the Japan Foundation, celebrates 100 everyday objects that each, in their own way, broke design......

To some people, Groundhog Day is a silly little day where some rodent-like critter gets 15 seconds in the news cycle to flip a coin and tell us if there's going to be a short summer or not. Or for some, it could be all about the 1993 classic starring Bill Murray about a crazy day that repeats itself over and over and over again. But to Fort York, Groundhog Day is going to......

You know what's awesome? People on the internet who love the TTC. Torontoist is already firmly on board with the freelance public transit love, so it seemed only appropriate to alert the masses to another project in no way affiliated with the TTC that seeks to improve it. gottc.ca doesn't look like much when you open it in a normal browser, and it isn't supposed to. That's because it's been written as simply and sparsely......

Those of us in the Cool Kids Club (honest, there are secret decoder rings and everything!) have been rocking out with Jemo for a few years already. The rest of y'all will get your chance when this solid bouncy-poppy-rocky trio does their thing this Thursday at Lee's Palace. While Jemo shows are always memorable, Torontoist caught up with lead singer Jeff Dantowitz to find out which show stands out to him as most the......

We're experimenting with a new daily photo posting. Each weekday morning, we'll pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! Most photographers try and light their subjects well -- but here it's the shadows that draw us in. The silhouetted family in this transit scene is an almost flattened, abstract shape.......

If you’re hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs “so are you nakie” to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor......

The Pet Shop Boys (Yes they're still around. They never left, actually) come to the Hummingbird Centre tonight, 8pm (some seats still available), bringing their campy, more politically-charged pop tunes to the colonies (who knew I'm With Stupid was about Tony Blair's love affair with GW Bush?). Judging by the various bootleg Youtube cell phone videos out there, the show is more militaristic and yet not as over the top as their "Very" tour. Neil......

Blaring horns, bicycle bells, glowing necklaces, screeching tires, and hundreds of Torontonians sprinting through the Financial District yelling, "Incoming!" These are the sights and sounds one can expect from Newmindspace's latest installation of everybody's favourite childhood game, Capture the Flag. The game has been liberated from its grassy prison and placed squarely in the "business ghetto" grid. Participants will use five subway stations, two streetcar lines, a bus, the PATH network, bicycles, longboards, scooters......

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddy for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bids Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this guy......

Wednesday, March 15th brings the launch of [murmur] at Hart House. [murmur] currently exists in several places, including Toronto's Kensington Market and along Spadina Avenue. It is an audio archival project made up of signs of big green ears. You call the number on the ear with your cell phone to hear a story that took place in the exact spot you're standing. Details: [murmur] at Hart House Launch March 15, 2006 at 6pm Debates......

When newmindspace put out a call for folks to come down to Kensington Market for a game of Capture the Flag, Kevin Bracken, one half of the heart of the operation, printed off 55 maps for participants. He thought he had overestimated how many people would show up, but figured he'd play it safe. To what was likely a combination of shock, delight, and ultimately being overwhelmed, 100 people came to play. This time......

Torontoist is quite aware other news sources are scooping our ideas, and to some extent, that's quite alright. But when it comes to perverts stealing our ideas (more like perverting our ideas!), we absolutely have to draw the line. Following our post on how to catch perverts with cell phone cameras, a Scarborough pervert may have used the suggestion as a new innovation for pervert-related activities. Damn these perverts! Now it's back to the drawing......

Already effective in both New York and Paris, cell phone cameras could be the next wave of Toronto pervert defense. It's quite simple: When a pervert whips out his wild thing, on-lookers need only to get a shot of it their cell phone cameras. This will act as Exhibit A in a pervert trial. Though we haven't heard of these anti-pervert tactics around David Miller's Toronto just yet, cell phone justice could represent the next......

Perhaps you've seen those sneaky ads for Virgin Mobile on the subway lately? You know, the ones that masquerade as public service ads about STDs and implore you to visit www.curethecatch.ca? Well, Catch 23 has absolutely nothing to do with those irritating advertisements! No siree, Catch 23 is a weekly improv competition that takes place at Clinton's Tavern (corner of Clinton and Bloor) every Monday night. This week is an extra-special one for the funnymen......

When a cell phone goes off in the middle of a play, the logical person to hiss at is the miscreant who forgot to turn off his or her phone, of course. At the same time, however, we must recognize that to err is human. Even Torontoist has had something of ours beep at an inappropriate time once or twice. (It was a funeral. Yeeks.) Less understandable are theatre companies that still do not have......

From the moment Fido came onto the market they were perceived as a threat to the large margin, big profit cell phone carriers like Rogers, Bell, and especially Telus. The competition cause by Fido’s entrance into the market drove prices down and service quality up. If you’ve ever dealt with Rogers or Bell before, you already know that’s not their business plan. So when the unlimited local calling City Fido plan was released in Vancouver......

Leave it to Torontoist to quell the anxieties surrounding violence on the streets of our city. In the wake of two more murders in the Greater Toronto Area, Torontoist would like to remind certain police services and right-wing newspapers that text-messaging has had little effect on murder rates. As of this post, homicides are down from 2003. Conversely, text-messaging use is up. BlackBerry-toting aside, the truth remains that Toronto's murder rates pale in comparison to......