The public service announcement on the left is courtesy of the TTC. The public service announcement on the right is courtesy of the MTA. On Friday morning, Accordion Guy Joey deVilla juxtaposed the two on his blog, along with the question "who plagiarized whom?" Well, presuming that plagiarism is defined as the lack of attribution for an idea, then fortunately neither. This particular TTC poster, like a number of others (and even some of......

Dubaimetro Naming Rights Turn your brand into a destination RTA offers Dubai Metro Naming Rights Welcome to the ultimate branding and marketing opportunity. With Dubai Metro Naming Rights, you can put your brand on a Dubai Metro station of your choice, or one of the two lines of the Dubai Metro Network. Dubai Metro Naming Rights offers you unmatched impact and visibility to take your brand to new levels of saliency and success. What's......

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.......

At 6:45 a.m., Cy Goldsbie spotted a guy spraypainting this message on both of Spadina station's Spadina-immediately-north-of-bloor entrances and was kind enough to snap these pics for us. TTC labour issues and graffiti, together again at last.......

In the fall of 1997, the Metro Toronto Zoo had something of a clearance sale, divesting itself of merchandise branded "Metro Toronto Zoo." On January 1st, the Megacity would be coming, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto would be no more, and the Zoo—to be renamed simply the "Toronto Zoo"—would be prepared for the change. The Metropolitan Toronto Police, however, were not quite as on the ball. Two years later, in 2000, the organization finally......

The above video—not safe for work unless you're using headphones—was shot by the late Peter Walker and is a clip from Min Sook Lee's documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing (winner of the best Canadian feature prize at Hot Docs 2005). Uploaded to YouTube fewer than three weeks ago, it's been passed around online over the last few days, since being linked to by Toronto Life's Philip Preville in a Friday blog post. The......

If you're interested in pursuing a career in crime here in Canada, it looks like your best bet is to pack up and move to Regina. According to an article published in Maclean's, Regina (aka "The Other Other Queen City") has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous city in Canada, followed closely by Saskatoon and Winnipeg. The rankings, based on per-capita crime rates published by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, paint......

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.......

Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city. Take our word for it: the film is a comedy...more or less. American Psycho is one of those movies. By all......

Torontoist is ahead of the game for previewing some of the best music choices this week (Queen West fire benefit, Forest City Lovers' CD release) but Musicologist will give you one more recommendation—just for kicks. When UK’s Field Music announced a (begrudged) break last year, who knew David Brewis would be in Toronto playing a show under a different name and clean ethos so quickly? School of Language and their debut LP Sea From Shore......

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. Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing......

Each week, Torontoist shows off the most interesting, creative, and cool submissions to our Torontoist Flickr Pool. We're especially partial to photos that show our city in a new light, highlight a recent event, and remind us why we live here. Join the Flickr pool and show us what you've got. UntitledBY COTROPITOR UntitledBY APARATGRAF mist walkingBY NICKEFKOZAK Front in InfraredBY METRIX X paffBY PROFESSIONAL.NERD factoryBY VTOGRAPHY UntitledBY LOUIS TAM snow stormBY MOONWIRE City Hall......

City councillor, unintentional humourist, and Torontoist favourite Councillor Rob Ford has grabbed himself some headlines again. He refuses to apologize for his comments on Wednesday, "the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over...they're hard, hard workers," because his sweeping generalization was intended as "a compliment." However, a spokesperson for the Canadian Council of Lazy Asians has said that the remarks were "deeply offensive." A devout Sikh man has lost his bid to overturn the law......

It's Canadian Music Week and that means there's an unusually large number of hip hop shows going on. KRS-One will be teachin' at The Opera House on Saturday as he continues his Stop the Violence movement. RZA dons his Bobby Digital mask on Sunday at the Phoenix. There's also grimy New York hip-hop (M.O.P. on Friday), French rap (DJ Orgasmic and Cuizinier on Thursday), and a strong showcase of local talent (Friday's Exclaim! event). Also......

Attention residents of the tri-city area: much of the cast of SCTV is reuniting for a single live performance in Toronto on Monday, May 5 at 8 p.m. The occasion is a benefit for the Alumni Fund for Second City cast and crew facing financial or health difficulties. It's bound to be difficult for the talented troupe—Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas will all be there—to live......

City sells "the McDonald's site" on Bloor for a fairly low price. However, Adam Vaughan insists there are upsides to the deal, such as being able to limit the height of the condo development that will take its place, because who would want tall buildings in the downtown core? Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer. Although initial reports that he has "weeks to live" were apparently false, pancreatic cancer is still one of the deadliest......

A demonstration at City Hall yesterday by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty forced the Speaker to halt proceedings after the protest spilled onto the chamber floor. The action by OCAP was called after the discovery of a homeless man frozen to death in a downtown stairwell February 27. A statement by OCAP called the death a "preventable tragedy." Members of the activist group handed out statements to councilors as others rebuked them for their......

With Rogers' plan to move Citytv, OMNI Television, and the Fan 590 to the southeast corner of Dundas Square, those familiar with the current streetfront studios on Queen Street have wondered if the former Olympic Spirit building will be opened up in a similar way. Though merely an preliminary concept rendering, Rogers and Quadrangle Architects seem to have grand designs for the space, currently dubbed Rogers Television City, as evident in this image supplementing......

Photo of Forest City Lovers by Joe Fuda Torontoist is gearing up for the annual Canadian Music Week this week. CMWist's complete coverage of show listings and a constant outpour of recommendations and reviews throughout the week will keep you all focused with that overwhelming 500+ band schedule. But CMW aside, Soundscapes will be hosting a handful of free (yes, free) in-store performances throughout the week running parallel to CMW, and supporting the new......

We've said it before: MuchMusic kinda sucks nowadays. Dave Bidini says the same thing, but more eloquently, in his column at This Magazine. The front man of the now-defunct Rheostatics reminisces about a time when his band was "afforded two hours at midnight to present bands live in an empty garage studio in the bowels of the Much/City colossus." Regrettably, those days of low-fi Canadocentric programming are long gone. Bidini continues: Circa 2008, MuchMusic......

Here's a riddle: What walks throughout Canada, weighs more than a Brit, but less than an American, and can help stop global warming? No, it's not Sasquatch. It's not Kyoto. Stumped? We'll give you a hint. It's the average Torontonian's carbon footprint! According to Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit environmental organization, the average Torontonian's carbon footprint sits at 8.6 tonnes per year—more than a fully-grown African elephant! Zerofootprint teamed up with the City of Toronto to......

Hello! Although you probably didn’t notice, this Torontoist writer was away for a week, and as a result we failed to do something very important. Specifically, to congratulate Norm Wilner on becoming NOW’s senior film critic. We're not doing this just because we know Wilner keeps an eye on Torontoist to see if he gets a mention, but because we like his work so much that we can’t think of anyone better to step......

This evening, Toronto Culture and Fort York are unveiling a permanent public art installation under the Gardiner Expressway (off Fort York Boulevard, between Bathurst and Fleet Streets). In WATERTABLE, Toronto artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak use video and lights to create the effect of rippling water on the underside of the highway—a reminder that the Gardiner runs along what used to the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Ever wonder why the the Toronto......

City councillor Rob Ford has at times been accused of making a career out of saying tremendously stupid things, but we here at Torontoist fully back his latest proposal to automatically name all new streets in Toronto after dead soldiers, even if the dead soldiers aren't from Toronto. If anything, we think Rob Ford doesn't go far enough. Sure, families of Canadian soldiers killed in action receive an immediate $250,000 death benefit plus an......

A variety of opportunities for residents to help out the victims of the Queen West fire have been popping up all over the city. Right now, the best way you can participate is to walk into any Scotiabank location and make a cash donation to the newly-established Queen Street Fire Fund––effective today, the fund set up by the City of Toronto will assist all of the residents affected by the fire––but as Ward 20......

You really have to wonder how performance artist and sexual activist Louise Bak always manages to schedule the very best mix of the Toronto literary scene for her Box Salon series. The successful poet and CIUT "Sex City" host founded the event back in 1998, and a decade later it is still the most entertaining literary night out in Toronto. While many other reading series can be hit or miss, the Box is consistently fresh,......

The problem of abandoned and unwanted pets is not unique to Toronto. A recent Toronto Star article, however, has highlighted the plight of abandoned animals who may no longer be collected by City of Toronto shelters due to budget concerns, ultimately leading to an overflow of dogs and cats in neighbouring municipalities. According to the article, one of the biggest fears is an explosion in the feral feline population, since—as everyone knows—cats are raging......

Last February, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the NYC Condom, with packaging echoing the city's iconic subway signage and distributed for free by street teams in heavily-trafficked areas. In time for Valentine's Day this year, the rebranded LifeStyles condoms have been redesigned, accompanied by a multimedia campaign under the slogan "Get Some." But one of the campaign's new banner ads will look strangely familiar to Torontonians—it features a......

Forget death and taxes: the one real constant in life is breathy local news coverage of almost any kind of weather. Watching TV news reporters acting bewildered by temperature fluctuations or any amount of precipitation, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the giant dome that has maintained the city's perfect 21° year-round weather for hundreds of years had just broken down, letting sandstorms, radiation, and monsters invade the city from the post-apocalyptic wasteland that......