Photo of Julie Wilson, courtesy of Julie Wilson. Julie Wilson has become a favourite in literary entertainment over the past few years. Since 2006, her popular blog Seen Reading has been keeping Toronto book geeks amused by tracking the city's public reading habits. The concept is both simple and ingenious—Wilson spots a stranger reading, guesses where they are in the book, transcribes the passage onto her blog, and then lets her imagination run wild.......

If you're anything like us, you've always dreamt of riding the subway without pants. You'll finally have your chance on Saturday, during the first ever Toronto No Pants Subway Ride. The idea for a pantsless ride originally came from the good folks at Improv Everywhere in New York, where the ride is in its seventh year. While Toronto already imports far too much culture from other cities, this is just too awesome of an......

Does the image at right strike fear into your soul? You may be in luck, because this weekend local activists The Fat Femme Mafia host Dunk Your Chunk, a fat-positive swim event. The duo, comprised of Chelsey Lichtman and Liz Brockest, have hosted other fat-related events, including dance performances, workshops, and a fat cabaret that featured only performers of size. They've also been known to do some tagging from time to time. The event is......

In an age of hipster irony and shirts to match, the Joy T-Shirt Project and its slogan, "Wear the World on Your Heart," seem impossibly sincere. But the "we're all connected" paradigm rings true: each shirt features the face of a real person—not Paris or Perez, but Sonya from Toronto or Sabry from Algeria, or one of over a hundred others in the online catalogue—hand-drawn and silk-screened over the wearer's heart. "It's more than just......

According to an anonymous tip, there was just (at 3:15 p.m.) a head-on collision between two streetcars at Dundas Street West and Roncesvalles Avenue. Apparently, at least one car is derailed, both cars have extensive damage to them, and there are some minor injuries. Hopefully everyone's okay. We're not quite sure yet how it happened––there's no word yet on any other news site, so if you know something, please e-mail tips@torontoist.com––but contributor Adam Hawkins......

The Monkey's Paw, Torontoist's favourite place to purchase odd out-of-print books and small creatures encased in resin, is hosting a contest: the Monkey's Paw Detournement Tournament. Inspired by the 1950s French artistic practice of detournement ("the re-use of pre-existing cultural elements in a new ensemble"), the challenge is to combine the words of titles in The Monkey's Paw catalogue (you can spend as long as you like in the Dundas Street store with your head......

September 25 this year is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. That is to say, on September 25 it'll be time to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with delicious mooncakes! The holiday's history dates back to the Xia Dynasty (2070 BC–1600 BCE), when people would gather to celebrate the full moon in honour of the mythical moon goddess Chang'e. Nowadays, people celebrate by eating pomelos and sharing mooncakes with......

Beginning this Thursday, the fifteenth annual Junction Arts Festival will be swarming the streets with an entourage of innovative musicians, performers, and visual artists hailing from Canada, Denmark, Brussels, and the United States. Taking place on the one kilometre stretch between Quebec Avenue and Keele Street on Dundas Street West, the festival will present the works of over fifty visual artists as selected by the 2007 Juried Art Exhibition—and for the first time, will......

The corner of Dundas Street West and Indian Grove used to host McBride Cycle, a 21,000 square-foot motorcycle retailer with some ninety-seven years of history behind it. As of last September, however, the store is no more, a death caused in large part by motorcycling companies cancelling agreements with dealerships like McBride's around the country. Beginning in the spring, the building was slowly demolished, and now there is little more at the corner than......

Torontoist apologizes for erroneously predicting The End of The Internet (alas, we are still here) back in April, but organizer Louis Calabro insists that The End is truly nigh tonight. We think he might really mean it this time. If headliner Christian Bök can’t do it, no poet can. Christian is the author of two outstanding poetry collections from Coach House Books: the 'pataphysical encyclopedia, Crystallography, and the best-selling Griffin award-winning Eunoia, which employs only......

If Torontoist wasn’t looking after the kids tonight, we’d be checking out The End of the Internet. The End is scheduled tonight at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West) for precisely 9 p.m. The upstart, performance-based reading series, which has been ending the Internet for almost a year now, is hosted by man-about-town Louis Calabro. Tonight, Brian Joseph Davis performs his “first ever laptop gig” with dulcet sounds he has produced over the last......

Each weekday morning, we 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! Power outages plagued the downtown core when a hydro panel in a buried electrical vault outside the Eaton Centre caught fire. With the system on a network, it initially seemed to have only affected the south side of the......

This week our attention is almost completely owned by Cinematheque Ontario’s offerings, even with the thought of Christina Ricci chained to a radiator in Black Snake Moan grasping at us. Not only are Cinematheque Ontario hosting the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, they’re also showing From the Tsars to the Stars, a series of Russian sci-fi. How awesome is that? (There’s more to Russian sci-fi than just Solaris, doubters.) Maybe they’ll do a season......

Now that we have your attention, let us explain. Toronto filmmaker/photographer Ryan Hughes launches his newest project Makeout! this Saturday, March 3, at the Ryerson University Business Building at the corner of Bay and Dundas Street West. Makeout! is both an event and a film. 125 couples will fill up the room to your left and “lock lips for the camera in what will be one of the largest displays of affection this city has......

Jam packed day today! Torontoist Daily Agenda June 6, 2006 8am - Hearty breakfast at Country Style Donuts (666 Millwood) 9am - Pick up flooring samples from Armstrong Floor Service (666 Spadina Avenue) 10am - Appointment with lawyer Chartered Accountant: Spiegel & Associates (666 Wilson Avenue) 12pm - Lunch with Keyes at Korea House (666 Bloor West) 1pm - Appointment for film work at Accent Entertainment (666 Queen West) 2pm - Coffee with Grassi at......

Courtesy of our friend Fauxreel, here's a full-service dry cleaners specifically for emcees. Was it only a matter of time before the rap game took over the laundry services industry? Apparently sometime-Torontonian Mos Def gets his shirts starched here...at 4020 Dundas Street West.......

Weekday brunch is the new weekend brunch and this is the new that. On a gray and wet Friday morning, Torontoist ambled towards the heart of Toronto’s Little Portugal district for brunch at Saving Grace. SG regulars have been enjoying lunch and brunch here for years, including local talents Sarah Polley, Sloan’s Chris Murphy and Sook-Yin Lee, to name a few who have all been spotted gracing this cozy spot. Saving Grace’s daily specials include......

Hidden in the Village by the Grange food court, just across from gallery goers (AGO) and gallery makers (OCAD), lies Helena’s Magic Kitchen.  Helena’s offers Eastern European traditional dishes such as perogies (6/$3), goulash, and cabbage rolls, in addition to other fresh goodies including daily soups, quiches, crepes ($5), frittatas ($4) and more.  This secret spot of OCAD students is a fave with Torontoist too, especially with its veggie friendly appeal – choose from lentil......