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......

Photo by ethervision from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. We wanted to start off this challenge with a proclamation, in Japanese, of our deep love of sushi. Unfortunately, all the online translators we tried just came up with a bunch of squares. We're pretty sure the Japanese language has evolved past this, so we're going to have to blame it on our inferior translator-finding skills and move on. Invented as an early form of fast......

What could be better on a cold winter day than a hotdog and fries, straight from one of the chip wagons lining Queen Street at Nathan Phillips Square? There are plenty of chilled condiments to choose from and some of the trucks offer free gravy. So take a break from those ice skates and load up on some carbs—this snack will keep you going for hours. Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

Photo by natmeister from Flickr. With all the readily accessible gourmet-quality food on offer here in Toronto, we have quickly become a city of foodies, expounding the joys of this boîte, this bar, and that beanery. Unfortunately, as travel season gets into its fullest swing, we urban folk may find ourselves in an airport lounge or even somewhere outside of Trenton on the 401, at a service centre, hungry, and with limited choices. The......

After refusing to allow environmentalists into the official Canadian delegation at the Bali Climate Change Conference, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has raised some hackles by bringing businesspeople, including oil company executives, into the group. Wow, he's not even pretending to care anymore. In other Bali news, a proposal to eliminate tariffs on "green" technologies was shot down at the conference on the weekend, the victim of bickering between developed and developing nations. The human......

In Tuesday's news round-up, we told you that the plan to sell McDonald's the land at Bloor and Avenue had been halted until January 18. It's a good thing, too, as there are many questions that must be answered before the $3.38 million sale is finalized. Is it in the best interest for Toronto taxpayers? Is the sale a smart corrective action to the bungled 1971 lease agreement or another dumb move we'll regret for......

If you’re feeling hungry and are looking for something a little less bland than your average, it might be worth dropping by the Tenth Annual World Spicy Food Festival at Harbourfront. The Festival promises three solid days of spicy goodness, with heat levels ranging from slightly piquant to eye-popping, face-melting, sinus-clearing insanity. Highlights of the festival include candied insects courtesy of Sugar Mountain and a series of tastings by a group of women (somewhat misleadingly)......

It's not entirely clear how or when R. Kelly's hip-hop opera "Trapped in the Closet" became a Zeitgeist. Part music video, part soap opera, it—while verging on self-parody throughout—has spawned parodies by everyone from South Park (which used it to make fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others) to Weird Al (who used it to make fun of fast food. Oh Weird Al!). What is clear is why it's been embraced by seemingly......

Gilligan Island's Ginger was a movie star—a beautiful starlet with a husky voice, expensive tastes, and, allegedly, a thing for the professor. Toronto's Ginger is a Vietnamese restaurant with outrageously cheap great food, with several locations around the city. And, uh, aside from being proper nouns, now they actually have something in common. The system for ordering at Ginger, the restaurant, normally works like this: when you place an order, you're also assigned a......

In a promotion ingeniously titled...uh..."Harvey's Hamburger Day," head into your local Harvey's on Sunday between 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. for a free Original Hamburger. Or, if you're really eager, you can confirm your attendance on Facebook. There are, it appears, no vegetarian or vegan alternatives, but odds are that if you're a vegetarian you were probably never really that big on Harvey's in the first place. Photo by Crime Photography. Thanks to blogUT......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing—what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as they wrote......

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico. Bostonist was happy they finally found an Anna Nicole Smith connection to their fair city and that an Apple Store was opening up. They were less happy that new rules have been established limiting underage shows and that their Governor is spending a......

Torontonians are, to say the least, an opinionated bunch. So instead of a simple "Best Of" list to cap 2006 off, the Torontoist staffers have racked their brains about everything (books, songs, restaurants, people, places, stores, newspapers, politicians, musicians, and a lot more) to bring you their choices for the very best and the very worst of our city this past year. It's Torontoist Love/Hate 2006, and you can find a new one every......

Let it never be said that Torontoist’s fearless Film Friday column doesn’t use its peerless powers of precision to pick out the perfect film for your viewing pleasure! Yes, the other rags might have ignored it (probably no press screening) but this week’s pick above all others has to be Let’s Go To Prison, starring Toronto born Will Arnett (of Arrested Development) and directed by Mr. Show genius Bob Odenkirk, how could it possibly be......

Weird. We caught Tuesday's CityTV news segment comparing Tim Horton's new breakfast sandwich to McDonald's established one, and the whole thing felt eerily familiar. As muted fury coloured our cheeks a brighter red than Consumer Specialist Jee-Yun Lee's coat, we recalled that five of our contributors already got together just a week ago to do the same thing. Could there be cross-medium war over mundanity? A few things that we noticed: Our sample size......

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. SFist Tourist......

Frank'z Finest Hot Dog Palace (335A Yonge St.) opened up back in May to lackluster reviews. Most reviewers found the hot dogs to be of no higher quality than the average cart vendor's, and similar quality complaints were made about the chili, french fries, and hot dog buns. Worst, the prices were higher than a vendor's, so on top of the mediocre quality. One of those reviews was mine. I disagreed about the chili,......

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines. Houstonist announces their new Cops spinoff "World's Funniest Tazer Videos" and the possible cancellation of their pervs' "World's Grossest Bathroom Videos" and PBS trains cams on cows at, uhg, Mootube. Also,......

We stopped by our local branch of the Toronto Public Library this morning to keep ourselves, nay, all of Toronto reading. From being able to order books online from any branch and pick them up locally, to the nerdy pick-up joint that is the reference library, it warms our heart and fills us with pride to know that wherever we are, whoever we may be, the TPL is standing by, just waiting to fulfil......

A double big mac, extra large fries and a gallon of iced tea might just be the worst call of year. Deeeesgusting. Surprisingly, though, there are a lot of attractive people in McDonald's at the Eaton Centre, including young mothers (read: especially young mothers!). But drunks aren't the only ones at the LCBO, so why would fat people dominate the population at fast food dealers? Also, look closely at the drink: While it actually......

Restaurants: Hero Comes to Save the Day...

Burritos, pitas and seafood sausage will all come in and out of favour with the after bar/fast food crowd, but it’s pizzas that will always have a place in the hearts of the trans-fat scenesters. As if we were a Ninja Turtle, Torontoist grabs a slice from the five best pizza restaurants in the city this week for the Ist List: Best Slice. 5. Big Slice (385 Yonge St) "What’s the Big Slice like?" "Big!"......

Where do all the Star Wars fans work? They can't possibly show up to work looking like Chewie, or get weeks off at a time to wait in lines. Can they? Toronto fans waited in line, some since last week, for the first viewing of George Lucas's sixth and purportedly last official Star Wars film (we say official because there could be another Ewoks movie, which would be awesome). When the clock struck midnight this......

Late last fall posters popped up around Kensington Market advertising an event called “Guerrilla Gourmet.” What was it? A vegan restaurant? A new store selling organic foods? A gang of vicious foodie/freedom fighters bent on wreaking havoc on the fast food industry? In reality, Guerrila Gourmet was a series of Sunday-night dinners put together by Jesse Archibald and Maria Solakofski. Through November and December the pair held dinners in secret locations. If you wanted......

The appeal of New Ho King Restaurant(416 Spadina) is fairly obvious; affordable, promptly served, after-hours Chinese. After a long night of throwing back beverages on College St., the mix of Hunan beef, sweet and sour chicken balls and BBQ pork admittedly make for the perfect night cap. And relative to the neighbouring Burger King or the 7-11 frozen burrito rack, the restaurant even seems like the more refined choice in the area. But one look......

The girl with the fist in her mouth was paid to do as much by burger purveyors to the south, Hardee's. The ad is actually called 'Fist Girl.' In an awesome Slate ad report, Seth Stevenson talks about the oversexed ads the revamped fast food co. is using to sell bigger burgers to the 18-34 year-old meat-eatin' male. As you can see by the header, we're setting up a little cross-border compare and contrast, red......

The ever expanding split within the ranks of the unhealthy breaks down as such: On one side, there are the fat people that take the more traditional stance against smoking cigarettes, and then there are the smokers who adhere to anti-fast food activism. Which is worse? Well, a recent study at some place called UCLA (not to be confused with Toronto's Brit-pop scene, UKULA) proved that fast-food makes people fat and ugly, while smoking just......

Now that the much-maligned Rochester ferry has been ferried off to jumbo catamaran neverland, Torontonians may find it difficult to commit the grave Spongebob felonies that have gripped Burger King's latest US film tie-in promotion. BK's across the country have been given 10-ft inflatable Spongebobs to decorate their buildings. But, and this is a real shocker, people are stealing up to the fast food chain and making off with these Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade-size toys......

At left, and for your consideration, is the Octopus Card Torontoist uses during trips to visit mother in Hong Kong. It's a stored-value dealy, meaning that you stop by the train station or corner store on your way to wherever, put like $500 on the card, and whizz around on public transit all day without actually handling any change. And while it's increasingly easy to use Octopus at convenience stores and fast food outlets......

Fast food restaurants rarely close. They're parasitic in a way, dependent, as they are, on the steady stream of nugget consumers, or, in days or yore, Arch Deluxe consumers. And a steady flow of grease-eaters, unlike crude oil, has never seemed a diminishing commodity. So it's kind of a shock to see that the smelly McDonald's that used to occupy Torontoist's nearest patch of Bloor is no more. We're surprised, because McDonald's has always seemed......