It may beat a straight-up name or number, but this tagger near Avenue Road and Lawrence could surely do better than 90s bumper sticker slogans. It's not just about design, people, it's about philosophy. Photo by rupert affen from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.......

It seems that some Toronto taggers are no longer content to scrawl their own names on blank concrete canvases around the city and are trying instead to make more of a cultural statement. Last year, references to composer Gustav Mahler popped up in several places around town. This year, a more cryptic stencil has appeared on the Humber Bay Arch Bridge, boldly proclaiming "ISBN 486-28495-6" for all to see and ponder. This International Standard......

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.......

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. Y-SmileyOrNot BY OAV_SANDROS......

When first we came across this graffiti on the wall of a U of T bathroom, it was merely a staredown: "Zombie Winston Churchill vs. Robot Hitler." When next we returned, they had obtained allies: "Vampire Stalin" and "Werewolf Mussolini," respectively. The sudden late addition of wild card "Ninja FDR," however, tipped the balance of power, but the "Ref: Mummy Castro" stepped in to keep him in check. Who next will join in on......

Our favourite Bloor Street comic emporium is having an event tomorrow that sounds totally neat. The Labyrinth proudly hosts its first-ever group show tomorrow evening, an event called Vinyl Graffiti. They accepted submissions of art in any medium for which an old vinyl record sleeve could be used as the canvas. The event starts at 7:00 p.m., but at 8:00 p.m. they will begin a Character Design Face Off competition. Anyone who shows up......

Drivers passing through the south end of Leaside on Millwood Road may have noticed commentary added to a Baxter's Soup billboard. An anonymous critic with a penchant for exclamation marks has unleashed their critique of the petit bourgeoisie of the neighbourhood, chastising them for falling for the flattery of an instant meal that appeals to their yuppie pretensions and expensive jeans. It might also be the work of a disgruntled diner who thought that......

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. Many Annex-dwellers rejoiced last December when BMV opened its fabulous new Bloor Street location, and the discount book warehouse......

"Read a Book" The words, it should be noted, were not written on the outer glass, but rather on the interior panel of the ad caisson. Photo of the shelter on the south side of Queen at Ossington taken by Jonathan Goldsbie.......

For reasons that were surely thoroughly considered, York Mills was not a stop on the recent Type & Tile Tour of the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Nevertheless, due largely to escalator maintenance that has been ongoing for over a year, it is still quite the treasure trove of wacky signage. Here are some recent highlights: Top left photo: On the collector's level, riders are directed to the buses and subways via laser printouts that fail to......

Torontoist has already done a pretty good job of letting you know how rad Posterchild is. In fact, the extent to which Torontoist writes about Posterchild could be seen as the textual equivalent of a marriage proposal. So without rehashing what has already been said about our favourite local street artist/public space crusader, just know that his radness is still on the upswing with new and improved versions of what he’s known best for:......

Photo of the Montreal edition of Mille Femmes from Galerie [sas]'s Picasa album. Consider the first editions of Toronto's two major multidisciplinary arts festivals: Nuit Blanche 2006 was a stunning success, a magical playground that revived the spirit of the blackout and provided a moving conclusion to Let's All Hate Toronto; Luminato 2007 was a mixed bag of highfalutin performances not attended by anyone you know (with the exception of the George F. Walker......

TTC EMPLOYEES WANTED PAY: 26.58/hr JOB REQUIREMENTS: • Able to be rude and unhelpful • Must be constantly late • Willing to waste tax payer moneyTTC service, union wages, and graffiti. If this post gets fewer than thirty comments, we'll be very sad. Thanks to Corinne Alstrom for the tip! And thanks to the people who helped decipher the hard-to-read middle bullet point. Photo taken by Jonathan Goldsbie, at the southwest street-level entrance to......

Torontoist spotted this bit of loveliness in St. George Station on Monday. Unlike most fugly marker graffiti, this is an elegant and playful addition to the station’s signage. It looks like the floral flourish on a crown, or possibly a fleur-de-lis. What compelled someone to draw this on the station wall? Is it a political statement, or is it simply meant to elicit a smile? Whatever the intention may have been, this piece of......

At Torontoist, we're so used to writing about certain niche genres of art—graffiti art, video art, comic art, participatory art, billboard liberation art, performance art, outdoor art, nocturnal art, transit art—that we tend to forget about the encompassing category of "fine art for the commercial market." Canadian and international contemporary art enthusiasts will descend upon the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street West) this weekend from October 25–29 for the Toronto International Art......

At their crudest, graffiti tags are generally used for the artist’s personal aggrandizement. While it is not uncommon for graffitists to tag the names legendary celebrities (Tupac anyone?) much more rare is the tagger who promotes the work of classical composers posthumously. Recently, tags of the name of the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler mysteriously appeared on the Queen Street Bridge and along Lake Shore Boulevard East. Who is this culturally aplomb tagger and why......

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable. So instead they bring you noncorporatized Not Blanche, "a pwyc all-night public-space thing," straight outta the Brunswick Theatre from 11:00 p.m. Saturday through 3:00......

From mid-September through year-end, all City Community Centres will be closed on Mondays. Skating rinks won't open until January. Fewer potholes will be repaired. Snow won't be cleared unless there is at least 15 cm of it (the current minimum is 8 cm). New materials from Public Health will only be available in English. Welcome to the new Toronto, where you get what you (and the provincial and federal governments) pay for—or won't get what......

When Maximo Park released their debut in 2005, many critics were hoping the new wave revival was coming to an end. A Certain Trigger was catchy, but also included almost every post-punk trope that could be imagined. It's jolting rhythmic changes took time to get used to, but slowly the band managed to ditch the comparisons to Razorlight and The Futureheads. Fast-forward to this year's Our Earthly Pleasures, where the band has slightly toned......

Whether you associate the myriad back alleys that criss-cross Toronto with crime and filth or art and beauty, Graeme Parry's laneway tours are sure to be a treat. Each of the free cycling tours explores a neighbourhood from behind, uncovering the beautiful and unexpected sights along the way. Riders will see laneway houses, hidden gardens and parks, colourful graffiti, and many other under-appreciated bits of our urban fabric. This is your chance to explore the......

Yes, Posterchild is at it again, this time remixing "OBEY" for the Stencil Revolution Stencil Challenge, letting a smiling cop with a stencil do the work for him. This, however, is not yet another hey-look-at-this-cool-graff post; instead, Posterchild sent us his graffiti manifesto that accompanied the stencil, a lengthy document "about how we deal with graffiti and Illegal ads, and a proposal for change." In a city as obsessed with graffiti as we are—for......

A little bit of whimsy has been lost along the embankment of the Don Valley Parkway. One of the most light-hearted pieces of graffiti in the city has been recently whitewashed out of existence, leaving Bloor line subway riders without the biggest word they ever heard. Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay, so it goes.......

In our ongoing quest to highlight the city's most heart-warming graffiti, we draw your attention to Erin Pryde’s Love photoset on Flickr. Pryde first spotted the "I Love You" series of tags in early 2006. At that time, she "was in a whirlwind of major life changes." Although Pryde moved to Toronto in 1995, she had a love/hate relationship with the city for over a decade, but thanks to a move and the graffiti,......

Torontoist’s Poetry Contest winners were announced last month, and thus far we’ve presented Matthew Tierney's "The Man who Knew from Cool" (Honourable Mention) and the winning poem, "Eaton's Effluviad," by Gregory Betts. We’d like to introduce you to another local poet, Jenny Sampirisi, whose poem, “Velocity,” also received an Honourable Mention. Jenny holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor and is currently working with The Scream Literary Festival. Check out......

Torontoist has no over-arching editorial stances. We are not pro-advertising, or anti-advertising; we are not pro-graffitti, or anti-graffiti; we are not pro-corporation, or anti-corporation. Individual writers may have stances, but we, as a shared entity and a collective, do not, and that distinction between individual and group is an important one. No one person, the editors included, represent the entirety of our staff, nor is there any one "Torontoist Writer" mould that our staff fits......

Less than a week after the Toronto Star wrote an article profiling Style in Progress' two year-old Bell box project, the box chosen for the paper's photo (shown left) has gone brown. Initially, we believed it must have been some kind of miscommunication between Bell workers, who painted over the boxes believing they had been vandalized by graffiti. A scratch test revealed the truth to be even worse: the painted doors have been stolen......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay tribute......

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......

One of the most interesting aspects of art in public spaces is the viewer's reaction to it. Street art photograher David Owen sent us photos of a response to Mark Daye's series of street signs which address homelessness. David writes, "The colour's not quite right and the sign is a bit low, but I give him full marks for attachment method--it's the same as the 'official' signs." David found the signs across from CityTV......

You are more familiar with street artist Posterchild's work than you realize. Visit his site Blade Diary, and you'll immediately recognize his posters, stencils and outdoor installations. Like fellow stenciler Banksy once said, "If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you've made your......