Toronto gets a C+ on the annual Smog Report Card. Most of the blame for the low grade goes to the city's financial crisis, which is stalling transit improvements and other environmental initiatives. The rest of the blame goes on YOU. Yes, YOU. In the back. Don't try to point to the person sitting next to you! You horrible polluter, you! Speaking of smog: oil prices hit a record high. This in response to......

Earlier this week, The New York Times ditched their Times Select subscription thing, a move that saw content previously available for about $8 a month––like some well-liked columnists, for instance––unlocked and made free for everyone. Best of all, though, was the huge amount of material from the newspaper's archives that was set free, dating all the way back to 1851. The rest of the internet has already been having some fun uncovering the gems......

Our friends over at Spacing Magazine have officially launched their foray into a whole new blogging environment, Spacing Montréal. Covering the urban environment five hours down the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, Spacing's new blog looks at many of the same public space issues in Montreal (in a refreshing mix of both official languages) that the newly-rebranded Spacing Toronto examines here. It may be worth noting the many parallels between Toronto and Montreal that make it a......

Torontoist finished Book 7 last night, and we're feeling a little down about the Harry Potter saga being over. Sure, everything turned out alright (and Mrs. Weasley said the B-word!) but we can't help feeling like the wizarding world no longer needs our support. Under normal circumstances, we would be binge eating and watching Prisoner of Azkaban on repeat. Thankfully, Toronto will be flooded with Harry Potter fans this weekend, keeping the wizarding spirit......

Today is the first day of Prophecy 2007—the annual Harry Potter-centric academic conference where adult fans of the series present papers on The Boy Who Lived. With Book 7's release not two weeks ago, we imagine there was a lot of frantic editing and crumpled paper over the last few days. But this ain't no Yule Ball. Children under 14 are not permitted to attend, and teenagers must be accompanied by a chaperone over......

Photo of delighted fans by Carrie Musgrave. It's a curious bit of magic that can connect eighties synth-pop, Bob Marley, and bouncing castles with a seventeen-year-old boy wizard. It's even more curious to see how far that wizard and his multi-billionaire creator have come in just a few short years. Last night, magic and wonder invaded the typically staunch and business-like intersection of Bay and Bloor. To celebrate the release of Harry Potter and......

James Bow. Transit Toronto Editor. Blogger. Yonge Street dream-dasher. Fantasy novel writer. Anti–Harry Potter activist. In what may be the best indie literary publicity stunt in some time, Bow will stage a half-serious one-man picket beside the midnight line-up of Potter fans waiting outside Another Story Bookshop (315 Roncesvalles Avenue) this Friday night. The fans, of course, will be there to get their hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the......

Tut tut tut. We’re all very disappointed in you, John Krasinski, for your decision to star in License to Wed. Sure, you’ve been working so hard to build up your hipster cred—interviewing the Shins, playing on stage with Ben Gibbard, but I’m afraid we might have to revoke your hipster privileges. The Sun’s Kevin Williamson claims of the film, “you can at least approximate the experience of sitting through this alleged romantic comedy at home......

We went to the opening of the Kozyndan "Tales of the Bunnyfish" show at Magic Pony last Thursday. Kozyndan are the L.A.-based, husband and wife duo Dan and Kozue Kitchens. They are best known for illustrating The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" single, but they work in both the commercial and fine art worlds. Not only is the installation at Magic Pony a fantastic example of two artists working as one, but also how cute......

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......

Playing at the Tranzac this evening is Harry and the Potters, a band that inspired a new genre of music called Wizard Rock. While brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge started playing their Harry Potter-inspired songs just to friends, they developed a massive fan base online and began touring around North America. Pitchfork named their appearance at the New York Public Library one of the top live shows of 2005, and now there are over......

Between fake terrorist alerts and scandals big and small, this just might be the Best Best of the -ists ever. We're exhausted just thinking about it. First up, SFist, who saw their little 'ole site be the center of what was a nice little scandal (even getting their editor on TV) only to find their scandal dwarfed by the even bigger scandal caused by their Mayor boffing one of his aides' wife. We're not just......

Condoleezza Rice promises to "look into" why Maher Arar is still on an American terrorist watchlist. Remember when you were at work and someone at work kept stealing your yoghurt and you were pissed so you went to your supervisor and complained and he said he'd "look into" it? This is kind of like that, except Maher Arar is probably a lot less important to Condoleezza Rice than yoghurt is. Queen's Park Grits and Tories......

Director Terry Gilliam onstage at Cinematheque Ontario following a screening of his classic film Brazil. The former member of Monty Python was pleased when one member of the audience asked about the difficulty getting the film made. Gilliam delighted in retelling the (in)famous struggle in which he took an ad in Variety asking a studio executive when exactly Brazil would be released. Eventually, after Gilliam began screening the film personally and critics suggested it......

We here at Torontoist thought we’d try out a new weekly feature listing the best (and worst) films to be hitting Toronto’s screens in the following week, as a city which features both multiplexes, second run theatres and blessed with several vintage single screen movie houses, there’s a lot that can be missed. Released yesterday, Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha has received a cinema adaptation universally derided by reviewers. Golden’s novel is, much......

TOist's favourite sharp-eared correspondent Ann overheard the following jaded exchange between two worldly six-year-olds this weekend: Little Girl #1: Why do you have a letter N on your forehead? Little Girl #2: Oh, it's not an N, it's a scar. I was at another birthday party this morning... Little Girl #1: I see. Harry Potter. Everyone's doing that. I wanted to be different. Little Girl #2: I know. Good for you.......

These beauties came all the way from a pumpkin patch near Woodstock, and Torontoist and our best friend carved them just in the nick of time to display them for trick-or-treaters. We gave candy to a stoplight, a Via Rail train car, a 9-year-old punk rocker, a chimney sweep, and a Hobbit who adamantly informed us that he was not Harry Potter.......

Up until now, anyone of Torontoist's age who was interested in Harry Potter and his fictional adventures found the need to keep this adoration under wraps. Despite his and J.K. Rowling's global popularity, it was considered trendy to keep distance from the Potter craze. But with the sixth book making more than enough headlines in time for its Saturday release, Torontoist feels it necessary to point out the cooler reasons for picking up a copy......

Ists are multiplying like Harry Potter fans at your local bookstore. Parisist is up, and it's in French. Once upon a time we had a bit of French in the mix too. Sigh. But this isn't about us (and our former Franco-contributor, who will be making a surprise visit at TOist's party!), it's about Paris. We'll always have Paris, so read it if you go in for other languages.......

Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, probably would have been a better image for this post, but many Torontoist readers find his face unbearable. So we went with this guy. For those who like Radcliffe's boyish charms, there's the touring exhibit of The Secret Life of Sets: Set Decorators at Work at the CN Tower, which includes a portion of the set from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The exhibit will show various Potter......

Toronto's theatre community is all abuzz and aflutter about this item that appeared The Globe and Mail's "Feed the Goat" gossip column today:Don't hold your breath, but we should know within the next fortnight whether Toronto will be chosen as the launch site for the largest theatrical project ever conceived. My sources in London tell me the show's producers are seriously considering Toronto for the world premiere, either in late 2005 or early 2006. Details......