As you strut into Extreme, indie-electro is blaring, beautiful twenty-somethings are chugging from flasks and sipping on vodka redbulls, and sushi is offered to all guests on a platter. Attendants dressed in all black-and-white wait in the washroom, eager with hand towels and breath mints. Bars line the perimeter of the underground mecca, a rare place where both hip teens and once-hip businessmen can gather to sip on the same poison. The DJ is......

The CBC is reporting that Cheese Magic has had to throw out $1,000 worth of cheese and are currently being investigated for listeria contamination, after a pregnant woman allegedly ate cheese from the store and contracted listeriosis. According to Cheese Magic's Establishment Inspection Report from Toronto Health, the store was given only a conditional pass on Tuesday's inspection for a whole host of problems. (Slashfood was in the store yesterday, noting that "the long expanse......

Why travel? Especially in a city like Toronto, where we can experience so many cultures just by walking through any of the dozens of ethnically-diverse neighbourhoods? What, at its essence, makes traveling to Italy different than drinking prosecco in Little Italy? What’s the difference, really, between hanging with the Dutch and eating Dutch chocolate ice cream? We travel, of course, so that we can experience the subtleties of a culture and immerse ourselves in......

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Dr. Hastings, M.O.H., in his office (January 13, 1925). City of Toronto Archives, Series 372, Sub Series 32, Item 749. In the late 19th century, Toronto's booming growth and industrial development brought with it the problems of slums, pollution, epidemics, poverty, and ill health. Following trends in Britain and the United States,......

Opposition critics are calling the review of the controversial provincial health tax a sham, pointing out how Dalton McGuinty has already acknowledged that the tax would not be eliminated and the review was going forward only because it's required by law. The premier at first denied the charge, but upon hearing it repeated, said, "Oh, I thought you said 'scam'. Yes, the review is definitely a sham." As the planet heats up, experts say......

Happy Simcoe Day, formerly known as the Civic Holiday until the powers-that-be decided it would be more more festive to name your undeserved day off after an English man than a Japanese car. Malls and liquor stores are open, banks and Canada Post are closed, so you can get drunk but you can't get mail. Last night saw a spate of violent crime—or in the words of the Sun headline, "bloody mayhem"—with three knife......

Get little Timmy and Cindy-Lou on the horn, stat! Health Canada has contradicted last week's warnings from Toronto Public Health that children should reduce cell phone use, saying that the science doesn't support the conclusion that your kids' brains will mangled and cancerfied by cell phone heat and radiation. Well, except for this study. And this one. Oh, and these ones. Feelings apparently hurt by last week's news that Toronto has the lowest crime......

Toronto Public Health's Antoine Nikolopoulos has gotten back to us; he's the Entertainment District's Environmental Health Officer, and yesterday he inspected Second Cup's 307 Queen Street West location after Kate Bowen spotted a mouse inside the store on Sunday morning and sent photos along to us. First and foremost, Nikolopoulos concluded that the store has "adequate pest control." (And Second Cup told us that they were immediately taking additional steps at that particular location to......

Earlier today, Torontoist got sent a series of photos that appear to show a mouse inside Second Cup's 307 Queen Street West location. The three shots (one above, and two after the fold) were taken by Kate Bowen this past Sunday at 2 a.m., while she was waiting for the Queen streetcar. According to Dinesafe, the store passed its last health inspection, on June 11 this year. Toronto Public Health, where we forwarded the......

Singers, singer-songwriters, comedians, rappers, and good-deed-doers came together Tuesday night at the Drake Hotel for It’s Always Something Else, an evening aid of Gilda’s Club Toronto, the organization named for Gilda Radner that offers free cancer support to those afflicted by the disease. For $25 a pop (or $45 including eats), guests were treated to no less than three floors of solid Canadian entertainment. In the infamously-packed Sky Yard, comics Sean Cullen and the......

Despite the fact that it's damn near impossible to find an unoccupied treadmill at the gym after work, the Toronto Sun is reporting that a large portion of Torontonians—one-third, in fact—are overweight. More disturbing (except perhaps to a small but dedicated group of fetishists) is the fact that one in nine Torontonians is considered obese. In total, 40.4% of Torontonians are considered to be over their acceptable weight, based on the Body Mass Index,......

Cancer Connections, an exhibition of photographs of people whose lives have been changed by cancer, launches today in Nathan Phillips Square. The exhibition, organized by photographers' group PhotoSensitive in partnership with the Canadian Cancer Society, aims to document the effects of cancer on the lives on Canadians. PhotoSensitive is inviting people to take part in the exhibition as it travels around the country, helping to raise awareness of the growing incidents of cancer in......

Stephan Marinoiu, the frustrated father of a 15 year-old autistic boy, began a hunger strike outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario at Queen’s Park last Sunday, May 4. Six days later, he’s still hanging in there, and although he’s reportedly beginning to show signs of weight loss, he appears to be in good health. Marinoiu’s son Simon is one of an ever-growing number of children on the waiting list for a government program called......

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon, except when Ms. Snappy Answers is in New York City, as she was last weekend—sorry! Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. I want to work on getting in shape this summer, and that means signing up for a gym. Any recommendations for a good gym in Toronto? Something not too intimidating to us common folk would be nice. —Kyle......

The fear over bisphenol A is understandable. That something as innocuous as feeding infants from baby bottles could cause irreparable harm to their development is scary, and preemptive measures are worth taking if there is sound science to back it up. Concern over the danger of bisphenol A has picked up steam as researchers look at the effects of low concentrations, which had previously been assumed harmless. The decision by the Canadian government to......

TTC workers may opt for a work-to-rule or slowdown campaign rather than an out-and-out strike—moves which could include actions such as refusing to collect fares, adhering to rules of the road, and not wearing uniforms. Union President Bob Kinnear's comments indicate that they'd prefer the less drastic action so as not to antagonize the public. Hmmmm, let's see...empty pier...tearful relatives waving goodbye from the wharf...yep, sorry, Bob, that ship has definitely sailed. Controversial city......

Today's ad proves that hair dye has been available for purchase at Yonge and Carlton for over a century, even if going to "Armand's" sounds classier than a quick run to Shoppers Drug Mart. The 1 Carlton Street address shifted north in 1931 due to a street reconfiguration that directly connected Carlton with College Street. The project was partly initiated by Eaton's, who had just opened their new store on the southwest corner of......

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......

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You'd think it would be common practice these days for everyone to regularly wash their hands, especially if they work in the health-care profession. Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care advises that frequent handwashing is "the single most effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases." (Cooties are the obvious exception here, since they can only be prevented by administering a cootie shot.) Unfortunately, the statistics indicate that health-care workers aren't very diligent......

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he'd be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn't taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a bit harsh, since there can't be too many politicians who'd be willing to spend a day crouched in their own......

Photo of Owen Pallett by Heidi Slimane from his MySpace. News of Owen Pallett's OHIP being revoked has been quickly met with a reaction: an open letter sent today to George Smitherman, the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, from France Gélinas and Rosario Marchese, NDP MPPs who insist that Pallett is "an award winning artist who deserves our support" but who has instead been "unfairly treated." The letter takes issue both with the......

Vintage postcard of the Toronto General Hospital (1913) from Mars Discovery District. Encounters with government bureaucracy can be stressful ordeals at the best of times; at the worst, when things don’t go your way, they can be incredibly frustrating. Apparently, this is true even if you’re a Polaris Music Prize–winning musician. Former Torontoist contributor Carly Beath pointed us toward Owen Pallett recounting his recent travails with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care......

There are tons of great shows for all you concertgoers this week, including a particularly time-sensitive one tonight. Apparently a sold-out Wrong Bar for Crystal Castles last Thursday was not enough for the electro-punk duo. A last-minute show has been booked at the Wrong Bar tonight (alongside LA’s Health) before they continue on with their extensive North American tour. With no tickets to be purchased in advance, you better drop what you’re doing and immediately......

No Country For Old Men cleans up at the Oscars. The Coen Brothers finally got some big-time recognition with nods for best picture, best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best husband of Frances McDormand. In other news, a bunch of Canadians got nominated for stuff and didn't win any of it. (There! We could totally write entertainment news for any major Canadian newspaper now!) Visa IPO expected to be worth nineteen billion smackers. MasterCard responded......

At first we assumed it was Scientology. After all, who else has the money to produce and purchase space for such glossy anti-pharmaceutical ads, which have been popping up all over transit shelters and buses in Ontario and Montreal? Google wasn't much help, and their Blog Search just pointed us to other people as perplexed as we were. And poor spellers with domination fantasies. Searches of domain registrations weren't particularly fruitful, especially after the......

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......

National Non-Smoking Week starts January 20—as most New Year's resolutions to quit go up in smoke. It's a shame that the National Non-Smoking Week website sucks. The layout is plain, the links aren't updated frequently, and the only materials up for 2008 are a few fact sheets and posters with this year's theme, "Taking My Life Back From Tobacco." (The artsier French version is better: "Ma nouvelle vie sans tabac" or "My new life......

Apparently 6% GST is still being charged in parking lots at Pearson airport, in spite of the fact that the tax was lowered to 5% on January 1. The overpricing is being blamed on a system glitch that is being "worked on," but in the meantime, the GTAA plans to keep the extra cash for themselves. A spokesperson explained, "If you don't like it, then you can fly out of another international airport in......

City service fees to increase? Toronto's recreation department wants to increase user fees by 21 percent this year and a total of 81 percent over seven years. Because you know who doesn't pay their fair share? Poor people! Barack Obama, John McCain surging in polls as New Hampshire primaries take place. In related news, Obama and McCain both won the small villages of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, both of which had their complete......