Results tagged “hmmm”

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

LECTURE: Join urban experts Brian Andrew, Mark Kingwell, and Jay Pridmore at the ROM for a discussion on large-scale urban development. The talk, Shanghai: City of the Future?, is presented by the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum and complements the ROM's current exhibition, Shanghai Kaleidoscope. Royal Ontario Museum (in the Signy & Cléophée Eaton Theatre), 7:30 p.m., $10 ($6 for Friends of the ICC, $8 for ROM Members).

In our inbox yesterday appeared a link to a TTC tender for consultant services, sent to us by Joe Clark (as these things tend to be). They're looking to hire someone to (emphasis ours) "provide professional architectural, engineering/design services and specialized transit services to perform the study concerning the installation of platform screen doors at 75 locations in 69 subway stations and in the six stations that will be constructed within the Spadina subway extension, as well as the documentation to allow the Commission to install a test installation in an agreed upon location."

The public service announcement on the left is courtesy of the TTC. The public service announcement on the right is courtesy of the MTA. On Friday morning, Accordion Guy Joey deVilla juxtaposed the two on his blog, along with the question "who plagiarized whom?"

ThinkWater.ca, the Canadian manifestation of the United Nations' Water for Life campaign, is by all appearances a worthy project, aimed at educating citizens in various facets of water conservation, from the problems with bottled water, to the benefits of more efficient toilets. One of its TV ads [MPG], in which random shoppers in Kensington Market are quizzed on their knowledge of storm water management (and are grossed out to learn that everything that goes down a street drain goes straight to the Lake), might be more effective, however, if it didn't close on a time-lapse shot of food being prepared on the single most infamous cooking surface in Toronto, one begging for much more than water.

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.

In the fall of 1997, the Metro Toronto Zoo had something of a clearance sale, divesting itself of merchandise branded "Metro Toronto Zoo." On January 1st, the Megacity would be coming, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto would be no more, and the Zoo—to be renamed simply the "Toronto Zoo"—would be prepared for the change.

The above video—not safe for work unless you're using headphones—was shot by the late Peter Walker and is a clip from Min Sook Lee's documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing (winner of the best Canadian feature prize at Hot Docs 2005). Uploaded to YouTube fewer than three weeks ago, it's been passed around online over the last few days, since being linked to by Toronto Life's Philip Preville in a Friday blog post.

The above "Obey Spray" illustration is one of a series of Madvertisements (also featuring products such as "Empowermints" and conditions such as "Excessive Patriotism Disorder") by media tigress Carly Stasko, originally published in the January/February 2002 issue of This Magazine. Look familiar? Says Stasko of the "Obay" campaign for Ontario colleges, they're "so similar that I'm wondering if we just had the same idea or if they have riffed off of my original." (We think it's probably the former, but it wouldn't at all surprise us if someone at Smith Roberts had a subscription to This and has been storing the Madvertisements in his or her unconscious for years.) The photo, by the way, is a young Dave Meslin.

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.

SEPT. 28, 2006: Torontoist publishes "Two Peas In A Pod," a poorly considered article making fun of Eye and Now for both deeming Nuit Blanche significant enough to feature on their covers the same week.

Selected quotes from "Toronto's Type and Tile Heritage" by Edward Keenan, from the November 14th issue of Eye Weekly:

Photo by Hanoian from Flickr.

Photo by natmeister from Flickr.

Every November and December, a handful of current and former Toronto International Film Festival employees make the trek to the United Arab Emirates to help run the Dubai International Film Festival. Its fourth year having wrapped up on Sunday, DIFF—like most everything else about Dubai—is an experiment in accelerated postmodernization, an attempt to create a world-class film festival (this year's opening movie was Michael Clayton, with George Clooney in attendance) from scratch.

"Upper Canada Lower Bowel Clinic Inc."

Google has always been known for its clean, lightweight, ad-free search page, but Canada's largest provider of broadband internet is under fire today for messing with it. Toronto-based Rogers has begun testing a controversial technique that allows the media empire to insert its own content into another entity's web page, angering net neutrality proponents. According to a tip passed to L.A.-based technology expert Lauren Weinstein, the system being employed is manufactured by the "in-browser...

In what simultaneously has to be one of the most hilariously inspired and gut-wrenching punishments in the history of parental discipline, a local GTA father has set a new standard for puffing penalization. The man—an elementary school teacher known by the screen name "k_lid"—decided to sell his son’s Christmas present on eBay (a notoriously hard-to-find copy of the best-selling Guitar Hero 3 game) when he returned home from work early to find 15-year-old Isaac...

Many of you may remember 25-year old Jason Jones, who was on the front page of the Toronto Star last February as a graphic indictment against "the miserable state of dental care for our working poor." The resulting outcry led to demands that the indigent and working poor have better access to dental care. Jones' story had a happy ending: offers poured in from readers to help pay for the dental work he desperately needed,...

Photo by knittingskwerlgurl from Flickr. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Festivus, this is the time of year to give gifts and eat way too much food. Torontoist is no exception in enjoying these pastimes, and finds that giving a gift that is food is most often the best way to go. Giving a box of chocolates is a pretty sure way to make someone's day better, and is a firm favourite of...

Photo by William Self from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It seems like everyone in the city is looking for a new place to live. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of competition to find that oh-so-perfect abode, and you’ve only got a few (relatively meagre) resources at your disposal to help you in your search. Luckily for you, we have your back....

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...

Photo by gbalogh from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The Star's Jack Lakey, aka The Fixer, is invaluable. There is no better way to elicit a favourable response from the City bureaucracy than by sicking him on a case of civic neglect. It really is the most consistent way to get things done in Toronto. (The TPSC got Viacom to fulfill their contractual obligation to put street names on transit shelters simply by getting him...

Photo by Marc Lostracco.

At the Wellington Street entrance of the CBC Broadcast Centre, visitors of a certain age are met with some familiar sights from their childhoods: the treehouse from Mr. Dressup, a gang of puppets from Sesame Park, and the ratty but iconic Rusty and Jerome figures from The Friendly Giant. Now, the family of the Giant aren't feeling too friendly following a comedic skit shown during this year's Gemini Awards, and they are demanding the removal...

Over on Q107 on Monday afternoon, Max Webster frontman turned DJ Kim Mitchell was sounding quite enthusiastic about Tuesday's show. It seems that in an effort to bring attention to drunk driving and the negative effects of alcohol, he's going to have two on-air personalities (Maureen Holloway and Ryan Parker from Derringer In The Morning) drinking throughout his show, presumably getting progressively drunker and stupider as the afternoon wears into the evening. An expert...

On July 27 of this year, 75-year-old Antonio Batista was found guilty of making death threats against his Mississauga city councillor for writing and distributing around his neighbourhood a poem which concluded with the following passage:We are going to dig a pothole about six feet and 3 feet wide and 5 feet deep to hide her body and God will take care of Her Soul, but we cannot forgive her for doing nothing. She...

While events like Luminato and Nuit Blanche are fantastic, Toronto is sorely lacking in quality, long-term public art. Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be. Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be...

It’s an exciting time to get sick in Brampton. With the opening of the highly hyped Brampton Civic Hospital, Canada’s first “superhospital,” people living in the Peel Region can go through dialysis, give birth, and get a biopsy (though hopefully not all at once) with greater ease and comfort than before. What makes this place so special? According to Gillian Williams McClean, the Director of Communications and Marketing, this is the most technologically integrated...

The National Post is reporting today that Coyote Ugly––the raunchy, almost-a-strip-club-bar that inspired a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that everyone, including Piper Perabo, forgot about five years ago––will open up its first Canadian "saloon" next year at 220 Adelaide Street West. Coyote Ugly is upfront about its intentions: on their website, the bar explains the "business plan" of its first owner, Lil' Lovell, was "beautiful girls + booze = money." The organization's slogan is "Don't Just...