Mark Oliver Tessaro just sent us a link to the video above, of an unbelievably fun-looking do-it-yourself ski-hill that he and his roommates built in mid-February on their Kensington Market deck. Says Mark of the hill: I live with 3 other guys above a used clothing store in Kensington Market and we have a ridiculously large deck. A few weeks ago this meant that we also had a ridiculously large amount of snow on......

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. Hello, I am new to the city and am looking for advice on where to find great vintage clothing shopping. Can you please recommend both general areas of town where I might have some luck and, most importantly, specific stores I should check out? As someone on a budget, I'm looking for good deals. Also, I heard something about......

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. Dear Snappy Answers, I moved here from the U.S. a little while ago. Down there, I would hear these stories about the lax marijuana laws here and the more lax enforcement of those laws. When I got here, I thought I would have an easy time getting my smoke on. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. I’ve posted......

Kensington Market's Left Feet and Heart On Your Sleeve will be hosting its first annual vegan chili cook-off this Saturday, January 26 in support of homeless outreach. Amateur foodies, in addition to local restaurants Urban Herbivore, Sadie's Diner, and the Magic Oven will compete to find who's got the best vegan chili in Toronto. The cook-off will be held from 2–6 p.m. (with ballots counted and prizes awarded at 5:30 p.m.) at 88 Nassau......

What Honest Ed’s lacks in architectural artistry compared to more high-brow institutions, it makes up for in self-promotional bombast. From its "quirky hand-painted signage" to the low-price Toronto souvenirs, badly painted Elvis busts, and abandoned theatre props, Honest Ed’s is a museum of kitsch. Now a local illustrator, Christopher Hutsul, has designed a stationery set paying tribute his neighbourhood’s "foremost local architectural landmark." "When Ed Mirvish died the building took on greater historical significance,”......

In the battle of who owns the roads, cyclists and motorists are frequently at each others' throats. Over the last few years we've seen a heated altercation in Kensington Market and another that resulted in a motorist being stabbed with a screwdriver. It seems that the threat of a streetside melee is always looming. At Yonge and Bloor on Monday afternoon, a motorist attempted to make an illegal right turn and nearly knocked a......

Calling all local dance floor heroes and heroines! Hearts are ga-gunking to the clocks, which countdown to a night of pure electro-bliss. This Saturday night, Kensington Market’s Teranga (159 Augusta Avenue) will play host to Woodhands, Bocce, Opopo, and Green Go for what will undoubtedly be the sweatiest night of your lives. Too generous? No! With a lineup like Saturday’s, you'll definitely need to bring a second set of clothes. Woodhands is fronted by keytar......

That headline is only slightly misleading in order to alert you to Kensington's annual Festival of Lights, celebrating the winter Solstice tomorrow night. But we can assure you that there will be giant puppets and there will be fire, if not necessarily at the same time. Starting at 6:00 p.m, revelers will gather at the corner of Augusta and College and begin a procession down Augusta, east onto Baldwin, down Kensington Avenue, west on......

Showdown's hot picks for cold season include cropped leather jackets and cute jumper dresses. Photos courtesy of Showdown Vintage. Why Showdown Vintage isn't like Toronto's 1348 other vintage stores: 1. It's not really a store. Staysail Shedd, Mick Jackson and Andrew Pepall launched Showdown as an eBay retailer in April 2006, using their combined years of vintage-picking expertise to sell the coolest of Toronto's castoffs to customers all over the globe. But with a......

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, the fourth volume in the popular comic book series by Brian Lee O'Malley, hits stores across the city today. We feel confident in saying that there has never been a person in the history of time who hasn't liked this series. The fact that Scott Pilgrim is set entirely in Toronto only makes it more appealing: live vicariously through the characters as they eat dynamite rolls at New Generation......

Nicole Stamp's absolutely charming one-woman show BETTER PARTS plays tonight and for tonight only at the brand-new Bread and Circus Theatre Bar in Kensington Market at the corner of Baldwin and Augusta (we hadn't heard of it either!). You might recognize Stamp as the host of totally amazing kid quiz show Reach For The Top, but she's also an accomplished theatre artist who has been working BETTER PARTS for a few years now. The......

Election day is tomorrow, which provides a good opportunity to look back at how election ads were handled in the past. Today's selections come from the 1955 campaign, which Premier Leslie Frost's Progressive Conservatives won in a landslide on June 9th (83 PC, 11 Liberal, 3 CCF, 1 "PC Independent"). The "Big Blue Machine" was firmly entrenched, remaining in power for the next 30 years. York Centre was a new riding for the 1955......

GTA "bubble boy" has new hope after new experimental gene therapy. The donor: a very surprised Jerry Seinfeld. Dalton McGuinty challenges John Tory to explain where Tory will find $1.5 billion in budget cuts. Which is a good point, and begs the question why he didn't ask that, you know, at the debate. Shocking: Stephen Harper promises tax cuts. The government has a nearly $14 billion surplus this year, but it looks like Toronto......

If you dig free stuff and you happen to be walking through Kensington Market or Queen West this week, local band The Craft Economy have burned a hundred copies of their debut EP All On C and stapled them to hydro poles as a way of promoting their upcoming show. All On C is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. That means whether you rip it off the Internet, or a pole,......

Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks......

Photo by Jon . Torontoist loves a good stroll. In these late summer days, one of the more favourable strolling options is Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market. Provided you bring an ability to control your breathing against many an olfactory assault and sport a well-prepared munching arm, Kensington has also been deemed the prime venue to get your snack-on in Toronto. And so, with our noses prepared, a spring in our step, and a......

Embracing the new black each season can sometimes be a difficult task—especially considering fashion’s maniacally unpredictable cycles. And with this year’s new black—green—being a complete lifestyle makeover, things may seem just a little bit overwhelming. Fortunately, Heart On Your Sleeve, an ethical, earth friendly boutique, makes its debut later tomorrow evening at 61A Bellevue Avenue (the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Nassau Street) in Kensington Market, and will cater to all of your fashion-green desires.......

This Sunday, July 8 from 12 to 9 p.m., Mirvish Village will host the first Pedestrian Sunday outside of Kensington Market. The neighbourhood is home to the landmark discount store Honest Ed’s and is a collection of boutiques, studios and restaurants, founded and named for the Mirvish family in recognition of Toronto’s retail show biz entrepreneur Ed Mirvish. Inspired by the success of P.S. Kensington, the project is being taken on by the local Business......

In light of today's Torontoist vs. Torontoist debate on emergency vehicles' "Support Our Troops" ribbons, Posterchild (who is becoming a regular on Torontoist; we've interviewed him, written about his Canada Post mailing stickers, and showed off his feature film debut) sends us links to his recent work in and around Kensington Market: an infinite "Support" ribbon, and regular ribbons that read "Support Our Troupes" or "Support Our Koopa Troopas," each one pasted onto the......

Come and join Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market this weekend by celebrating the sun and the recent summer solstice. Join the Guerrilla Gourmet and "Brook the Cook" for a special summer street picnic. Ten dollars buys you a share in their "three course carbon free meal," featuring the season's local organic ingredients all cooked using Brook's amazing "grill," which focuses the sun's rays to heat the cookware (shown above). The picnic begins at 4......

Kensington Market Organic Ice Cream has returned! This small, Toronto-based artisinal ice cream joint that took our taste buds by storm several summers ago has always had trouble maintaining a venue. Last summer, it was operating out of The Back Alley (the restaurant, not an actual back alley) on Augusta. The summer before that, it was using the since-abandoned Sancis Fine Foods storefront on Kensington. Torontoist was dismayed a little while back when ice......

The World Naked Bike Ride wants to make a point that there are many things more offensive than a bare bum. The indecent exposure is not to some guy's twig n' berries, but to our polluted environment. On Saturday, Toronto was among 70 cities around the world that took a spin au naturel as a celebration of cycling, a protest against car culture, a comment on pollution, or just to express some exhibitionist tendencies.......

Want a graduation ceremony to go with your fancy education? Too bad. Convocations are overflowing and tickets are scarce. "Every day this summer is casual Friday", says Dalton McGuinty to Ontario civil servants. Bermuda shorts sales at the GAP skyrocket. HtO, Toronto's very own "urban beach", opens today on Queen's Quay. Sweet! New to town and want to learn a little more about the city? Check out the Toronto Ambassador Program for a stroll......

We've previously written about renowned architects designing furniture, but those creative design types also like to get their fingers dirty with paint on canvas. What could be more appropriate than an art exhibit from the guy who designed the OCAD tabletop building? Starting tomorrow, modernist British architect Will Alsop will be premiering Cultural Fog in Toronto—his first North American art exhibit. Alsop says he's been inspired by city neighbourhoods, which include Riverdale, Roncesvalles and......

Do you love this city? Of course you do! And here's your chance to profess your undying love to the world. Elevator Films, the people who brought you the Hot Doc hit Let's All Hate Toronto, are holding a contest called "Let's All Love Toronto." They are asking you—yes, you—to share photos and videos of why it is that you love this fair city of ours. Does riding the subway warm your heart? Put......

This was Toronto’s downtown at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, as seen from Lakeshore Boulevard near the Canadian Exhibition Grounds. Air Quality Ontario’s Air Quality Index measured a daytime high of 54, which put Toronto’s air well into the “Poor” category. The day before, the AQI hit 59. What to do? I ran errands on my bike yesterday, passing bumper-to-bumper car traffic everywhere I cycled. When I started cycling Toronto’s streets fifteen years ago, I didn’t......

Remember when, if someone was shot on the streets of the GTA, neighbours would appear on TV saying something like "I'm shocked—you just don't expect things like this to happen here?" Those were the good old days in Kensington Market. Violent crime has always been part of the area (usually it's attributed to drugs or alcohol), but a spate of seemingly random shootings has neighbours a little freaked out. On May 15, a 24-year-old......

A group of Grade 12 students caught a fight between a motorist and a cyclist on tape near Queen and Bay. The cyclist, who lost a tooth during the attack, allegedly stopped at a yellow light and prevented the driver from going through the intersection. Remember last year when a similar road rage showdown was captured on film in Kensington Market? (Thanks to Daniel for the tip.) Leaking barrels of toxic waste shut down traffic......

Toronto street artist (or what have you) Posterchild, the subject of a recent Tall Poppy interview right here on Torontoist, sent us along these two videos earlier this week from his first "first major film effort" Left Out In The Cold. The videos are of one night that Posterchild spent doing nine pasteups, seven stencils, and four tags and drawings last winter in Kensington Market—the culmination of months of preparation. A full forty minutes......

Torontoist Flickr Pool member snapparker has posted this shot of the aftermath of Tuesday morning's three-alarm fire at the corner of Baldwin and Spadina, right where Kensington Market meets Chinatown. The conflagration started in a rooming house above stores at 368 Spadina Ave. Flames quickly spread to neighbouring businesses. In all, over 100 firefighters and 30 trucks were called in to battle the blaze. Torontoist contributor Shaun Merritt spoke to a firefighter at the scene......