One of the biggest complaints that Toronto hip hop artists have is that they are ignored by local media, and, for the most part, they're right. Drop the Needle hopes to help remedy this by checking in with some of the city's finest artists each month to see what's up. Photo by Mark Kasumovic. Since 1997, PHATT al has been dropping records and rocking crowds in Toronto. Back then, he was part of Tallisman's crew......

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......

If you're like most snow-hating Torontonians, your weekend plans are changing with the weather. Suddenly, the thought of spending Friday night in high heels and club lineups has all the appeal of an ice bath. Forget new outfits or dinner spots, you're looking for new releases instead. Should you also be looking for a way to broaden your horizons, impress your intimidatingly smart date, or celebrate the Chinese New Year and Canadian cinema, look......

Toronto, we are told, is a world-class city. But Toronto is noticeably absent from the list of major urban centres famous for graffiti and street art: New York, Barcelona, San Francisco, Berlin, LA, Melbourne, and London. Even within Canada, smaller cities like Montreal and Vancouver hold a better reputation for graffiti than Toronto. Vandalist seeks to change all that. Toronto has some amazing stuff going on and up onto the walls––we just rarely hear......

Are you getting geared up for the season finale of The Hills on Monday? If so, continue reading. If not, we don't need another lecture about how the show is quasi-scripted—tell it to your boring friends. The last few weeks have surprised loyal viewers with some major plot twists: Audrina finally dumped Justin Bobby, Lauren wants to make a boyfriend out of notorious man-whore Brody Jenner, Spencer's sister has turned cat-fighting into the official......

When you think of literacy, chances are the first name that comes to mind isn't Slash. But the notoriously bad-assed guitarist from rock legends Guns n' Roses has recently come out with an autobiography detailing his many, many encounters with sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. He was born in England but moved to LA in the early seventies, where he was surrounded by musical icons such as Joni Mitchell and David Geffen, and even......

The Little Millionaires are so good, it took Torontoist several days to get over their righteous awesomeness in order to attempt a description of their sonic mightiness. Formed from the ashes of the phenomenal Bombs Over Providence, TLM balance the driving pop elements of Bombs’ punk rock aggression and step up the hardcore element in their sound considerably. The result had a full room at Sneaky Dee’s rocking out sincerely to a short, sweet......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

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......

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......

We're guessing most of you are hungover from St. Patrick's Day. Some of us are too. But still, we're going to muddle on through our green haze and give you (drum roll please...) this Week In -ists. We start with SFist which broke the -ist record for comments with nearly 500 comments on a post about our Mayor's girlfriend. She responded back on charges that she's not a "girl's girl" and, whoo boy-- the......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing—what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as they wrote......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

Tonight marks the first installment of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School at the Cameron House. The event provides a night of drawing from the live model with a series of cheeky twists. Firstly, the model is not some random naked person, but rather a cabaret star dressed in appropriately Vaudevillian costume. And at this life drawing session, the art-making is accompanied by alcoholic beverages and groovy tunes, not to mention kooky contests (best incorporation of a......

As the world holds its breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Super Bowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry's plans for......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing. Austinist said goodbye to their co-editor (sell-out) and played rumor monger on the SXSW lineup. And when dozens of dead birds littered downtown Austin, it's Big......

It's about time that Toronto started a feud with a major American city, and we think that Los Angeles, California has gotten off easy for far too long. The over-the-top Hollywood sign compared to our noble and restrained skyline; their smaller phallic symbol compared to our much, much bigger one; their cloud of smog compared to our green bins and green thumbs; their palm trees compared to our pine ones. So we were thinking,......

Argos fans be very very scared. It seems that Toronto is on a shortlist of five cities that will get a regular-season NFL game next year. The game's success would be a good indicator of whether these cities would be suitable for future NFL expansion. The NFL has some big fans here in Toronto, most notably media magnate Ted Rogers and Larry Tannenbaum (minority share holder of the Leafs) and Jays CEO Paul Godfrey. But......

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned.......

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. SFist Tourist......

Celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday with the Bikini Bandits and Phillyist! (NSFW). Speaking of Mr. Franklin, send in a picture of Ben (or Ed Rendell) with a red tongue and win a free t-shirt. And they might have the next YearlyKos in Philly. You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. LAist's sex advice column on......

You've probably seen Hoi Tang's work around town at places like Magic Pony, when the talented illustrator, designer and craftisan isn't busy making adorable magnets, buttons or prints she seems to be busy organizing shows like this weekend's Modern Art Design Exhibit. She's invited a dozen or so fellow artisans from Montreal, Toronto, New York and even LA to the Gladstone. Personally, we're thinking about picking up one of the adorable new dolls from Monster......

Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto doesn't contain the kind of jackasses who pee in public......

The weeks starts out right when a sucker punch on the field lands Chicagoist in the middle of a Sox/Cubs throwdown and the fists continue to fly in the comments. Despite suburban resident Ms. Pinney's best little try no books will be banned anytime soon and the El is really really gross. Houstonist is there to start compiling the punditry when when the guilty, guilty Enron verdict comes down. This guy seems to be able......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Well, though he’s been away, this Torontoist certainly missed Toronto. And his feet are a size 11 Ron but nice try. But honestly folks, what has happened to our town since we’ve been gone? The Royal, the Revue, and the Kingsway closing down? Are you kidding us? This is a serious problem. Not only is it probably going to kill off (or at least make it difficult for) many of the small festivals that make......

Our regular Film Friday writer Mathew Kumar is absent so I'll be filling in for his very big (size 13, right Mathew?) shoes. We're still not sure why anyone would remake 1972's the Poseidon Adventure, but they gone and done it. Director Wolfgang Petersen must really making movies with a lot of water in it and we agree with Now in thinking that it's way too soon for a movie with big waves. Insensitive Holywood......