Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. You know that our transportation system is in dire straits when so many cyclists can get so excited about......

Sears is threatening to sue Ryerson University after the department store giant dropped $10 million in donations and didn't get a building named after them. Sears claims they were promised top billing and instead only got a crappy logo inside a structure named after some guy who's probably never sold a single pair of wrinkle-free slacks. They're requesting a full building and a commitment from the University that campus hipsters will wear only Sears-bought......

Tomorrow night, November 2nd, a new CaseCamp-format un-conference will touch down in Toronto. Combining two sessions from the art community and one session from a related industry, ArtSmash is a unique speaker series that will generate a room full of creative ideas. The event is being coordinated by Ella Cooper and presented by the Emerging Arts Professional Network. Each speaker will be given 20 minutes to share a case study of a project they......

As Torontoist reported yesterday, the Hummingbird Centre is changing its name to the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, marking the second change in corporate naming rights during the venue's half-century existence. Support of the site has ranged from a philanthropic brewer (O'Keefe Brewing head E.P. Taylor) to a multinational media company. As today's ad promised, Yonge and Front has seen a wide range of performances since the O'Keefe Centre officially rolled out the......

There is good advertising and there is bad advertising. There is even good guerilla advertising—depending on who you ask. Take, for instance, Boston's "Mooninites" promoting the Aqua Teen Hunger Force film, which polarized (and paralyzed) the city; last week's Fashion Targets Breast Cancer Tees, which polarized Torontoist commenters; or, now, GJP Advertising's party streamer installation on Queen Street, just outside of Nathan Phillips Square. Earlier this month, as a promotion for the party store......

Dethroned! Ed the Sock will no longer be serving as grand marshal of the Toronto Beaches Lions Club Easter Parade this weekend. After dozens of complaints that the bawdy sock was an inappropriate choice to host the children's parade, the Lions Club replaced Ed with the less-offensive Luba Goy and Craig Lauzon of CBC's Royal Canadian Air Farce. David Miller's 5 per cent city tax is hiking the price of your beer, your cigarettes, your......

Earlier this week, Torontoist received word of an alarming recent event at Pearson airport. It centers around an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna, departing from Toronto on Monday night. During takeoff, the cockpit reported a problem concerning the plane's fuel filter. Alerting Pearson traffic control of the issue, the plane circled over Lake Ontario, dumped its fuel, and landed. According to Livia Dandrea-Boehm, spokesperson for Austrian Airlines, the dumping of the fuel was due to......

Let's start of by saying how much we love the TTC. Sure, it's expensive and plagued with corporate infighting, but it gets us where we want to go (for the most part) and there's a soothing comfort in the gentle rumble of our slick red streetcars. There's also a certain pride that many TTC riders have; a camaraderie rooted in the shared experience of Riding The Rocket -- which is why we're distraught at the......

Torontoist loves the library. It's a total wonder: We request books online and when it's our turn they ship it to our local branch,a robot librarian calls me to say that there's stuff waiting for me ("Hello! The Toronto Public Library has one or more items for the customer whose initials are S! ...R! ...F! ...and whose library card ends in the digits..."), and we bop on down the block and a half to get......

We here at Torontoist on the whole like unions. But in this case we're distraught that you would think about illegally walking out of your jobs at midnight and in the process take out our schools, snow ploughs, and half-a-dozen other services. Frankly your language sounds like posturing and a lot of bluster. It's also a move that would hurt your organization. ""We are coming out of this room today, the one thing that will......

Thank goodness the city mixes valid observance days with silly, public relations days, because if we had only 'official gingivitis prevention days' to make light of, we'd start to wonder about the proclamations issuing forth from City Hall. Oh wait, Multiculturism Day is a Government of Canada proclamation. Perhaps the Feds take on the 'real' days, and leave the salad ones to local crats. In any event, this newish day (Officially proclaimed as such in......

Mayor Miller unveiled plans for his 16-month TO arts public relations venture yesterday, oddly titled 'Live With Culture.' Naturally, this venture has a website. Ultimately, Livewithculture.ca will offer free entertainment listings, but for now its just an info page about the mayor and his monumental adventure in arts and crafts. Some of the other events tied to 'live with culture' do seem pretty cool - a 40th anniversary of City Hall photo retrospective, and a......

It could be just hours or minutes before we find out that the National Hockey League’s thirty participants will be officially boarding up their doors for the 2004-2005 season. Without suspense due to NHL Vice President Bill Daly’s leaked memo to the league owners on Monday afternoon, Gary Bettman is set to tell the player’s union that last Thursday's proposal is NOT what they had in mind. Leading up to the labour dispute, the league......