Results tagged “queenstreetwest”

                                   

Despite extensive coverage by both online and print media, Monday's splitting of the 24-kilometre Queen streetcar route came as a bit of a surprise to many, necessitating lengthy explanations at the new turnpoints (Parliament, Shaw), as well as the odd enraged passenger (a particularly vocal, slightly off-kilter, middle-aged man waiting at Shaw screamed, "Where is the Long Branch and all those f**king c**ksuckers at?!"). In the name of research, Torontoist travelled the entire length of the route, beginning at Yonge and Queen, continuing all the way east to Neville Park, and then traversing the entire 24 kilometres to Long Branch, getting off and on as required. To see how we fared, see the photo gallery above.

If something looks a little amiss about the model in the advertisement above—if her head looks a bit too big for her body, her torso a bit too compact to be natural, her arms, dear God her arms, doing things arms don't do—all can be explained: Bikini Bay on Queen Street West apparently offers its models, like its swimsuits, in "mix & match."

       

On Tuesday's World Carfree Day, a parade is gathering in Trinity Bellwoods park. The day is—according to the event's hand-drawn poster—"celebrated by 100 million people across the world." The contribution from this parade currently stands at around fifty people, mainly on bicycles.

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Mark Giesbrecht—better known as Mark the Litter Guy in the areas of the city that he patrols and cleans up in exchange for donations—has been tending to Queen Street West for long enough now that, when the West Queen West, Queen West, and Parkdale Business Improvement Areas (or BIAs) went looking to hire someone to help clean the area up, he was a natural choice.

Last week, passersby at the corner of Queen and Ossington began to take notice of a curious wooden crate protruding from the side of a building. Some gathered around it with great awe and wonder, while others scoffed dismissively, thinking, “So what? It’s a frickin’ box sticking out of a frickin’ wall.”

Today doesn't mark any kind of numerically significant anniversary for the fire that destroyed six buildings near the intersection of Queen Street West and Bathurst Street on Feburary 20 of last year. There's no nice, round number of days, years, or months to occasion this post. The timing here might be inconvenient, but then so was the fire's. (5 a.m. on a Wednesday?) So we're not totally out of line.

Queen West. 9:30 p.m. last Wednesday. A trio of teenage girls are crossing Peter Street.

The Dufferin Jog—that railway underpass at Dufferin and Queen—has long been considered a public art icon in Toronto. It's just that the public art it's displayed has been graffiti and paste-ups rather than municipally chosen sculpture.

If it works for shopping, it works for us: this is a pop-up series on the future (or is there a future?) of fashion in our city. Every Wednesday from now until we get bored, we'll log time with a new face on the local style scene: someone who's fresh, and not Joe, because there's got to be more to Toronto than the Mimrans.

Torontoist first encountered Yasmine Louis three years ago at the One of a Kind Show where she was selling her lines of pillows, shirts, and hoodies that have photographs and poignant, slightly melancholy, sayings silkscreened on them. The show is teeming with vendors offering similar items, but Louis's work stands out due to her incredible talent for writing and love of Toronto.

Who is moving into the main space in the development at Queen Street West and Portland, abandoned two months by Home Depot? Torontoist got a tip yesterday afternoon that a new primary retail tenant has been locked down, but according to RioCan, the property's keepers, that's just not the case.

The Queen Street West Heritage Conservation District came into force back in September 2007, preserving a 1.5 kilometre stretch of Queen Street between University Avenue and Bathurst Street. According to a study conducted for the City's Heritage Preservation Services, the proposal was not intended to restrict development, rather to ensure that any future changes would complement the overall historic character of the area, “which results in part from a continuous street wall, defined by the cumulative character of building scale, mass, height, and proportion.”

          

It seems strange to hook up your lean green biking machine to the pollution pumper itself, but a new kind of gas pump in Toronto might be greening up the urban landscape.

The day of Toronto's demisemiseptcentennial is gone, but it's never too late to spoil the party. Witness: the stencil spotted above on Queen Street West east of Gladstone, wishing Toronto a happy birthday while blowing out all the candles before the poor city gets a chance to.

A whole weekend has passed, and the town's still talking about Thursday night. It was a good party. The Governor Gwas there and probably the entire Globe & Mail Style section and a girl dressed up as Pocahontas or something. Hipster cultists huddled around American cigarettes near a window; through it, you could see Quebecois art collective BGL doing their interactive thing. Kiki, who's worked there so long she doesn't need a last name, looked killer in new glasses, almost too big. Kevin Drew looked a little unsteady on the stairs.

According to the Canadian Press, Home Depot (whose slogan, we know, is not "help is close to home") is "paying an unspecified amount in cash" to back out of their lease to part of RioCan's controversial development at Queen West and Portland. RioCan has stated that it's "reviewing the possibility of repositioning the retail portion of the development to reflect a new retail footprint," which is just a fancy way of saying that they're gonna find someone or several someones else to pay for and use the space; RioCan's CEO told the CP that "We are optimistic that we will re-lease this part of the retail component and do not expect construction of the project to be delayed." The condos that are part of the project are already under construction now, and are, again according to the CP, sixty percent sold.

One month after its launch, War Child Canada's latest multi-media campaign, Help Child Soldiers, continues to actively make itself visible on downtown streets. With a fresh smattering of posters spotted on Queen Street West (at McCaul Street) this past Sunday, the recent resurgence in the street-level marketing is an attempt to further educate and engage pedestrians. According to War Child Canada Director of Marketing James Topham, it's working. "We've had a record number of seventy volunteer offers in just one week," says Topham. "The television spot has been extended into January, but the posters add a new dimension, especially now that students are returning for school."

According to the Post, the Ontario Fire Marshall has declared that the cause of the massive February Queen West fire will remain a mystery. "[Fire investigations manager Chris] Williams" told the paper that "a team of 10 investigators, including forensic specialists and engineers, pored over piles of charred physical evidence, but there was simply too much damage, leaving them with no choice but to label the cause 'undetermined.'" It's bad news for the former property owners, but great news for those who enjoy wildly speculating about the fire's cause. (Did you know that if you re-arrange the letters in "Queen Street West Fire" you get "Queen St Fire=Teers"? Or that "Home Depot" backwards is almost "Top Demon"? Someone should really investigate that.)

     

On Sunday afternoon, one of the coldest days of the year so far, the Art Attack wing of the Toronto Public Space Committee spent several hours turning a TTC shelter into a cozy igloo.

Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Just off West Queen West, around the corner from 48 Abell and the Drake Hotel, on the wall of a long blue warehouse complex that is supposed to come down shortly to make room for a condo, stands Mr. Loogie.

The sign of the hipster apocalypse is spelled out in Helvetica. Black and white. "Now Hiring."

     

After a six-month pilot project by Toronto Police Services, the closed circuit television cameras placed at Queen Street West and Bathurst were removed yesterday morning. The intersection was chosen due to a higher-than-average violent crime rate, though some local residents at a January public forum felt the cameras would shift illegal activities to neighbouring streets. The CCTV tests around the city have also raised privacy issues and sparked debate about their crime-fighting effectiveness.

There goes another chunk of the 'hood. The ground is all chewed up, the renta-fence is in place, and Queen West's on-street parking just got a little bit worse. The cars have been kicked off the corner lot at Queen and Portland streets, ready for the construction crews to move in. The neighbourhood is a big step closer to getting ninety more condo suites, anchored by a big-box Home Depot. May, 2010, is the projected date for occupancy.