A month after the massive fire that gutted half a block of Queen Street West between Bathurst and Portland at least two of the businesses whose stores were destroyed in the fire have relocated and are planning to reopen soon. Meanwhile, the site has emerged from a blanket of snow and ice revealing what little remains of the businesses and homes razed by the fire. Photo by Miles Storey.......

Following the massive fire that devastated half a block of Queen Street West last month, National Sound, a stereo and electronics equipment store established in 1968 and made homeless by the fire, will be "coming soon" to 644 Queen Street, a block west of its old location. Duke's Cycle may open as early as April 1st, though they've yet to reveal where.......

Torontoist is ahead of the game for previewing some of the best music choices this week (Queen West fire benefit, Forest City Lovers' CD release) but Musicologist will give you one more recommendation—just for kicks. When UK’s Field Music announced a (begrudged) break last year, who knew David Brewis would be in Toronto playing a show under a different name and clean ethos so quickly? School of Language and their debut LP Sea From Shore......

Last week’s fire on Queen West didn’t only destroy some of the neighbourhood’s best stores; it also put the dozens of people who lived in apartments above the shops out of a home. Some of these folks didn’t have insurance and lost most of their possessions. Many of the artists who lived in the buildings lost their work, and thus their source of income. It’s great to see a neighbourhood—and Toronto as a whole—come......

Sarah Lazarovic––curator of the garage-based Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada––is painting a portrait of a Torontonian (be they Mirvishes or Meashas) every day. Each Monday, we'll feature one of those portraits here. Duke's Cycle began its life in 1914, so while the Queen West fire decimated its present digs, it's no surprise that Gary Duke and family have vowed to find the strength and moxie to bring the venerable velo shop back to life. Check......

There’s an eerie similarity between images of last week's Queen West fire and The Great Fire of 1904. The largest fire in Toronto history consumed one hundred and four buildings—leaving in its wake skeletal brick facades and mounds of rubble. Incredibly, neither fire claimed any lives. Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

A variety of opportunities for residents to help out the victims of the Queen West fire have been popping up all over the city. Right now, the best way you can participate is to walk into any Scotiabank location and make a cash donation to the newly-established Queen Street Fire Fund––effective today, the fund set up by the City of Toronto will assist all of the residents affected by the fire––but as Ward 20......

Fire at Queen and Bathurst. Adios to Duke's, the Suspect Video outlet, and a bunch of other cool places. Check out Torontoist's coverage of the fire here and here and here––Queen West will be closed until next week. Home sales in Toronto drop significantly after land tax kicks in. Of course, one has to account for the fact that home sales in January, before the land tax was initiated, were significantly higher because people were......

Today's blaze was not only devastating to the residents of Queen Street West who now find themselves homeless, but also to the business owners who served the community. Duke's Cycle—second home to many of the city's bicycle couriers—has been run by the same family in the same location since 1914. The owners of National Sound, which operated in the area for forty years and at that location since 1988, don't have fire insurance. Clothing......

Exclusive images from the massive fire on Queen Street. More shots after the jump.......

Photo by aardvark from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Transit vehicles are being diverted and streets have been closed near Queen and Bathurst as firefighters battle a six-alarm blaze this morning. The fire broke out about 5 a.m. and spread through eight low-rise buildings on the south side of Queen, consisting of fourteen addresses between Bathurst and Portland. The destroyed block contained commercial properties Suspect Video, Duke's Cycle, National Sound, Preloved, the Jupiter head shop,......

Photo by David Topping. Torontoist has a major crush on missed connections, and this one made our day: West Queen West, Drake/Beacs - m4w last weekend, at the drake. Or maybe it was the beaconsfield. You are very stylish, wearing an outfit from american apparel. it was colourful. i was skinny, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with my favourite band on it, with a vintage sweater over top. we talked for a bit, and......

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. A big-time hero for 2007 is the expansion of Queen West's Made You Look jewelry studio and gallery. in......

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. As the tenants who inhabited the warehouses of the Queen West Triangle were evicted to make way for demolition......

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. Although the developers currently building in the Queen West Triangle have collectively incited outrage with their controversial plans for......

As the crowds descend on the Eaton Centre and Queen West for last minute shopping, the Queen streetcar becomes the hottest spot in town. With shoppers in down jackets squeezing into the car, the experience most resembles warm sardines packed in a tin, and it smells equally appealing. Hey! Anybody got a can opener? Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

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......

This weekend, resist the urge to do the same old bar hop and try a more sophisticated means of indulging your party ADD: the art show hop. Okay, so we just invented that term, but the city does have three rad art happenings going on almost simultaneously this Friday, November 30. And we say, why choose? To start your adventure, knock back a whiskey for warmth and head down to the Harbourfront, where the......

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......

The Entertainment District got a little more entertaining early Monday morning as an innocent bystander was wounded in a wild movie-style shootout involving at least four gunmen. Mayor David Miller called for a crackdown on gun smuggling as part of his strategy of blaming all problems in Toronto on forces outside of his control. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled tax cuts yesterday, including corporate and personal income taxes reductions and a one-cent drop in......

After decades of being situated as an icon of Queen Street West, it has been revealed that Citytv will be moving to a new high-profile location: Dundas Square. Since Rogers Communications announced plans to acquire Citytv, there has been much speculation about what would happen to the legendary Queen Street studios. The solution became the former Olympic Spirit complex at the south-east corner of Dundas Square. Built for $42 million in 2004, the building......

No matter which generation you're from, chances are you have been influenced in one way or another by puppets. Lamb Chop, Elmo, Kermit, Casey & Finnegan, and even Ed the Sock have been huge puppet figures in popular culture. So why not relive your childhood and come on down to a puppet play this Saturday afternoon? Toronto puppeteers Kristen, Jackie, and Renee are back in town after a tour in New York City and are......

Slightly different beginning to our Film Friday today, because we’d like to highlight the fact that our favourite film in ages, Reprise (pictured above), was released on DVD this week. We really feel it should have been given the same kind of cinematic release it’s getting right now in the UK, rather than an astonishingly bare-bones DVD transfer with burned-in subtitles, but what are you going to do? You really have to see it......

As we mentioned in our Nuit Blanche photo album, the culprit behind that "Quick Lobotomy" sign you may have seen at Queen West's Tri Service Centre is our very own fauxreel. Earlier this morning, he posted a video on YouTube of his exploits, featuring some of the messages that he received from outraged/intrigued Nuit Blanche participants. It's lobotoriffic!......

If you can imagine, for a moment, that Queen West has been designated a streetcars-and-pedestrians-only zone, it would not be that much different from the traffic flow in 1907, or this weekend. Join Streets Are For People this Saturday for World Carfree Day. Celebrated in over 1,500 cities around the globe, Toronto's version is custom-tailored to our homegrown oil addiction. This Saturday, there are two related happenings to be aware of. The first is......

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,......

Photo by Shari Kasman. Despite the less-than-ideal weather this weekend, the Queen West Art Crawl was a hit. Torontoist contributors Soloman Lam, Kevin McBride, Shari Kasman, and Miles Storey wandered the "Art and Design District" equipped with cameras, just in case you missed the action.......

Reminder: this weekend (September 14–16) is the Queen West Art Crawl, or QWAC ("quack"), where the streets and parks of trendy West Queen West become galleries. What's going on? Well, Parkdale is hosting an exhibition of performance art and installation called Play/Grounds. You can head over to Trinity Bellwoods Park for the outdoor art show/sale or Art That Binds. Check out what's happening at the Gladstone in the evening—you wouldn't want to miss the......

Contributor Tony Makepeace is taking us for some spins around our city with his fantastic VR panoramas. You can look up, down, side to side, in and out—pretty much every direction but back at yourself, which would be kind of creepy. Say hello to Panoramaist: the Toronto shoe-gazer's worst enemy. Click the preview image above to launch the QuickTime VR panorama in a separate full-screen browser window. Panoramaist is best viewed on a fast computer.......

With Citytv moving out of 299 Queen West as part of the Rogers-CTVglobemedia deal, some alarm was raised over the fate of the CityPulse truck—long a fixture of Queen and John. Too complicated to dismantle and acknowledged as a downtown tourist landmark, it was announced that the famous artwork (or eyesore, depending on who you're talking to) would stay put. Now that the two entities are to be officially severed and City News is......