The idea of a TTC riders' union is nothing particularly new, but after what happened this weekend, it's quickly—and deservedly—picking up steam. Torontoist's last article about a possible riders' union was written by Roxanne Bielskis in November 2007. Our article was inspired by Erica Barnett on WorldChanging, who described the problems of Seattle's transit system and looked at the success of riders' unions (or their equivalents) in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Santa Clara, Atlanta, and......

Photo by wvs from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The ever-painful sight of the dilapidated pillars, scraggly grass, and utterly desolate concrete landscape of the Gardiner Expressway is enough to make even the most enthusiastic Torontonian sigh with annoyance. How to prevent these angry exhalations was the the topic of conversation Wednesday night at Harbourfont. As part of their Viewpoints series and in conjunction with the release of Spacing's latest issue, Car and the City,......

Spacing contributor Jessica Duffin Wolfe (aka vforvandal) captured the above video at Ossington station during a late-night mid-December snowstorm. It's difficult to think of a better possible respite from the sleet; every station should have one of these.......

It's a gloomy time of year to be a cyclist, but Dave Meslin and the Toronto Cyclists Union are still finding time for projects in between their slushy commutes. The group is about to launch its own magazine, and they're looking for a name. They've narrowed the list down to 11, selected from over 250 names submitted by Toronto bike fanatics (Torontoist's official vote is for "Spoke & Word"). Take a look at the list......

We love the TTC—we really do—but they make it hard to like them sometimes. The Commission does a good job behind the scenes keeping an enormous fleet of vehicles running, in reasonable repair, and reasonably on time, but where they really drop the ball is when it comes to the actual transit rider. Frustratingly, they have no shortage of passionate, inventive, and resourceful riders who seem to be happily at their disposal (gratis, even!),......

A couple weeks back, Spacing Wire posted this brilliant old TTC ad that made us hungry for more forgotten gems of Toronto advertising. The video in question was uploaded by a user calling themselves WNED 17, and their entire archive is made up of similar videos. In fact, their profile page provides a mission statement: "Youtube user WNED17 is proud to present repeat portions of broadcast captured in the 1980s and early 1990s via......

The ever-excellent Spacing is celebrating the launch of their latest issue––an "eco-friendly" one, pictured above––next Monday, December 3rd. The launch will take place at the newly-green Berkeley Church (316 Queen Street East), which has been redesigned to have a green roof and (holy crap!) a 25-person-capacity treehouse that may or may not be usable come Monday. Doors open at 8 p.m. and admission is free, with copies of the magazine on sale at the......

Some Canadian cattle will now be allowed into the United States following a 4-year ban in the wake of several cases of "mad cow" disease. American Homeland Security regulations will still require that any bovines wishing to cross the border carry a valid passport. The latest UN report on climate change says that global disaster is a safe bet if we don't change our carbon-emitting ways by 2012. It's all good for Canadians though, as......

NOW's yearly Best of Toronto issue is out, and amidst a slew of other winners (Cherry DiNovo is the Best MPP! CiRCA sweeps "Best Dance Club" and "Best club for an impromptu orgy"!), the alt weekly has named Spacing Toronto as the city's best blog. We're a bit jealous––we were Best Blog in 2005, and we'd definitely be up for winning again––but Spacing has been pretty awesome, consistently, since its formation. If anything, the......

Pearson Airport reduces landing fees. The move was cheered by airlines, who can now drop their prices accordingly. Oh, wait, they won't do that, they'll only drop their prices by maybe about ten percent of what they could with the savings, and pocket the rest. Capitalism works! Stéphane Dion says Canadians don't want another election right now; thus, the Liberals won't challenge the throne speech. More accurately, the Liberals don't want another election right......

Torontonians aren't known for pomp and circumstance, but if the Spacing buttons were any indication, we like to represent our 'hoods. Jane and Finch may want to rebrand itself as University Heights and Beach(es) residents can't agree on the name, but for Toronto, our neighbourhoods often define us. Other than demarcated street signs alluding to mysterious Discovery Districts and International Villages, there aren't many emblematic civic icons that Torontonians can use to show their......

Spacing did it, now CTV is doing it: CTV wants you to make a video about our city using the prefix phrase "My Toronto is…". Interview a kid smoking in line at Funhaus, a smiling, round-faced butcher at St. Lawrence Market, and a Bloor station musician. Ya know, the usual. Then pepper the vid with shots of the skyline, Kensington, and a passing streetcar. Or you can do something interesting. The contest runs until......

There are a shitload of pedestrian- and public space-themed events going on Sunday afternoon: P.S. Kensington, Word on the Street, the below-mentioned Not Blanche, and the "Our Streets – inserting oneself into the municipal process" pre-Walk21 workshop. But for raw pedestrianism, nothing is going to beat the Great Queen Street Psychogeographic Walk, organized by Spacing and the Toronto Psychogeography Society. Essentially, it's a walk. A big walk. Along Queen Street. All of Queen Street.......

Whilst performing our pre-read ritual of tearing out Toronto Life's 8,000 annoying snot-glued ad inserts and heavy stock subscription cards, we suddenly came across Torontoist's name in the mag's "Roundup" feature. The chart compares Toronto's four major city blogs: Torontoist, Spacing Wire (now Spacing Toronto), BlogTO, and the newish Torontopedia. Torontoist's raison d'être is listed as "news, arts, culture, snark"—and we won't argue with that—while BlogTO is like "your geeky friend who's always in......

Our friends over at Spacing Magazine have officially launched their foray into a whole new blogging environment, Spacing Montréal. Covering the urban environment five hours down the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, Spacing's new blog looks at many of the same public space issues in Montreal (in a refreshing mix of both official languages) that the newly-rebranded Spacing Toronto examines here. It may be worth noting the many parallels between Toronto and Montreal that make it a......

While researching the proper name for the device shown above, we stumbled across this page on the City of Toronto's website. (It's a "pushbutton," "push-button," or "push button," depending on which paragraph you believe.) And, what do you know, the more mundane elements of transportation infrastructure are fascinating stuff. If you agree, you might want to apply for a position on the Toronto Pedestrian Committee. As reported by TPC co-chair Dylan Reid on the......

Eight months after Torontoist, Reading Toronto, Spacing, and BlogTO all banded together to solicit reader comments to improve the TTC's website and after Adam Giambrone agreed to re-open the Request for Proposal (RFP) to allow for "a more ambitious and exciting project," there has finally been some news to report of late. Last week, Adam Giambrone told Torontoist that the website would launch sometime in the fall, and would definitely feature everyone's top request––a......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will appear every Friday night. First a monkey escaped. Then, elephants did. And now, a bear has! Animals are apparently not big fans of being captive. Weird, right?The semi-famous Enrique Inglesias was at MuchMusic.This weekend (starting tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.) is......

The Toronto Star published a good article Sunday revealing that "the city's Waterfront Secretariat is now reviewing the recommendations and cost estimates of recent waterfront task forces on the fate of the Gardiner." Torontoist hears you asking, wasn't this the whole point of the Gardiner Report released last September? Now that the city has all but canned plans to tear down the elevated highway due to lack of funds, however, discussions are focussing on......

Do you have a better vision of Toronto? Our friends over at Spacing are betting that you do, and would like fellow citizens to ante up their experiences and enthusiasms for our fair city in their My Toronto video contest; they’re asking the common people to create a commercial better than those offered up by the budget gluttons of Big Media. Torontoist would like to point out that commercials, for all their repetitive, soma-like blight......

Reader Amanda Happé came across this sight yesterday morning: city employees carving up and taking away Trinity-Bellwoods' much-loved painted blue and white tree trunk (also known as the Universal Love Machine). Neither felled by nature or protected by nature-lovers, we've yet to find out the reason for its removal—though Amanda suggests, and we agree, that it was pretty rotten-looking. Painted tree stumps can only live for so long, ya know. Either way, we've sent......

"Water," Spacing's summer issue, is finally out, available at your favourite bookstores throughout the city. Devoted to "Toronto’s ravines, rivers, water towers, sewers, and waterfront," "Water" is intended to be "a snapshot of Toronto’s relationship with water and how it shapes our everyday lives." The sneak peeks inside the magazine (featuring some photography by the ever-awesome Miles Storey) look as gorgeous as ever, and we're itching to get our hands on a copy. Of......

You want a greener city? Prepare to pay $4 million per year in taxes to plant and maintain trees. Alternatively, you could covertly plant them yourself with your own funds. We hear that chicks dig tree planters. Transit officials are testing the Presto card in Mississauga; a refillable swipe card that allows you to travel between Mississauga Transit, GO Trains and TTC while only paying for one fare. Eventually, the project will be extended......

Developers RioCan bought the parking lot at the corner of Queen Street West and Portland back in 2005. Immediately, rumours started to circulate that a big box store, like Home Depot, was going to be built at the site. At the time, The Globe and Mail reported that RioCan planned to start building in 2007. Which is now. So what's happening with the project? In August 2006, Spacing Wire reported that activists had met......

...need to know the latest bridge strategies. Businesses rushed to latch onto hippies during the "Summer of Love" as their next target market, if only to convince squarer clientele of how their product swung with the times (and there was a lot of swinging going on within the pages of Toronto Life's first half-decade). The pair on the right appears to be part of a Velvet Underground-style band—he with Sterling Morrison/Andy Warhol pockmarked skin,......

This is pretty much the most amazing news tip that we've ever received. From an anonymous reader:David Miller was at a press conference at the Steamwhistle Brewery today. There were a couple drunk bums there and at one point, they got mad at the mayor and threw beef jerky at him. What a...jerky...thing to do. Maybe they had beef with the mayor. UPDATE (May 24, 5:00 p.m.): The Post has some more details (thanks......

If the premise of the headline is appealing to you, you should probably be coming out for the Toronto The Good party on Tuesday night. Spacing Magazine, E.R.A. Architects, [murmur], the Toronto Society of Architects, and Wireless Toronto have teamed up for the third annual TTG party to celebrate the Festival of Architecture and Design. We went to the 2006 edition, and it was the single most fun event we attended all of last......

Last summer, Clear Channel Outdoor threatened to sue the Toronto Public Space Committee; last week Astral Media Outdoor threatened to sue Rami Tabello and his IllegalSigns.ca. That left one bidder for the "street furniture" contract with a relatively fuck-up-free slate. "Some people are blessed with intelligence; some people are blessed with good looks; others, with personality," Tabello wrote on Wednesday. "Then there's Nick Arakgi of CBS Outdoor. He's blessed with having competitors that are......

Yesterday the City of Toronto unveiled the designs submitted for the "Coordinated Street Furniture Program," its plan to grant a billboard company a twenty-year monopoly on providing and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, benches, and other items for Toronto’s sidewalks. The "renderings" have been posted on the City website as epic PDFs, but our friend Joe Clark has also extracted the images from the PDFs and posted them to his Flickr account for convenient......

Howard Moscoe proposes a licensing fee or tax on temporary downtown parking lots with the revenue directed towards building more commuter parking lots at public transit hubs. Moscoe argues that this would induce more people to take transit and encourage temporary lots to be redeveloped more quickly. Iranian refugee Zahra Kamalfar and her two children arrived in Vancouver yesterday after spending 10 months stuck in an airport terminal in Moscow. Everything you ever wanted......