Even on a street as gaudy, inconsistent, and ugly as Yonge, the Brass Rail has always felt out of place. Bordered by Ginger on one side and Kitchen Stuff Plus on the other, the building's façade eschews subtlety: unflattering snapshots of women in bikinis––the focus squarely on breasts and torsos––cover the exterior of the building, while an LED marquee scrolls the latest club news past (there's always something about "Porn Star Nikki Benz"), 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. Toronto is a city full of great venues and great people helping to put on great shows. Sure, we're......

In celebration of 60 years and counting for the local, legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Joel Plaskett Emergency will be performing six consecutive shows this week beginning Monday, each day playing in chronological order an album in their discography of full-lengths. After seeing its days as a blacksmith shop, a strip club, and of course the host of some of the most legendary first time Toronto performances including Willie Nelson, The Talking Heads, and Neutral Milk Hotel,......

When thrashy experimental punks Quebexico called it a day earlier this year, angry, drunken, often-bearded fans across the country had a good reason to get more angry, more drunk, and grow larger beards. Thankfully, the band's offspring is hitting the same musical highs in the same aggressively DIY manner. TEENANGER, comprised of the 3/4ths of Quebexico that lived in Toronto (Ottawa-based guitarist Davey now plays in the also-awesome Million Dollar Marxists), is a little......

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of......

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......

Is it still shocking if you're not surprised? It's been revealed that former police chief Julian Fantino's special task force on police misconduct was most likely formed only to avoid a full-scale public inquiry. It's all spelled out in a 2001 report that's being labeled "a blueprint for how to conceal from the public the malfeasance and the corruption that had been going on in the [Toronto police service]." Golly. Another report confirms that neighborhood......

The AGO’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre has the largest public collection of Henry Moore pieces in the world. Although Large Two Forms, the Henry Moore sculpture that was at the corner of Dundas and McCaul, has been temporarily removed due to the AGO Transformation, the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre remains intact throughout the construction. Unfortunately, the room with the Moore pieces has undergone its own transformation as part of Wallworks, which features artists’ work on......

The province has given municipalities the power to set closing time for bars. Toronto even gets the power to add additional taxes to booze. The province might even give this power to other municipalities if it works well in Toronto. Was there a link between the man who took a shot at police in Etobicoke yesterday and a series of recent sexual assaults? Council wants to make it illegal to harm law-enforcement animals. The law......

Pants off, dance off. Indie exotic dancers (as opposed to exotic indie dancers) have probably been around for a while (didn't Nathalie Portman play one in Closer?), but it's still interesting to hear that dancers at the North Toronto boutique erotique Mystique Lounge are now entertaining to the sounds of Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand. (Not all independent artists per se, but still falling under that catch-all phrase, "indie") And it's not Mystique......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

Nathan Sellyn makes us want to invent a new word: a mixture of jealousy and intense admiration (jealoumiration, admilousy?). We don't think there's a word like this in English and Torontoist sadly doesn't have his German-English dictionary handy. So first the jealousy part. Sellyn is 22, just recently published his first collection of short stories Indigenous Beasts with Raincoast Books and he was mentored by American literary giant Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton. But we......

Kevin Drew, the braintrust behind Canada's premiere art-rock collective-typ band, is now trying his hand at travel writing. But instead of selling a blurb on Ft Lauderdale to Maclean's or something of that ilk, the easy-on-the-eyes singer went to Silver Spring, Maryland to sell articles about Toronto. For Harp Magazine, a U.S. music magazine, Drew wrote a quick-hits, some nonsense guide to Toronto. He highlights Rotate This, a bar that's been closed for some time,......

Ah lad lit, publishers trying to cash in on the success of “chick lit” writers like Helen Fielding, Candace Bushnell and Sophie Kinsella tried to create a the genre over the last couple of years. Thankfully it died a quick (and hopefully painful) death. Reasons for lad lit’s sudden demise are many. Market numbers point out that men make up a very small number of novel readers (about 20% in the US). Laura Miller, writing......