Hey there, arty partygoers. Where will you be this Thursday, May 22? At the Powerplant's annual fundraiser, Powerball 10: Decadence (231 Queens Quay West), or Gallery TPW's D-List Ball at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West)? One party is for fashionable media yuppies and their wealthy aunties, the other is for Queen West art scenesters. One is for people who collect art to diversify their investment portfolios, the other is for people whose......

Oh, the seemingly endless toil and frustration of being an underpublished and underappreciated writer. There's the mailbox full of polite, predictable rejections and the depressing rite of passage otherwise known as "open mic night." When you finally emerge from it all, it's certainly time to rejoice. Thankfully Pages Books & Magazines’ This Is Not A Reading Series has stepped up to celebrate some of the lesser-known but soon-to-be-well-known players in Toronto’s vibrant literary scene.......

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......

Ok, so we're starting to get the message that we need to act on this whole "we're killing the planet" thing, and fast. But amongst all the noise about how much trouble we've gotten ourselves into, it's sometimes hard to hear the solutions and see the positive ideas. Enter GreenTOpia, the third installment in Coach House Books' uTOpia series, which is being released at a party this weekend into our eagerly outstretched arms. As we......

Anyone who grew up in Toronto has been on at least one school field trip to historic Fort York. You've smelled the horseshit, eaten the biscuits, and probably watched some corny performance by someone in a costume telling you how things used to be in the olden days. So it might be tempting to dismiss Crate Productions' new play The Fort at York as an educational play, or worse, historical reenactment. This would be......

As the humidity has dropped off considerably, those craving the oh-so-far-away sweltering days of summer may want to head out to The Gladstone this evening for another Turning Point session. This time, chief conductor A Man Called Warwick will be spinning tunes all by his lonesome on a solo five hour set of MADNESS. Doors open at 10 and the entry is $10. And as usual, get there early to avoid the lineup.......

A funny thing happened near the end of the short play "The Card Trick" last afternoon in the second variation of The Gladstone Variations. The action moved outside to the alley behind the hotel and the audience was told to stand in a driveway next to the hotel's back entrance to watch the action unfold. Unfortunately, there was an humongous Jeep parked in the driveway; the kind where the alarm goes off not because......

The Gladstone Variations is taking the Fringe by storm. And with good reason. The 90-minute piece is by Convergence Theatre, who were the team behind last year's fantastic Autoshow, which was actually a collection of 7 ten-minute plays by different playwrights performed in and around the parking lot at Royal St. George's. The Gladstone Variations is actually more ambitious and, amazingly, even more successful. The piece is made up of four short plays by......

Tonight, The Fifteenth Annual Scream Literary Festival launches its six-day festival with readings by Dennis Lee and Souvankham Thammavongsa at The Gladstone Ballroom. Performances by George Elliot Clarke, and robots belonging to Shapour Shahidi are also promised, and it sounds like audience members are invited to make art with weird, old science textbooks. This year's festival “considers the strange alchemy of poetry and science, through readings, panels, and performances.” On July 9th, the festival......

If last week’s key word on the literary scene was “big,” as in prizes, galas, festivals, sold-out readings, visiting writers, and BookExpo, we get back to normal-ish this week. In fact, we’ve not had such a low-key stretch since March. Fear not. The Scream Literary Festival is adding more information to their website every week. On July 3rd, the festival kicks off with readings by Dennis Lee and Souvankham Thammavongsa, films by Shapour Shahidi, and......

Spring launch season slows this week, but finishes strongly with new poetry collections by national treasures bill bissett and David McFadden. Tomorrow night, help David celebrate his Selected Poems: Why Are You So Sad?, edited and introduced by Stuart Ross. Here’s Stuart, from the intro: "David's poetry, like David, is social. It's interested in people, and in trees, squirrels, dogs, and oceans. It's also social in that it wants to be read, and it......

On your mark, get set, go register for Run The ROM! The 5km run is scheduled for May 12 and it’s the latest in the Run With Art series from The Movement Movement. The main movers of The Movement Movement, dancer/choreographer Jenn Goodwin and artist/curator Jessica Rose, are inviting the public to run laps of the museum for public art’s sake. You could be running through Ancient Peru or perhaps Heaven or Hell. Sounds exotic!......

As I waited in line for Last Call At The Gladstone Hotel Saturday afternoon, bartenders from the Gladstone Hotel were behind me. "It makes us look bad, I hear," they were saying. "Like, not us personally, but the hotel. Real bad." If you are a recent transplant to Toronto, or just barely over the drinking age, then you probably had no idea that the Gladstone was once a cockroach infested, drug-addled, festering slum that was......

The good news: tonight, there are three great literary events happening in our fair city. The bad news: you’re going to have to choose. Mark Truscott’s Test Reading Series presents Reg Johanson and Jordan Scott at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art (37 Lisgar Street) tonight at 7:30 p.m. Reg Johanson has traveled from East Vancouver for tonight’s performance. His first book, Courage, My Love was published by Line Books last year. Reg’s critical......

If you're the creative type who's looking for a night out on the town, head over to the Gladstone tomorrow for the SpeakEasy Comic Book Show. For one night only, local comic artists will be taking over the second floor of everyone's favourite arts-promoting hotel (you heard us, Drake) to show off their skills. Toronto has one of the biggest and best indie comics scenes in North America, so it should be quite the party.......

Perhaps you can best describe it as a scavenger hunt with a lot of creative freedom. Within a 24 hour period, amateur and professional photographers alike were given a roll of 35mm film with only 12 frames to capture their interpretations of 12 secret themes for the 4th Toronto Photography Marathon. Having already taken place on February 17, final shots submitted by participants will be displayed at The Gladstone (1214 Queen St. West) for your......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! This past weekend The Gladstone Hotel held it's 4th annual Come Up To My Room Exhibition, and Fotograf416 was there to capture the event in all it's unique glory. The twelve rooms on the second floor were all transformed......

Toronto is one of the most important centres of African music outside of Africa itself, according to cultural heritage organization Music Africa. Besides pointing out that Toronto has more African music on the radio than any other North American city and hosts the largest annual music festival of its kind (Afrofest), the site also has these flattering words to say: Probably the most remarkable development over these last few years is how groups have combined......

Ahh yes. One last Turning Point session for 2006. Join A Man Called Warwick and scores of attractive, energetic and soulful peoples for a night of fun and adventure, or maybe just dancing. It's at The Gladstone this Saturday Dec 9th (tomorrow night) and you know it's going to be busy so show up before 11 to make sure you get in.......

Before embarking on your Nuit Blanche evening, take a few minutes to load up your iPod. Artist Lewis Kaye has put together a series of MP3s intended to act as your audio companion for the night. Each track is tailored to a specific Nuit Blanche event. Download the audio files here. Here are our five "must see" events from Nuit Blanche's Zone C. This area runs in a line along Queen West West, between Trinity-Bellwoods......

Everyone recovered from V-Fest yet? No? What's wrong with you? Better take your vitamins and Red Bull then, because there's a lot going on this week. Notably, Ms. Emily Haines will be playing four (that's right, 4!) shows in a span of three days (incl. V-Fest), so if you think you're tired... If this isn't enough music for one week and you know of other shows, as always, we want to hear about it......

Is it any wonder that The Gladstone Hotel has become the "it spot" du jour? With all the events they seem to pack into their space one wonders if the guests become part of the installations at some point. Going on this weekend on the 2nd floor is OBEJCToronto "an artist presented annual exposition of contemporary objects from the fields of craft, art and design". This won't be your typical art fair macaroni art,......

Rump-shakin' beats will abound at tonight's Metro Desi mix at The Gladstone. It's a benefit for INSIG - the International Nursing Student Group at U of T's Fac of Nursing, but it'll also benefit the parts of your body that you didn't know where capable of moving, much less moving in time to music. DJ Amita of Besharam and CKLN's Masala Mixx promise to 'help us break dance desi-style into March Break!' They also invite......