It seems there is a sort of subtle resentment for pants growing in popular culture. Although Improv Everywhere has been organizing their annual No Pants Subway Ride in New York for seven years, only recently has the tradition really taken hold in cities around the world. This past weekend, Toronto, along with Adelaide, Australia, New York, San Francisco, and a bunch of American cities you probably aren't interested in hearing about, joined Improv Everywhere......

In case you were wondering, it's probably not a great idea to be hanging out in the entertainment district at 3:15 a.m. Especially if you're in a luxury SUV. And especially especially if you've got a ponytail. In February of 2006, Toronto police officers arrested Irshad Ahmed and Omar Betty for failure to stop, failure to comply, and obstructing police. Their trial is currently being conducted at Old City Hall, and some interesting evidence......

Queen Elizabeth II––who you will recall is our Head of State and yet still won't pony up to fix the TTC ––- has had her annual Christmas address posted on YouTube this year. The 81-year-old monarch gives a dignified formal message about her thoughts on the past year and hopes for the future before stripping to bra and panties and lip-syncing to Nellie Furtado's "Promiscuous." Stephen Harper made a perplexing statement on immigration, suggesting......

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has, as he put it to Torontoist in a phone interview earlier today, "seen better days." The Integrated Media OCAD student and his final project for his advanced video class are the direct cause––intended or not––for yesterday's bomb scare at the Royal Ontario Museum, and, a day later, Jonsson is now suspended from OCAD and is wanted for questioning by police. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades pieces (the most famous of......

Torontoist has always kept an eye on The Star. Now, it seems, they're keeping an eye on us. Several weeks ago, David Topping launched DiManno Watch, a new column where articles by loudmouth Star columnist Rosie DiManno are rated on a scale of one to six disembodied DiManno heads. Our dislike of Rosie's writing is not a new thing: we've been DiManno critics for ages. In last Tuesday's news roundup, we followed up on......

Poor OCAP. They can't even complain about the police watching them without the police watching them. At noon on Wednesday, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty held a press conference (not a rally or an action or a march but a press conference) at the northeast corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, and there was about one police officer for each person in attendance (around twenty). As eight or so cops casually observed the conference from......

Police are investigating a mysterious purple liquid found seeping around the Don River. When asked for comment, the police stated that they have all their men rolling around in the goo in the hopes that it's radioactive and gives them all superpowers. A man is dead after a shooting near Broadview and Dundas. And an Etobicoke teen is dead after being hit by a car in a parking lot. Let's stop the hate, shall......

Election day is tomorrow, which provides a good opportunity to look back at how election ads were handled in the past. Today's selections come from the 1955 campaign, which Premier Leslie Frost's Progressive Conservatives won in a landslide on June 9th (83 PC, 11 Liberal, 3 CCF, 1 "PC Independent"). The "Big Blue Machine" was firmly entrenched, remaining in power for the next 30 years. York Centre was a new riding for the 1955......

When the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario published its guidelines for the use of video surveillance cameras in public places back in October 2001 [.PDF], it summarized that institutions considering their use "must balance the benefits of video surveillance to the public against an individual’s right to be free of unwarranted intrusion into his or her life. Pervasive, routine and random surveillance of ordinary, lawful public activities interferes with an individual’s privacy." As......

Earlier this evening, The Star reported on what might somehow rank as one of the strangest videos on YouTube. Recorded on Monday afternoon at the protests in Montebello, the video shows the tail end of a confrontation between Dave Coles (president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and three masked men who seem hell-bent on rilling up him, his fellow protestors ("old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers"), and the line of riot-ready police.......

"Oh my God, my blow-up doll has been brutally murdered!" shrieked the young woman from the southeast corner of John and Richmond as she clutched her fake-blood-soaked inflatable companion. "My only friend, and someone brutally shot her! The horror! Why hasn't the police security camera done anything about it?!" Early Saturday afternoon, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Cameras in Public Spaces campaign performed this bit of street theatre in the Entertainment District. It was......

In a recent jaunt to London (England), Torontoist saw colours on the road. No, these weren't hallucinations brought on by too much ale at the local pub. The colours were those of lanes on the street: red for public transit vehicles and green for bikes. (And in case you're wondering, bikes can use the public transit lanes.) The message? If you're in a car, stay out of them. Toronto already has bike and transit lanes,......

NASA is embarrassed after a Toronto man found an error in their climate reporting. The new data mean that the warmest year on record in the US was 1934, not 1998, and skeptics have seized on the story as proof that the whole "global warming" thing is a hoax. Upon hearing the news, the newly navigable passage through the Arctic Ocean immediately refroze. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is shuffling his cabinet. The move will......

Toronto police chief says it's not right to scare the public by suggesting spending cuts to the police force. Also, the garbage commissioner says it's not right to scare the public by suggesting spending cuts to public sanitation and the head of Parks and Rec says it's not right to scare the public by suggesting spending cuts to public lawnmowing. Cast finalized for Dirty Dancing, the musical. Very soon, Torontonians will thrill to performances......

Sunburned, gaunt and greviously underslept, the average Torontonian party-goer is in rough shape this week after the World Electronic Music Festival, or WEMF 2007 this past weekend. To nobody's surprise, WEMF isn't dead, international trance DJ Ryan "OS/2" Kruger isn't retiring and the image of thousands of ravers from the city camping in an Ontario field for three days is seemingly burned into Toronto's collective tube. It is estimated that over 5,500 people, mostly......

Chicago prosecutors expected to ask that the book be thrown at Conrad Black. HA HA HA ROT IN JAIL YOU UNKIND GENTLEMAN [Needless to say, the previous two words originally read...uh...differently. They were swears!—Ed.]. Sorry, that was not very objective. Please amend the previous sentence to read "hee hee hee rot in jail you freaking aardvark." In other news, he may also go bankrupt, making this officially the best news story of the year so......

To borrow a line from an old Saturday Night Live parody of Talking Heads frontman David Byrne's fashion sense, you may ask yourself "why such a big suit?" Village by the Grange opened on McCaul St in the mid-1970s as a mixture of residential and retail spaces. Any secrets the complex held by the time this ad appeared were hidden in each model's shoulder or loose jacket. The toll of those stuck in narrow......

Atomic Vaudeville's Legoland is an absolute delight from beginning to end; a perfect Fringe experience. If you see only one of the 140 show in this year's Fringe, see this. Celine Stubel and Amitai Marmorstein play, respectively, Penny and Ezra Lamb, two bizarre teenaged siblings with a completely insane story to tell about drug trafficking and popstars. Often, they will use toys or puppets for clarification. Penny and Ezra were both homeschooled by their......

Hot on the heels of our review of the National Post's new Posted Toronto blog, they've reported that Toronto icon and terrifier-of-tourists Zanta, né David Zancai, is leaving. Zancai is well-known to downtown residents for doing pushups in his Santa hat, and his bizarre "Yes! Yes! Yes!" growl that causes alarm to unfamiliar pedestrians. Zanta has been banned from interacting with the sensitive suits on King Street from Church to Spadina, is prohibited from being......

It's a familiar story: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl breaks boy's heart. Unfortunately for girl, boy is diagnosed with a dependent personality disorder. This is where things get more complicated. Boy argues with girl, and she tries to phone the police. Boy cuts the phone cord and attacks girl. When the police arrive, boy stabs himself in the aorta with a butcher knife. A psychiatric examination reveals that boy has......

The World Naked Bike Ride wants to make a point that there are many things more offensive than a bare bum. The indecent exposure is not to some guy's twig n' berries, but to our polluted environment. On Saturday, Toronto was among 70 cities around the world that took a spin au naturel as a celebration of cycling, a protest against car culture, a comment on pollution, or just to express some exhibitionist tendencies.......

Finally, the OPP got Facebook! Unfortunately, it's not what you think; they're not spending their time friending, poking, and tagging. No, they're up to serious business... they're "fighting parties" in Tillsonburg, Ontario (best known for hosting the 2007 Purina National Dog Show). In an "emerging investigative technique," the police are scouring the profiles of unsuspecting Tillsonburg youths, looking for parties to crash. But don't worry, they don't "object to parties" in general. They're only......

Two arrests have been made in the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners. The two boys, both 17, were allegedly very close friends with Jordan, and even attended this weekend's vigils and had offered condolences to Jordan's mom. Here's hoping that this does not prompt more ignorant white guys to claim that children of single mothers shouldn't be friends. Corporal Matthew McCully's body will be arriving at CFB Trenton today. He will be having......

Yesterday, Environics released the results of a study commissioned by Goodyear Canada about driving attitudes. It found that 74 percent of Canadians hate drivers “who engage in road rage/impolite gestures.” Another 72 percent are angered by motorists who tailgate or follow too closely, who allow their doors to hit the car next to them, or who speed up to block others from passing or changing lanes. Environics' Vice-President of Consumer Research David MacDonald added......

Earlier this evening, at around 6:15 p.m., a big crowd was gathered on the west side of Parliament St., just above Shuter St. An ambulance was being loaded up on the east side. At Shuter, Metro's finest were cordoning off the block with police tape. Just inside the tape, a man in a gray t-shirt sat on the curb, crying and shaking. A woman, dressed in white, was explaining to a friend what had......

A group of airport taxi drivers were ejected from the Toronto council chambers yesterday after a dispute regarding the council's plan to ban taxis that are not registered in Toronto from picking up fares downtown. In related news, city councillors got their class portrait taken. Awwww. More information on the Jane Creba shooting is being revealed as witnesses reluctantly give their statements to the police. It's official: the sale of incandescent lights will be......

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

Each week, Torontoist chooses the most interesting cases from the Toronto Police Service crime blotter. All charges are alleged until proven under law. • An investigation is underway about a man posing as a police officer who is allegedly stealing personal belongings in the Entertainment District. The guy apparently uses imitation police equipment to gain entry into clubs, then steals unattended purses and mobile phones. Real cops are mandated to carry specific identification, which they......

Each week, Torontoist chooses the most interesting cases from the Toronto Police Service crime blotter. All charges are alleged until proven under law. When the police weren't busy trying to manage opening and closing the Gardiner a bunch of times after the Great CN Tower Ice Incident of 2007, they had their hands full with some skeezy characters this week. • The Fraud Squad is in full-effect these days with yet another charity fraud arrest.......

Gas shortages continue to plague Ontario and Quebec and it isn't getting better anytime soon. Hybrid owners laugh manically as the world slowly crumbles around them. Mad Max-style mayhem ensues. Mayor David Miller unveiled his plan to bring a one-cent share of the GST to Toronto. Miller's secret weapon? Green-coloured buttons and posters. Predictably, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty responded with a resounding "no way man." Sources close to the Mayor say he will counter with......