On Friday night at 10:30, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Art Attack will "descend on the streets to re-imagine bus shelters as sensational structures of snow," converting the two ad-adorned boxes at Queen and Jones into something a little more whimsical. Transit shelters, like garbage bins, are giant heaps of private property littered throughout the sidewalks and roads of our city. And, most of the time, they serve a purpose. But every now and......

Kincardine-born, Mississauga-bred, Toronto-based, and Berlin-bound, Joel Gibb is the musical and managerial head of The Hidden Cameras, the fantastic and always well-populated music collective whose members have included Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), Reg Vermue (Gentlemen Reg), Laura Barrett, Maggie MacDonald (Republic of Safety), Dave Meslin (founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee), Bob Wiseman, Steve Kado (founder of Blocks Recording Club, member of Barcelona Pavilion and Ninja High School), Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say......

They're in cabs, ATMs, and the Entertainment District, and they're about to be in all TTC vehicles. By next June, every one of the TTC's 1.5 million daily riders will be photographed multiple times over their journey. A part of the TTC's $18-million security plan, the commission will install up to 12,000 cameras throughout the system—in key station areas and on streetcars, buses, and subways. The intention is to provide police with evidence if......

Sunday afternoon is the Toronto Public Space Committee's third annual Human River Walk, a trek along the course of the buried Garrison Creek, from Christie Pits to Fort York in a parade of blue, symbolically bringing the river back above ground for one beautiful afternoon. Along the route, there will be music, performances, and stories about the history of the creek, the neighbourhoods, the trees, and Toronto's stormy relationship with its water. But, above......

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable. So instead they bring you noncorporatized Not Blanche, "a pwyc all-night public-space thing," straight outta the Brunswick Theatre from 11:00 p.m. Saturday through 3:00......

When Monkey Warfare premiered at TIFF last year, Torontoist's Mathew Kumar gave it a less-than-positive review. (Its director and star were none too pleased.) When it opened at the Royal in December, however, I commented, "I personally love Monkey Warfare....I've been urging everyone I know to see it; the film fills me with a glee that makes me want to shout its title from the rooftops....On a number of levels, the film is an......

Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks......

When it premiered at TIFF last year, Radiant City, ostensibly a documentary about urban sprawl, stirred up a bit of controversy. Its portrayal of the soul-rotting effects of the suburban environment on one aggressively average family was met with a variety of bemused reactions, some positive, others less so. (End of Suburbia this wasn't.) Torontoist's Mathew Kumar, for example, savaged it in his spoiler-happy review. But three months later a panel of "filmmakers, festival......

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......

"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......

From mid-September through year-end, all City Community Centres will be closed on Mondays. Skating rinks won't open until January. Fewer potholes will be repaired. Snow won't be cleared unless there is at least 15 cm of it (the current minimum is 8 cm). New materials from Public Health will only be available in English. Welcome to the new Toronto, where you get what you (and the provincial and federal governments) pay for—or won't get what......

On the west side of Dufferin Street, just south of Bloor, is a Wal-Mart. It is (currently) the only one in the former City of Toronto. On the other side of Dufferin is Dufferin Grove Park. It is the very antithesis of Wal-Mart, a collective community creation that is an exemplar of neighbourhood engagement—public space of, by, and for the people. Tonight, the Toronto Public Space Committee and Friends of Dufferin Grove Park invite......

Lynsey Kissane, the project coordinator of Evergreen at the Brick Works, sent Torontoist the above photo, telling us "I have seen this truck-vertisement around a lot and don't think the blatant irony would be lost on anyone." Except, of course, the person responsible. From the advertised website: Vision-Adz Media is a Canadian mobile advertising company that is committed to being the dominant and most effective mobile advertising company in Canada. [...] Being a mobile-based......

Torontoist has been saying for years that City Council provides better bang for your buck than any other piece of live entertainment in this city. At absolutely no cost (unless you count, you know, taxes), you can attend this extravaganza that combines the spectacle and epic scale of a mega-musical with the manic energy of a really good Fringe show. Each run lasts two consecutive days a month but is often held over to......

The Toronto Public Space Committee last night Art Attacked every single Astral pillar in the city. Photos are here and here, with more to come. The revulsion with which Torontonians responded to last week's sudden advertising invasion got us wondering: If that's how the public reacted to forty street-level ad structures in place for two days, how will people feel about the one hundred twenty new "info pillars" that will be in place for......

On Monday and Tuesday nights, the Toronto Public Space Committee will be holding its third Art Attack event. The first, in 2002, had people meet up at the Tranzac to make art and then tape it over outdoor advertisements in the Annex. Last summer, the art-making took place at the Gladstone Hotel and the ad-jamming occurred mostly in the West Queen West area (with one excursion to King and Strachan to hit the Monster......

Torontoist has no over-arching editorial stances. We are not pro-advertising, or anti-advertising; we are not pro-graffitti, or anti-graffiti; we are not pro-corporation, or anti-corporation. Individual writers may have stances, but we, as a shared entity and a collective, do not, and that distinction between individual and group is an important one. No one person, the editors included, represent the entirety of our staff, nor is there any one "Torontoist Writer" mould that our staff fits......

A source at City Hall recently warned that the ONESTOP Media Group, which operates the advertising screens on TTC station platforms, will soon make another play to put video ads inside subway cars (the Toronto Public Space Committee successfully warded off their last attempt). The new cars the TTC has ordered will have video displays, anyway (see after the jump), but as of yet there are no plans for them to be used for......

If you remember the "handing over" of Iraq to Iraqi authorities by the US-led coalition a few seasons ago, you may recall that, in order to prevent terrorist attacks, the ceremony was performed a day early. Yup, W, you sure pulled a fast one on them. Well, we couldn't help but draw the mental parallel between that auspicious day and the rolling-out of new police cameras three days ahead of schedule, perhaps to zigzag......

After evaluating the privately-contracted submissions from the City of Toronto's Co-ordinated Street Furniture Program, the design jury has awarded the contract to Astral Media Outdoor. Astral gained some notorious bad press recently when they threatened to sue IllegalSigns.ca and proprietor Rami Tabello for accusations that the advertising behemoth is refusing to remove illegally-retained billboards around the city. This also upsets the Toronto Public Space Committee, who say that the street furniture program will actually......

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......

A little less than two years ago, Dave Meslin sat before the Toronto Public Space Committee and said, "Harmonization could be the best or the worst thing we have ever seen." Riding high on a series of victories for public space in Toronto, the radically optimistic committee sincerely believed that harmonization might spell the end of advertising on street furniture. As this fateful day has approached, however, it is clear the proposal is leaning......

In yet another show of contempt for the residents of Toronto, Transportation Services and "Clean and Beautiful City" staff have opted to put the models of the City’s proposed street furniture on display to the public for one day only; they will be visible in the City Hall rotunda from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, April 4. This is a project that will determine the look and feel of all of Toronto......

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......

Last month, we announced the finalists for the Nathan Phillips Square redesign competition, naming Plant Architect with Shore Tilbe Irwin as our pick. We liked the proposal's subtlety and forward-thinking environmental slant, as well as nods to elements of Revell's original plans that were never realized. Tonight, the competition jury committee agreed with us and revealed Plant/STI's entry as the winning proposal. Torontoist writer and Toronto Public Space Committee member Jonathan Goldsbie attended the......

Last week, Matthew Blackett quietly announced that his comic m@b would be taking an early retirement after four years of syndication in Eye Weekly. "I'm still happy with m@b", he writes, "[but] I've lost the energy to think about it. The spark of inspiration of when I saw someone do something insane, or say something off-kilter, has dulled and rarely goes off these days. I'd rather play Tetris on my cell phone that try to......

Tonight, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Streets to Screens series wraps up with a screening of Ron Mann's Rochdale College doc Dream Tower: "Rochdale College was one of the most controversial experiments ever to have taken place in Canada. Set up as a combined free university and student residence, the eighteen-storey building at the southeastern corner of Bloor & Huron Streets in downtown Toronto opened in the fall of 1968 – at the height of......

Tonight, the Toronto Public Space Committee presents the fifth of six films screening at the Bloor Cinema as part of its ongoing Streets to Screens fundraising film series (which also includes monthly screenings of public space-themed NFB shorts at the Toronto Free Gallery). The theme of the evening is Workspace: Public Space, and the feature presentation is the Toronto premiere of Robin and Rory Muir's Downtown Locals, a documentary following a year in the lives......

The subject on everyone's mind at Spacing this morning is Regent Park's revitalization project. Our favourite public space newswire will be featuring a series of documentaries on YouTube called Regent Park TV, a project by the Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre. The Toronto Public Space Committee will be screening another series on Regent Park at the Toronto Free Gallery on Thursday, December 14 @ 7:30. "You better be going to school this......

Did David Miller do it for you the past three years? Did Jane Pitfield plagiarize your heart? Or did Kevin Clarke shout his way into yours? And what of the 30-odd other mayoral candidates, and that whole "choosing a city councillor" thing? Well, after months of waiting, months of hype, and months of just wanting to get the whole mess over with, you finally get to vote. But what if you haven't chosen? For......