Plagued by complaints, the City of Toronto has finally gotten around to ticketing some homeowners who don't clear the snow in front of their property. A city spokesperson said they prefer not to send out inspectors in the winter because it's so difficult to get around. Anxious to cement a reputation for self-serving indifference to the public interest, more than 99% of TTC workers have voted more to reject their most recent contract offer.......

Gas prices in Toronto are at $1.09 or more a litre today, reflecting all-time record oil prices of over US$108 per barrel. For all our driving readers, it might cheer you up to consider that it's still cheaper to fill up your car with gas than say, orange juice or Diet Pepsi. By the way, if you do decide to go with orange juice, remember that the pulp-free kind is less likely to gum up......

Premier Dalton McGuinty has fired off a whiny letter to the PM complaining about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's public criticism of Ontario and its tax laws. Flaherty, who apparently counts all time lost when he's not psychologically bitch-slapping his governmental inferiors, responded by calling McGuinty a "big stupid crybaby." Time to start prying out grandma's fillings—the price of gold hit a record high of US$984.95 an ounce in London this morning, and experts predict......

Today’s release on Xbox Live Arcade is Trigger Heart Exelica, an originally Japan-only Dreamcast "bullet hell" vertically scrolling shooter, and if that sentence doesn’t make any sense to you whatsoever, that’s totally fine. You see, we’re actually here to mention last week’s Xbox Live Arcade release, N+. It's based on N, the freeware game sensation developed by Toronto independent game developers Metanet Software, but the main difference is that you have to own a......

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Each Sunday, the editors of every site—from LAist to Londonist—choose their most interesting article, a list which is compiled into the network-wide feature Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse. Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show––it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovered that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates in China has risen to 1,798 Yuan (or US$251).SFist welcomed in......

In the most important news story of the day, two people have been arrested in the mysterious case of Huckleberry, the dog who vanished from outside a Yonge Street bakery and was returned after his owner offered a $15,000 reward. Police haven't said whether they believe Huckleberry was in on the caper. Oil prices closed yesterday at over US$100 a barrel yesterday, spooking financial markets. And my mom said I was crazy for keeping......

A brief stint of Radiohead concert rumours spread like wildfires last week. Ticketmaster had announced that the band would play two shows on May 26 and 27 at the Air Canada Centre, but mentioned neither the date for the tickets to go on sale nor the price of the tickets themselves—the announcement was quickly removed from the site. This is not the first time Ticketmaster has announced a Radiohead show that did not exist, and......

Next Saturday, Toronto Poetry Slam brings you the last slam of the season, with some of the city’s brightest and wordiest battling it out for the last remaining place in the semi finals. Finalists will have a shot at the 2008 Toronto Poetry Slam Team, which competes at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the US National Poetry Slam (this year to be held in Madison, Wisconsin). This month’s event also features a guest......

Attention basement dwellers: on Wednesday, February 6, OCAD is hosting a free presentation by SWEAT, a collaboration of game designers, programmers, and artists dedicated to bringing socially aware video games to the general public. SWEAT has already produced games like Crosser, a Frogger-esque game about illegal crossing at the US/Mexico border, and is currently developing Juan & the Beanstalk, a game about the societal effects of illegal drug production in Colombia. The presentation will......

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly......

Gas prices are up three cents a litre as the price of oil crossed the psychological threshold of US$100 a barrel for the first time ever. Upon hearing the news, Stephen Harper flew to the Alberta oil sands and gave a stirring speech about how victory would soon be his, whereupon he was roundly cheered by all the hosts of Mordor. A low-level mobster claims that in 1974 he was tasked with assassinating Pierre......

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. Despite the loonie's heroic achievement this year, there was still an unpalatable flip-side to its gratifying performance for many......

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. Many Annex-dwellers rejoiced last December when BMV opened its fabulous new Bloor Street location, and the discount book warehouse......

Even though Moss Park dance punk duo MSTRKRFT ">believe that, as dance music artists, "there's much better places for us to be," (this is said right at the 4:16 mark, of all times) Toronto's other homegrown house producers have taken the entire electro world by storm in the last few months. One needs only to point one's browser to the website Beatport, which has quickly become the DJ world's number one website for downloading......

The good folks at TiVo have decided that now would be the optimum time to unleash their initially-much-talked-about-but-not-so-much-talked-about-anymore product on Canadians, a mere eight years after its release to the U.S. and U.K. markets. (Way to capitalize on a phenomenon, fellas!) TiVo can be credited––at least according to Canada.com––with "making TV watching less of a laborious task," which is a relative understatement considering how exhausting sitting through commercials can be to the average viewer. Don't......

Dalton McGuinty's throne speech will focus on poverty and climate change. They were going to focus on Desperate Housewives, but the writer's strike got in the way. If you wanted to know more about the phony bomb scare last night at the ROM, Torontoist has the goods right here. Buy all our playsets and toys! Opposition rebels against Tory climate change proposals. Harper says that the Commonwealth's climate change plan would have meant a doubling......

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure......

These days, everyone and their grandmother has a celebrity gossip blog. Perez Hilton became a millionaire by outing Lance Bass and defacing paparazzi photos, while TMZ.com (named for the Thirty Mile Zone surrounding Hollywood) came out of nowhere in 2005 and almost instantaneously became the top site to see celebrities behaving badly. Sassafraz may be the closest we have to The Ivy, yet it's not stocked with a phalanx of paps, and celebrities can usually......

This weekend, Toronto will be a rockin' city, as the 2007 World Rock Paper Scissors Championships cut into town. The game of Rock Paper Scissors has been settling scores on playgrounds since long before little brothers came into existence. In fact, some say it originates back to the year 200 BC in Japan, where it was referred to as "Jan-Ken." Others say it started as an early Scandinavian pastime, while others trace it back......

Photo by smlgphotos. Beware, Toronto. The Celebrities walk among us. There are only three days left before the horde returns to their L.A. mansions and the pages of US Magazine, so enjoy them while they're in town. We're featuring the best celeb photos from our Flickr Pool in our ongoing coverage of TIFF 2007.......

The price of oil scaled new heights yesterday, climbing up over $80 US for the first time ever. That's good news if you're an oil company, but bad news if you're a regular folk who likes to go places, or do things, or eat stuff. McDonald's Canada is going upscale. Influenced by popular chains such as Starbucks, the fast-food giant will renovate its restaurants to make them more "comfortable," creating cosiness with leather chairs,......

Environment Canada reports that this has been the driest summer in fifty years for Toronto, with the city only receiving around half of its usual rainfall. Short-term predictions suggest that fall will be equally dry, with the the long-range forecast calling for global warming followed by drought, famine, plague and societal collapse. Sounds like great picnic weather! Provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton has said that, if elected, he will roll back college and university......

The Ontario government will spend around $27 billion on nuclear power between now and 2025 in a bid to keep the lights on in the province. If history is any indicator, the nuke plans will be characterized by inefficiencies, unanticipated delays,and massive cost overruns, but will at least ensure that future generations have access to a secure supply of radioactive waste. 14 teens have been arrested in a series of violent muggings in Toronto's......

Stock market volatility continued yesterday, with the TSX index adding a 194 point drop to a loss of about 10% in the last month. A spokesman for the Global Society of Plutocrats said that in spite of the burgeoning financial crisis, everything remains fine for the super-rich. Toronto City Councillor Giorgio Mammoiliti is still planning on taking a $5000 trip to a zoo conference in Budapest next week in spite of a City Hall ban......

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......

Civil engineers say that Ontario bridges are at risk. Short, short version: we're not in as bad shape as the Americans on this front, but we need more strenuous testing of existing bridges since most of ours were built in the 1960s and have expected design lives of about fifty years, so we're entering the beginnings of a replacement cycle. Ontario to distribute HPV vaccines to girls in grade 8 beginning this fall. Small-c conservative......

It's been said that the geeks shall inherit the Earth, and a pair of Ontario high school students are doing it with zero emissions. Behold the Tango—a compact, electric motorcycle that could be the future of motorized solo transportation. Introduced at this year's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (IISEF) in Albuquerque, Oakville's Ben Gulak and Hamilton's Jason Morrow based their invention on the science behind the Segway. The bike features two wheels mounted......

Operating a public transit system is a difficult job, continually plagued by budget cuts, aging infrastructure and rampant customer dissatisfaction. We've always been fans of GO Transit, however, which has generally proven to be clean and reliable despite being operated by the Government of Ontario (hence, the acronym "GO"). When the 2005-06 provincial budget was announced and included more than $300 million in funding for GO's operating and capital costs, transit enthusiasts were ecstatic.......

Vancouver Central Public Library photo by lindn. Bad Buildings has always looked around this town of ours and bemoaned its lack of architectural cojones. For the most part, our buildings are safe, functional and dull (Four Seasons Centre, we're looking at you). Now and again, though, we've been graced (or cursed) with real bursts of boldness—risky designs that challenge the monotone drabness that pervades our built environment. The question is, though, is it enough......

Though it is a rare sighting in Toronto, the luminous body pictured on the left is not Joel Black’s UFO. It’s a chandelier by award-winning glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. Originally from Tacoma, Washington, Chihuly is a highly prolific artist known for massive architectural installations, some of which exceed nine metres in length. Chihuly’s works are found in over 200 museum exhibitions around the world including in the Distillery District’s Sandra Ainsley Gallery, where his motley......