Results tagged “vancouver”

Reader Ian Simpson sent us this photograph, yesterday, of a newly installed billboard for Bud Light at John and Adelaide streets. It reads: "Torontonians aren't cold. Not in August, anyway." The ad, of course, is a direct response to a Coors Light billboard in British Columbia, which announced that that company's beer was "COLDER THAN PEOPLE FROM TORONTO."

Photo by roland.

Photo by JesseK-G from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

You've got less than three weeks to prepare yourself for Earth Hour on Saturday, March 29. That's when people around the world are being encouraged to turn off their lights for one hour to raise awareness about global warming. Toronto was the first Canadian city to sign up for the international event late last year, and has since been joined by most other GTA municipalities, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and many more—close to 50 cities across the country at last count.

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.

If you're like most snow-hating Torontonians, your weekend plans are changing with the weather. Suddenly, the thought of spending Friday night in high heels and club lineups has all the appeal of an ice bath. Forget new outfits or dinner spots, you're looking for new releases instead.

It's hard out there for a scenester these days. So many parties, so many DJs, so many Next Big Things... and so few brain cells to spare. We all know how important it is to like the right stuff, but between finding hot new ways to wear neon headgear (hint: there aren't any) and figuring out which prescription drugs don't mix, who has the mental energy to figure what exactly that stuff is?

Toronto, we are told, is a world-class city. But Toronto is noticeably absent from the list of major urban centres famous for graffiti and street art: New York, Barcelona, San Francisco, Berlin, LA, Melbourne, and London. Even within Canada, smaller cities like Montreal and Vancouver hold a better reputation for graffiti than Toronto.

Torontoist Environment Editor Chris Tindal is currently engaged in a federal by-election campaign. This weekly column is an attempt to offer a "behind the scenes" glimpse into what it's like to be that mysterious Other: a politician.

Last week, Toronto-based advertising agency TAXI announced 15 Below, a new project to coincide with TAXI's fifteenth anniversary that would see the company create, manufacture, and distribute 3,000 coats for homeless people across North America. Designed by TAXI's executive creative director Steve Mykolyn and designer Lida Baday (pictured), the waterproof, windproof, and plentily-pocketed coat serves as a lightweight jacket during not-too-cold weather, can fold into a backpack during decent weather, and—when you fill the pockets up with newspaper—converts into a super-warm jacket that was tested (in a meat locker, no less!) to be effective up to -29° celsius.

While Newmindspace have organized subway parties in Toronto, SkyTrain parties in Vancouver, and métro parties in Montréal, sometimes nothing beats an old-fashioned streetcar party for a beat-bumping, track-turning, three hour party tour of the city. The TTC will rent a streetcar (PCC, CLRV or ALRV) for a minimum of three hours for a pretty steep fee to just about anybody. The customer can request a custom route, like Newmindspace has, that takes advantage of...

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...

City backs away from plan to buy its own sidewalk food carts. And to think, it only took about ten thousand "what the hell is the city doing buying food carts, just let people buy their own damn food carts" comments and articles for the City to get the message! Toronto is getting more responsive every day, it really is.

When New York punks Leftover Crack were denied entry into the country last week (something to do with criminal records), East Vancouver's The Rebel Spell opted not to give up and salvaged the tour, making their way across this fine land in true DIY punk fashion. This weekend finds the band in Toronto, trading a show at all ages mega-complex The Reverb for the way punker Siesta Neveaux. Located at 15 Lower Sherbourne, there isn't a better place in this city to watch some proper, gritty punk rock.

Dual protests are set for tomorrow afternoon in Vancouver and Toronto in an effort to maintain media awareness of the misuse of force by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that led to the death of Robert Dziekanski, captured on video by a witness. The video, since viewed (in its various incarnations) by millions of people, documents a confused and clearly agitated Dziekanski sweating and pacing until a fatal confrontation with four RCMP officers killed the 40-year-old Polish immigrant. This week, the government of British Columbia has announced a public inquiry to investigate Dziekanski’s death, “and rightly so,” writes the editorial board in this week's Eye Weekly: "Perhaps the inquiry’s report can communicate some simple steps to prevent this sort of tragedy from ever happening again, and communicate to the RCMP that it is their job to protect people and expose lies, not to kill people and invent cover stories to protect themselves."

It's not news that, especially in recent years, a lot of passionate, involved and interested/interesting riders really do give a damn about what the TTC is up to. It's also not news, however, that the TTC is famous for leaving a bad taste in its collective riders' mouths. From its unveiling of crappy transit merchandise (despite ample feedback on merchandise people actually want) to its crappy rider survey (which Torontoist reconfigured to get more...

Wouldn't your friends appreciate it more if you were present for dinner? Unless you are rewarding them, do you trust your friends and clients enough not to blow your credit limit in a swanky establishment such as this restaurant? Toronto was one of several Canadian cities featured in this late 1970s American Express campaign. All of the ads feature models who look too eager to serve cardmembers (check out Vancouver's entry). It's hard to...

Few companies inspire the kind of product lust that Apple does, and it's no secret that Mac users can be somewhat evangelical about the company from Cupertino. To many Apple fans in Canada, it's sheer torture that TV shows and movies aren't yet available in the Canadian iTunes Music Store, or that the iPhone is taking so damn long to cross the border. In the United States, the iPhone has been the must-have tech...

Liberals turf scandal-ridden MP. Blair Wilson (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast) would just like everybody to know that he is very sorry that he impugned the Liberal Party's name with his electoral spending mishaps, although not quite so sorry that he's resigning as a member of Parliament.

Photos by Sarah Prickett. Above: Vancouver's Ginch Gonch Underwear, first show.

After decades of being situated as an icon of Queen Street West, it has been revealed that Citytv will be moving to a new high-profile location: Dundas Square.

If you were a child passing through Toronto since the early 1970s, there's a good chance you may have eaten at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Kitschy antique decor, the pots of whipped garlic butter that arrived with the loaf of bread and a family-friendly atmosphere have kept the crowds coming for nearly four decades.

Given the chance to provide insider knowledge about Toronto to a well-known travel site on behalf of your city and fellow residents, what juicy local secrets would you reveal?

Canada's first same-sex marriage was performed here, and according to 2006 census data released today, nearly a quarter of same-sex common law couples in Toronto have officially tied the knot. Strangely enough, hetero marriages haven't crumbled en masse since the unions became legal country-wide in 2005, nor have people started lobbying to marry their pets. Someone should tell the Americans.

Toronto came in 5th in the livability survey of the Economist Intelligence Unit, behind Vancouver, Melbourne, Vienna and Perth. While we can rightfully be proud of our score, it's kind of like being one of the kids who sits in the front of the room near the teacher while all the cool kids like New York and London are having a lot more fun down in the 40s and 50s.

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will appear every Friday night.

It's not just for pot-smoking, Cheetos-eating, reluctant-to-bathe college dudes anymore.

For years, Toronto tourism ads have gotten a bad rap. These attempts to bring visitors to our fair city have a knack of running off the rails—try finding the love for the Toronto Unlimited campaign.

James Bow. Transit Toronto Editor. Blogger. Yonge Street dream-dasher. Fantasy novel writer. Anti–Harry Potter activist.

Vancouver Central Public Library photo by lindn.