Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. Dear Snappy Answers, I moved here from the U.S. a little while ago. Down there, I would hear these stories about the lax marijuana laws here and the more lax enforcement of those laws. When I got here, I thought I would have an easy time getting my smoke on. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. I’ve posted......

"It's hard to beat the system / when we're standing at a distance / so we keep waiting / waiting on the world to change." - JOHN MAYER How Do You Get To Massey Hall? I don't know, I only came close. I can at least tell you that practice has nothing to do with it. I'd practiced my speech a lot. Last night I was invited to represent my party (the Green Party of......

This was Toronto’s downtown at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, as seen from Lakeshore Boulevard near the Canadian Exhibition Grounds. Air Quality Ontario’s Air Quality Index measured a daytime high of 54, which put Toronto’s air well into the “Poor” category. The day before, the AQI hit 59. What to do? I ran errands on my bike yesterday, passing bumper-to-bumper car traffic everywhere I cycled. When I started cycling Toronto’s streets fifteen years ago, I didn’t......

First incandescent light bulbs, now toilets: at the recommendation of David Miller, the Ontario government will consider banning conventional toilets to promote low-flush toilets. Low-flushies use only 6 litres of water per flush, while regular toilets will use anywhere from 13-25 litres to flush. Not only would the ban save Toronto 26 million litres of water per day, it would eliminate the need for $60 million in water and sewage-treatment capacity. Here's a ban......

Now that National Poetry Month is over, it’s time to recover from the full schedule of festivities (spring detox cocktails, anyone?), and to share poems which garnered Honourable Mentions in Torontoist’s Toronto Poetry Contest. Watch out for five new Toronto poems and poets in May. Our first poem, by Matthew Tierney, was written at the intersection of King and Yonge streets. Of "The Man Who Knew from Cool," Matthew says: I could argue that this......

Torontoist Poetry Contest Reminder! At the beginning of the new year, Torontoist launched a poetry contest to encourage the penning of new poems about our fair city. To inspire you, we are presenting a series of previously published Toronto poems that will run until the contest closes March 15. Our third poem, "I Parked My Car Behind Loblaws and Knew I Would Never Die" is by writer, performer and composer Gary Barwin. The poem references......

The CouchSurfing Project has nothing to do with The Beach Boys or crowd surfing on a futon (although that must be fun) and has everything to do with traveling the world by the seat of a couch -- someone else's, that is. CouchSurfing.com is where couch surfers hook up with couch owners for a place to crash for a night or two for free at their travel destination. They can browse though the database......

Looking for that authentic theatre experience in the comfort of your own home? Forget shelling out thousands of dollars on a new high-definition television. As part of ongoing renovations, the folks at the Danforth Music Hall are selling their seats. “They’re fantastic seats,” says the Music Hall’s box-office sentinel Trevor Dunseith. “But they’re a bunch of different styles.” New seats, which will give the interior of the hall a more uniform look, have already......

When I was living in Vancouver, I had a roommate purchase a few strange canned beverages at the T&T supermarket on the edge of Chinatown. He put them in all the housemates' Christmas stockings; someone got some wax gourd juice, I got a can of milky coffee with jelly which tasted like cold airplane coffee, but with little bits of unflavoured Jell-O floating in it. It was so disgusting that the only appropriate thing to......

Everyone likes free swag, and we happen to have quite a bit of it lately. Our latest offering is for tickets to see Chicago buzz band The Changes, along with +/- and The Sharp Tongues this Wednesday at Sneaky Dee's. Yes, we know that the show is technically free, but hey, this guarantees you'll get in, should it happen to sell out. Perhaps more importantly, you'll also take home a signed copy of their......

Nicole Krauss weaves a tangled yet breathtakingly beautiful web in the History of Love. Her second novel tells the story of precocious 14-year old Alma Singer, busily trying to cope with the loss of her father and her mother's depression. Across town there's Leo Gursky, a Holocaust survivor, writer and man desperately afraid to die alone. Their lives are brought together by a book that miraculously survived war and genocide. The end product is a......

Tonight, the Horseshoe Tavern plays host to the Pitchfork/Secretly Canadian Indie Rock Triple-Header. This is a chance to see three awesome bands you've probably never heard of... but who everyone will be talking about in a few months. If you want to get ahead of the curve, read on. San Francisco's Birdmonster headline the night. Their sound is giant. Their guitarist famously declared: "Our main goal is to rock so hard one of us faints."......

When I was thirteen, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Halifax. In the maritimes nine years ago, the Atlantic Superstores were way bigger than anything in Toronto, and they sold clothes! Needless to say, I was impressed - that is, until I tried on several pairs of ill-fitting pants and realized that Superstore clothes sucked. But my, how things have changed! Joseph Mimran, "the man synonymous with Canadian fashion," has launched a......

The worst thing about having a pass for NXNE is using it. I got my perspective of the festival working the door at The Boat for the Maple Music showcase. The job was to bow for the “delegates” or “pass-holes” as they walked passed a growing line of wristband holders, or “audience.” It’s crystal clear to me that NXNE is set up by the industry, for the industry; audience and musicians are afterthoughts. On......

I was taking a few photos on Bay and Bloor a while back, trying to be unobvious about what I was doing. Turns out I didn't do so great of a job. When I got back home, I realized that the homeless guy on the right was staring at me. In every shot.......

Torontoist thinks love letters are a little too schmaltzy and saccharine for our taste, give us a good breakup letter any day of the week. So we were thrilled when someone tipped us off to e-closure. These local boys solicited a bunch of breakup letters last summer and have added 48 different breakups on their site. They're always looking for more and will keep things anonymous if you're worried about any future partners finding......

Sometimes, even if it isn't pretty, Toronto's graffiti can really be beautiful. After a long time in darkness, the Bloor subway comes outside between Dundas West and Runnymede stations. If you're heading westbound, this crude piece of graffiti on the very top of the back of an auto shop - "MORGAN AND ALISON ARE IN L" - is the one that you might notice first as you leave Dundas West. For some reason, something......

Tall Poppy Interview - Amanda Walsh, Actor...