The city of Paris has recently been courting tourists from London, England with a new series of ads that look like this: What does a Paris tourism poster have to do with Toronto? Well, the C'est So Paris ads, with their posy compositions, saturated colours and irreverent humour, bears an uncanny resemblance to those T.O. Live With Culture posters from January, only these are actually good. The Parisian ads are witty, attention-grabbing and intelligible—everything the......

Toronto had a violent weekend with nine people shot and four of them killed, including an 11-year-old boy at a birthday party. Two more people were stabbed. Cue relatives wailing, Police Chief Bill Blair saying "this is unacceptable," and headlines like "Saturday Night Bloodbath." We’ve seen all this before. Solutions, anyone? On Sunday, about 8,000 people attended the opening of the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a spectacular 94,000 square foot Hindu temple near Finch and......

Torontoist was at last night's Under-20 World Cup semi-final between Argentina and Chile at BMO Field and left wondering: "How did a riot not break out?" Well, as it turns out, a riot of sorts did break out after the game, when members of the Chilean team confronted a group of policemen. Reports of taser guns being used have yet to be confirmed, although eyewitnesses swear it happened. How did it all go so......

Photo of David Beckham by rayxhead These are halcyon days for Toronto soccer fans. Toronto FC, the city's long-overdue Major League Soccer team, is in its inaugural season. The 20,000-seat BMO Field is open for business, and doubles as Canada's new national soccer stadium. The Under-20 World Cup, which culminates this weekend in Toronto, is breaking tournament attendance records. And on August 5, David Beckham (perhaps you've heard of him?) is scheduled to make......

The St. Clair West neighbourhood has had some conflict-filled times over the past few years. Who can forget the St. Clair streetcar ROW debacle, during which there were calls to boycott the beleaguered community? We think that it’s time to forgive and forget, and how better to do that than with a sultry summer samba party? Salsa on St. Clair emerged two years ago to stake its own claim on the city’s busy summer......

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! Who says soccer—er, football—isn't a contact sport? Behold this moment frozen in time by Flickr pool contributor sthursby, taken last Wednesday during the U-20 FIFA World Cup at the National Soccer Stadium here in Toronto. The action finds Gambia's Ousman Jallow......

City Council plans to create as many as 21 new leash-free areas for dogs by the end of the year. Councillor Howard Moscoe calls for fences to separate people and canines, saying, "The problem is the dogs can't read the signs. We'd lose control completely unless they're fenced areas." Alarmed local media dub 2007 "The Summer of the Dog." 24 people, including a Toronto police officer, were arrested yesterday and charged with being part of......

On Sunday night, a small motorcade of revellers snaked down the Danforth, whistling and beeping and waving what looked like the Japanese flag with a green background. Turns out it was the flag of Bangladesh and the occasion was the Bangladeshi team's triumph over Bermuda in Cricket World Cup. While most sports fans are fixated on basketball's Final Four, the rest of the commonwealth is feverishly following cricket's Super 8. The unsolved murder of......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash argues in his latest column that he wants Canada to join the European Union and that he came to this conclusion after seeing the multicultural and happy World Cup celebrations here in Toronto. Driving through Toronto last week I saw a shiny black 4x4 with an English flag sticking out of one side window and a German flag out of the other. Presumably a Canadian family of mixed English and......

Unless you've been asleep for the last 24 hours you already know that Italy won the World Cup. Torontonians celebrate all over the city but the bulk of the partying centred on College St. and up on Corso Italia on St. Clair. Local shutterbugs have tons of photos check out Flickr feeds from Ren C, FTP Media, Lee Horrocks, The Big Durian. This one guy celebrates too much and drives a schoolbus into a......

After several days of beautiful weather, we were due for a nice storm. And since tanning is not an option today, go see a Fr!nge Play or two (or eight) this afternoon. To make sure you don't see a dud.. read on... Torontoist was lucky enough to catch SplasH2O yesterday, foreshadowing today's moisture. You may have seen the trio around the Fr!nge Tent saturating passerbys with some impromptu aquatic comedy, but count yourself as......

The City wants to allow you to add more items to your recycling bin. Proposals are in the works to allow polystyrene, spiral containers (ie. frozen juice concentrate cans) and even plastic bags. The problem is that the city's recycling capacity is maxed out and the City is desperately looking for more cash to increase capacity. Ok, which of you are hoarding green Steamwhistle bottles? The popular brewery is experiencing a bottle shortage and wants......

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddy for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bids Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this guy......

Sampaist is on the scene in São Paulo beginning this week to become the only ist south of the Equator. Editor Leandro M. Pinto leads the paulistanos down there. You can protest someone at his office, sure, but when the whistle blows at the end of the day can you follow him home? D.C. has sports fans, apparently, and elephants aren't really cut out for zoos. There's this trick where you can read information from......

After a week of pridelicious events, it's now time to take over downtown Toronto, drink a lot of beer, make some noise, wear colourful threads.... wait, is this a post about The World Cup or Pride Toronto? Anyhow, Pride Toronto Weekend is finally here, and just like on St. Patrick's where everyone's Irish... everyone's Queer this weekend... There is so much to do and most of it is free. And since the weather seems......

A man was stabbed to death in North York at a party celebrating Ghana's victory over the USA at the World Cup. Apparently gang colours may have been a trigger for the tragic attack. A memorial to the victims of the Air India bombing has started construction in a Toronto park. Bombardier defends itself against its rivals and their claims that they can build the TTC's subway cars cheaper. Siemens acknowledges that its estimates might......

Sure, World Cup fever is sweeping the city. But why stab or bludgeon people when you can just watch all the games (like June 9th's Poland v. Ecuador game, in this case) through a store window at Bay and Bloor with complete strangers. The best thing about this shot? The store's attempted tie-in with the tournament: "World of Cups" for a cup sale.......

Well, with the first match of the World Cup watched and a fresh cup of coffee brewed, looks like it’s time for Torontoist to file another one of it’s Film Friday reports. But with the whole world going footy mad (Rightly so – did you see Lahm’s goal at six minutes? What about Frings' finisher? But we digress) what on earth is there to get excited about in the world of film? I mean, we’ve......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

During the World Cup huge parts of the city were paralyzed by fans celebrating victories. We're wondering whether similar things will be happening because of the World Baseball Classic? Cuba and the Dominican Republic are already in the semis at the WBC. Torontoist wants to know whether members of this city's Cuban or Dominican population will be congregating anywhere in the event of a victory? The wildcard is Korea. The Korean team are the only......

Jeremy Wotherspoon has blown it again. After his silver medal at the 1998 Nagano games, the Canadian Speedskater has been at the top of Rick Tocchet's odds sheet ever since. Yet he continues to disappoint in Olympic competition. The three-time World Cup 500m champion was average at best, finishing ninth today. This comes after he tumbled to the ice in Salt Lake City four years ago when he was also a heavy favourite. American Joey......

Traditionally Canadian literature has been divided into two very logical halves, English and French. But within English Canadian Literature there really should be another division, one that reflects this city’s overwhelming dominance in English Canadian letters. The bulk of the country’s publishers are here. The country’s influential critics, journalists and chattering classes live, write and pontificate in the cafes and bars of the Annex, the Beaches and Queen St. West. This dominance translates into a......