news
Newsstand: February 1, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
Have you ever been on a TTC bus or streetcar and seen the driver dash out, leaving the vehicle idling with passengers locked inside, to duck into a coffee shop? If so, you can probably sympathize with those who were stuck on Queen West in a 501 streetcar for an estimated seven minutes when their driver jogged away to take care of some personal banking. Now, after one unimpressed commuter snapped some pictures of the incident, the TTC is trying to find out who the driver was. Their spokesperson, Brad Ross, wants you to know that drivers aren’t allowed to stop for personal business—including caffeination and, we assume, balancing their chequebook—and that passengers should note the vehicle number, date, and time before calling in a complaint.
Two more pedestrians were hit by a bus this weekend. One, a Scarborough man, was smacked by a TTC bus while crossing Lawrence at East Avenue, and suffered minor head injuries, but since he was believed to have been on his cell phone at the time, police haven’t laid charges. The second victim was crossing an intersection on a green light in Toronto’s west end when she was hit by a left-turning Can-ar coach, whose driver said she didn’t see the pedestrian. The woman on foot suffered minor injuries. A police officer told the Star that, even though the victim had the right of way, “she still has to pay attention.”
The other big news this morning is, of course, the Leafs’ major trade, which sends off six players and brings in four more. GM Brian Burke hinted pretty strongly that other big changes are coming soon when he told the press that “I think this deal takes some offence out of our lineup. That’s the next question, who replaces that offence?” Being masters of subtlety in our own right, we’ll now insinuate that, if you check back at Torontoist in an hour or so, maybe there will be a big piece we’ve been working on about the trades…
Getting back to police, they are now putting inattentive drivers on notice: motorists are being warned to drive carefully, be aware of their surroundings, and respect pedestrian and traffic signals not talk on their cell phone while driving (unless they’ve got a hands-free device). Calls using a headset and the like are allowed, but dialling numbers manually is not. Also explictly banned are using a laptop, fiddling with an iPod, or watching DVDs while driving, and if that seems unfair then you should definitely check this site regularly.
Speaking of nasty shocks for drivers…ouch. Let’s hope he wasn’t a pianist. Still, it sounds as though the city’s latest victim of gun crime, who was shot through his car window in Toronto’s west end by an unknown man, got off reasonably lucky. Which isn’t to say there’s anything okay about people getting shot on Toronto streets. The assailant was only described as a black man aged 35–40, 5’10” tall, with a medium build. Police are working on the case.
While we’re doing public service announcements, let’s direct you towards this exposé of the wild subculture of tattooed and pierced “deviants.” The meat of the article is drawn from some research conducted at two religious universities and two regular campuses, all in the US, that found links between having multiple tattoos or body piercings and engaging in perverted behaviours like drinking to excess, smoking marijuana, being sexually promiscuous, and cheating on tests. And, who knows, maybe listening to loud music is in there, too. To their credit, the Sun spoke to a few perfectly well-adjusted tattoo fans, as well as elicited hand-wringing pleas for sanity from a well-meaning parents’ group, which warned that having even one tattoo means “you might be on the road to disaster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be redirected to make better choices.”
And that is the news, but while we have you here, let’s add that temperatures hit their coldest level all winter over the weekend—at an icy 19 degrees below zero on Saturday. The chilliest part is supposedly over, but you might want to bundle up more thoroughly than usual, and maybe drink an extra cup of hot coffee before you head outside, just in case.