Extra, Extra: Pitch Pals, Toronto Trends, and Hell on Wheels

By Meg Campbell

Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

• Presented by the Muddy York Rugby Football Club, and starring some of its players, the above video presents the story of a young gay man struggling with his identity and finding a home and camaraderie on the rugby pitch. It is both entertaining and enlightening, funny and heartfelt, and definitely worth a watch.
• Toronto Trending is a new jumbly mashup of Foursquare and Twitter feeds that aims to provide a what’s-happening-now view of the city. An offshoot of Tourism Toronto’s See Toronto Now site, the Trending page’s function is a little unclear on first view, but its dynamic elements and tiltshift views of Yorkville and Yonge-Dundas Square make it a fun distraction from the get-go.
• Similar to what the City of Toronto is doing with the online public consultation portion of its Core Service Review, Calgary has undertaken its own public budget consultations online. Only theirs are really slick-looking and kinda fun. OpenFile Calgary reports on the process in detail here.
• Sometimes, in this workaday world, we all just need a good, cathartic rant. And, on her blog She Was Disarming, that’s exactly what Emma Woolley gave us today, going off on misbehaving cyclists who disregard the rules of road, putting themselves and others in danger, and giving cyclists, overall, a bad name. Woolley, in her preamble, recognized she would be preaching the choir, but sometimes when you feel like you’re the only sane person on two wheels, you just need to reach out and say, “Please, please please please, stop being such jerks,” you know?

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