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Newsstand: June 9, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
Blazes! It’s Thursday and the heat is on. In the news: a TTC fare hike may be in the works, free TTC rides on smoggy days probably aren’t; Catholic school decides lesbians aren’t funny, or is it too funny?; and police are on the hunt for sedans and sickos.
So it was pretty crazy outside yesterday, huh? With the scary clouds, and hail the size of money, the hottest June 8 on record, and all the storm damage. Today should be a bit less crazy, but who really knows anymore.
Ah, the signs of summer: the smell of fresh cut grass, the sounds of neighbourhood children scream-laughing, the increased attraction of suitors with air conditioned apartments, and, let’s not forget, the sickening prospect of the up-skirt photographers. A man riding the Bloor line with a tricked out lunchbox camera and a fetish for bad angles has the dubious honour of being the first upskirt photographer to get arrested this “skirt season.” We’re pretty sure skirt season doesn’t officially get underway until June 10 (according to the Goddess Lunar Calendar, anyway), but we’ll trust the National Post on this one.
From one terrible TTC-related to tale to another. The transit commission is facing a growing hole in its budget, and there are only a few ways to fix that and they all kind of suck. Fare hikes, service cuts, and staff cuts are all being considered as the TTC scrambles to balance its books by next September. Numbers released Wednesday put the budget hole at around $39 million, but that will surely rise thanks in part to two brilliant plans: the 10 per cent cut demanded from all City services, and the move to make the TTC an essential service, which will likely increase labour costs. There is one idea that could help: bumping up the ad revenue, which is currently only five per cent. We wouldn’t mind sitting on a pressure-activated jingle-singing seat while having different adver-laser beams shot into each eye if it meant we didn’t have to pay more for the pleasure.
And what better day than the day the TTC announces it’s broke to ask for free rides on smoggy days?
Even if you’ve traded in your Metropass and your right to gripe about transit for the luxuries of a 2002 to 2006 model midsize sedan, you’re not getting off that easy. Police will be contacting every Ontarian with a Nissan Altima as part of an intense search for a suspect in a “gas and dash” death last month. So if you have a car that fits the above the description, you might want to give the police a call.
Coming off the heels of a rainbow ban in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board, the Toronto Catholic board banned a comedian from performing when they found out she was “affiliated with gay marriage” (which is a classically Catholically circuitous way of saying she’s married to a woman). The board claims the whole lesbian thing isn’t the problem, though. They just worried that a comedienne wouldn’t take their anti-bullying message seriously enough.