Newsstand: December 22, 2011

Poor Thursday; always a Thursday and never not a Thursday. At least it comes with cake! No wait, news. It comes with news: more on the mayor's fancy business cards, gravy found at the water department, a statue for a hot dog vendor, the Toronto bandit scene, and Bieber.

By Sarah-Joyce Battersby • Illustration by Brian McLachlan

The saga of the mayor’s fancy business cards continues. Apparently Rob Ford’s office has destroyed documents relating to the bidding process for printing the shiny gold cards. The mayor’s office had no comment on the destruction of the documents, records of the other, higher bids that ultimately helped Ford-owned Deco Labels and Tags secure the printing contract. Despite those documents being of potential interest to the Integrity Commission investigation of the mayor’s office expenses, deputy mayor Doug Holyday defends the document destruction saying, “There’s only so much room in this building for us to store things.” Technically true. Not one of his better excuses, but technically true.

Water trucks, water trucks everywhere, and a lot that we don’t need. The City’s water department has a fleet of more than 700 vehicles—including dump trucks, pickup trucks, and vans, in case you were wondering—so it can afford to shed a few. And by a few we mean 41. The surplus vehicles will fetch a handsome price at auction and save on future fuel and maintenance costs. So yay.

The last of the Bloor Street hot dog vendors (along the Yorkville strip) is being replaced by a statue. There used to be 11 vendors in the area, but they’ve slowly been pushed out by new regulations and construction projects. For now we can only hope it will be a statue of a hot dog. One never can tell with these things.

Toronto Police have a new plan to catch the bad guys in this town. A ruse to round up the nogoodniks, if ya know what we mean. See, if you want to catch crooks, ya need to know who you’re fixin’ on catchin’, see. So rather than wandering around town all willy nilly looking for some guy in Ray-Bans who could be any guy in Ray-Bans, you oughta be looking for the truly original inimitable Ray-Ban Bandit. Or didn’t you know, a bank robber’s no longer a bank robber, he’s now known to the cops as the [insert first thing you notice about the guy and/or crime no matter how mundane of a detail it is] Bandit. And that’s how it’s done, boys.

And, what would a day be without a touch of Bieber? Don’t worry, that won’t be happening for a long time.