February 2012
8 posts
2 tags
This week: Starbucks, Starbbucks, and snowstorms
In The Grid:
There’s only one fast food or coffee chain with more locations in Toronto than Subway. Guess who?
It’s not often that someone you’re interviewing pleads “Give us a chance!” but hey, it happens.
Here:
Speaking of coffee, if you’re looking for some, might I recommend Tim Hortins, Starbbucks, Seconp Cup, or Counrty Style?.Elsewhere:
Look, you can’t...
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You've always got time for Tim Hortins?
For this article for The Grid about just how many Starbucks, Second Cup, Timothy’s, Country Style, and Coffee Time locations there are in Toronto (a lot!), I spent a half-day digging through an Excel spreadsheet of all of Toronto’s active business licences. Because operators fill out the licence applications themselves, typos sometimes make their way onto a business licence, a problem...
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This week: Scarborough, Montreal, and the whole...
Elsewhere:
My map of all of Toronto’s residents’ associations and neighbourhood groups just got two dozen new organizations (there are 108 mapped now), thanks in no small part to Jessica Roher from the Scarborough Civic Action Network, who helped pass the map around the east end of the city. Thanks so much, Jessica!
The Grid went and got itself named the world’s best-designed...
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This week: planetariums, light-rail vehicles, and...
In The Grid:
The long-dormant McLaughlin Planetarium might end up being demolished in two years, and a new group called Planetarium Toronto wants to stop it from happening.* This is also how I learned that people really miss Lazer Zeppelin.
A small but positive change for Toronto Public Health’s food-safety program: the DineSafe signs you see in the windows of every restaurant, grocery...
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This week: lots and lots about empty lots
In The Grid:
Back in November, I wrote about the stretch of Queen Street West, near Bathurst, that burned down in 2008; now, a scoop: at least two of the three remaining vacant lots that have yet to be rebuilt are about to be.
Here:
I crunched some data to find out where bike accidents happen most frequently in Toronto, or at least the reported ones.
That map of Toronto residents’...
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Where bike accidents happen most often in Toronto
The Globe did a great thing today—they got, and mapped, twenty-five years of cycling collision data. And then they released the data, which makes it much easier for people like me to tell you, say, the total number of reported collisions on any street you can name. Which is what I’m going to do here.
Here are some of the Toronto streets that stuck out from a glance at the map as especially...
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"With new synagogue, Forest Hill Village goes old...
Along with my article about a missing Banksy, the other article I wrote for the Globe and Mail a few months back (while I was freelancing, before landing at The Grid) was about a synagogue coming to Forest Hill Village that’s based on one that the Nazis burned down in Poland. (It’s on the stretch of Spadina Road pictured above.) Since it’s no longer available for free online,...
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"Banksy was here. And he survived the wrecking...
Because it’s no longer freely available online, here’s the article I wrote for the Globe back in September, about the demolition of a downtown building that a work by super-famous British street artist Banksy was on.
The latest on the wall: it’s in storage, and so, too, is the stencil of a security guard that Banksy painted onto it. The new towers coming where it was are still...
January 2012
7 posts
4 tags
How safe's your favourite place to get food in...
I wrote The Grid’s cover story this week: everything you’ve ever wanted to know about where you get food in this city but were afraid to ask because what are you some kind of scaredy cat? (On newsstands today!) There’s a lot of different stuff to go explore online:
For starters, there’s this interactive map of every single restaurant, grocery store, café, cafeteria, food...
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This week: Moriyamas, Big Bops, and Colle's note
In The Grid:
The Toronto Reference Library, brick behemoth that it is, almost looked totally different. Go gawk at the building that might have been and what the thing looks like now that it’s got a new glass cube in front of it, but maybe grab a copy of The Grid in print this week to see the full-double-page spread the way it oughta be seen.*
Toronto might be the greatest music city in...
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That residents' associations map: new, and...
Back in October, I started making a map of where all of Toronto’s residents’ associations and neighbourhood groups were. But as it’s gotten bigger and bigger and I’ve added more and more groups to it, I bumped into a problem I hadn’t considered: that Google Maps can only display so many items at a time on a regular map. It’s annoying. So, this weekend, I moved...
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This week: info pillars, black children, and...
In The Grid:
You’ll never guess what’s become of Pages Books & Magazines’ former home on Queen Street West, unless you guessed “condo sales centre,” which is frankly the first thing someone would probably guess.
Astral Media’s new “info-pillars”—only 14.3% info and 85.7% advertising—aren’t exactly well-loved in Toronto, and last weekend...
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Michael Topping, international man of mystery
Something I found this summer in a catalogue sitting in the basement of the Art Gallery of Ontario: a portrait of one “Michael Topping, Esq.” by John Smart. The AGO has at least one other piece by Smart, but I’ve never heard of this “Michael Topping” guy before, and neither has my cousin’s wife, who maintains our family tree—but then, my family tree...
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Things my grandmother told me about growing up in...
Kensington Market in 1934: “it was gross.”
My mom’s mom was born in Toronto on June 9, 1923. That, I knew. What I didn’t know: that she spent the first twenty-five years of her life on Grace Street, around the corner from where I live now. Until she was two, her family—my great-grandparents, her brothers, and her—lived just north of Dundas Street West, and when she was...
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This week: #RIDE, Layton, and year-long photos
Here:
The night before New Year’s Eve, I wrote something asking people who tweet to take the #RIDE hashtag back from the jerks who were using it to share the locations of police RIDE stops. I was hoping it would take off, but didn’t expect it would take off the way it did: there were at least 2,500 unique #RIDE tweets between noon on December 31, 2011 and 3 a.m. on January 1, 2012,...
December 2011
8 posts
2 tags
When you tweet this New Year's Eve, use the...
It’s the holidays. Some people are going to be idiots and drive drunk. Since 1977, police across Ontario have been trying to stop them by running spot checks as part of the Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, or RIDE, program—which aims to not only catch drunk drivers, but deter them altogether. The police don’t make the locations of those spot checks public, for obvious reasons: doing...
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This week: hexes, murals, and menches
In The Grid:
The Grid’s year-end cover story is the fifty people who made Toronto better in 2011, but it’s you—you!—whose vote will decide the winner. (Ensuring you have your say in this defining moment of civic engagement is my department.) *
Is the former home of Igor Kenk’s Bicycle Clinic—927 Queen West—cursed? No. But now that it’s just been sold again, maybe it...
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This week: the Cameron House, my 'hood, and...
In The Grid:
The Cameron House has finally got its two new murals up, and they look great. I wrote about how the Queen West tavern started the tradition of painting new murals every few years—and how the new pieces on its east and south sides harken back to the beginning.*
…speaking of which, I’m looking for photos of the Cameron House’s façade over the years, especially throughout...
Why my neighbourhood needs something more, and why...
A few months ago, I started mapping where Toronto’s residents’ associations were. The map’s not yet complete, but if you go a little west of downtown, you’ll see there’s a chunk of land sandwiched between the Roncesvalles-Macdonell Residents’ Association, the Parkdale Residents Association, the Queen-Beaconsfield Residents’ Association, the Brockton...
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The last two weeks: Playboy, strip clubs, and bike...
Now that I’ve landed a gig, these weekly things are going to have to be a little simpler. The best way to stay up on what I’m up to is still following me on Twitter.
In The Grid:
After Jenna Morrison was killed by a truck while riding her bike at Dundas West and Sterling, a ghost bike was chained to the stop sign beside where she died. Last Tuesday, that ghost bike was taken...
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That time Sue-Ann Levy and I argued about Playboy
I wrote something for The Grid today, about how the Toronto Sun and Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy are in the wrong for criticizing the Toronto Public Library for having exactly one microfilm subscription to Playboy. One of the reasons: that taxpayers pay $278 a year for the single subscription to the men’s magazine, but more than $21,000 a year for 78 Sun subscriptions—scantily clad...
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What Toronto used to look like really, really...
Throughout 2009, Google sent its fleet of horrifying panopticon machines sedans all around this city to assemble the imagery that’d make up Google Street View. Two years later, though, some of what was shot has already changed dramatically.
Here’s The Big Bop at Queen and Bathurst, before scaffolding scarfed it up:
Here’s Queen West and Dufferin, before the Dufferin...
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Here’s a good thing! I’m The Grid’s newest associate editor. I’ll be writing lots, as well as working with both the print and digital sides of the weekly city magazine to make cool stuff that people will like a lot, I hope. I am very, very happy about this.
November 2011
8 posts
2 tags
This week: rocks, stucco, and lynchings
Bixi is getting bigger, as you surely know by now. The full details of the bike-sharing program’s move east and west finally got out earlier this week; here’s a map of all the new Bixi locations, and all the old ones being moved to expand the service’s boundaries. (If you’re an Annex or Distillery District resident, you’ve got reason to be happy.)
Because The...
5 tags
Going…going…back.
Starbucks’ façade on November 16 (top), November 21 (middle), and November 25 (bottom).
The Starbucks at Queen West and Dovercourt looked, for a while, like it was going to lose its yellow stucco façade—a façade most famous for having “ho” written on it. There was some rejoicing, as the material was chipped away, revealing the slate-gray concrete underneath . But it was not...
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This week: fires, demolitions, raccoons, and ghost...
After a big blaze, then what? In The Grid this week: what’s happening at nine different Toronto locations struck by big fires in recent years, from 335 Yonge Street (nothing happening for a long time) to Musa’s Dundas West home (the future home of a Starbucks, maybe). Plus, online: what’s going on now with Queen Street West between Portland and Bathurst, four years after its...
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To BE, or Not To BE?
Once a factory, then home for dozens of artists, 48 Abell is being demolished this week—condos will be built on top of it. This great thesis [PDF], by Michelle Van Eyk, is worth reading for anyone interested in the property, West Queen West, the Drake, or how Toronto gentrifies. From it, I’ve learned that in 1912, Toronto city council banned apartment buildings, because they were...
5 tags
A brief interview with Noori Lalani, of the Lalani...
The Lalani Group doesn’t talk about the fire that burned down 335 Yonge Street, the former home of the Empress Hotel (and, more famously lately, Salad King).
The Lalanis didn’t return the Globe’s calls, or the Star’s calls, or the Post’s calls or the Sun’s calls, or Post City Magazines’ calls, or OpenFile’s calls. But for some reason—maybe because...
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Looking for "Drake You Ho"
As Mondoville put it once, it might be “the most infamous scrawl in local history”: the “DRAKE YOU HO THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT” plopped on the side of the then-new Starbucks at Queen and Dovercourt all the way back in 2005. (The Drake Hotel, two blocks west, had re-opened after a massive retooling at the beginning of 2004.)
In what will surely be a wild goose chase,...
6 tags
This week: mapping highrise construction...
I’m working at The Grid at the moment—doing what is, for now at least, a brief stint—and have been really liking it a lot. (My gig, on top of doing lots of reporting, is to work with both the print and web sides of the magazine and make them fit together a little bit better, hopefully turning people who mostly read us in print into web readers, too, and people who mostly read us on the web...
6 tags
That time I met Ezra Levant, the Sun's biggest...
…and why I can’t hate him even though I so badly want to. Here’s my latest for the Toronto Standard.
October 2011
14 posts
2 tags
Some of the unkind things that Rob Ford and...
Rob Ford and Giorgio Mammoliti used to really, really hate each other. They’re best friends now, or, to put it less kindly, a little more than a year into a marriage of political convenience. In 2002, Ford called Mammoliti a ”Gino-boy” and a “scammer,” comments that were widely reported then, and have been widely reported since, but their history goes further—and is...
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Torontoist won some stuff and so, I guess, did I?
It may be the end of October, and I may have left Torontoist almost a year ago, but work that I did and work that I helped with while I was still around as editor-in-chief just helped land Torontoist three gold Canadian Online Publishing Awards at the Gladstone. (For those keeping track, that makes five wins and twelve nominations for Torontoist in the awards’ three years.) Among that work:...
6 tags
"It's Kirk Russell Time"
And hey, speaking of Davenport’s Progessive Conservative candidate Kirk Russell, these signs were pretty much everywhere in the area during the provincial election:
On election day, I biked past a woman walking along Dovercourt, south of Bloor, ripping the posters down, one after another. She did not look especially happy.
Quick calls to the two phone numbers I could find for the Russell...
2 tags
Norm Macdonald doesn't especially miss Canada
Norm Macdonald: [Canada] was a great place to start, because, first of all, there’s no industry in Canada. There’s no movies or television.
Marc Maron: Isn’t there a little? And doesn’t…
NM: I think there might be now, but when I was doing it there was none. Or it was horrible.
MM: Cause it seems like if you stayed there long enough and you don’t leave that you...
4 tags
Ain't that a shame?
My first piece for the Toronto Standard: why it’s really time to stop yelling “shame.” (Don’t yell it anymore, please. Really. This means you, protesters.)
One thing I couldn’t quite fit into that argument, but that’s worth noting at least in passing: yelling “shame!” seems like a particularly left-of-centre quirk. (Protesting in Toronto at all, actually,...
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Finding out where Toronto's residents'...
I’m slowly building a map of all of Toronto’s residents’/community associations—because I figured that i) people might find it really useful; ii) no comprehensive map seems to exist anywhere else; iii) and I’m curious about areas that are underrepresented or overrepresented. It started because I’m considering getting something informal together in my neighbourhood...
2 tags
Some publications read a bit about talking a bit...
How’d my thing about how publications shouldn’t exploit freelancers do inside publications? One metric of reach—a hint at it, really—is to check out Google Analytics and see what “Service Providers” were used to access it over the course of the few days its traffic peaked. For publications that have their own networks (the biggest ones usually do), that gives a relatively...
2 tags
We talked a bit about exploitation
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Let's talk about exploitation, journalists.
I’ve been thinking a bit about Russell Smith’s article in the Globe, about how there’s a generational divide between young writers, who don’t expect to be paid for their work, and older writers, who do. “There now exists an entire generation of intelligent people who have grown up without any expectation of compensation for imaginative work.” That sort of...
4 tags
What the Big Bop looks like today
It’s taken a while, and it’s going to take a while longer before it’s done, but the transformation of the Big Bop into a furniture store, CB2, is well underway. If you want a look inside, or to find out more, OpenFile got a peek in February, back when I was its Toronto Editor.
The more you know: the reason that the Toronto Standard’s got a billboard on the side of the...
6 tags
The Cameron House's new face
The Cameron House’s new Queen West–facing façade looks like it’s nearly done being repainted, just in time for the venue’s thirtieth birthday. (It used to look like this.) No such luck on the east-facing wall, though.
From BlogTO, back in July:
“Renovations started because of a work order from the city of Toronto,” [owner Cosmo Ferraro] explained. “They...
5 tags
Back to Shul
My latest for the Globe’s weekend Toronto section is about Forest Hill, orthodox Judaism, and what a bunch of jerks the Nazis were. Read it here, or pick it up on newsstands if today is Saturday, October 8. You may also grimace at my headline, which I am both embarrassed by and proud of.
A few things of note that weren’t in the piece:
How Jewish is Forest Hill, exactly? According...
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What Banksy's Toronto pieces look like now
It’s been almost a year and a half since Banksy came to Toronto, and people—okay, mostly me—still care about what’s happening to the work he put up. A year ago, for Torontoist, I checked in on each of the seven pieces to see how they were doing. Because many of those pieces of art have changed since, and because I biked around Toronto last Thursday (that’s September 29, 2011) and...
September 2011
4 posts
8 tags
Saving Banksy
Here’s my first article for the Globe, about one of the last Banksy pieces left standing in Toronto, and what’s happening with it now that the building it was painted onto, 90 Harbour Street, has been demolished. That’s the original piece, on top there, and that what’s come of it, at the bottom. (Both photos by me.) If you’re in Toronto, and today is October 1,...
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