Through a Glass, Smartly Larry Sherk is one of the world's foremost brewerianists, a collector of beer stuff who over 40 years has amassed the country's second-largest private collection of beer labels (about 3,000), many of which date to the late 1800s.
[more inside]
posted by modernnomad
on Feb 4, 2012 -
4 comments
"In 1999, Toronto-based photographer
Jeff Harris began taking a photo of himself each day as an alternative to all those diaries he started but couldn't keep up. But what began as a self-portrait project has evolved considerably in its 13 years. Harris' photographs aren't the typical, self-portrait vanity projects that crop up on YouTube now and again. Instead, he used the project to inspire him in his daily life, to go out and do something that would get him off his couch....This story becomes even more incredible as it progresses, but it's difficult to explain without cheapening it."
* So
watch it now [video || 05:26].
posted by ericb
on Jan 6, 2012 -
22 comments
The history of Toronto in photos is 90 some odd posts linked to provide a thematically organized visual overview. The vast majority of the photographs featured derive from the Toronto Archives. Should you be interested in a less visually oriented take on Toronto history, there is also the
Nostalgia Tripping series, which was designed to be a bit more about storytelling than just the photos.
posted by netbros
on Dec 5, 2011 -
20 comments
The Complaints Choir phenomenon, started by the Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, has
spread all over the world since
last we paid it any attention, from
Birmingham to
Helsinki,
Hamburg,
St. Petersburg,
Poikkilaakso,
Bodø,
Penn State,
Canada,
Juneau,
Gabriola Island,
Sointula,
Jerusalem,
Melbourne,
Budapest,
Malmö,
Chicago,
Florence,
Copenhagen,
Vancouver (
2),
Philadelphia,
Sundbyberg,
Milano,
Åland,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo,
Rotterdam,
Basel,
Umeå,
Ljubljana,
Gdansk,
Arizona State University,
Washington, DC,
Horace Mann School,
Durham-Chapel Hill,
Auckland,
Toronto theatre students,
Kortrijk,
Cairo (
2),
St. Pölten,
Maribor,
Port Coquitlam,
Ústí nad Labem,
Columbus &
Kauhajoki (
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8). For more information, including a
9 step guide to forming your own complaints choir, go to the
Complaints Choir website. Finally, here's the
Singapore Complaints Choir, whose performance was banned by the Singapore government.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 19, 2010 -
40 comments
The Toronto 18. "The [Toronto] Star was the first to break the news, just over four years ago, that an al-Qaeda inspired homegrown terror cell had been busted in Toronto. ... Numerous publication bans have kept the full story from the public. Now, with the case over, we can present the complete narrative of the Toronto 18: Who they are, how they met, what they did." This is a great example of how to present long-form journalism online.
posted by chunking express
on Jul 9, 2010 -
46 comments
Toronto's Open Civic Data. The city of Toronto has released its data to the world via the new Open Toronto initiative: geographic data for a variety of civic divisions, lists of licensed business, public transit stops, routes & schedules, a SOAP-based geocoding API and more.
posted by GuyZero
on Nov 3, 2009 -
30 comments
Remote control Toronto's City Hall by iPhone during Octobre 4th
Nuit blanche. Project Blinkenlights will again transform a huge building into a computer display. This time 960 windows of Toronto's City Hall. Everybody can submit animations to be shown and there will be client programms for iPhone and OSX to receive the signal and interact with the installation.
Watch the previous installations in Berlin [
Mefi thread] and Paris [
Mefi thread] on Google Video.
posted by meikel
on Sep 23, 2008 -
16 comments
Montreal Graffiti/Street artist
Roadsworth, who
was arrested in 2005 and faced up to 250 000$ in fines, is
back on the streets,
this time with a permit and a commission. Interestingly, the title of the new piece (which stretches across multiple intersections on downtown Sainte-Catherine street) is "Défense d'Afficher", which means "No Postering". It seems as though he's commenting on the role of art and advertisement in public space, but maybe that's just my take. Thoughts? For a more in-depth discussion, read
the Torontoist's article on graffiti), and for more examples, check out
Vandalist, the same blog's photostream of T.O. street art,
Streetsy, a great photoblog showing off various street art from around the world, and, of course, Flickr's
STREETART pool.
posted by rssaddict
on Jul 3, 2008 -
20 comments
White Stripes play Toronto YMCA The duo of
Meg and Jack White snuck in through the back entrance of an auditorium at a downtown YMCA in Toronto at about 3:30 p.m. Thursday for the latest in a cross-country barrage of small secret shows as part of their Canadian tour. During the short set, Jack pulled four of the children up to the makeshift stage to sing and show off the masks the campers had been creating before the arrival of the rock stars. In recent weeks the band has played on a bus in Winnipeg, at a bowling alley in Saskatoon and in a youth centre in Edmonton.
Previously.
posted by KokuRyu
on Jul 5, 2007 -
51 comments
From Muddy York to the Toronto of today.... My search to discover the exact age of the house I recently bought led me to the fabulous
Toronto Archives. Even if you don't have the good fortune to live in Toronto and so have the ability to visit the Archives to take a free tour and check out their
massive holdings, they have a whack of stuff on line. Of their million photographs dating back to 1856, over 21,000 are online. Check out some of their
virtual exhibits. I couldn't begin to give you an overview of the site or even the best of its many gems, but check out
Chinatown's VE day victory parade,
Bay and Wellington as it was after a huge fire in 1904,
old advertisements,
letters and
postcards (including
some from the disenchanted), snapshots of a, er,
less politically sensitive time (
thanks, Capn!), and — inevitably! —
hockey artifacts. A friend of mine makes a hobby of Toronto's history, and after this search of mine, I better understand her interest. It’s fascinating to see what lies beneath the
layers of time on a surface so
familiar and
loved.
posted by orange swan
on Jul 4, 2006 -
23 comments
Maid for a Month. On February 1, Ontario raised its minimum wage from $7.45 to $7.75 per hour. Well-known Toronto
Globe and Mail writer Jan Wong: "I thought the best way to tell the story of that 30-cent raise was to work — and live — at the bottom of the food chain. I would find a low-paying job, a low-rent apartment and, single-mom-like, take
my boys with me for the month and see how we survived."
posted by russilwvong
on May 1, 2006 -
151 comments
Cool! Toronto's Deep Lake Water Cooling System was launched today. The system cuts electricity consumption in commercial buildings by 75 per cent by drawing near-freezing water through pipes extending five kilometres out into Lake Ontario. According to the
city, the system will save enough power to service more than 100 Toronto office towers or 4,200 homes per year, and it will eliminate 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Here's a public television segment explaining the process. Seems like it makes a nice complement to the lakeshore
windmill.
posted by stonerose
on Aug 17, 2004 -
48 comments
At least one person is dead when Toronto theatre The Uptown (a frequent haunt of my childhood)
collapses. The 2000 seat
Uptown was built in 1920 and closed in September of this year, right after the
Toronto International Film Festival, which regularly used the theatre for its screenings.
Ignoring a
Cinema Treasures'
petition, and heartfelt articles from
local media,
Famous Players, the theatre's owners, decided to sell the building to a condo developer after
losing a two year battle with
The Ontario Human Rights Commission, who were insisting that the venue be made wheelchair-friendly. Oddly, as I was walking past the site last night, I considered contacting the
demolition company about what was being done with the theatre's sign when it finally came down.
posted by dobbs
on Dec 8, 2003 -
12 comments
WHO lifts Toronto travel ban.
And
Health Canada Recommendations:
Health Canada continues to strongly endorse travel into and throughout the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] as safe and encourages travellers to maintain their business and/or personal travel plans to the GTA.
That's just great. What, a week after banning all travel to Toronto because of SARS, it's on again?
That's bloody irresponsible, considering the damage it has done and will continue to do so to travel to Canada no less Toronto. [s'more inside]
posted by alicesshoe
on Apr 29, 2003 -
15 comments
"Toronto flings garbage at Michigan" no no!... - US Courts Canadian Crud! ...Eh?, well, OK: Toronto
trucks it's tons 'o trash across the border to dump in Michigan landfills, and some Yanks are
eager to buy, although others...
"It's so disgusting we don't even talk about it...Why can't they keep their garbage over there?" .....[''We need to put an end to this desecration of our beautiful state,'' fumed Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan who also warned that terrorists or weapons of mass destruction could be concealed
amidst the rotting food and used diapers.]
......"Relations between the United States and Canada have been souring for two years....Canada's wishy-washy stance on the Iraq crisis...has irked Washington" chides the Boston Globe, clearly piqued that Boston is not in a position to
catapult cannisters of it's garbage and toxic waste northward at Canada, towards the "Great Concavity" of David Foster Wallace's
"Infinite
Jest". [other shades of "....Jest" loom as "...a reputed haven for terror groups." whispers the Globe...just like in Wallace's book!]
.....Toronto can't find any Canadian communities willing to furnish an immense garbage pit, while "
Michigan's underused landfills are famous for courting crud from outside the state's borders.": They approached Toronto with the deal.
["Ontario, meanwhile, accepts imports of toxic industrial sludge, low-level radioactive waste, and other dangerous refuse from Michigan and other US states."] Garbage is a protected "free trade" commodity under NAFTA and Michigan may need the 'trash jobs':
NAFTA has spurred automakers to
shift production away from the US and build new factories in Canada and Mexico. Canada's auto
factories are
7%
more productive than US ones and have lower health care costs. [
"The growth of imports to the
U.S. from these factories has contributed substantially to the growing U.S. trade deficit and
the related job losses."]. So: Canada sends garbage and shiny new autos south: the US sends radioactive sludge, spittle, jobs and curses north.
Meanwhile, walk across the border and the
murder rate per 100,000 (per year) drops from
42.6 (Detroit, USA) to
2.2 (Windsor, Canada):
"Are
Canadians somehow flinging all their fear and murderous rage into the US along with the garbage?" (asks the Daily Tabloid)
posted by troutfishing
on Mar 10, 2003 -
42 comments
What happened to sportsmanlike behaviour in hockey? Islander fans booed the Canadian national anthem hours after a memorial service for the Canuck soldiers who died at American hands. Fine, whatever, that type of behaviour is expected. They also harrassed Toronto fans in the parking lot outside the rink, including stealing their flags and setting the Maple Leaf ablaze. Now if this was Canadians burning the
American flag...
posted by drgonzo
on Apr 29, 2002 -
52 comments
First gay marriage legal, for now "The Ontario government will face a court battle if it refuses to register two marriages performed yesterday at a Toronto church in a ceremony billed as the world's first legal homosexual wedding since the Middle Ages."
posted by sylloge
on Jan 15, 2001 -
11 comments
Designer-programmer-actor-model-waiter? Finally, someone giving one or more fingers to Toronto's tightarsed, outdated
nouveaux-médias hiring practices. How would
you like to be on call
24 hours a day as an interactive-TV manager for the Weather Network way the fork out in Mississauga?
Lila Feng worship isn't enough of a payoff, kids.
posted by joeclark
on Jun 12, 2000 -
7 comments
![[pic]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sep0707-highwayofheroes.jpg){kind=link}
