Silent film aficionados, rejoice once again. The Toronto Silent Film Festival is back with a line-up against with we can measure all future and former silent film festival line-ups. I say this purely on the inclusion of Victor Sjöström's 1928 Lilian gish vehicle, The Wind (Thursday, April 3 at 8PM; Innis Town Hall), arguably the greatest of all silent films, influencing filmmakers up to and including Béla Tarr.
Not to ignore other legends in this year's festival: Murnau, Chaplin, Linder, and Von Sternberg. Full schedule available here.
The Toronto Silent Film Festival runs April 3rd to 8th at Innis Town Hall.
The top driving schools in Toronto are struggling for students in an age when the first thing a boy wants for his sixteenth birthday is less likely to be the keys to the family car. What was once a rite of passage completed before prom is now postponed until after college or even to the day when buses and subways are no longer the best way to get a week's shopping for a family.
Free events in Toronto this week will sing to you, read to you, and hype you up for the Feminist Porn Awards. It's the end of the month, and after my rent cheque cashes I'll have $1.40 in my bank account. We're all in this together until we die (everyone dies alone).
The quick conversion of Ezra's Pound into Toronto's first hummusia is now complete. The pretty corner lot on Dundas West is serving up a new menu of pita and Middle Eastern dips to enjoy onsite or to take home - or to the park if the weather ever permits.
Today in Toronto, Eleanor Wachtel hosts the TIFF presentation of Books on Film, a discussion of the relationship between literature and cinema, with some noteworthy guests. Lee's Palace hosts Austin, Texas rockers ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, touring their Tao of the Dead Part III EP, and Hart House offers a musical and visual experience with their Vision and Sound: Action Painting Underground event. Mixed Company promises some laughs at The Comedy Bar. For more events, 
This Week in Music rounds up the latest news, releases and concerts coming to Toronto.
This newly opened restaurant and lounge on St. Clair West channels the flavours of the French Caribbean. It's not 
Boing Boom Tschack. 
I heard some criticism about the 3D visuals being kind of basic, but I found them vibrant and immersive; the simple aesthetic was a nod to the era of computing that existed when many of their iconic albums were written. A simple ploy, while somewhat tactless, was when the song "Space Lab" ended with a simply rendered CGI version of the CN tower, which was met with screams and applause from the audience. 
I was lucky to be in the balcony, which was the best spot, with a bird's eye view of the synths and controllers that the band was using, not visible to the people sitting on the main floor. It was great to see them punching out the bass lines and vocoder parts. In 2004, they'd seemed to be using mostly laptops and various controllers, so it was impossible to grasp what they were doing and how they were manipulating the sounds live. Not the case this year, at least for the people in the balcony seats.
Above criticism aside, this was one of the best shows I've ever seen. The crowd at Sony Centre was a who's who of Toronto's electronic music scene and felt a bit like a family reunion as every few steps brought me face to face with people I hadn't seen in years. 
At the end of the night one overzealous fan rushed the stage and tried to grab Ralf Hütter's microphone headset, much to his horror. While many people seemed highly offended by this brazen act, personally I thought it was funny.
Forget Bixi - it's Bike Share Toronto now. Three months after being placed under the control of the Toronto Parking Authority, the city is finally lifting the lid off the new-look bike share system.
The top concerts in Toronto in April 2014 take place during that last stretch before we hit 
The Toronto Festival of Beer's Spring Session is a new addition to the city's beer events this year and is, like the name might suggest, a smaller, spring version of the Toronto Festival of Beer that has for a number of years been taking place at Exhibition Place each summer. Like it's bigger, warmer sibling, the Spring Session offered much by way of beverage enjoyment options, as well as food trucks and live music. 
Sunday afternoon is an underrated time for a dance party. Living in Osaka, Japan for two years, my first experience to the afternoon loft party came out of necessity - the response of promoters to archaic club laws being enacted that effectively 
Guests were transient between the North and South rooms for the first hour, most walking around transfixed by the beauty of the space. Hugs and warm handshake were plentiful, and a commendable lack of smart phones set the tone.
The party kicked into gear around 3:30, when opening DJ Nuner provided a vision of summer. Playing Gigamesh's reigned-in edit of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" (which mercifully avoids messing with perfection by simply adding on some additional percussive thump) to a room full of dancers wearing summer dresses was like an aural antidote for seasonal affective disorder. 
The sunlight pouring in through the window perfectly complimented the music, and as I started to move, I remembered that this was probably what I'd be doing at home on a Sunday afternoon as well: dancing to Fleetwood Mac in sunbeams.
When he dropped the Sante remix of Anek's "Come Out and Play", its 
Following Farris' set, as the sun began to slowly wane in the sky, the Box of Kittens crew took to the decks. While Jamie Kidd, Hali, Fabio Palermo, Mike Gibbs will be back next week at Toronto's 
While Box of Kittens are usually associated with techno fare, the mid-90s New York vibe that characterized the party fit perfectly for the space. The emphasis throughout the evening was on deep house that ebbs and flows slowly - tracks indebted to Kerri Chandler and Mood II Swing as well as a host of producers that are likely before this writer's time. 
As I left, I reflected on what a rarity it is to leave a dance party feeling more refreshed than exhausted. The well-curated venue, music and atmosphere make the Afternoon Social series a must-attend for anyone who's a fan of great dance music and getting a good night's sleep afterwards. Long live the Sunday afternoon loft party. 
Photos by Jeff Karpala. Find 
Vote Jeff McElroy - he'll still smoke himself into a stupor, but promises he won't use crack cocaine. Three spoof campaign signs that appeared in Trinity Bellwoods Park this morning are promising a new kind of awful mayor, albeit one who's marginally more benign than the incumbent.
The best butter chicken in Toronto is decadent, comforting and addictive. Best had with basmati rice or tandoori'd breads, this dish has become a celebrated staple on menus at Indian restaurants and take-out counters across town.
Today in Toronto, you can catch a sexy cartoon by the makers of what's called the "most beautiful erotic handdrawn animation film ever" as part of the Sex and the Erotic Film Fest. Not outrageous enough? Maybe a 50 Shades of Grey parody musical is for you, or there's Markus hrn's "harrowing spectacle of desire and control" at World Stage. On the other side of the spectrum, Indie88 is hosting a free gig at the Horseshoe. For more events, 
DineSafe shut down Chinatown pho spot Kim Vietnamese this week for a laundry list of rodent-related infractions. Others struggling to provide adequate pest control include Gale's Snack Bar and the Red Room.
Each month we round up the most noteworthy live theatre playing in Toronto.
The version of Toronto we see around us, the streets, parks, transit system, and its neighbourhoods at large, are all just a version of the city that could have been. Unlike cities in other parts of the world that evolved semi-organically over centuries, Toronto is the result of years of planning and controlled expansion. A road here, a public space there, (usually) for a reason.
Sadly, the story of the Toronto waterfront is one where the might of industrial development won out over plans to protect the shoreline for public use. The Walks and Gardens (to use just one of its various names,) 
There can be no part of Toronto that has been so thoroughly manhandled as Ashbridge's Bay and the lower Don River. In its natural state, the natural mouth of the Don was a reedy marsh with scattered deep ponds and creeks. A sandbar connected the Toronto Island to the foot of Woodbine.
Imagine Toronto with diagonal avenues radiating from Queen Sand University to the Humber River and Queen and Church to Taylor Creek Park near Woodbine and O'Connor. Scattered in between are parks with tantalizing names like Sugar Loaf Hill and Dufferin Ridge.
Sixty years before Lieutenant-Governor Ray Lawson sunk the ceremonial first soldier beam into Yonge in advance of the coming subway, 
If there's one thing Toronto's transportation planners loved drawing on maps as much as subways in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, it was expressways, or "superhighways." This plan, produced as part of the Toronto Metropolitan Area Master Plan in 1943, imagined high-speed roadways just about everywhere: up Ossington, parallel to Bloor and Eglinton, down the Don Valley, and along Coxwell with a flagrant disregard for the housing and neighbourhoods they would obliterate.
