Once again, developers have enshrined Rob Ford's foibles in the annals of video game history. First, there was Stay Mayor, an Android minigame that featured a cartoon Ford in a race against time to earn enough money to buy back the crack video. Then there was Flappy Bird clone Flappy Ford (because why not). This Hour Has 22 Minutes even made a video mock-up of an 8-bit Ford game (it's not playable yet, but we're hoping).

Now there's Crackathon, an unpolished but weirdly addictive little platformer created by Nick Mostowich and Chris Ngan. The game allows you to play as a pixellated Ford avatar with a pasted-on face, dodging cops and cameramen in front of a Toronto skyline.

The player has to collect clouds of smoke, pot leaves and bottles of booze to win points (er, increase your "party score") before the timer (or "public opinion") runs out. There seems to be no in-game mechanism to increase public opinion, which leads me to believe that the real-life Ford has found some sort of cheat code.

The game features plenty of Ford's most infamous sound bites (pick up a cloud of crack smoke, and you get a "probably in one of my drunken stupors"). The game-over screen? A giant photo of Ford hanging his head, with the message "YOU HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED". (Technically, that's not possible in our legal system - but then again, plumbers can't spit fire and echidnas can't fly.)

This newly-opened tavern joins a bustling row of restaurants on Spadina, south of Queen. While the menu is informal, expect some seriously skilled preparations and thoughtful flavours from the chef behind St. Lawrence Market fine-dining spot Trevor Kitchen & Bar.

Read my profile of The Tavern by Trevor in the restaurants section.

The Toronto Public Library isn't just about books any more. Today, a Toronto library card gives its holder access to a world of information, including, as of this morning, 10,000 films, and 250,000 records available to watch or download for free online.

Hoopla, a service similar to (though not nearly as comprehensive as) Netflix, which officially launched Monday in Toronto, provides media streaming subscriptions for 40 North American public libraries. As we reported in January, the service eliminates late fees and hold lists associated with eBooks. There are a few recent movies, but the selection is geared towards documentaries and educational TV programs.

There's music, too. Drake's Nothing Was the Same is one of the stand-out titles available to stream for free. Digital books and magazines are available via Overdrive, though the system of holds and limits on the number of digital copies of each publication makes the service feel a touch clunky compared to Hoopla.

(Caveat: Hoopla limits its users to five movies per month and video "rentals" expire after three days, albums after seven.)

"E-content is our fastest area of growth, with customers borrowing more than 2 million ebooks, eaudio-books and emagazines in 2013," said Vickery Bowles, Director of Collections Management at Toronto Public Library in an emailed statement. "We expect we'll see even more growth this year with the introduction of online music and video."

In February, the library launched a suite of 3D printers, part of its $44,000 Digital Innovation Hub on Yonge Street. These cutting edge machines, still cost-prohibitive to all but the most dedicated early adopter, render digital wireframe models in real, hold-in-your-hand plastic. A boon for medical science (print out bones, teeth, and possibly other prosthesis) and even model makers: create custom tools or replacement parts from scratch in minutes.

The digital lab also includes Raspberry Pi programming computers, laptops, iPads, and other computers all of which are available to anyone with a library card.

TPL has greatly improved its digital archival offerings, too. Not long ago most online image searches turned up low-res scans that gave an unnecessary amount of space - sometimes about three quarters of the image - to citation information. Now, a quick search for a picture of the Summerhill train station, for example, results in a gorgeous, high-res picture of the Tyndall stone building from 1913, minus extraneous detail.

Three cheers for free stuff.

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

Photo by Rina Pitucci

The best nachos in Toronto keep to the classic formula of chips, cheese and toppings. This line-up of sports bars, pubs and Mexican grills really distinguishes itself in their use of top-notch toppings and skilled layering techniques.

This killer batch of nachos starts with great sturdy chips - in some instances, kettle-cooked tortillas or fried wontons. Next, it comes down to nuanced layering techniques: What gets smothered by cheese? (Onions, yes - pico, never!) Maximum cheese coverage is paramount. Oh, and having extras like blackened chicken, pulled pork or fried calamari doesn't hurt either.

Here are the best nachos in Toronto.

See also:
The Best Pubs in Toronto
The Best Mexican Restaurants in Toronto

Photo by ZensLens in the blogTO Flickr pool.

Today in Toronto, Amin Amir screens as part of the ReelWorld Film Fest. The doc shows a side of Canada rarely seen as Somali exile and political cartoonist Amin Amir struggles to to help disenfranchised Somali youth in Edmonton. Watch the trailer here. At Monarch, Snowblink and special guest thereminists will play Carl Wilson and Sean Michaels' double book launch. For more events, click on over to our events section.

• Amin Amir
• Carl Wilson & Sean Michaels tandem Book Launch
• Cosmonauts, B-17, Mean Tikes
• Toronto Silent Film Festival: Last Command

Have an event you'd like to plug? Submit your own listing to the blogTO Toronto events calendar or contact us directly.

Photo from Amin Amir

The Toronto Images Festival, North America's most expansive film and media art event, returns for its 27th year this Thursday. Featuring 10 days of installations, performances, gallery exhibitions, and screenings of experimental shorts and features, it's a reminder that cinema is first and foremost an art, and serves as a perfect palate cleanser before we're bombarded with another summer of big-budget blockbusters.

Given the festival's transmedial sprawl, it's virtually impossible to see everything it has to offer; even if you do have the physical and mental stamina, there just aren't enough hours in the day. We've identified 10 of the events and programs that look especially enticing this year.

Andrew Lampert's Making Space For More (Friday, April 11, 6pm; Art Gallery of Ontario)
Essentially a dinner party, but unlike any you've ever experienced. Located at the AGO's Frank Restaurant, indulge in chef Jeff Dueck's gastronomic inventions as you listen to legendary Toronto artist and filmmaker Michael Snow perform live music, while filmmaker and archivist Andrew Lambert hosts and curates "a view into the AGO's never-before-seen, endlessly fascinating archive." A three-hour event, but feel free to arrive/depart whenever you're ready. To make reservations, go here.

A collection of drops (Friday, April 11, 9pm; Jackman Hall)
This is the annual "locals" survey, where you'll find most of the Toronto-based artists featured in the festival. Curated by Toronto artist Johnson Ngo, the program offers a steady gradient of familiar faces (Chris Kennedy's Brimstone Line played in TIFF's Wavelengths program last September, while John Kneller's Axis appeared in one of Kennedy's editions of The Free Screen at TIFF in February) and emerging new voices.

Curtains (Apr 12-May 24; InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre)
Slowly but surely, Ken Jacobs' dream of realizing 3D's potential in the art world is becoming a reality as more and more artists start to explore the vexed, "gimmicky" medium. Now, it might seem redundant for an art installation - typically already three-dimensional - to call upon the powers of 3D glasses (anaglyph red/blue 3D, in this case), but that's exactly the approach Oakland-based artist Lucy Raven takes in her look at contemporary movie-making in this piece.

A Conjuring, A Slow Acting Poison (Sunday, April 13, 6:30pm, Jackman Hall)
This rich selection of work from various parts of the world is fixated on the idea of conjuring - of spirits, of visions, and of histories. Included is Karen Yasinksy's haunting Life is an Opinion Fire a Fact, which you may remember from the Regional Support Network's Baltimore-Based program, and Joshua Solondz's hypnotic Prisoner's Cinema, meant to evoke the light displays prisoners see when confined to dark space for extended periods of time.

It For Others (Sunday, April 13, 8:30pm; Jackman Hall)
This program is a diptych of sorts, juxtaposing Chris Marker and Alain Resnais's 1953 film Les statues meurent aussi beside Duncan Campbell's new, short feature, It for Others. Campbell's film takes Marker and Resnais's collaboration as a point of departure in his rigorous treatise on "the life, death, consumption and circulation of objects and images." Not to mince words: when a Marker or Renais film screens on film (16 mm, here), you schedule your life around it.

Double Nature - International Student Showcase (Monday, April 14, 6:30pm; Jackman Hall)
Don't let the word 'student' fool you; this is a bona fide collection of films coming to Toronto from as far away as Germany, the U.K., Argentina and Brazil, including Ana Vaz's The Age of Stone, which screened at the New York Film Festival last October, and reveals an architectural artifact that has to be seen to be believed.

Bloody Beans (Monday, April 14, 9pm; Jackman Hall)
Where Campbell evokes Marker and Resnais, director Narimane Mari situates her film in the light of the work of Jean Vigo and Jean Rouch. Co-presented by Cinema Scope magazine, Bloody Beans is an imagined ethnography that sees a group of Algerian children kidnap a soldier, among other magical interludes. Made a big splash at Copenhagen's International Documentary Film Festival.

OPEN SCREENING! (Tuesday, April 15, 10pm; CineCycle)
In which you bring a film - ten minutes or less, film or digital, new or old, work-in-progress or finished, your own or someone else's - and watch it in a free, open, and social atmosphere of peers and strangers, artists and amateurs. From my experience, the work played in these open screenings can be just as inspired and invigorating as what's been programmed in the actual festival. Don't have something to bring? Come anyway (though it's not too late to toss something together)! A great, fun way to stay up all night.

Two Hours Two Minutes (Wednesday, April 16, 8:30pm; Jackman Hall)
To echo what I said above: when a work by Jean Eustache screens on film (this one on 35mm), you schedule your life around it. Part of why this program - centered around the concept of voyeurism - runs so long (check the title) is that it features, as its core, Eustache's impossible to see, 50-minute 1977 film Une sale histoire, in which a man tells a tale of discovering a peephole into a cafe's ladies' room, becoming entranced by the exposed female he could see.

From Deep (Saturday, April 19, 9pm; Jackman Hall)
The avant-garde video essay meets Steve James's Hoop Dreams. Featuring cameos by Run-D.M.C., Adidas, Michael Jordan, Woody Harrelson, and Magic Johnson - which is to say, 1980s America in a nutshell. To best prepare yourself for this closing night event, be sure not to miss the film's director Brett Kashmere speaking with Canadian artist Jennifer Chan two days before the screening.

Lead still from From Deep.

There were no closures this week on DineSafe, though yellow cards were doled out to some presumably above-board establishments - tsk tsk, O&B, Nu Bugel and Butter Chicken Factory.

Here are the rest of this week's rogue restaurants.

Oliver & Bonacini (2901 Bayview Ave.)
Inspected on: March 31, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 7 (Minor: 2, Significant: 4, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator fail to maintain hazardous foods at 60 C (140 F) or hotter.

Nu Bugel (240 Augusta Ave.)
Inspected on: April 2, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 6 (Minor: 3, Significant: 2, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operate food premise maintained in manner adversely affecting sanitary condition.

Sweet Escape (55 Mill St.)
Inspected on: April 2, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 4 (Minor: 2, Significant: 1, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator fail to maintain hazardous food(s) at 4 C (40 F) or colder.

Kibo (533 Parliament St.)
Inspected on: April 2, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 4 (Minor: 2, Significant: 1, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Maintain hazardous foods at internal temperature between 4 C and 60 C.

Butter Chicken Factory (556 Parliament St.)
Inspected on: April 3, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 5 (Minor: 1, Significant: 4)
Crucial infractions include: N/A

Gelato Pizza (200 Queen St. West)
Inspected on: April 3, 2014
Inspection finding:Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 4 (Minor: 3, Significant: 1)
Crucial infractions include: N/A

Billy's Souvlaki (748 Dovercourt Rd.)
Inspected on: April 3, 2014
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 1 (Minor: 2, Significant: 2, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator fail to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated

This house located at 1549 Dundas Street East in Leslieville is a modern-living paradise. Floor-to-ceiling windows fill the open-concept home with light and make the space perfect for entertaining. And if sunlight isn't enough for you, LED lights throughout the house can be turned on from a smart phone, computer or tablet. We are living in the future! And, should we experience another winter like the last, you'll never have to worry about SAD again.

The second floor contains 3 bedrooms, each with their own walk-in closet, so for all the wide open space, there's no shortage on storage. The master bedroom also includes a terrace overlooking the large backyard - perfect for keeping an eye on the kids (or the neighbours). And the basement is finished with a separate entrance, ready for an income unit, or extra space, if desired.

As far as location, it seems like you can hardly go a day without hearing about Leslieville and surrounding neighbourhoods, and this house part of this East Side Renaissance. Not only is it a quick walk to spots like Ascari Enoteca or Queen Margherita Pizza, but walk in the other direction for 15 minutes and you can be chowing down on briyani at Lahore Tikka House. In other words, you'll actually have a reason to leave this lovely home.

SPECS

• Address: 1549 Dundas St. E.
• Price: $1,229,000
• Lot Size: 25 x 125 Feet
• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 3 ½
• Parking Spaces: 2
• Taxes: $2,935
• Walk Score: 92

NOTABLE FEATURES

• Centralized computer unit controlling lighting, security, temperature, fireplace, and music
• Built-in espresso machine
• Open-concept modern design
• Walk-in closets in each of the 3 bedrooms
• Finished basement with separate entrance for a possible rental unit

GOOD FOR

People looking for a "move-in ready," modern home. Fans of the Jetsons. OK, so it won't brush your teeth for you, and there is no Rosie the robot, but this home has plenty of futuristic finishes. The house is smart-wired for music, lighting, temperature control, and security. This is high tech living.

MOVE ON IF

Your dream home is crown mouldings, stained glass, and wood-burning fireplaces. This house is modern, capital "M." If you're looking for a turn of the century Victorian or neo-Gothic home, this isn't for you. Shame.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

Thanks to The Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) for sponsoring our obsession with Toronto's real estate market.

Read other posts in this series via our House of the Week Pinterest board.

Writing by Isabel Ritchie

It's been over a year since we tagged along while Liberty Village Brewing Company brewed their first commercial batch of beer, but, unless you frequent 25 Liberty, it's unlikely you've had much of a chance to sample the fledgling neighbourhood brewer's beers. That's about to change.

Today, after a year of producing only small batches of their brews and maintaining only one regular account in their neighbourhood, Liberty Village Brewing Company is rolling their beer out to bars across the city.

In order to brew a batch large enough to expand their reach to more venues, LVBC enlisted the folks at Cool Brewery, who are by now something like the area's go-to contract brewing facility, and who proved more than capable of helping Liberty meet their goals.

"The process at Cool was fantastic," says Casandra Campbell, Marketing and Sales for LVBC. "They are very professional so we felt very comfortable. [Cool Brewmasters] Adrian [Popowycz] and Vince [Marsman] were more than happy to let us be super fussy and we felt like we had total control. They provided important information about brewing efficiency and hop utilization, both of which are important for scaling up, and they also have a fantastic lab that can test just about everything."

For their first large scale batch, LVBC brewed their 504 Pale Ale, a dry-hopped American-style pale ale named for Liberty's overworked, perpetually-late streetcar. "We have seasonals in the works too but nothing confirmed yet," Campbell says. "We need to deal with our first batch before we do anything else."

Kegs will leave Cool later today and over the next few weeks you'll see Liberty Village Brewing Company's 504 Pale Ale on tap at Tequila Bookworm, PACT, Mildred's, Brass Taps, Dundas & Carlaw (formerly Lola Bar), Tallboys, Bar Hop, WVRST, and barVolo. Some of the beer is slated to go into bottles and you can expect a few more bars to start carrying LVBC brews then.

Ben Johnson also writes about beer over on Ben's Beer Blog. Follow him on twitter @Ben_T_Johnson.

Canada turned 100 years old in 1967. Montreal hosted Expo '67, the Bank of Canada issued a special centennial bank note that contained a stylized version of Stuart Ash's famous maple leaf logo, and in Toronto The Globe and Mail wondered what life would be like in Ontario's capital 100 years hence.

The curving towers of Toronto City Hall were barely two years old in the summer of '67. Mies van der Rohe's TD Centre, the first pair of modern skyscrapers to be built downtown, was still a steel skeleton. Up at Wellesley and Bay, the concrete Sutton Place Hotel, the fourth tallest building in the city, had just opened its luxurious rooms to the public.

"North American cities may face nuclear demolition or cultural collapse," John Burchard, dean of the school of humanities and social studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ominously warned at the start of the story. "If, however, they escape both, they might become beautiful."

"Might."

"Toronto will be totally urbanized by 2067," reporter Betty Lee wrote. "The majority of urban-orientated Torontonians will prefer the inbuilt efficiency of the mile-high apartment building or the 20-mile long, continuous metro building of fused apartments, factories, roads, universities, hospitals, and shopping facilities."

(Lee seems to have been talking about Metro Centre, the later aborted plan to redevelop a large swath of abandoned downtown railway lands that gave rise to the CN Tower.)

"About a million persons will choose to live in pre-packaged, one-family dwelling units," many of them located in 100-floor towers near the water front.

In 2067, buildings, all built on stilts for reasons for some reason, sit among landscaped lawns and parks, she writes. Downtown is home to a "three-harbor hydrofoil" port and air terminal, but most people get around via "electrically powered hovercraft," which are stored in skyscraper garages. (That classic sci-fi invention the people tube makes an appearance, but only for inter-city travel.)

The Torontonians of the future use hovercraft because the era of the "super-subway" and "super-highway" have passed.

When it comes to crime, Toronto appears destined to take on a positively dystopian style of policing. "Cops have become psychiatrists ... citizens with symptoms of kleptomania, melancholia leading to suicide or murder, are sent to special community hospitals for corrective neurosurgery or brain stimulation. Mild cases of, say, sex disinterest, grouch or boredom are prescribed anti-mood drugs."

In 2067 hardly anyone works because, its seems, all the work has been done. Although stores will still exist, staffed by "fun androids," most shopping is done over video phone by "housewives" (the gender roles of the 1960s are still a thing, apparently). Clothing comes in single-use packs, and food "much of it synthetic or flavourfully processed from seaweed" is prepared automatically based on pre-set menus by a kitchen computer.

The biggest changes, Lee and her team of experts predict, will come to the built form of the city and its climate. Toronto is a city-state in 2067, its "super-mayor" wielding the power of the prime minister in Ottawa. The city stretches from Niagara, to Oshawa, to Orangeville and Aurora. 25 million people - roughly half the current population of Ontario - live within its borders.

Outside, the climate is tropical, not because we will destroy the environment, but because we will make it do our bidding. The polar ice caps have been intentionally melted and by-products from nuclear energy used to keep Toronto toasty warm. The lake shore is alive with "coconut palms, hibiscus, and frangipanni," the lake dotted with pleasure islands, and the water clean enough for year-round swimming.

"There will be ... year-round tramping through planned jungles where men, bored with their individual flying packs, can commune with nature."

At least there will be jet packs.

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

Image: "Toronto 2067: mile-high apartments and instant suits," Betty Lee, Jul. 1 1967, The Globe and Mail, "Skyline," Ellis Wiley, 1967, City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 2

Montreal design duo WANT Les Essentiels de la Vie have brought their luxurious travel bags to a new retail outpost, along with a host of clothing and accessories from hard-to-find European brands. The bright, airy store, which was designed to resemble a 19th-century pharmacy, features shelves full of bottled skin care products - and bags (either way, it's good for what ails you).

Read my profile of WANT Apothecary in the fashion section.

Rob Ford: wild, unpredictable, animalistic, and hard to track down in his native environment - perfect fodder for a Discovery channel wildlife documentary (or at least a goofy mockumentary).

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel gave viewers "a rare glimpse at one of nature's most powerful and voracious predators: the Great White Ford." Diet (primarily fermented hops,) behaviour (erratic and often aggressive,) and the err... "mating dance" all get examined.

Watch and tell yourself this is the logical byproduct of a crack cocaine scandal.

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

If you live or work downtown and fantasize about running away (but not too far away) to catch some rays, art will have your back this June. The 2014 Luminato Festival will install a fully licensed temporary beach at their hub at David Pecaut Square from June 6-15, where the world's largest disco ball hung last year.

The catch? Unlike Toronto's admittedly decent existing beaches, this "oasis" will be entirely made of cardboard. Cuban art collective Los Carpinteros are pulling our leg with their Cardboard Beach installation - but a beach party is still a beach party, even if it's smack between King West and the Financial District and the huts, chairs, cabanas, umbrellas are all made of cardboard. The real downside? Organizers want you to wear flip flops. Ew.

Luminato seems to be invested in reaching out to Toronto's party and food scene this year: on Saturday, June 7 the festival is bringing in 10 local chefs to the beach for a themed barbecue menu, plus live entertainment, and they've planned a train themed "food adventure" ride that will run from Fairmont Royal York Hotel to a secret destination where there will be live performances and eats aplenty.

The fest will also takeover the Pattison Onestop video screens in the TTC from June 2-15, and have hooked up The Roots and TV on the Radio to headline a ticketed weekend concert series. Perhaps best of all, Matthew Barney's latest film River of Fundament will screen three times during the fest. Watch our for our full preview closer to the festival.

Luminato runs from June 6-15.

By day, this rough-around-the-edges event space, located on a sleepy side street overlooking the DVP, acts as a shared co-working office. By night, it comes alive as a live music venue and theatre, featuring cheap beer, comfy couches, and a cool open-concept atmosphere that comes from its previous life as a preserves factory (yes, they come by that punny name honestly).

Read my profile of the Jam Factory in the Bars section.

The good news: Toronto finally got those new subways (subways, subways) we've been waiting for, with the expanded network stretching from Pioneer Village to Liberty Village.

The bad news: All that digging unleashed an army of bloodthirsty snakes. (Surprise!)

That's the premise behind a new indie board game created by Toronto studio Benham Games. Creator Sean Benham came up with Subways & Serpents during last summer's neverending subway vs. LRT debate: "I got to thinking how great our subway map could look if only we were able to fund all the proposed routes, and I began to sketch out what that potential map would look like - making sure to gerrymander the map to my own selfish whims," he says.

The game, which takes place inside this super-sized subway system, sounds like a takeoff of childhood favourite Snakes & Ladders - but the rules of the game are far more complex (and badass). You (and three to six of your closest friends) play as leaders of a team of serpent exterminators, looking to make some money and St. Patrick some snakes. "The 'bullseye' on your back grows larger and larger as you get closer to victory," with other teams trying to steal the cash you've accumulated, Benham says.

Your team is composed of parodies of beloved local figures - think "Sam The Wreckin' Man", who sports glasses that look like a pair of records, and "Oliver Russell", who's depicted sitting on top of a pile of gold, lighting a cigar with a Canadian $100.

The game is available on the Benham Games site for $35, and it's the closest any of us are going to get to York University Station anytime soon.

Photo by Nick K in the blogTO Flickr pool.

Today in Toronto, MakeWorks is launching a 10,000-square-foot shared work space in a restored factory in College West. The open house is free from 4-7pm, then the launch party with Skratch Bastid starts at 7pm ($10). Picastro will release their new LP You at Cinecycle as Wavelength hosts music, film screenings, $5 Steam Whistle, popcorn, and more to celebrate the band's long and winding career. Read our interview with Picastro here. For more events, click on over to our events section.

• Party: MakeWorks Open-House & Launch Party (MakeWorks)
• Music / Film: Wavelength Presents: Picastro Record Release (Cinecycle)
• Art: Toons On Tap - Session 47: Army of Darkness (Round)
• Fashion: Waning Ardour, a Rosehound Apparel Launch Party Pop Up Shop (Likely General)
• Theatre: Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre)
• Dadcore: The National (Massey Hall, sold out)

Have an event you'd like to plug? Submit your own listing to the blogTO Toronto events calendar or contact us directly.

Photo of Skratch Bastid by Dylan Leeder

This Week in Fashion rounds up the week's style news, store openings and closings, pop-up shops, sales and upcoming fashion and design events in Toronto. Find it here every Wednesday morning.

NEWS

Last week, online shopping destination LAB Consignment launched its lineup of spring merchandise, highlighting an impressive collection of '90s vintage Versace garments. The timeless and iconic pieces - including a safety pin dress and cropped leather jacket - are now available online and in studio by appointment only.

EVENTS

A Homerun! and Singhnature are back at it with Walk-In Closet, a monthly pop-up concept all about recycling, reusing, and reinventing. This time around, shop fashion blogger Franceta Johnson's closet while enjoying tunes by Bambii and sweet treats from Le Dolci at the launch party Thursday, April 10 (6-10pm). If you can't make it, don't fret! The pop-up shop will run April 10-13.

This Saturday, April 12, Save a Child's Heart is hosting a pop-up shop at 352 Adelaide St. West (3rd floor) to fund life-saving cardiac surgery for children in developing countries. Shop gently used vintage and second-hand pieces from labels ranging from H&M to Prada, all while supporting a good cause.

Nudie Jeans knows all about the wear and tear their raw denim has to go through to look just right, so they're bringing a pop-up repair shop to Dutil (704 Queen St. West) to give those bad boys the TLC they've been waiting for. Drop in April 12-13 to have your crotch blowouts and pocket holes mended for free by repair specialist Phil Rodriguez. And, if you're ready to part with your Nudies, you can trade 'em in for a special gift.

Next week (April 14-20), drop off a special piece of clothing - like a blazer or designer blouse - that may or may not have been gathering dust in your closet at Jonathan & Olivia (49 Ossington Ave.) for their second annual This Is West Queen West S.O.S clothing drive. Your donations will support CAMH's Suits Me Fine Boutique program, which dresses CAMH patients for occasions like weddings or job interviews.

The Centre for Social Innovation (720 Bathurst St.) is hosting yet another pop-up market next Wednesday, April 16 - this time celebrating the arrival of spring. Stop in from 11am until 7pm to snag some vintage and handmade goods including jewellery, scarves, bath and body products, artwork and more.

SALES

In an unexpected turn of events, TNT revived its March outlet sale with a short stint ending tomorrow (April 10). Hurry to 388 Eglinton Ave. West to rummage through all the sale merchandise from every location, at prices no higher than $99. Be sure to hit up an ATM beforehand, as they're accepting cash only.

Photo from Dutil by Dennis Marciniak

After 10 years of operation, a longtime Queen West fixture has opened its second Toronto location in the Distillery District. With faithful shoe brands like Schutz and Nine West on offer, and a growing clientele of new condo owners in the neighbourhood, the historic neighbourhood fits this footwear boutique perfectly.

Read my profile of Heel Boy (Distillery District) in the fashion section.