While the TTC has escaped corporate rebranding efforts on station platforms, a Toronto designer has dreamed up a way to inject a bit of pop culture into our daily commute. Put together by Trevor Twells, the TTC pop culture project is a fantasy exercise that uses station names as a spring board to bring characters like Frank Castle and George Costanza onto the platform.
Even for those who think we're already saturated with pop culture iconography, it's a fun little project that serves as a reminder that some TTC stations could really use a splash of creative design to spruce things up. And while these would be a way-finding nightmare, I have to say that the Drake entry in the series is just great. Here's a few more examples from the project.
View the whole set on Twells e-Folio page.
TTC fantasy maps tend to be, as their designation suggests, wildly unrealistic visions of transit expansion in Toronto. Typically showing sprawling grids of new subway and LRT infrastructure, one's first reaction in seeing them is less hope than it is mild despair at just how far we have to go when it comes to building a comprehensive transit network across the GTA. That's not necessarily the case with this recent effort from Matthew Canaran of Hogtown Commons. Designed using Jonathan English's CityRail concept, 
This newly opened lunch counter and late night destination on King West skips the easily recognized Greek standards like gyros or rice and potato dinners in favour of street food-inspired dishes like Cretan-style poutine and deep fried haloumi. So how does it stack up against more traditional fare?
Toronto Food Events rounds up the most delicious events, festivals, pop-ups, winemaker dinners, supper clubs and other food related happenings in Toronto this week and next. You can find us here every Friday morning.
Breakout Toronto Bands features local artists that we think you should give a listen to.
After a two-day meeting full of all the vitriol, hyperbole, and absurdity we've come to expect from city hall, last night council finally nailed down Toronto's $9.6-billion operating budget for 2014, while (mostly) rejecting a raft of measures Rob Ford had claimed would save the city $60 million.
The top concerts in Toronto this February are a good way to medicate your winter blues, because if locals were polled on which is the most depressing month of the year, February would likely win. It's freeze-your-ass-off unbearably cold, the end of winter is still not in sight, and you project your dread at Valentine's Day in the form of a righteous resentment towards greeting card companies.
Just half a year after it began, the short life of King East furniture store 
Weekend events in Toronto is our guide to events happening this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Here's what's happening in Toronto this January 31 to February 2, 2014.
Surprise, surprise. Rob Ford is back on the late night talk shows. In the wake of 
This new juice bar inspired by spots in LA and NY promises to rejuvenate and satiate with their custom menu of organic juices, nut milks and boosters. Using only organic produce in the cold-pressed method of extraction, these beverages boost immunity and energy and are tasty to boot.
I live at the bottom of a river. Or at least I would if this was 1906. The signs are all over the neighbourhood: my street, Highfield Road, a couple of blocks east of Greenwood and Gerrard, sits at the bottom a wide basin with steep banks at either side. Round here, streets dip and rise unexpectedly; adjacent houses sit at drastically different elevations.
In 1794, the original Ashbridge family, Pennsylvania farmers who were granted a substantial plot of land east of the Town of York, largely stripped their narrow allotment of its native hardwood bush from Danforth Ave. to the bay that now bears their name, planting an orchard, laying fences, and sowing fields.
A small stream with two distinct branches ran sporadically spring along the property's western edge, merging into a single flow just east of Dundas and Greenwood, before winding its way in a shallow depression to a mouth roughly where the TTC yard backs on to Eastern Ave. today.
As far as records of the Ashbridge Estate and old maps reveal, the little waterway, which was often no more than a frozen trickle in winter, did not have a formal name. A history of the estate that contained several photos, published in 1912 by Wellington Thomas Ashbridge, Jesse Ashbridge's son, referred to it as "the creek."
A little north, in Monarch Park, the land shows the distinctive crumples and depressions of the lost river. It was here, according to early maps, that one branch of the creek flowed on its way south. The other branch started further north, just above the Danforth but seems to have been erased by gravel mining adjacent to Greenwood Ave.
The ground in Monarch Park, where the stream used to flow.
The old river bank south of Gerrard St.
Chef Grant van Gameren, founding co-owner at 
Blurry photos, awful filters, snatched seconds of dance-floor action - it must be another controversial Rob Ford night out, this one in a Coquitlam, B.C. bar while in town to attend a memorial service for a family friend.
This year-old boxing gym at Yonge & Wellesley offers training and conditioning for those who want to learn to fight. Run by a former pro fighter, classes include boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing and MMA.
Spoken word events worth knowing about in Toronto, February 2014.
February is full of free events in Toronto if you know where to look (hint: our