Photo: "Mayor Miller" by Brendan Lynch, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

Remember the dramatic raids on the infamous Comfort Zone last year? Now owners of the seedy club (go there on a Sunday morning for indisputable confirmation) are fighting back with an $11million harassment lawsuit against the City of Toronto and Councillor Adam Vaughan. The lawsuit claims that the club has been subjected to an unfair, targeted campaign of unlawful, excessive inspection, and intimidation.

GO Transit riders may be facing a small fare hike as soon as this coming Saturday. The fare increase is said to be in line with inflation, and is not so much that the general public is likely to call foul.

Toronto Police are warning the public about potentially unsafe chicken. In what may be the weirdest local case of theft-for-quick-blackmarket-sale I've heard of in a while, its believed that a truckload of chicken breasts was stolen, repackaged, and sold in the city. And there's no guarantee that the thieves followed proper food handling and refrigeration protocol.

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CAW and GM have reached a tentative deal that might save jobs. Making sacrifices that include wage and pension benefit freezes will keep labour costs from increasing, and keep GM breathing in the short term.

People are being urged to shop local. Retailers in the Beach are being hit hard by the recession and small businesses are dropping like flies. It's starting to resemble the section of Bathurst between Bloor & Dupont, an area of the city that one might expect to be doing better than it is, given its location.

Use of the city's food banks is also up since the economy has been tanking, and has Daily Bread concerned about their abilities to help all in need. Things are tougher for everyone, but please continue to give if you can.

And the Toronto Star has updated and improved its neighbourhood maps Google mashup. It was great in version 1.0 and it's even better in version 2.0.