blogTO | Posts by Adam

Pups Take the Streets This Weekend

Adam Schwabe — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:09:43 PDT

This weekend is the one your favourite furry friend has been waiting for. This year's Woofstock kicks off again tomorrow and will see Front St. closed off from Jarvis to Yonge as hundreds of drooling, hyperactive dogs take to the streets, with owners in tow for North America's largest outdoor dog festival.

I stumbled across last year's festival merely by accident and it was a lot of fun seeing dogs just totally losing it, not knowing what to do with themselves they were so excited. Whether it was officially sanctioned or not, the fountain just west of the Flatiron building ended up getting a good dose of soap, and was full of dogs covered in suds.

This year's festival runs all-day this Saturday and Sunday in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood, and will play host to events like the Stupid Dock Tricks Contest, Extreme Doggie Makeovers, a fashion show and costume contest and plenty of vendors selling trendy dog clothes that Fido will surely never forgive you for.

They'll also be running a new event this year, the Ontario Dock Dogs on Market Street contest which really boils down to a long jump for dogs in an inflatable pool. For more information, check out the Woofstock site and be sure to stoop and scoop!

Photo by blogTO Flickr Pool contributor, Taylor Zhou

TO's First Male Burlesque: Where's the Beef?

Adam Schwabe — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:46:02 PDT

Any time some group tries to claim they are the "first", I start to raise an eyebrow. Particularly when a group like Boylesque comes along and claims to be "Toronto's first all-male burlesque show".

Toronto's no stranger to burlesque - maybe it's something in the water, but I see more burlesque troupes announcing performances at Goodhandy's or your favourite West Queen West drinking hole every week. My big question for Boylesque - where's the beef?

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Luminato: Visual Arts Round-up

Adam Schwabe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:03:21 PDT

June seems to be the month of choice for festival organizers looking to capitalize on our all-too-brief summer, and Luminato is one that really stood out last year. We were treated to a wealth of free visual arts spread about the city from the giant, building-sized art and a wide variety of suspended installations (my first piece with blogTO) to the spectacular beacons of light at Harbourfront that responded to your pulse (shown above).

This Friday, Luminato will kick off again. This year, they've stepped up the dance and performance-related events, and there's noticeably fewer public art installations. Either way, there's some interesting venues to check out at the festival. Keep reading for my picks.

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Bitch Salad's for Dinner Tonight

Adam Schwabe — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:19:38 PDT

Who said there was nothing to do a Tuesday night? If you're not going to be getting your party on tonight at Toronto the Good, maybe a good dose of bitchy comedy could do the trick.

Andrew Johnston (who I profiled last year in our 'Through the Eyes Of' series) will be hosting a "melange of live comedy for bitchy queens by bitchy queens" tonight at Buddies.

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Toronto the Good?

Adam Schwabe — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:44:50 PDT

Tomorrow night, the Spacing folks are throwing their fourth annual Toronto the Good event along with the ERA Architects, Toronto Society of Architects, Heritage Toronto, Wireless Toronto, and [murmur]. The organizers are hoping attendees will get together to discuss the idea of an 'urban centre' and how that could work here in Toronto.

The event will also play host to an interactive map of the city (last year, attendees were asked to place markers where they got drunk, had their first kiss, and got busy for the first time), a public text message display board and a few other artistic displays.

The venue for this event, the Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District is spectacular, and it's not a bad deal for food included at $10/head, but what last year's event really came down to was a glorified schmooze-fest with opportunities for rubbing elbows with architects galore.

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Your Guide to Doors Open Toronto 2008

Adam Schwabe — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:54:47 PDT

Get on your walking shoes! The city is throwing its annual Doors Open Toronto festival this weekend, May 24-25. Doors Open is a chance for you to explore and discover some of the very unique buildings and sites around the city - many of which are typically inaccessible to the general public.

There are more locations than ever participating this year, and with the city's fairly unwieldy listings database, I thought I'd make your life a little easier this weekend by making a shortlist of places to see this weekend at Doors Open Toronto.

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Washington DC Gets Bike Sharing - Where's Ours?

Adam Schwabe — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:31:00 PDT

You might have already heard of the bike sharing program in France that has been a huge hit with Parisians. Vélib' (short for vélo libre) was launched last year in Paris with around 10,000 bikes available at the near 750 stations for short term rental. That number has since skyrocketed to 20,000 available bikes and almost 1,500 automated rental stations, and it's been cited that the program has resulted in a 10 time increase in bike usage across the city.

Those numbers aren't anything to cough at, so it's no surprise that the idea is starting to take root in other cities, including Washington DC which just launched its Smart Bike DC bike sharing program in partnership with Clear Channel Outdoor. For about $40 a year, Americans in their capital get access to (an admittedly meager) 120 bikes at 10 locations around the city - but hey, it's a start.

That begs the question - with no shortage of bike advocacy groups and a renewed interest in cutting carbon - where's our bike sharing program?

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Swap Your Jewellery and Mash It Up

Adam Schwabe — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:41:49 PDT

Spring Cleaning season is in full swing, and now that Victoria Day has come and gone, we're ramping up for summer and all you've got is your busted and broke-looking bling to show off. Enter The Franken-Jewellery Swap. If you have a taste for DIY, this is going to be right up your alley.

Everyone brings their old jewellery, and the idea is to break 'em down, and mash 'em up - creating new jewellery from the raw materials. For a mere $5, all the necessary tools are provided, as are refreshments, music, and surely a bevy of interesting people with fun stories behind their treasures. It's like going to get parts for your car from the junkyard, except decidedly more social and creative.

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Pride 2008 Crowns Grand Marshall Enza Anderson

Adam Schwabe — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:30:00 PDT

This year's Pride Week celebrations might still be a couple months off, but the folks at Pride Toronto are wasting no time and have just announced that this year's Grand Marshall will be none other than Enza "Supermodel" Anderson.

Enza has been a fairly loud voice in Toronto's queer community as a regular columnist over at Metro newspaper, covering local entertainment news and "on the street" profiles.

Anderson is well known for a bid for mayor back in 2000 where she competed against Mel Lastman, taking a fairly substantial number of votes. This surprised many because of the fairly low amount of capital she put into running the campaign.

Enza hasn't been shy in declaring her intentions to run for city council in 2010; She told me as far back as last year's Pride that this was her plan, and calls her role as Grand Marshall "a stepping stone" to that goal. If she's elected, that will reportedly make her the first transsexual on a city council in Canada.

The role of Grand Marshall is to lead the Pride Parade, as well as making media appearances where necessary, in effect acting as the spokesperson for Pride Toronto.

Pride Toronto 2008 runs from June 20th to 29th this year, with Enza leading the parade on Sunday, June 29th. Keep an eye on blogTO for tons of coverage from Pride.

Photo by Adam Schwabe

Run the ROM Runs Tonight

Adam Schwabe — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:26:48 PDT

Almost a year ago, hundreds of joggers and high-sock enthusiasts descended on the then-unfinished ROM reno to take part in a 5k run through the museum. Keen readers might recall that blogTO interviewed the duo that "runs with art" behind The Movement Movement on an earlier episode of the Arts Now Podcast.

Having run the ROM event myself, part of the fun was trying not to fall over the number of camera toting runners that were putting together footage for what will be shown at the premiere screening tonight at The Gladstone. Keep on reading for the deets.

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GO Lakeshore: More Delays Than Usual Next Week

Adam Schwabe — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:32:54 PDT

Subscribers to GO Transit's E-News Alerts service are surely thrilled to read a fairly vague message about "significant train delays" forthcoming on the Lakeshore tracks (the system's busiest) over the next week:

Due to CN trackwork on the Lakeshore tracks, GO Transit is concerned that significant train delays may occur during the week of April 14 to April 18. Please allow additional time or take an earlier train, if possible. We regret any delays, but CN must do this work to maintain safety & train speed.

I suppose this is in addition to the insignificant delays caused by assclowns sloshed off their faces after a Jays game, who are single-handedly responsible for causing not only over an hour delay at Rouge Hill (and a lovely commuting experience), but an evacuation and relocation of passengers from one train to the other. Thanks GO, we heart you.

Photo by blogTO Flickr pooler theXenon

vidTO: CN Tower's Glass Floor Elevator Ride

Adam Schwabe — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:24:56 PDT

Yesterday morning I got a first look at the CN Tower's new glass-floor elevators that I wrote about last week. The novelty floor is being dubbed as "North America's first" and feature two strips of glass giving you a view of the elevator shaft below your feet rushing away.

Watch the video above as I talk to CN Tower's CEO Jack Robinson about the new floors in the elevator and take a ride up and down myself. Keep reading for some of my impressions.

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"The Best Corner in the World"

Adam Schwabe — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:00:34 PDT

After several months of lane closures, holes in the road, sidewalk blockages and plenty of excess "caution ribbon motif", it's no wonder Torontonians are getting fed up with the veritable clusterfuck that is Yonge & Bloor.

Lauded by the new, entirely over-hyped 1 Bloor condos as the "best corner in the world", they'd be hard pressed to even define it as a corner at this point, with fences and pylons blocking nearly every passage through the intersection. I've taken great joy (and an equal amount of shame) in reading blogger bstewart23 tearing the intersection a new one every so often.

More photos and excerpts of his frustration after the jump.

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Get Your Garden On

Adam Schwabe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:29:44 PDT

Despite the rather unruly weather we've seen over the past couple days, Spring is well underway. The mounds of snow are starting to melt (well, most of them, anyway), and if you look hard enough, the first bits of green are starting to make an appearance.

Just in time, since the Guerilla Gardeners are having their first meet-up of the season tomorrow, to kick off their annual campaign of city-wide beautification. Their mission, "Without permit or license, we plant seeds and seedlings in all those neglected corners of public space."

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CN Tower Glass Elevators Coming Soon

Adam Schwabe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:22:23 PDT

The chaps at the CN Tower have announced that a week from today, April 9, they'll begin running new glass floor elevators to propel visitors to the top of the tower. (No word on whether the elevators will continue to rise from there)

They also claim these are the world's highest and North America's first use of such elevators and will give riders a 5+ square foot view of the ground they'd be plummeting to if it weren't for the mere 2.5 inches of glass holding them up.

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