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Torontoist

Torontoist is a website about Toronto and everything that happens in it. It's edited by David Topping, and published by Gothamist.

Rocket to the StarsYesterday

Riding the rocket is a routine event for most of us, a mundane part of our daily schedules that doesn't get a whole lot of attention. But at least for the next month, some imaginative physicists want to take the edge off our collective tedium and sprinkle a bit of cosmic wonder through our otherwise boring commutes. This year is the International Year of Astronomy; to celebrate, a series of posters is going up on the TTC which aims to engage our curiosity about the very nature of the universe itself. The campaign is part of an initiative called CoolCosmos, and consists of five posters that offer whimsical tidbits of information about astronomy, couched in terms that those of us who never ventured past grade 11 physics can still understand. It’s an endearingly nerdy campaign, and the most compelling use of TTC ad space we’ve seen since

Twitter, Twitter, Liberal StarYesterday

Two months ago, Michael Ignatieff joined Twitter. Under his biography, he clearly stated his objective: Michael Ignatieff for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Over five weeks, he updated fifteen times ("Is energized by the crowd last night – what a great way to start a week. Off to Ottawa today," he wrote on November 24) and accumulated 754 followers.

According to Twitterholic, Iggy is doing alright, ranked 52nd in Toronto based on the number of followers. Overall, however, he’s got some catching up to do: he’s ranked 10,700th on the site. Stephen Harper is 1,999th, with just under two thousand followers—although to be fair Harper did join sixteen months before Ignatieff. King of the Canadian Hill, even without a coalition, is Jack Layton with 2,058 followers, and Layton joined only six months ago. It’s obvious where Iggy’s not following through. Harper has been on Twitter significantly longer and Layton is a beast at updating, out-typing Harper by 60%, Iggy by 1000%.

Luckily, the leader of the Liberals has got down the chummy, spontaneous-ish format of

Working at McDonald's No Longer Soul-CrushingYesterday

You know how when most people think of working at McDonald's they picture a bunch of unhappy people who really have no other options cramped together and sweating over deep fryers, collecting minimum wage while working long hours serving greasy, high-fat food to screaming, overweight kids?

Well, it turns out those people are wrong and McDonald's is actually one of the best places to work in Canada, if the results of a recent internal employee survey are to be believed. McDonald's Canada ranked at #25 in the 2009 list of Canada's 50 best employers, based on a survey conducted by Hewitt and Associates. Out of almost forty-two thousand people surveyed, 84% considered themselves valued employees and a whopping 86% felt proud to be a McDonald's employee. It's like the questionnaires were filled out by forty-two thousand Calvins.

Now, we're not saying this data is

Putting a Fresh Face ForwardYesterday

Store makeovers don’t always have negative outcomes. According to the Danforth East Community Association (DECA), successful projects can even revive and re-energize a desolate community.

DECA was formed this past spring by a group of neighbours living between Mortimer and the train tracks south of Danforth, and Main and Coxwell to the east and west. Its founding members read a Toronto Star article that described their community in unfavourable terms and they decided to take action in order to improve the neighbourhood’s commercial value and social interaction. Examples of their initiatives have included running a Farmers’ Market on Thursday evenings in the summer and providing walking tours of the area.

DECA now wants to make a bigger statement. To do so, its members have started a store makeover initiative in order to revitalize the neighbourhood’s commercial strip on Danforth Avenue. Their test-run efforts have been aimed at Roger Wang and Julie Liao, the new owners of Michael’s Meats and Deli. According to DECA board member Ellen Long, the store has historically been overcrowded with inventory and it has had a

Your Brain and the CityYesterday

Walking down Queen West can be an obstacle course. We've got to navigate the hazards of traffic, meandering pedestrians, and patches of ice at the same time as car stereos, bits of overheard conversation, flashing signage, and the temptations of shop windows all fight for our attention. The chaos of street life can be lively and invigorating, even comforting. Yet a new study from the University of Michigan (as reported by Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe) concludes that streets like Queen West are hard on our brains.

Our brain tires out by having to constantly sort through the overwhelming array of stimuli encountered in urban settings to figure out where it needs to direct its attention—towards monitoring the traffic hazards of crosswalks or towards mapping the route to our destination, for example—and what it can block out as irrelevant, like snatches of conversation and the freshly baked goods in the window. To investigate the impact of urban life on our brains, psychologist Marc Berman had some students walk throug