Sports bars in Toronto used to mean soggy nachos, face-painted guys named Big Mickey and eau de bleach mixed with stale cigarettes. Thankfully, a new era of communal fandom has arrived, with the help of three luxe lounges where discerning diehards can enjoy good food, microbrews and giant HD TVs. Here, the best places to catch the game
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Parts and Labour patio nixed by Parkdale residents and committee of adjustment
Due to a ruling by a committee of adjustment, patrons will confined to Parts and Labour’s indoor spaces
Looks like revellers will be staying indoors this summer at Parkdale hot spot Parts and Labour. Inside Toronto is reporting that the restaurant and bar was denied a patio application at a committee of adjustment meeting on March 9. Apparently, committee members and neighbours who helped stop the application were concerned that owners Richard Lambert and Jesse Girard hadn’t done their due diligence when considering a patio’s impact on the surrounding neighbourhood.
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Want to celebrate Kate and Will’s impending nuptials in style? Go ask the attorney general
Ontario’s arbiter of fun, Chis Bentley (Image: ontla.on.ca)
Bring on the (tentative) mimosas: Attorney General Chris Bentley has said that the provincial government would consider any requests to extend bar hours for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s April 29 nuptials. Extended drinking time is sometimes granted for special events—certain Toronto establishments are open until 4 a.m. during TIFF and North By Northeast, and bar hours were extended province-wide to begin sales of alcohol at 10 a.m. for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. However, we’re curious just how early Bentley would be willing to go, considering the wedding ceremony itself is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. in London, which would be 6 a.m. Toronto time.
The unaffordable city: how did Toronto get so !@#$%&* expensive—and is it worth it?
Middle-class life isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to a heated real estate market, a strong dollar, new taxes and stagnating incomes, Toronto has become, improbably, one of the world’s most expensive cities. Is it worth it?
(Illustration by Julien Pacaud; skyline photo by Brian Summers)
Today, an average Saturday, I spent the following: $6 on a round-trip TTC ride; about $17 on groceries from the Wychwood Barns farmers’ market (organic Crispin apples, an olive boule and free-range eggs); $34 on two bottles of wine (one decent, one plonk); almost $20 on the recent Superchunk CD and $11 on toiletries. Lunch was cheap and simple: a peanut butter sandwich, an apple and a few spoonfuls of raspberry yogurt. Dinner was free: homemade rice-and-bean burritos at a friend’s house. On the way home from that modest dinner party, waiting forever for the Dufferin bus, I almost splurged on a cab, but it seemed wasteful. Then I got home and booked a flight to New York on Porter for a friend’s 40th birthday: another $326. There’s also what I spend on my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, cellphone, Internet, YMCA membership, charitable donations and credit card debt. All of that adds up to roughly $65 a day. So, as a childless, home-owning, not-terribly-extravagant-but-not-entirely-miserly-either Torontonian, this one day at the tail end of 2010 cost me—not counting the airfare, which, for argument’s sake, I’m setting aside as an exceptional expense—about $153.
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s about $20 more than what I make every day, after taxes. And it leaves nothing, obviously, for home repairs, clothing, vet bills, investments, medical expenses, birthday presents, savings, recreational drugs, holidays or the kid that Liz, my fiancée, and I have been talking about having this year but which, if things continue in this fashion, we’ll have to postpone having until we get jobs that net us more than $50,000 each a year. Read the rest of this entry »
2010 Lexicon: 11 new words that entered our vocabulary this past year
1. true belieber \troo bih-leeb-er\ n. (2010): Self-designative term adopted by mega-fans of Canadian entertainer Justin Bieber. Males identifiable by side-swept haircuts, high tops and hoodies. Females known for fierce loyalty and pathological bouts of hysteria. Natural habitat: Twitter. (See also: Bieber Fever)
2. Giambroner \jam-brohn-er\ n. (2010): Any scandal of a sexual nature that involves a couch. Named after former mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone, whose campaign for mayor of Toronto was thwarted after it was discovered that he had been engaging in horizontal activity on his office sofa with a woman who was not his live-in girlfriend. (See also: Clintonastrophe)
Introducing: Churchill, the latest lo-fi bar on “destination” Dundas West
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Remember West Queen West before it was a zoo? The folks at Churchill, Little Portugal’s newest bar, sure do. The owners of the new place are looking to resurrect that 2006 feeling, one street north. Churchill, staffed by Parkdale expats, joins Camp 4, Red Light and Brockton General in the glut of lo-fi-vibe bars that seem to be spilling off Ossington onto Dundas West.
Introducing: Bar Salumi, an aperitif bar by the owners of Local Kitchen
The interior of Bar Salumi. Volano meat slicer located near bottom left (Images: Jon Sufrin)
Inside Queen West’s new Bar Salumi—under hanging Berkshire prosciutto, garlands of hot peppers and a wild boar’s head—sits the Ferrari of all meat slicers: a Volano. In the hands of the right operator, the apparatus is supposed to make a perfect slice every time. Michael Sangregorio and Fabio Bondi, Bar Salumi’s owners, are hoping to become such operators. “It’s the most expensive thing in the entire bar,” says Sangregorio, who likens it to a Swiss watch. Bondi admits they’re trying to figure out how to use it to its full potential.
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Nine highlights of Toronto’s first ever Beer Week
Perhaps the only thing Torontonians seem to love more than patio season is the beer they drink on patios. Well, the thermometer may have dipped, but the organizers of Toronto Beer Week see no reason why they should stop slinging suds. In an homage to all things frothy and foamy, 45 bars and restaurants have banded together to celebrate the first ever Beer Week—a showcase of craft beers and foods.
Below, our Beer Week preview, with our best bets for the best ways to get tipsy from now until Sunday (the full schedule is here).
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The swag series: celeb guests get Bulgari bling, Bay blankets at the Hazelton Hotel
(Image courtesy of the Hazelton Hotel)
Yorkville’s Hazelton Hotel is one of the swankiest places to stay in Toronto, which is why 30-something celebs are booked in for this year’s film festival. To keep the VIPs happy and presumably away from hotels closer to the Lightbox (Hyatt Regency, The Thompson), each guest receives a goodie bag complete with a Hudson’s Bay Company cashmere throw, Bulgari cufflinks, a monogrammed Longchamp tote, a Moleskin film journal, Kiehl’s skin care products, Burt’s Bees spot treatment, VIP passes to bars Goodnight and Amber, tickets to George Stroumboulopoulos‘s party tonight at the Hazelton, vitamins, drinks and room fragrances. Take that, King West.
The 75 must-know TIFF hot spots
From Yorkville to West Queen West, here are the 75 restaurants, bars, clubs, cinemas and party venues that every festival-goer should know. Be sure to check back throughout the Toronto International Film Festival as we plot new celebrity sightings, event locations and more.
See the full-sized map »
Introducing: Stirling Room, the Distillery District’s first and only nightclub
Glow job: Stirling Room's new bar in a classic building (Image: Jon Sufrin)
There are no ghosts in one of the buildings at the old Gooderham and Worts Distillery, at least not according to entrepreneur Albert Rishes. He would know, too, since he and his partner Simo Korac—both veterans from Embassy nightclub—spent months there setting up Stirling Room, the first and only nightclub in the Distillery District. Open for just over a month, the new venture fills the space that once housed A Taste of Quebec and brings parties and live music to a neighbourhood known more for sleepy evenings than pumping nightclubs.
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Where to get a TIFF drink: the film festival’s 44 spots with 4 a.m. licences
The arrival of TIFF always demands answers to three crucial questions: which celebs are coming to town, what are the best flicks to see, and where can we get inebriated at ungodly hours of the night? The first two we’ve taken care of here and here, and now we have the nearly complete list of venues with extended hours for TIFF. The news is good: last year, around 25 bars and restaurants were approved for extended hours; this year, about 44 will be serving late. The selection is more varied, and with spots like Gabby’s and Hey Lucy on the list, it’s decidedly more casual. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario tells us that the list could expand as more venues get last-minute approval. Here, the 44 bars officially licensed to stay open until 4 a.m. »
War on fun: New zoning bylaw prohibits restaurants and bars located south of Bloor from having back patios
Patio season ended early this year (Image: Matt MacGillvray)
Think the one-year ban on bars and restaurants on Ossington was strict? This week, a new zoning bylaw quietly went into effect; it forbids any restaurant or bar located south of Bloor from Victoria Park and west to the Humber from opening a backyard patio.
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Best of the City: our guide to everything exemplary in Toronto in 2010
We’ve become a city obsessed with provenance. We know the politics of the farmer who collects our eggs, whether our T-shirt designer plays in an indie band, and which Japanese artisan hand-carved our kid’s non-toxic forks. We gossip about the people behind our stuff like they’re celebrities because notable origins almost always mean a superior product—and loonies well spent. This year, our crew of expert consumers dug deep, bravely comparing the gleam of cufflinks, road-testing fixed-gear bikes, sniffing perfumes, measuring poolboys’ biceps, and sampling an entire summer’s worth of steak, ice cream, fresh-squeezed lemonade and more. Here is our guide to everything exemplary in Toronto in 2010
