Pack up your poetry chapbooks and start flirting with your local copy shop boy/girl—the Toronto Small Press Book Fair is upon us once again. The spring fair will be held at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, 750 Spadina Avenue on Saturday June 7 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. In this time of scant profits for major newspapers and magazines, getting a small magazine off the ground is a challenging enterprise. The phrase......

Since January 2006, quirky black-and-white brushstroke illustrations have graced the back page of the The New York Times Magazine. The work is that of Toronto-based designer and OCAD teacher Bob Hambly, who just completed his 500th illustration—a bus—for the prestigious Sunday newspaper supplement. "Even after twelve years, I still get that little pang in my stomach each time a new story is sent to me," he says. "I feel a great sense of responsibility for......

The arrival of Toronto Life in the mailbox each month is something to look forward to, except for one thing: the ridiculous payload of advertising that comes with it. Now, we understand that magazines generally lose money on subscriptions, and Toronto Life's $24 annual fee is worth every penny, but we think that Toronto Life is starting to look more like Toronto Life Square. Subscription card "blow-ins" and heavy-stock ad inserts are extremely unpopular......

Torontoist spotted this bit of loveliness in St. George Station on Monday. Unlike most fugly marker graffiti, this is an elegant and playful addition to the station’s signage. It looks like the floral flourish on a crown, or possibly a fleur-de-lis. What compelled someone to draw this on the station wall? Is it a political statement, or is it simply meant to elicit a smile? Whatever the intention may have been, this piece of......

An overflowing pile of books by paolo_dlk from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The summer months may have left us a little dehydrated, a little sun burnt, a little flaky, and a little wordless, but after a long break, LitTO is returning to inform you how this fall season will revitalize your sense of word wonder. Yesterday the longlist for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize was officially announced. A record of 108 books were submitted......

Whilst performing our pre-read ritual of tearing out Toronto Life's 8,000 annoying snot-glued ad inserts and heavy stock subscription cards, we suddenly came across Torontoist's name in the mag's "Roundup" feature. The chart compares Toronto's four major city blogs: Torontoist, Spacing Wire (now Spacing Toronto), BlogTO, and the newish Torontopedia. Torontoist's raison d'être is listed as "news, arts, culture, snark"—and we won't argue with that—while BlogTO is like "your geeky friend who's always in......

FOUND magazine's hook is simple: readers send in items they've found (from handwritten love notes to Polaroids), and Davy Rothbart curates and publishes them. The finds, which appear in the magazine, the best-selling series of FOUND books, or on the mag's website as the Find of the Day, run the gamut from cute to tragic; like PostSecret, it's a way to get an anonymous glimpse inside someone else's life, but unlike PostSecret, participation in the......

Warren Kinsella has a diatribe in today’s Post (that’s National, not Midtown) about trashy celeb magazines. Their circulation is up, Time’s circulation is down, more people care about P. Diddy than national politics, yada yada yada. At the end he encourages us to "pick up quite a few more copies of The Economist and U.S. News and World Report. And the National Post, naturally." Right. So since Kinsella seems to consider the Post totally......

Originally published by Viking Press in 1957, Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been wearing holes in the back pockets and floppy canvas knapsacks of gaggles of come-find-yourself road trippers and college-aged who-am-I types ever since. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of its publication, Wednesday night will see the Gladstone play host to something of a symposium on the life and legacy of their main man, Kerouac. Authors Ray Robertson and David Creighton will......

Confession: this particular Torontoist did not understand the meaning of TJ Dawe's latest Fringe show's title at all and was expecting a drama about two Frenchmen named Maxim and Cosmo to unfold inside the George Ignatieff Theatre. Instead, Dawe's one-man talk-fest is a series of monologues on the subject of men and women and the title refers to gender-barometric magazines Maxim and Cosmo. This show doesn't follow a story in particular, just Dawe's amusing......

Pandas is an odd name for anything, and more than a little disconcerting if you're a fan of large, bamboo-eating quadripeds who don't like to breed. Luckily for pandas and those who love them, the No Pandas gallery isn't a radical anti-panda group dedicated to the final destruction of that most endangered of species. It's an art show at Xpace, dedicated to exposing North Americans to China's up-and-coming young artists. Curator Siya Chen, who......

Toronto’s Small Press Book Fair runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Trinity St. Paul Centre, 427 Bloor Street West (just west of Spadina on the south side). Now in its twentieth year, the fair presents about 70 micro to medium-sized publishers and magazines. An archive of some of the fair's past and present exhibitors links to many of Toronto's small presses. You'll find comics, fiction, zines, word sculptures, artist's books,......

British fashion magazines have been talking about "new rave" (or nu-rave) since early last year in outlandish glossies like Super Super and Pop. The genre's name is a little misleading, however, as it shares only small parts of the "old rave" aesthetic and none of the beats, which is why the movement has been generally confined to magazines about clothes, not about music. Related to dance-punk and no wave, new rave scenesters don day-glo,......

Every night, BabyG and Jay "Jmon" drive around Toronto, getting into trouble with a satellite uplink in a custom Hummer. The fledgling Canadian webcast network BlogTV doesn't really seem to have much to do with blogs, but so far it has been strangely entertaining. On every weekday night from midnight to about last call, the pair hit local hotspots like the Drake and Lee's Palace, checking out listings they find in magazines. Then it......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

With the lamented demise of Toro, we continue to weigh in on the future of men’s magazines (for a past example, read this). Will they last? Do all middle-class men aspire to have a walk-in humidor? If you accidentally look at UMM, will you turn into one of these guys? In many ways, the talk surrounding their legitimacy is part and parcel of the fact that masculinity, now more than ever, is in crisis. Manhood......

Yesterday was day two of Canada’s Bridal Show at the Metro Convention Centre (still on until 6pm today). It’s apparently “The Big One” for brides-to-be in our city, with over 400 vendors coming to peddle all kinds of stuff you didn’t even know you needed to have in order to publicly express your love for another person. Just walking in the door you're handed a bag containing, among other things, a package of "slightly......

Torontonians are, to say the least, an opinionated bunch. So instead of a simple "Best Of" list to cap 2006 off, the Torontoist staffers have racked their brains about everything (books, songs, restaurants, people, places, stores, newspapers, politicians, musicians, and a lot more) to bring you their choices for the very best and the very worst of our city this past year. It's Torontoist Love/Hate 2006, and you can find a new one every......

Ever dreamed of running your own magazine? Then Nicole Cohen wants to talk to you. In a candid announcement on Shameless magazine's blog, the co-founder and co-editor expresses the joys of indie publishing -- and the sober realities. And sadly, the heartaches are winning: The world of small magazine publishing is not as glamorous as you might think. Sure, we get to air our opinions in the media, spend time with smart, creative folks......

D.B. Scott over at the Canadian Magazines blog has noticed that The Star's Antonia Zerbisias has stopped blogging. Zerbisias was an absolute blog trooper, posting frequently on this country's often hilarious media scene. Unlike other prominent bloggers, Zerbisias left comments back to her readers, and for that she must be commended. We're well aware of just how tiresome sifting through angry, illiterate sometimes even hateful comments can be. We're also well aware that despite......

The Ryerson Review of Journalism is one of the most acclaimed magazines in the country – and it’s run entirely by the students of Ryerson University’s school of journalism. Running a national magazine is a costly endeavour, so to fill the coffers the RRJ is hosting a black-tie fundraiser this Tuesday night. It promises to be a good one. In honour of the 40th anniversary of Truman Capote’s Party of the Century, the RRJ is......

For a fairly small media community we Torontonians aren't very nice to each other. Case in point is this recent article by DB Scott on his Canadian Magazines blog. Scott reports that the Walrus is losing staff again. Last week, Tom Fennell, the deputy editor, quit. This was followed by the resignation of Bernard Schiff, the publisher and also chair of the Walrus Foundation; he was followed out the door by most of the rest......

The last 10 days have been a great time to be a film nut, but now Christmas comes early for book nerds as over the next few weeks two of the biggest events of the year take place, starting with next Sunday’s Word on the Street, which will be followed by the start of the International Festival of Authors in mid-October. A few events taking place today. Poet Lorette C. Luzajic launches her first book,......

We learnt from DB Scott's Canadian Magazines blog that after 10 years Toronto Life is pulling the plug on its Summer Fiction Issue. Scott, who gets his copy of Toronto Life even earlier than Torontoist does, quotes from TL editor John Macfarlane's editors column: "I wish I could say that in publishing such stories we were creating an appetite for fiction. But, while I’m certain they found an appreciative audience, there’s no evidence it was......

Briton Karl Pilkington - an unlikely cult figure even for Queen Street - is now available in pin-form at Pages Books & Magazines. For those out of the loop, Mr. Pilkington is the oddball star of a weekly, once-free Ricky Gervais pod-cast. Mr. Pilkington thinks gay people stay out too late on the weekends, and says Asian people don't age well. Despite these views, he's become something of a world-wide phenomenon. A mark of Mr.......

The transit loop at Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue (across from Havergal College) will soon be transformed into a heart-shaped park. Along with the TTC, Lorne London (publisher of Post City Magazines) and city councillors Howard Moscoe and Karen Stintz are working to develop a beautiful neighbourhood park from an existing triangle-ish area of grass that measures nearly 100 by 100 feet. At the specified location, a lonely white sign with black and red......

D.B. Scott over at the Canadian Magazines blog pulled the numbers from the survey in the back of Toronto Life (not up yet). The question this month is about what kind of restaurant you go too when you eat out, fitting considering it's TL's restaurant issue. Chinese and Italian top the bill at 21% and 17% respectively but in a strong third is "Canadian" food at 12%. Which makes us wonder what in the world......

Torontoist is well aware that Maisonneuve magazine is out of Montreal, the editors seem to love rubbing that in our Toronto noses. But because they're sooo stylish, smart and funny we forgive 'em for it. Well changes are afoot for the President's Medal winning mag. Maisonneuve is moving away from its general-interest, Harper's/New Yorker for the under-35 set beat and refashioning itself as a Montreal city mag starting this Fall. We have mixed feelings about......

Frank Magazine is unwelcomely back. For those unfamiliar with Frank Magazine, take a look at the NOW Magazines' Up Front feature. It's a fairly basic formula: take an unflattering picture of a public figure, use photoshop to prove your point, and write unfunny pejoratives to match the graphic. An example of what you might see in Up Front on Thursday: Mayor Miller's cronyism is at an all-time high - or should we say low. Seems......

Most philanthropic organizations have jumped on the rubber band-wagon started by a certain cancer-beating, Tour de France winning, Sherryl Crow dating cyclist Cash strapped arts organizations have decided to opt out of the rubber band craze and gone another route. The e-bay auction. With over 5000 charities registered to sell everything from power lunches with Warren Buffett to stamps from Sierra Leone the E-bay auction isn't a bad idea. Brick Magazine, one of the best......