Posts by Adam

Pride 2008 Crowns Grand Marshall Enza Anderson

Enza Anderson Pride Grand Marshall
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

Run the ROM Movement Movement
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.

GO Lakeshore: More Delays Than Usual Next Week

GO Train Delays Toronto
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



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.

"The Best Corner in the World"

Yonge & Bloor ConstructionAfter 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.

Get Your Garden On

Garden
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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