If you remember what it was like to have a pager, you probably remember using pay phones - those dusty remnants from the past that can still been seen around the city, usually broken or covered in a viscous goo.

There was a time, before cell phones and Facebook, when these machines were cleaner and used by urbanites all over Toronto.

With less demand, and what seem to be nastier phone booths, the CRTC has decided to allow phone companies to double the traditional 25 cent fee for local calls on public pay phones. They've also increased basic phone service rates for home lines and will uncap rates for extra services like call-waiting.

It's not New York, but $16-million is a big chunk of change for what will be Toronto's priciest penthouse pad.

What do you get for that much moolah? A 9000-square foot home on top of one of the new Four Seasons Hotel development towers in Yorkville. Aside from living in trendy-but-kind-of-boring Yorkville, you also get stone floors, nickel-plated faucets, space for your live-in housekeeper (not included), and the right to say you're richer than your snobby Yorkville neighbours.

The newly designed Four Seasons (officially called the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences), is another example of hotel and condo units going up in the same building (think Sangria-La, Pantages and the Trump Hotel and Tower).

There's been a lot of talk about dirty words in the last few weeks. Don Imus said some stupid words. Russell Simmons is asking rappers to stop saying three specific words. And now, another pesky curse word, or at least something that sounds like a curse word, is causing some gosh darn drama in Ontario.

The "Flick Off" campaign was launched earlier this week by billionaire Richard Branson and the Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten (the one creating the hilarious F-bomb photo-op above) to ask us to reduce our energy consumption.

There's nothing like a list to feel like we're better than other places.

The latest, a 300 city comparison of the world's cleanest cities completed by Mercer Human Resources Consulting, has Toronto tied with Amsterdam for 21st place in city cleanliness.

While you can still hear Americans talk about how clean our city is (and make other comments like "your money is funny lookin'"), we've been beaten out by a bunch of other Canadian cities like Ottawa (4th place) and Montreal and Vancouver (tied for 10th).

And if you want to live in the world's cleanest city, buy a cowboy hat and move to the oil-boom town of Calgary. And I thought bubblin' crude wasn't so clean?

In the spirit of spring cleaning, it would be nice to improve our ranking. According to Forbes, the cleanest cities are high-tech, focus on education and have a strong public transportation system. If we focus on that, we can even beat those clean-freaks in 6th place Oslo.

photo: Image from Jon. from the blogTO flickr pool.

If I'm coming back to Toronto through any highway, there's not much to see - I'm mostly looking at gray office buildings, advertising and other cars. I only feel like I'm at home when the recognizable skyline appears or a familiar streetcar rolls by.

The city is trying to make that ride more interesting. Gateways located at different highway points into the city are looking for private sector backing, but Toronto has agreed to fund the design costs.

One initial design is for a series of 24 poles that will reach 40 meters into the air and sway in the wind because of a flexible fiberglass construction. The piece, from Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co. Architects, will be called Gathering and would be installed near Highway 427 and Dixon Road - a useful place to welcome people driving into the city from the airport.

I'll admit that I am a map nerd (and not the only one at blogTO). All maps - transit maps, geological maps, those maps that show man-made light across the globe, all give me a little shiver. Google Earth changed my life and I can look at an old atlas for hours (and, somehow, I have a girlfriend).

You can image my happiness when I came across the above image from The Infonaut Blog - a map of what Toronto looked like over a century ago from the University of Texas maps archive. If you're anything like me, you'll be spending way too much time looking at this glimpse into how our city evolved (and how "lunatic asylum" was once an acceptable term).

Turns out I live close to what was our Central Prison and down the road from the "Home for the Incurables" - seriously fascinating!

Check out the enlarged map here.